Lamb of God #2

Divinity1

Lois Tverberg’s newest book is about Jesus in his Jewish context, or more specifically, how to understand the ethics of Jesus in Jewish context.

Rabbi Dust

Two Mary’s

Recently an archaeology blogger, for whom I have nothing but respect although he is a skeptic when it comes to matters of faith, made a comment on his blog about the gospels being unreliable. He said that we find a pattern in human discourse about major events. Years after the event, people make up apocryphal stories. They often put the stories in the mouth of authority figures to give them more credibility and the stories pass down as if they really happened and were witnessed by important people.

This, he said, is what the gospels represent. Maybe there are some genuine stories in there, but most are apocryphal and put into the mouths of earlier authority figures. The blogger recommended that people read the book by Bart Ehrman called Forged for more details. Ehrman says that many biblical writings were forgeries perpetrated in the name of others to establish credibility for their religious structure.

I thought about these statements and compared them with the research I have been doing for several years now and found a complete disconnect. While my views on the Bible have changed and while I do see that some things are not as simple as I once thought them to be, I’m not finding the gospels to be documents capable of forged stories and invented tales. On the contrary, I’m seeing more clearly a deliberate pattern of eyewitness testimony and oral history as a source.

Oral history, by the way, is very different from oral tradition. Oral history is direct, related by eyewitnesses. Oral history is Simon of Cyrene speaking in the early congregations, telling his story. Oral history is Peter, teaching gathered groups and relating his direct experience of Yeshua. Oral tradition is when stories are passed from teller to teller. Variations get introduced. Words get attributed to people who may not have been the actual origin.

The gospels were written down at the time the eyewitnesses were dying out. It seems the stories were written when the time for direct oral history was disappearing.

I also think about the importance of this topic for another reason. I care very much about people knowing the stories of Yeshua and joining the community of his followers. I represent this story to many Jewish and intermarried families. I care how Jewish people in particular see the life and identity of Yeshua. I also encounter many non-Jewish thinkers in my writing and correspondence. I read many points of view. It is important to me to advocate the Jesus-is-the-Messiah-of-Israel-and-the-Nations point of view.

I’m not a disinterested scholar. No scholars are actually disinterested anyway. I’m a Messianic Jewish rabbi and I think Yeshua’s story is the crux of meaning for the world.

I see faith eroding all over the place. People have new access to a broader spectrum of ideas. Critical scholarship is widely accessible. This should be a good thing. Yet, it has mostly been harmful for one very simple reason.

That reason is this: the people who represent faith tend not to read critical scholarship and the people who represent critical scholarship generally do not advocate faith. There is a lack of communication between the two.

It is my desire, then, to study the gospels and the life of Yeshua in order to communicate with people who may or may not read critical scholarship. I’ve given reading and study enough time to feel confident that critical study and faith in Yeshua are perfectly compatible.

One step in putting away false doubts about the reliability of the gospels is to address some of the evidence that they represent early written forms with sources in oral history. To say that another way: the gospels are the written record combining literary freedom with the oral reports of people who were there. There is no need to deny either the literary freedom the writers exercised or the oral history on which they largely based their accounts.

And in this podcast, I simply want to address the idea that Peter’s oral testimony stands largely behind the earliest gospel, Mark. But before I do, I am not saying that there are no exceptions to the oral history principle. The most famous example of something in the gospels that is not likely to be from oral history are the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Neither am I saying that the evangelists were mere recorders or claiming that all parts of their writing are equally close to the oral histories behind them.

But if I can convince someone that the essential basis of the gospels is direct testimony by people who were there, it would go a long way toward putting to rest all this doubt about the life and identity of Jesus, of Yeshua.

Amid the numerous books about the historical Jesus and the gospels, one that has become a particular focus for me is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. On June 5, here in Atlanta, I am leading a seminar called “Eyewitnesses in the Gospels.” It is a seminar I’d like to give more than once and bring to other places as well.

In the seminar, we’ll examine topics including: the statements of Papias about the sources of the gospels, trends in named and unnamed characters in the gospels, the footprints of Peter in Mark, the footprints of the Beloved Disciple in John, and the meaning of the Yeshua who is revealed by testimony. The overall point is simple: the accounts in the gospels in many cases reflect early stories told by people who were there. They represent stories told in a community containing number of eyewitnesses. The possibility of fabricated stories about Yeshua is far less than many theories of gospel origins admit.

