23 Pentecost, C p 25, October 23, 2016
Joel 2:23-32 Ps. 67
2 Tim. 4:6 8,18 Luke 18:9 14
Lectionary Link
How does a Gentile group of Christians who do not observe all of the ritual purity rules of Judaism understand Jesus in his own time as an observant Jew and yet find the roots for what eventually happened within Gentile Christianity? If we can understand the issues of transitioning from the Judaism practiced in the time of Jesus to the Christian practices of the Gentile Christianity, we can understand how the Gospel writer had to deal with this transition. Why were the Christian churches different from the synagogues? How did they become this way? Can we understand that Gospel writers associated Jesus of Nazareth with this great shift from the synagogue to the church?
This dilemma is illustrated in the parable of Jesus about the Pharisee and the tax-collector.
The Pharisees were one of the major religious parties within Judaism. The practices and identity of the Pharisees was a form of Judaism which had developed from the templeless Jews in exile in Babylon and Persia. Without a Temple the Jews could still "gather" for communal prayers and Beit Kenesset or synagogue was the gathering place for reading of the Torah and communal prayers. Jesus attended the synagogues and the Temple. Most of the New Testament derived from the time when the Temple had been destroyed by the Roman armies and so the synagogue as a more portable gathering became one of the models for the "house churches" within early Christianity.
A Pharisee was an observant Jews. He or she would have been a person who followed the ritual purity codes of Judaism as it pertained to the application of the rules found in the Torah.
A publican was person designated from the perspective of observant Jews as one who was defiled. In Palestine a publican would have been a Jew who collected taxes from his fellow Jews on behalf of the Roman authorities. The way in which a publican would earn a living would be to add his collection fee to the amount that the Roman authorities wanted him to collect. So a publican was a person who lived in contact with Roman authorities and who was often hated as one who betrayed and "over-charged" his own people. In a purity code of the Pharisee a publican would have been a designated defiled sinner. The lifestyle of the publican who had to live in contact with Roman authorities would make the publican a "defiled person" and not one who could be a ritually observant Jews. A publican would have been regarded to be a ritually and morally defiled person. So one definition of sinner was one who was a ritually defiled person.
Within early Christianity there occurred a subtle rehabilitation of the notion of sinner. Within the theology of St. Paul, being a sinner was an unavoidable condition of being human. If one cannot avoid being a sinner, then how can we say that some sinners are better than others?
In the theology of St. Paul, a Pharisee could not be excluded from the human condition of sin. Paul, himself was a Pharisee. For the Pharisee, sin was the condition of living a ritually defiled life, so a person could go in and out of being defiled depending upon the observance of ritual and moral purity.
St. Paul's theology of sin did not exclude ritually observant people from the human condition of being sinners. St. Paul wrote that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.
If all Gentiles were ritually non-observant people who lived in a perpetual state of defilement, then Gentiles were born and lived in the condition of sin.
St. Paul redefined the notion of sin. He moved the condition of sin from the Jewish context of observing ritual purity into the Greek notion of archery as it was known in Hellenistic Greek usage. The Greek word for sin was a word from archery. To sin "hamartia" meant to miss the mark; to miss the target.
St. Paul said that the purpose of the Jewish law was to expose us to the fact that we are always missing the mark. We cannot help but always miss the mark. We are shooting arrows and we are missing the target. Why? Because the target is the holiness and the perfection of God and such holiness cannot be attained in any final sense; we can only be in the process of attaining holiness and perfection. So how do we tolerate ourselves in not yet being perfect. We ask for a pass. We ask to borrow or use in the meantime someone else's perfection as our own. The permission to borrow or use God's perfection temporarily as our own is the experience of mercy or grace.
So the publican of the parable of Jesus acknowledges his condition. "God, I am not a ritually observant Jew. I only know myself as missing the target of moral excellence and perfection in life. How can I live with myself in knowing that I lack a Pharisee or Sadducee or anyone to declare me pure or clean or perfect? God, I need your mercy, because I can never have the mercy of the Pharisee or Sadducee."
And this is where the theology of Paul also is known. St. Paul wrote that God in Jesus Christ was God's Son giving us the grace and mercy to borrow an identification with God's perfection even while we have not arrived there.
