The Torah Of The Messiah

"You Have Heard That It Was Said.......
But I Say to You......."

The Messiah was expected to bring a renewed Torah - his Torah. Paul may be alluding to this in the Letter to the Galatians when he speaks of the "law of Christ." - Gal. 6:2 - His great, passionate defense of freedom from the Law culminates in the following statement in chapter 5: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." - Gal. 5:1 - But when he goes on to repeat at 5:13 the claim that "you were called to freedom" he adds, "Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another." - Gal. 5:13 -

And now he explains what freedom is - namely, freedom in the service of good, freedom that allows itself to be led by the Spirit of God. It is precisely by letting oneself be led by God's Spirit, moreover, that one becomes free from the law. Immediately after this Paul details what the freedom of the Spirit actually consists in and what is incompatible with it.

The "law of Christ" is freedom - that is the paradox of Paul's message in the Letter to the Galatians. This freedom has content, then, it has direction, and it therefore contradicts what only apparently liberates man, but in truth makes him a slave. The "Torah of the Messiah" is totally new and different - but it is precisely by being such that it fulfills the Torah of Moses.

The greater part of the Sermon on the Mount - cf. Mt. 5:17, 7:27 - is devoted to the same topic: After a programmatic introduction in the form of the Beatitudes, it goes on to present, so to speak, the Torah of the Messiah. Even in terms of the addresses and the actual intentions of the text, there is an analogy with the Letter to the Galatians: Paul writes there to Jewish Christians who have begun to wonder whether continued observance of the whole Torah as hitherto understood may in fact be necessary after all.

This uncertainty affected above all circumcision, the commandments concerning food, the whole area of prescriptions relating to purity, and how to keep the Sabbath. Paul sees these ideas as a return to the status quo before the messianic revolution, a relapse in which the essential content of this revolution is lost - namely, the universalization of the People of God, as a result of which Israel can now embrace all the peoples of the world; the God of Israel has truly been brought to the nations, in accordance with the promises, and now shown that he is the God of them all, the one God.

The flesh - physical descent from Abraham - is no longer what matters; rather, it is the spirit: belonging to the heritage of Israel's faith and life through communion with Jesus Christ, who "spiritualizes" the Law and in so doing makes it the path to life for all. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks to his people, to Israel, as to the first bearer of the promise. But in giving them the new Torah, he opens them up, in order to bring to birth a great new family of God drawn from Israel and the Gentiles.

Matthew wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians and, more widely, for the Jewish world, in order to renew this great impulse that Jesus had initiated. Through his Gospel, Jesus speaks to Israel in a new and ongoing manner. In the historical setting in which Matthew writes, he speaks in a very particular way to Jewish Christians, who thereby recognize both the novelty and the continuity of the history of God's dealings with mankind, beginning with Abraham and undergoing a revolution with Jesus. In this way they are to find the path of life.

But what does this Torah of the Messiah actually look like? At the very beginning there stands, as a sort of epigraph and interpretive key, a statement that never ceases to surprise us. It makes God's fidelity to himself and Jesus' fidelity to the faith of Israel unmistakably clear: "Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." - Mt. 5:17-19 -

The intention is not to abolish, but to fulfill, and this fulfillment demands a surplus, not a deficit, of righteousness, as Jesus immediately goes on to say: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." - Mt. 5;20 - Is the point, then, merely increased rigor in obeying the law? What else is this greater righteousness if not that?

True, at the beginning of this "relecture" - this new reading of essential portions of the Torah - there is an emphasis on extreme fidelity and unbroken continuity. Yet as we listen further, we are struck by Jesus' presentation of the relationship of Moses' Torah to the Torah of the Messiah in a series of antitheses: It was said to them of old...but I say to you..."Jesus' "I" is accorded a status that no teacher of the law can legitimately allow himself. The crowd feels this -

Matthew tells us explicitly that the people "were alarmed" at his way of teaching. He teaches not as the rabbis do, but as one who has "authority." - Mt. 7:28; cf. Mk. 1:22; Lk. 4:32 - Obviously this does not refer to the rhetorical quality of Jesus' discourses, but rather to the open claim that he himself is on the same exalted level as the Lawgiver - as God. The people's "alarm" (the RSV translation unfortunately tones this down to "astonishment") is precisely over the fact that a human being dares to speak with the authority of God. Either he is misappropriating God's majesty - which would be terrible - or else, and this seems almost inconceivable, he really does stand on the same exalted level as God.