Or, to say it another way, the gospels are more reliable and more firmly grounded in the experiences related directly by people who had those experiences than many modern day authorities acknowledge. The stories about Yeshua are far more worth listening to than many people have been led to believe.

Consider for example the case that Richard Bauckham makes for the old theory, well-known to many readers of Mark, that Peter is largely the voice behind the stories in Mark. I will give a very short and in many ways inadequate summary of that case here. In the seminar, we’ll spend an hour on this issue and in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses you can read the thoroughly developed case.

Where did people first get the idea that Mark’s gospel is, in some way, shape, or form, relating stories originally sourced in Peter? They get that idea from a statement made by Papias, probably around the year 110 C.E., based on what Papias claims to have heard from the disciples of John the Elder, probably in 70’s or early 80’s of the first century. The statement of Papias is recorded in the writing of Eusebius in the fourth century and there are some problems with the statement.

The reason many people reject Papias’ statement outright is that Mark is clearly a literary gospel. Mark is clearly not simply the written account of oral teaching. There is too much literary artistry to take Mark as some sort of transcript.

But that is not what Papias said exactly in the first place and the idea of a literary gospel sourced in Peter’s oral teaching is worth investigating. Is there any evidence internal to Mark to back it up?

I’ll simply give three examples of that sort of internal evidence. These examples have behind them precedents in ancient biographies and are not simply literary theories based on thin air. Mark has done some things in his gospel comparable to what other biographers have done and fitting with theories of how history should be written as well. Skipping over all that complexity, here are three examples.

First, Mark goes out of his way to mention Peter by name first and last in his gospel. The two basic reasons that could explain this are either that Peter was so important in the early movement, he deserved special attention or it could be an indication by Mark that Peter is his main source. Many people have simply assumed that the importance of Peter in Mark is simply about Peter’s position in the early community. But Bauckham shows that the literary device which is now referred to as inclusio was used by ancient biographers in some cases to indicate their direct source.

Thus, we read in Mark 1:16, “And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen.” Note that Simon, who is Peter, is mentioned by name first and that his name is oddly repeated when Andrew is named. Much more can be said about the oddity of naming Simon Peter first in light of John’s account in which Andrew knew Yeshua before Peter.

And we read in Mark 16:7, “ But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” Note the odd naming of Peter even though telling the disciples would already include him. Mark has gone out of his way, in the next to last verse of the gospel, to name Peter.

Peter is named first and last among the disciples and major players in the gospels.

Now, let’s look at a second example and a different category of evidence. There is a curious feature that happens twenty-one times in Mark. It is a feature noted by many commentaries. Bauckham calls it the plural-to-singular literary device. Let me explain it by one example and suggest its possible origin.

In Mark 5:1-2, we read: “They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.” Note that they came across the sea and yet that the action resume with just he getting out of the boat. Who is the “they” and who is the “he”? The answer, obviously, is the group of disciples and Yeshua.

Why does Mark write the scenes this way? A theory worth considering is that Mark knew the stories as told by Peter who would describe them in a similar manner. Let me restate Mark 5:1-2 changing the they to a we to illustrate what I mean: “We came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.”

It makes sense that a person who was part of a group might relate a story in this way. And the plural-to-singular narrative pattern in Mark looks like a residual feature of stories originally told by one who was in the “we” of the story. In terms used in the study of narrative, this is a device for internal focalization, which I will explain more in depth at the seminar. It basically means a literary device that allows the reader to view the story from the viewpoint of a character or group of characters. The reader becomes part of Mark’s literary “they.”

Finally, and as our last specific example of literary footprints of Peter in Mark’s gospel, consider the stories in which Peter stands out as the main character. Again, this could be simply due to his importance in the later community. But it could also be because Mark and others knew the stories primarily from Peter’s point of view.

So, in Mark 9:5 we read one of many examples of Peter as the main actor among the disciples, “And Peter said to Yeshua, ‘Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’” The compound result of these stories is that the reader thinks Peter is almost the only disciple who speaks. This fits well with the idea that the source of the stories is Peter.

