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Jesus has a different agenda and strategy, even though this wrong “law of holiness” continues in all immature religion to this day. Jesus has come to transform people, not to exclude them. He has come for the seeming losers, and not to create a country club for the supposed winners.
the biblical text itself reveals both a movement forward into a gradual discovery of God and a simultaneous movement backward into a self-centered using of God for our own purposes. Both are often in the same text.
We still do not want to change ourselves; we want to change others instead.
I know that any kind of defeat or humiliation is not the American way, but it is surely the biblical way. There the pattern is rather clear, and there is no going up until you go down.
Oppositional energy never knows what it is for, it just knows what it is against. It is sort of a sad substitute for vision, yet negative people feed on it. This “spirit of rejection” is what kills Jesus,
Naaman is a complete victim of grace!
he points out that the prophet “Elijah was sent to the widow of Zarephath, a town in Sidon” (outside of Jewish territory). He more than suggests that it is often the outsider who crosses borders of prejudice to receive the gift, while you remain smugly inside your synagogues.
Religion which was supposed to be life and healing for the world has too often become death and boundary-keeping for the few.
“God of Israel, Samaria, Sidon, and Syria, are you really all the same God? Can I allow you to be free, or should you follow our rules and our theology?”
smug people are threatened by anyone farther along the path than they are.
“What you find hateful do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary. Now go learn that!”
Listen, Israel, the Lord your God is One. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ And this is the second. ‘You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:29–31
regressive restoration of persona commonly happens to both individuals, and also to institutions, as we continually see in our country, our social groups, and even more sadly in our churches. They too often go back to nostalgia for the past and victimhood for the future in lieu of courage or guidance. We need healing images and courageous people to image us at our best.
Jeremiah becomes here what he hates and fears in others.
they “try to arrest him,” just as much of Christian history has arrested, feared, and denied any message of actual union with God.
You can either rally around love to unite, or you can rally around fear, gossip, paranoia, and negativity, usually symbolized by one issue or person. I am afraid the second rallying point is the much more common. It is more efficient and gathers groups much more quickly and tightly than love does. I wish it were not true.
Note that it says on the tenth day of the month (“April”), they are to procure a small year-old lamb for each household. They are to keep it for four days— just enough time for the children to bond with it and for all to see its loveliness—and then “slaughter it during the evening twilight”!
it was meant to be a psychic shock for all as killing always is.
The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born.
we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb!
It really is about “passing over” to the next level of faith and life. And that never happens without some kind of “dying to the previous levels.”