How, then are we to understand this Torah of the Messiah? Which path does it point toward? What does it tell us about Jesus, about Israel, about the Church? What does it say about us, and to us? In my search for answers, I have been greatly helped by the book I mentioned earlier by the Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner: A Rabbi Talks with Jesus.

Neusner, a believing Jew and rabbi, grew up with Catholic and Protestant friends, teaches with Christian theologians at the university, and is deeply respectful of the faith of his Christians colleagues. He remains, however, profoundly convinced of the validity of the Jewish interpretation of Holy Scripture. His reverence for the Christian faith and his fidelity to Judaism prompted him to seek a dialogue with Jesus.

In his book, he takes his place among the crowds of Jesus' disciples on the "mount" in Galilee. He listens to Jesus and compares his words with those of the Old Testament and with the rabbinic traditions as set down in the Mishnah and Talmud. He sees in these works an oral tradition going back to the beginnings, which gives him the key to interpreting the Torah. He listens, he compares, and he speaks with Jesus himself. He is touched by the greatness and the purity of what is said, and yet at the same time he is troubled by the ultimate incompatibility that he finds at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount.

He then accompanies Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem and listens as Jesus' words return to the same ideas and develop them further. He constantly tries to understand; he is constantly moved by the greatness of Jesus; again and again he talks with him. But in the end he decides not to follow Jesus. He remains - as himself puts it - with the "eternal Israel."

The rabbi's dialogue with Jesus shows that faith in the word of God in the Holy Scriptures creates a contemporaneous bond across the ages: Setting out from Scripture, the rabbi can enter into the "today" of Jesus, setting out from Scripture, can enter into our "today." This dialogue is conducted with great honesty. It highlights the differences in all their sharpness, but it also takes place in great love. The rabbi accepts the otherness of Jesus' message, and takes his leave free of any rancor; this parting, accomplished in the rigor of truth, is ever mindful of the reconciling power of love.

Let us try to draw out the essential points of this conversation in order to know Jesus and to understand our Jewish brothers better. The central point, it seems to me, is wonderfully revealed in one of the most moving scenes that Neusner presents in his book. In his interior dialogue Neusner has just spent the whole day following Jesus, and now he retires for prayer and Torah study with the Jews of a certain town, in order to discuss with the rabbi of that place - once again he is thinking in terms of contemporaneity across the millennia - all that he has heard. The rabbi cites from the Babylonian Talmud: "Rabbi Simelai expounded: 'Six hundred and thirteen commandments were given to Moses, three hundred and sixty-five negative ones, corresponding to the number of the days of the solar year, and two hundred forty-eight positive commandments, corresponding to the parts of man's body.

"David came and reduced them to eleven...
"Isaiah came and reduced them to six...
"Isaiah again came and reduced them to two...
"Habakkuk further came and based them on one, as it is said: "But the righteous shall live by his faith." - Hab. 2:4 -

Neusner then continues his book with the following dialogue: "So', the master says, 'is this what the sage, Jesus had to say?'
"I: 'Not exactly, but close.'
"He: 'What did he leave out?'
"I: 'Nothing.'
"He: 'Then what did he add?'
"I: 'Himself'" (pp. 107-8).

This is the central point where the believing Jew Neusner experiences alarm at Jesus' message, and this is the central reason why he does not wish to follow Jesus, but remains with the "eternal Israel": the centrality of Jesus' "I" in his message, which gives everything a new direction. At this point Neusner cites as evidence of this "addition" Jesus' words to the rich young man: "If you would be perfect, go sell all you have and come, follow me" - cf. Mt. 19:21 - Neusner, p.109 [emphasis added]) Perfection, the state of being holy as God is holy - cf. Lev. 19:2, 11:44 - as demanded by the Torah, now consists in following Jesus.

It is only with great respect and reverence that Neusner addresses this mysterious identification of Jesus and God that is found in the discourses of the Sermon on the Mount. Nonetheless, his analysis shows that this is the point where Jesus' message diverges fundamentally from the faith of the "eternal Israel." Neusner demonstrates this after investigating Jesus' attitude toward three fundamental commandments: the fourth commandment (the commandment to love one's parents) the third commandment (to keep holy the Sabbath) and, finally, the commandment to be holy as God is holy (which we touched upon just a moment ago). Neusner comes to the disturbing conclusion that Jesus is evidently trying to persuade him to cease following these three fundamental commandments of God and to adhere to Jesus instead.