In conclusion, there is internal evidence that Papias’ statement is basically true. Mark’s gospel does show signs of being heavily based on Peter’s telling.

REFERENCE:
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (2005, Schocken).
Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow (2010, Zondervan).
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (1962, reprinted in 2007 by Hendrickson).
http://www.messianicjudaism.me/musings/2011/05/10/life-of-loving-deeds-1/ (and more will follow in this series).

Kingdom Winners
A comment in Scot McKnight’s book One.Life got me thinking. He made a comparison between two two-part parables of Yeshua that I had never thought of connecting before.

The first two-part parable occurs only in Luke 14 and concerns the builder of a tower and a king counting his troops. The second two-part parable occurs only in Matthew 13 and concerns one who finds a treasure in a field and another who finds a “pearl of great price.” There’s no literary connection between them, but there is a thematic connection.

One is about kingdom winners. The other is about kingdom losers.

To begin to understand the concept of kingdom from a practical point of view, I’d like to read a few excerpts from McKnight’s book. This is not about the theology of the kingdom or tracing the biblical roots of God’s kingship. Those are very important tasks on their own. But this is about what the kingdom means in a sense of practice, of living in light of the Rule of God on earth:

Every Jew in Galilee and everywhere else, and I mean every one of them, when they heard Jesus say “the kingdom,” looked for three things: king, land, citizens. This might surprise you, but that is only because so many Christians have turned kingdom into either a “personal experience with Jesus” (the evangelical meaning of kingdom) or into “cultural redemption” (the liberal, progressive meaning of kingdom). When Jesus said “the kingdom,” the first thing his hearers looked for was a king, and then they were thinking of a land (or a sacred place or sacred space) and themselves as participants (citizens). This needs to be fleshed out for one reason: Kingdom is not about an experience with God but about the society of God, and this society is Jewish (and biblical) to the core.
-McKnight, 30.

It’s a great explanation and I appreciate the emphasis on Jesus in his Jewish context. I appreciate McKnight’s refusal to reduce the kingdom to a feeling or an individualistic experience. I also appreciate his refusal to reduce the kingdom to a feel-good message about improving humanity.

God’s society has a king, a land, a specific and definite shape and purpose and destination. The king is God himself who has given all authority to the Son. The land is Israel but the kingdom spreads to the whole renewed earth from Israel. The specific plan and shape unfolds in stages and we are in part of it now and much more is to come. God’s society is initiated and much work has been done by God and his servants, but, to say it simply, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

And then, on page 31, McKnight gives a very practical definition of kingdom: God’s Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world.

On page 82, he summarizes some of the key practices involved in living for the kingdom, saying that a disciple is one who follows Jesus by devoting his or her One.Life to the kingdom of God, fired by Jesus’ own imagination, to a life of loving God and loving others, and to a society shaped by justice, especially for those who have been marginalized, and to peace.

The kingdom and living for the kingdom, then, is a big deal. And there are winners and losers. And what makes the difference between them?

Let’s consider the contrast between the two sets of parables that first turned my mind to the subject. Let’s consider the tower builder and king counting his troops versus the treasure finder and pearl seeker.

The Difference Between Winning and Losing the Kingdom
The tower builder and the king counting his troops stories both come in a section of Luke concerned with instruction for disciples about what to expect and how to follow the Master.

Yeshua’s demands are high. Given a choice between family and the work of a disciple, Yeshua says sharply that being a disciple is far greater in priority. Given a choice between protecting our lives and clinging to safety versus doing the hard work of a disciples, Yeshua says there is really no choice. A disciple will go to the cross for faith and love. A disciple will not count death too great a price.

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and was not able to finish.’

I thought I used to understand this parable. The first time I read it, I had the wrong idea. I thought this was a calling for a special category of person, something not addressed to everyone hearing Yeshua’s words. I thought these words were for people who wanted to become clergy, to be missionaries or pastors or monks or holy men and women of some kind. So I thought this could mean, “Don’t take up the calling to be an especially holy person unless you think you can handle the challenge.”

I felt as if most people would be free to ignore this demand of Yeshua. There could be ordinary followers and specially dedicated followers, I reasoned, and the cost of being dedicated is too high for most people.

The second story in this two-part parable is similar: Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.