So our life is a life like the life of publican or the tax collector. We live in the state of knowing ourselves as sinners. We are archers shooting our arrows in the right direction toward the bull's eye of God's perfection and yet we always fall short. But in falling short we receive an identity with God's perfection because we cannot be proud of individual perfection. We can only be proud of God's perfection which is shared with us through the experience of God's mercy, grace and forgiveness.
The Gospel of Luke was written from the reality of Gentile Christianity and so there was this need to change the notion of a sinner from being a non-observant person of the Jewish purity code to being the human condition of being born with an unclean heart in the state of sin. Even when people believe they are not breaking any big laws, they cannot observe perfectly the 10th Commandment. Thou shalt not covet. This essentially says, "Thou shall not have any wrong desire." In order not to have wrong desire, one needs to have a clean heart and a renewed spirit. And so the Gift of the Holy Spirit gives us the clean heart and renewed Spirit and a participation in perfection without being able to claim perfection as something that derives from us as individuals.
The Gospel for you and me today is that we can embrace our lives as archers today, metaphorically speaking. The arrows of our lives which we shoot are the intentions of our thoughts and deeds. And we need to shoot the arrows of our thoughts and deeds toward what is worthy and excellent and perfect in love and justice. We never attain finality in perfection because we still live in time. We are touched by God's perfection through grace and mercy and so we are aided continually to be better today than we were yesterday.
The Gospel for us today is to look at the contrast in attitude presented by the parable about the proverbial Pharisee and the publican. The attitude of Pharisee is that "I have arrived at perfection to the point of being able to judge people like this publican. I have conveniently defined perfection according to the rules that I understand." The attitude of the tax collector was "God, the perfect one, have mercy upon me who is far from perfect but who still wants to participate in some way with God's perfection."
You and I are invited to embrace this positive notion of sin; never arriving at perfection because we always have a future towards what is better for us. And because we know we can always be better, we remain hopeful about that same invitation for others and so we cannot make any final judgments about the sins of others.
Let us be happy sinners today, happy archers, aiming the arrows of our thoughts and deeds of love, kindness and justice toward the perfect target of God. And the archery situation will never be finished so let us embrace it. Amen.
How does a Gentile group of Christians who do not observe all of the ritual purity rules of Judaism understand Jesus in his own time as an observant Jew and yet find the roots for what eventually happened within Gentile Christianity? If we can understand the issues of transitioning from the Judaism practiced in the time of Jesus to the Christian practices of the Gentile Christianity, we can understand how the Gospel writer had to deal with this transition. Why were the Christian churches different from the synagogues? How did they become this way? Can we understand that Gospel writers associated Jesus of Nazareth with this great shift from the synagogue to the church?
This dilemma is illustrated in the parable of Jesus about the Pharisee and the tax-collector.
The Pharisees were one of the major religious parties within Judaism. The practices and identity of the Pharisees was a form of Judaism which had developed from the templeless Jews in exile in Babylon and Persia. Without a Temple the Jews could still "gather" for communal prayers and Beit Kenesset or synagogue was the gathering place for reading of the Torah and communal prayers. Jesus attended the synagogues and the Temple. Most of the New Testament derived from the time when the Temple had been destroyed by the Roman armies and so the synagogue as a more portable gathering became one of the models for the "house churches" within early Christianity.
A Pharisee was an observant Jews. He or she would have been a person who followed the ritual purity codes of Judaism as it pertained to the application of the rules found in the Torah.
A publican was person designated from the perspective of observant Jews as one who was defiled. In Palestine a publican would have been a Jew who collected taxes from his fellow Jews on behalf of the Roman authorities. The way in which a publican would earn a living would be to add his collection fee to the amount that the Roman authorities wanted him to collect. So a publican was a person who lived in contact with Roman authorities and who was often hated as one who betrayed and "over-charged" his own people. In a purity code of the Pharisee a publican would have been a designated defiled sinner. The lifestyle of the publican who had to live in contact with Roman authorities would make the publican a "defiled person" and not one who could be a ritually observant Jews. A publican would have been regarded to be a ritually and morally defiled person. So one definition of sinner was one who was a ritually defiled person.