The Dispute Concerning the Sabbath

Let us follow Rabbi Neusner's dialogue with Jesus, beginning with the Sabbath. For Israel, observing the Sabbath with scrupulous care is the central expression of life in Covenant with God. Even the superficial reader of the Gospels realizes that the dispute over what does and does not belong to the Sabbath is at heart of Jesus' differences with the people of Israel of his time. The conventional interpretation is that Jesus broke open a narrow-minded, legalistic practice and replaced it with a more generous, more liberal view, and thereby opened the door for acting rationally in accord with the given situation. Jesus' statement that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" - Mk. 2:27 - is cited as evidence, the idea being that it represents an anthropocentric view of reality, from which a "liberal" interpretation of the commandments supposedly follows naturally.

It was, in fact, the Sabbath disputes that became the basis for the image of the liberal Jesus. His critique of the Judaism of his time, so it is said, was a freedom loving and rational man's critique of an ossified legalism - hypocritical to the core and guilty of dragging religion down to the level of a slavish system of utterly unreasonable obligations that hold man back from developing his work and his freedom. It goes without saying that this interpretation did not favor a particularly friendly image of Judaism. Of course, the modern critique - beginning with the Reformation - saw in Catholicism the return of this supposedly "Jewish" element.

At any rate, the question about Jesus - who he really was, and what he really wanted - as well as the whole question as to what Judaism and Christianity actually are: This is the point at issue. Was Jesus in reality a liberal rabbi - a forerunner of Christian liberalism? Is the Christ of faith, and therefore the whole faith of the Church, just one big mistake?

Neusner is surprisingly quick to brush this sort of interpretation aside - as well he might, because he lays bare the real bone of contention so convincingly. Commenting on the dispute over the disciples' right to pluck the ears of wheat, he simply writes: "What troubles me, therefore, is not that the disciples do not obey one of the rules of the Sabbath. That is trivial and beside the point."

To be sure, when we read the dispute over the healing on the Sabbath and the accounts of Jesus' angry grief at the hard-heartedness of those who spoke for the dominant interpretation of the Sabbath, we see that these debates concern deeper questions about man and about the right way to honor God. This side of the conflict is therefore by no means simply "trivial." Neusner is nonetheless right to identify Jesus' answer in the dispute over the ears of wheat as the place where the heart of the conflict is laid bare.

Jesus begins his defense of the disciples' way of satisfying their hunger by pointing out that David and his companions entered the House of God and ate the holy bread, "which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests." - Mt. 12:4 -

Jesus then continues: "Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice' - cf. Hos. 6:6; 1 Sam. 15:22 - you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. - Mt. 12:5-8 - Neusner comments: He [Jesus] and his disciples may do on the Sabbath what they do because they stand in the place if the priests in the Temple; the holy place has shifted, now being formed by the circle made up of the master and his disciple. (pp. 83f.)

At this point we need to pause for a moment in order to see what the Sabbath meant for Israel. This will also help us to understand what is at stake in this dispute. God rested on the seventh day, as the creation account in Genesis tell us. Neusner rightly concludes that "on that day we...celebrate creation. (p. 74) He then adds: "Not working on the Sabbath stands for more than nitpicking ritual. It is a way of imitating God ." (p. 75)

The Sabbath is therefore not just a negative matter of not engaging in outward activities, but a positive matter of "resting" which must also be expressed in a spatial dimension: "So to keep the Sabbath, one remains at home. It is not enough merely not to work. One also has to rest. And resting means, re-forming one day a week the circle of family and household, everyone at home and in place." (p. 80) The Sabbath is not just a matter of personal piety; it is the core of the social order. This day "makes eternal Israel what it is, the people that, like God in creating the world, rest from creation on the Seventh Day. (p. 74)

We could easily stop here to consider hoe salutary it would also be for our society today if families set aside one day a week to stay together and make their home the dwelling place and the fulfillment of communion in God's rest. But let us forgo such reflections here and remain with the dialogue between Jesus and Israel, which is also inevitably a dialogue between Jesus and us and between us and the Jewish people of today.

For Neusner, the key word rest, understood as an integral element of the Sabbath, is the connecting link to Jesus' exclamation immediately prior to the story of the disciples plucking the ears of wheat in Matthew's Gospel. It is the so-called Messianic Jubelruf (joyful shout) which begins as follows: "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes." - Mt. 11:25-30 - We are accustomed to considering these as two totally distinct texts. The first one speaks of Jesus' divinity, the other of the dispute surrounding the Sabbath. When we read Neusner, we realize that the two texts are closely related, for in both cases the issue is the mystery of Jesus - the "Son of Man" the "Son" par excellence.