Don’t start building a tower unless you have the means to finish. Be careful before you accept the challenge to war. Is the tower worth it? Is the reward of winning worth it?

Then Yeshua gives the lesson of the parable: So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Here is the truly important thing: Yeshua tells us specifically what the cost is — renouncing our possessions.

Contrast that with the two-part parable in Matthew 13: The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Note here that the lesson is the same, though made positively instead of negatively: sell everything and commit yourself one hundred percent to the kingdom.

The difference between kingdom winners and losers is simple: commitment.

One hundred percent commitment makes you a disciple. Ninety-nine percent commitment leaves you with a crumbling, unfinished tower; leaves you not in possession of the pearl or the treasure; leaves you conquered and defeated by the other kingdom, the kingdom that had higher commitment than you did.

Okay, yes, Yeshua deliberately exaggerates. Yes, in his mercy God accepts all efforts made in his direction and humility goes a long way.

But you can’t get around this: the kingdom is about knowing the king, believing in his land, being a participant in his dream society, and committing all your possessions to the cause.

Specific ways that gets fleshed out, ways that draw on Jewish and Christian thought about the ethics of responsibility, about almsgiving and tzedaka, about serving and sacrifice, that’s what we need to think about and put into practice.

Because if there is one thing that costs more than the kingdom, it is missing the kingdom.

I had an experience last night that gave me an idea for this podcast. I’ve been closely reading the gospels and books on the gospels and books on the historical inquiry into the life and message of Yeshua for several years now. It’s like swimming in a sea of information at times.

But sometimes a surprise breaks through. Actually, it happens more often than sometimes. Last night I got one of those surprises reading Paul Anderson’s The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus. It reminded me of the joys of reading, especially the joys of reading the life and message of Yeshua.

I’m fortunate to have the time to do all this reading. Many people might have only half an hour a day to spare. But the joys of reading can come to you in a half hour a day.

I’m fortunate to have a background in biblical studies that makes it easier for me to read book after book of history and commentary. But the joys of reading can come from simply reading the gospels themselves or in combining them a little at a time with other reading.

I have a good friend in our congregation who makes more time for study than most people, but he is also a very busy person. Sometime more than a year ago, when I mentioned to people they might benefit from reading a Harmony of the Gospels, he asked me which one to buy. Then he came back time and time again, and still does occasionally, excited about parallels he has found or observations he has made that are only possible because he now reads more closely.

I have another good friend in our congregation. She is devout and loves to study. She told me just recently that taking Torah Club Volume 4 with Daniel Lancaster’s teaching on the life of Yeshua has been so rich and meaningful.

I get emails from several people who read my commentary on the gospels every day and notice the finer points of close reading and see something in the message of the gospels that inspires them, challenges them, keeps them focused on the meaning of life.

The joys of reading, and especially reading in conversation with friends, are many. There are the surprises. There are the community experiences of togetherness. There are the frequent reminders to re-order my priorities and my way of viewing people, the world, evil, righteousness, and hope.

The secret of reading is not short bursts of intense energy. The secret is regular, a little at a time, over a long period of time.

It all started for me with a reading of N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God followed by Jesus and the Victory of God. Before that, I didn’t know historical Jesus studies or gospel research could be so rewarding.

There have been many aha moments for me along the way. One was when Vine of David published Paul Philip Levertoff’s Love in the Messianic Age. I read the epilogue called “Love in the Fourth Gospel” and my outlook on many things was changed.

Levertoff opened me up to the mystical in the life and sayings of Yeshua. By mystical I mean the idea that we can experience on earth foretastes of the Age to Come, of the Presence of God, of Life from Above, of the Mystery of Union with God.

Messiah, he says, is the personification of Divine Love. The visible manifestation of this love is the death of Christ. The love of God is concentrated in Messiah. The world is perishing for want of True Light and Communion with him. He gives to them his Fullness. Jesus, by his love, expects to awaken in men love for God and each other. The mystical oneness of the believers, this perfect achdut or unity, is founded on the oneness of Jesus with the Father. As Jesus cannot work without God, so his followers cannot work without Jesus. The conception of love is not merely humanitarian, it is an Israelitish covenant love. God in his Spirit makes the heart of the believer his habitation, and thus the highest expectation of the Messianic Age is fully realized.

I followed up this reading soon after with Raymond Brown’s commentary on the Fourth Gospel. There is so much to learn.

And gospel reading, like Torah study in classical Jewish thought, is not about learning something once and moving on. It is about constant forgetting and remembering.

A rabbi and mentor taught me a midrash on the story from Exodus in which the people of Israel cannot endure the voice of God. They ask Moses to listen to God and relay the words. If Israel had not done this, if they had persisted through their fear to hear the words from God directly, then Torah learning for Jews today would not be so hard. No mitzvah or bit of Torah learning would ever be forgotten. Each generation of Israel could read Torah once and know it their whole lives. But because that generation of Israel asked Moses to relay the words, they brought upon us forgetfulness, so that Torah must be learned daily and its points forgotten and recalled over and over again through repetition.

The joy of reading the gospels regularly, daily if possible, and over and over again, is just this. There is frequently a fresh revelation or a sweet reminder of something once learned and all but forgotten.

In Paul Anderson’s book on the Fourth Gospel last night, certain impressions I had developed over the years from following the standard course of historical thought about Yeshua, were suddenly challenged. I read a remarkable list he has in his book. It is a list of parallels in memorable sayings of Yeshua between Mark and the Fourth Gospel.

In historical Jesus research the Fourth Gospel is discounted. In gospel scholarship, the Fourth Gospel is often regarded as the least historical. And it is an axiom that John did not use Mark. Anderson gives a more complex theory, one I am not taking time to fully explain here, about interdependence of the traditions in the formative or oral tradition years. And he gives a remarkable list of forty-four parallels in memorable sayings from Mark to John.

It was another surprise, another aha moment. And its full effect on me can only be explained by the fact that I have become immersed in the world of the gospels. And I have found, as you will too and as many others have, that they are a deep well. Like the Torah, the gospels are a regular source of forgetting and remembering that can occupy a lifetime.

And perhaps the most important practice of reading is simply reading the gospels themselves. There is the importance of reading each gospel individually and then there is the importance of comparing, contrasting, and finding patterns, similarities, and differences.

When you become familiar you will think about things like, were there two anointings of Yeshua by a woman or only one? Did she anoint his head or his feet? You will think about things like, why are some minor characters named and others not? It will occur to you to compare the Sermon of the Mount with the parallels in Luke. You will want to get a Harmony of the Gospels, but you will find yourself disagreeing with it in places. And you will also realize that the parallels are not always in parallel stories. Often the same sayings of Yeshua, sometimes in varied form, show up in different settings and stories.

If you haven’t started, you should. There are many ways to go about it. The first and simplest is just to use a bookmark and a Bible. Read a little every day. Write observations sometimes. Compare things. You can find a free harmony of the gospels on the Study Tools page at BlueLetterBible.com or you can buy a Harmony such as the one by Thomas Gundry.

You can start adding some commentary. Consider taking Torah Club Volume 4, the “Chronicles of Messiah,” from FFOZ. Use my YeshuaInContext website. I could gladly recommend various commentaries to you on the gospels. There is joy in the reading and an endless supply of surprises and revelations.

Yeshua said in Mark 7:15, “there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.”

I have always thought that this passage was one of the most penetrating, well-phrased, to-the-heart-of-the-matter statements of what Yeshua stood for. It’s actually only part of what Yeshua had to say on the matter. It’s what he said to the crowds, the outsiders, the ones who did not get private instruction as part of the inner circle. Mark 7:15 is rather vague and can be taken in some different directions all by itself.

Yeshua gives further clarification in vss. 17-23. I won’t go into detail about some of the controversial matters here. Many people wonder if Yeshua is nullifying the dietary law. You can find my take on that question in chapter 8 of Yeshua in Context.

What I am interested in in this podcast is the meaning of Yeshua’s ethical teaching here. We’re too quick to make blanket statements and simplistic arguments. I hear all the time, “God hates religion and loves relationship.” You can’t possibly read the Bible with intelligence and believe this. What God hates is not religion, but the kind of things some people make of religion and the kinds of religion the masses tend to settle for. These weak and sometimes evil forms leave people empty, unfulfilled.

Likewise, it’s simplistic to say, “Yeshua is against ritual purity laws.” That’s not the point.

I’m saying Mark 7 cuts through our shoddy notions of religion. It is not simply a rebuke against those scribes back then.

Neither is Mark 7 unique in Yeshua’s teaching. It is a thread that runs throughout it.

In one parable, Yeshua calls his movement a mustard bush. That is, Yeshua’s movement is an annoying weed that pops up in the religious scene which the official gardeners can’t get rid of. It results in sinners and gentiles and the great unwashed coming into the kingdom.

In a famous scene, Yeshua protests the Temple. It is his Father’s house. He has zeal for it, as his disciples testify. Why does he protest it?

The simplistic say, he was against the Temple. Those who look deeper say, he was against what the leaders made the Temple to be. It has become an unjust system, a burden on the people and a source of enrichment for the power-brokers.

His Father made the Temple a place not only of worship but also of feeding the hungry and filling the people with abundance. But the leaders demand the tithes of the people without fulfilling the purpose. They keep as much of the proceeds as they can and use the Temple as much as they can to perpetuate their power. They demand without giving.

Yeshua opposes the Pharisees again and again and modern religion completely misses why. So many modern religious people act just like the Pharisees Yeshua opposed.

They shut people out of the kingdom. All the while they congratulate themselves, “We believe in grace; we are not legalistic Pharisees.” Mark 7 doesn’t allow any of us the luxury of self-congratulation.

In spite of much rhetoric, much modern religion is no more than “come to our meeting so you can have the mark of being one of the saved.” And in order to accommodate the idea of grace, many have made the meeting more like a concert, so that the threshold is lowered and it is not so hard for large numbers of people to attend the meeting and have the mark of the saved. Come as you are. You can wear a T-shirt. But by God, get here. If you don’t, you’re missing God’s healing power and heading to a dangerous place.

No wonder Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of religionless Christianity as being so needed.

When people reduce the message of Yeshua to something as powerless as having the marks of the saved on you, outward signs like mere attendance, they have missed Yeshua completely.

Belonging to a community of believers is not and never has been, for Yeshua, about having the mark. Yeshua designed his community to be the place that IS and DOES his will.

How about we translate Yeshua’s saying in Mark 7: “Failure to attend meetings and bear the outward marks of faith is not what defiles, but righteousness comes from within, goes out from my followers, and comforts the suffering”?

What are the false notions of impiety in modern religion. They are many. Wrong music. Disinterest in shallow or boring worship services. Failure to apply the right bumper sticker or proclaim Jesus in a T-shirt logo.

Think about what Yeshua is actually saying in Mark 7: “Don’t worry that in the jostling crowds at Walmart you might contact uncleanness. It’s not contact from the outside that defiles. It’s what comes out of you, the wickedness in your heart. Your sense of superiority, I’m better than that woman. Your deceit. Your lust. Your grasping for self-enthronement is what defiles.

But you can get these words wrong too.

It’s not that Yeshua is saying, “Measure up.” Nor is he calling you to be a righteous individual.

First, a focus on measuring up will lead you astray. Don’t look at your shortcomings and feel unshakable shame. Look at all the good you can do and do it. Be a force for love, justice, kindness, goodness, service, help for those hurting.

Second, a focus on being a righteous individual will lead you astray. You were not created to be a solitary paragon of virtue. You made for others, to be with others, to be completed by others. You were made for God’s family.

But, you say, the congregation near me has it all wrong. Well, start somewhere. Yeshua’s generation had it all wrong too.

And no matter where you go, you’ll find people who want love, friendship, encouragement, help, and even to lend a helping hand.

But you will find that evil always pops up, in you and in others. Why be surprised? The power of sin is in perpetuating evil. The power of good is in reclaiming lost ground and advancing the kingdom of God.

While we are waiting for it to fully arrive, the kingdom of God is what we do together. It is what Yeshua taught us to do. Comfort mourners. Fill the hungry. See God. Supply needs. Right wrongs. Promote life.

Sabbath Grain.

Discipleship Secret.

Sacrifices and Yeshua.

Crucifixion Irony.

Born from Above.

A Prodigal Story.

The Messianic Secret.

Yeshua the Healer.

Yeshua the Exorcist.