Within early Christianity there occurred a subtle rehabilitation of the notion of sinner. Within the theology of St. Paul, being a sinner was an unavoidable condition of being human. If one cannot avoid being a sinner, then how can we say that some sinners are better than others?
In the theology of St. Paul, a Pharisee could not be excluded from the human condition of sin. Paul, himself was a Pharisee. For the Pharisee, sin was the condition of living a ritually defiled life, so a person could go in and out of being defiled depending upon the observance of ritual and moral purity.
St. Paul's theology of sin did not exclude ritually observant people from the human condition of being sinners. St. Paul wrote that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.
If all Gentiles were ritually non-observant people who lived in a perpetual state of defilement, then Gentiles were born and lived in the condition of sin.
St. Paul redefined the notion of sin. He moved the condition of sin from the Jewish context of observing ritual purity into the Greek notion of archery as it was known in Hellenistic Greek usage. The Greek word for sin was a word from archery. To sin "hamartia" meant to miss the mark; to miss the target.
St. Paul said that the purpose of the Jewish law was to expose us to the fact that we are always missing the mark. We cannot help but always miss the mark. We are shooting arrows and we are missing the target. Why? Because the target is the holiness and the perfection of God and such holiness cannot be attained in any final sense; we can only be in the process of attaining holiness and perfection. So how do we tolerate ourselves in not yet being perfect. We ask for a pass. We ask to borrow or use in the meantime someone else's perfection as our own. The permission to borrow or use God's perfection temporarily as our own is the experience of mercy or grace.
So the publican of the parable of Jesus acknowledges his condition. "God, I am not a ritually observant Jew. I only know myself as missing the target of moral excellence and perfection in life. How can I live with myself in knowing that I lack a Pharisee or Sadducee or anyone to declare me pure or clean or perfect? God, I need your mercy, because I can never have the mercy of the Pharisee or Sadducee."
And this is where the theology of Paul also is known. St. Paul wrote that God in Jesus Christ was God's Son giving us the grace and mercy to borrow an identification with God's perfection even while we have not arrived there.
So our life is a life like the life of publican or the tax collector. We live in the state of knowing ourselves as sinners. We are archers shooting our arrows in the right direction toward the bull's eye of God's perfection and yet we always fall short. But in falling short we receive an identity with God's perfection because we cannot be proud of individual perfection. We can only be proud of God's perfection which is shared with us through the experience of God's mercy, grace and forgiveness.
The Gospel of Luke was written from the reality of Gentile Christianity and so there was this need to change the notion of a sinner from being a non-observant person of the Jewish purity code to being the human condition of being born with an unclean heart in the state of sin. Even when people believe they are not breaking any big laws, they cannot observe perfectly the 10th Commandment. Thou shalt not covet. This essentially says, "Thou shall not have any wrong desire." In order not to have wrong desire, one needs to have a clean heart and a renewed spirit. And so the Gift of the Holy Spirit gives us the clean heart and renewed Spirit and a participation in perfection without being able to claim perfection as something that derives from us as individuals.
The Gospel for you and me today is that we can embrace our lives as archers today, metaphorically speaking. The arrows of our lives which we shoot are the intentions of our thoughts and deeds. And we need to shoot the arrows of our thoughts and deeds toward what is worthy and excellent and perfect in love and justice. We never attain finality in perfection because we still live in time. We are touched by God's perfection through grace and mercy and so we are aided continually to be better today than we were yesterday.
The Gospel for us today is to look at the contrast in attitude presented by the parable about the proverbial Pharisee and the publican. The attitude of Pharisee is that "I have arrived at perfection to the point of being able to judge people like this publican. I have conveniently defined perfection according to the rules that I understand." The attitude of the tax collector was "God, the perfect one, have mercy upon me who is far from perfect but who still wants to participate in some way with God's perfection."
You and I are invited to embrace this positive notion of sin; never arriving at perfection because we always have a future towards what is better for us. And because we know we can always be better, we remain hopeful about that same invitation for others and so we cannot make any final judgments about the sins of others.
Let us be happy sinners today, happy archers, aiming the arrows of our thoughts and deeds of love, kindness and justice toward the perfect target of God. And the archery situation will never be finished so let us embrace it. Amen.