The verses immediately preceding the Sabbath narrative read as follow: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' - Mt. 11:28-30 - This is usually interpreted in terms of the idea of the liberal Jesus, that is, moralistically. Jesus' liberal understanding of the Law makes for a less burdensome life than "Jewish legalism." This interpretation is not very convincing in practice, though, for following Christ is not comfortable - and Jesus never said it would be, either.

What follows from this? Neusner shows us that we are dealing not with some kind of moralism, but with a highly theological text, or, to put it more precise, a Christological one. Because it features the motif of rest, and the connected motifs of labor and burden, it belongs thematically with the question of the Sabbath. The rest that is intended here has to do with Jesus. Jesus' teaching about the Sabbath now appears fully in harmony with his Jubelruf and his words about the Son of Man being Lord of the Sabbath. Neusner sums up the overall as follows: "My yoke is easy, I give you rest, the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath indeed, because the Son of man is now Israel's Sabbath: how we act like God." (p. 86)

Neusner can now say even more clearly than before: "No wonder, then, that the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath! The reason is not that he interprets the Sabbath restrictions in a liberal manner...Jesus was not just another reforming rabbi, out to make life 'easier' for people... No, the issue is not that the burden is light... Jesus' claim to authority is at issue." (p. 85) "Christ now stands on the mountain, he now takes the place of the Torah." (p. 87) The conversation between the practicing Jew and Jesus comes to the decisive point here. His noble reserve leads him to put the question to Jesus' disciple, rather than to Jesus himself: "Is it really so that your master, the Son of man, is Lord of the Sabbath?...I ask again - is your master God?". (p. 88)

The issue that is really at the heart of the debate is thus finally laid bare. Jesus understands himself as the Torah - as the word of God in person. The tremendous prologue of John's Gospel - "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." - Jn. 1:1 - says nothing different from what the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels says. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel and the Jesus of the Synoptic is one and the same: the true "historical" Jesus.

The heart of the Sabbath disputes is the question about the Son of Man - the question about Jesus Christ himself. Yet again we see how far Harnack and the liberal exegesis that followed him went wrong in thinking that the Son, Christ, is not really part of the Gospel about Jesus. The truth is that he is always at the center of it.

Now, though, we need to consider a further aspect of the question that arises more sharply in connection with the fourth commandment. What disturbs Rabbi Neusner about Jesus' message concerning the Sabbath is not just the centrality of Jesus himself. He throws this centrality into clear relief, but it is not the ultimate bone of contention for him. Rather, he is concerned with the consequence of Jesus' centrality for Israel'e daily life: The Sabbath loses its great social function. The Sabbath is one of the essential elements that hold Israel together. Centering upon Jesus breaks open this sacred structure and imperils an essential element that cements the unity of the People of God.

Jesus' claim entails that the community of his disciples is the new Israel. How can this not unsettle someone who has the "eternal Israel" at heart? The issue of Jesus' claim to be Temple and Torah in person also has implications for the people in whom God's word is actualized. Neusner devotes a fairly large portion of his book to underscoring just this second aspect, as we shall see in what follows.

At this point, the question arises for the Christian: Was it a good idea to jeopardize the great social function of the Sabbath, to break up Israel's sacred order for the sake of a community of disciples that is defined, as it were, solely in terms of the figure of Jesus? This question could and can be clarified only within the emerging community of disciples - the Church. We cannot enter into this discussion here. The Resurrection of Jesus "on the first day of the week" meant that for Christians this "first day" - the beginning of the creation - became the "Lord's day" - The essential elements of the Old Testament Sabbath then naturally passed over to the Lord's day in the context of table fellowship with Jesus.

The Church thus recuperated the social function of the Sabbath as well, always in relation to the "Son of Man." An unmistakable signal of this was the fact that Constantine's Christian - inspired reform of the legal system granted slaves certain freedoms on Sundays; the Lord's day was thus introduced as a day of freedom and rest into a legal system now shaped on Christian principles. I find it extremely worrying that modern liturgists want to dismiss this social function of Sunday as a Constantinian aberration, despite the fact that it stands in continuity with the Torah of Israel.

Of course, this brings up the whole question of the relationship between faith and social order, between faith and politics. We will need to focus on this point in the next section.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -