The Road to Redemption: The Jewish Context Part One

    Jesus was a Jew. That statement is one that ought to cause most of us 21^st Century Christians to stop and take notice. It ought to do so because across the centuries the church has often tried to remove Jesus from his Jewish roots. We have pretended that Jesus existed in some sort of religious neutral territory with the Jews on one side and the Romans on the other. This could not be farther from the truth. Jesus was born a Jew. He grew up as a Jew. He lived and worked within a Jewish context. Finally he envisioned his mission and ministry as an extension of God's work through the Jewish people as laid out in the Jewish scriptures.

    The Jewish community of the First Century within Judea was fragmented into a wide variety of religious/political denominations. These divisions were complicated even more by geographical divisions within Judea itself (an example is that the Galileans were considered by Jews in Jerusalem to be low class rebels who were always advocating for political independence). The Jewish community into which Jesus was born then was not a monolithic religious community, but a highly fractured faith family. In order to help make sense of Jesus' interaction with this fractured family we will take a few moments to find out who the players were.

    Pharisees: the Pharisees were a populist/democratic movement. The Pharisees (and we are not sure where the name comes from) were a logical outgrowth of the struggle for Judaism to maintain its traditions after the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. The issue for the Jews was how to remain faithful without the rituals of the Temple. Jews did so by congregating in small worshipping, praying and learning communities eventually called synagogues. After the restoration of Israel and the rebuilding of the Second Temple in 515 B.C. these communities did not vanish. Instead they became the gathering and learning centers for the poor and middle class. Their focus was on following the Law (both written and oral) and not on Temple ritual. Again we need to note that the Pharisees were subdivided into a wide variety of sects and never spoke with a single voice. One of their sayings was, "A learned illegitimate child (mamzer) takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest."

Sadducees: The Sadducees in general were conservative, aristocratic monarchists. They were responsible for upkeep of the Temple, administration of the state as well as international relations, collecting Jewish taxes to support the Temple and the priesthood, equipping and leading the Jewish Army, regulating relations with the Romans and mediating domestic disputes. Theologically they focused only on the written Torah (they did not believe in the writings or the work of the prophets), did not believe in eternal life and taught that human beings had complete free will. Because of their association with the Second Temple (which had been built with foreign funds) and the Romans they were always slightly suspect to many Jews. They looked down on the Pharisees and members of the early Jesus movement.

Herodians: the Herodians were a minor political party associated with the family and lineage of Herod the Great. It is possible that the Herodians wanted to maintain the concept of theocracy (a Jewish king over Judea insisting on the keeping of Jewish laws) and the idea that somehow Herod the Great had actually been the Messiah. In the Gospels they are usually mentioned with the Pharisees, though they are distinct.

The existence of each of these groups (along with the Essenes who are not mentioned in the Gospels) demonstrates the fractured nature of Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus. It also makes it clear why Jesus' mission and ministry would be viewed with suspicion by a wide variety of Jewish groups even while being lauded by the populous.

The Road to Redemption: Born into a Roman World

    I have often found it interesting that Rome appears to play such a minor role in the Gospels. It is only occasionally that we run across clear references to Rome, Romans and their impact an influence on the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. Luke sets Jesus' birth in the context of a census ordered by Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.E. – 14 C.E.). Matthew tells us a story about Jesus and a Roman Centurion (a Roman soldier who commanded 80 other men and had won this honor by his bravery in battle). All of the gospels remind us that Roman power was critical in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. These minor references could make one assume that the relationship between Jesus, Judea and Rome was minimal at best; that it had little or no impact upon his ministry. Such an assumption would be a mistake because the Roman presence significantly impacts Jesus' mission and message in three areas.

    The first was economic. As we read about Jesus' ministry, one of things that becomes apparent is that there were a great deal of poor everywhere that Jesus went. Jesus tells stories about day laborers, about fields and vineyards and about the poor in general. These stories are not simply drawn out of thin air. They reflected the living conditions within first century Judea which were brought about by the emergence of Roman domination. Prior to the Romans extending their control to Judea, the Jewish Empire under the Maccabees (the Jewish leaders who had given short lived freedom to the Jewish people from 163 B.C. to 64 B.C.) had experienced not only freedom but expansion. The state had expanded to almost the size of the original David Empire. This meant that Jews had displaced others from their homes and cities. With the coming the Romans, those lands were returned to their original owners, thus driving many Jews into landlessness and poverty. In addition Roman tax policy forced many small land owners to sell their property to larger and more wealth farmers.

    The second was political. The Roman Empire was an interesting phenomenon. Unlike many of its predecessors it was willing to allow minor "kings" to rule areas under their sway as long as those "king" not only offered their allegiance to Rome but were give their titles by the Roman Senate. This is why kings such as Herod the Great (who ruled for 37 years) could rule as long as he did. However what was clear was that though they were referred to as "kings" they were in fact no more than vassals of Caesar. Caesar was the king and the Lord of the Roman Empire. Caesar (whichever one was in power) would brook no other individual who claimed to be the Lord or king of a people independent from his rule. This understanding did not sit well with the Jews. The Jews like many other dominated people desired freedom above all else. For this freedom they looked to the coming kingly messiah. As we read the Jesus stories we will encounter the pressure put upon Jesus to assume this role. We will witness the people wanting to make him King as well as his ultimate conviction and execution for claiming to be King of the Jews.

    Finally there was cultural influence. Jesus was living and working in a time of great cultural transition. Just as there is American cultural imperialism in the world today so too there was Roman cultural imperialism in the first century. This imperialism was seen in the construction or reconstruction of towns in Judea in order that they reflect Roman culture (Roman baths, stadiums and Temples). These towns and what they represented caused further divisions among the Jews as to what it meant to be a faithful follower of God. The temptation was to become a Jew in name and not in practice, in order to be accepted by those in power. We witness these factors playing a role in Jesus' two meetings with Roman Centurions, Jesus' dealings with tax collectors (who had to associate with the Roman authorities) and much of his religious teaching. Thus the Road to Redemption does not exist in a vacuum but instead ran right through the Roman Empire.

        

The Road to Redemption: Jesus Arrives

    God was in a pickle (not really but let's go with it for the moment). God had promised to act decisively in and through Israel to redeem creation. Unfortunately Israel was not being very cooperative. As we discussed two weeks ago Israel, because of the trauma it had endured over the 500 or so years before the birth of Jesus, had essentially withdrawn from the wider world. Its primary goal was survival and not the redemption of the world. So what was God to do? The solution was to call forth one from the midst of Israel who would act on Israel's behalf…a messiah who would fulfill Israel's calling of world-wide redemption. Scripture tells us that this messiah was born into the lower middle class in rural area of occupied Judea. His parents named him Jesus. What is fascinating however is that each of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) treat Jesus' arrival, ministry and death in very different ways. Today we will look at his arrival.

In the oldest of the Gospel narratives, Mark, we first meet Jesus on the occasion of his baptism. There are no birth stories. There are no shepherds or angels. John the Baptist is doing his thing (baptizing Jews for the remission of sins), Jesus shows up, gets baptized and begins his ministry. Mark then shows Jesus as the teacher whose life is to be imitated.

In the Gospel of Matthew we find a Jesus who is the fulfillment of the promises to Israel. This is made clear in that Jesus' genealogy in this Gospel places him in the lineage of both Abraham and David (as the prophets had declared), has him born of a virgin (again as prophets had declared), and then named Jesus (meaning God saves). An angel even tells Joseph that Jesus will save God's people from their sins. Thus Jesus is the one who will do for Israel, and for the world, what God had promised.

    Luke expands upon this image of the work of Jesus by linking Jesus not only into the people of Israel but to all of humanity. Luke does this by offering us a genealogy which stretches all the way back to Adam. In other words Jesus will not only create a new Israel, as in Matthew, but will create a new humanity altogether. Luke, more than the other Gospels attempts to locate Jesus' birth in both specific historical moments (when Herod the Great still ruled) but also in specific places (Bethlehem, the city of David). His account is by far the longest and most complex. In it we have shepherds, angels, people proclaiming Jesus as messiah even before he is born as well as Mary's wonderful song which we call the Magnificat. Much of this birth narrative is intended to lay the groundwork for Jesus' ministry in which the entire world is turned upside down (rich brought low, poor exalted, etc.) as it is being made new.

    Finally in the Gospel of John we see the beginnings of Christ reaching even further back than Adam. In the Gospel of John we discover that Jesus was the eternal Word, the co-creator with God and the Spirit. We learn that the Word then became flesh (incarnate) in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is this Jesus of Nazareth who knows the Father and has come to reveal the Father and the Father's will to the world. In this sense then there is no birth story, because Jesus is eternal with the Father. Jesus' first appearance in the Gospel of John is when John the Baptist points him out and declares that Jesus is the "Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." Thus the Gospel of John declares that as Jesus begins his ministry it should be obvious to anyone with spiritual eyes, that he is the one who will save the world.

    So who is this Jesus? It is a question with which the church has been struggling for the past two thousand years. Often the church has settled for simplistic and comfortable answers. As we move down this road to redemption I hope we will be willing to be open to the wide variety of images the scriptures offer us that we might embrace Jesus in all of his fullness and complexity as the one who loved and saved the world.

    

The Road to Redemption – God Prepares to Act

    The prophets of Israel had vanished. No one is sure which of the prophets was last on the scene (Malachi or Joel) but it is clear that after 400 BCE the prophetic voice was silenced. This is somewhat remarkable considering that the role of prophet had been central to the life of Israel for more than 600 years. During those 600 years (from the time of King David until after the restoration of Jerusalem following the Exile) prophets had helped to shape the religious and political identity of the nation. Their writings had helped to preserve Judaism during some of its most difficult moments. Yet suddenly and inexplicably there was silence. No man or woman appeared to be called by God to speak a word to the people.

    This silence was particularly deafening because the 400 years before the birth of Christ were some of the most difficult and destructive years in the history of the nation of Israel. We will take a moment for a brief recounting of those times. The difficulty began in 332BC when Alexander the Great wrested Judea from the Persians. Alexander died and claim to Judea fell to the Ptolemies (the descendants of one of the four Generals who claimed portions of Alexander's Empire) who were not kind to the Jews. In 198 BC the nation was conquered by the Seleucids (another family descended from one of Alexander's four generals). The Seleucids eventually outlawed Judaism and made its practice punishable by death. The Jews rebelled and after a 27 year war of liberation gained independence in 142 BC. Less than 100 years later (around 63 BC) the Romans conquered the nation, tore down the walls of Jerusalem and killed more than 12,000 Jews. In 40 BC the Parthians (people from what is modern day Iran who had been influenced by the Seleucids and the Greek culture) drove out the Romans. They ruled for only 3 years, when the Romans once again became the dominant power and installed Herod (the Great) as the local ruler.

    We might imagine the desperation of the Jewish people for a word from God as they lived through centuries of brutality and conquest. Surely, the people believed, God would speak. After all the great prophets had promised that not only would God speak but that God would act; God would act to redeem God's people. The Jew's sacred scriptures were replete with promises of a new creation, of a restored Israel and of a messiah that would make it all possible. While there was no overall consensus about the messiah (who he would be, when he would arrive or if he would be a descendant of King David) the majority of Jews held fast to the hope that such a person would arise and be the savior of God's people. In the years preceding the life and ministry of Jesus there were numerous men who claimed to be the messiah, yet all were eventually killed by Herod or Rome thus proving they were not "the one."

    It was into this silence that John the Baptizer appeared. While we have some information on John from the Gospels (Luke records that he is the cousin of Jesus) we know little more than that he baptized Jews (including Jesus) in the Jordan River as a preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Many of the people around him considered him to be either the prophet Elijah returned (it had been prophesied that Elijah would return to prepare the way for the messiah) or a new prophet like those of old. John's preaching and teaching implied that he saw himself as both. He was very clear that he was not the messiah. His task was instead to prepare the way for the chosen one of God by calling the people to repentance and faithful obedience to the Torah. Ultimately his prophetic proclamations got him in hot water with the king and brought about his beheading.

     John's work fanned the flames of messianic expectation. So when Jesus appeared on the scene the people were more than ready to see in him the one who would free God's people. The only problem was, as we will discover, that in the end Jesus did not fit anyone's mold of what a messiah was supposed to be.

    

The Road to Redemption: The Danger of Local Religion

He was born in 1912 near Barry's Corner in the Irish middle class area of North Cambridge, Massachusetts. The third of three children his mother died when he was nine months old. He was raised by a French Canadian housekeeper until his father remarried when he was eight. Jumping into politics in 1928 he worked for the election of FDR. His first job was as a brick layer, but politics kept calling. In 1932 he suffered his only political defeat, as he ran for Cambridge City Council. It was after that loss that Tip O'Neal discovered, as he would say later, that all politics is local. O'Neal along with generations of other politicians have used that understanding to their advantage as they won reelection again and again because they were able to "bring home the bacon" to their constituents.

Leadership in a representative form of government is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand a representative is supposed to do the obvious, represent his or her constituents in the larger governing body. They are to insure that the needs of those who elected them are met. On the other hand representatives are also part of a larger body (city, state, or nation) whose interests they are also supposed to be considering. Thus, leadership becomes a balancing act. Unfortunately as most of us have witnessed, the tendency is to return to all politics being local wherein representatives focus solely on gaining advantage for and protecting the interests of those who elected them (in order to insure reelection) to the detriment of the needs of the larger community.

This understanding of all politics being local is nothing new and actually plays a role in the Road to Redemption which we have been examining. Last week we looked at the Return from Exile as an example of God's faithfulness not only to God's particular people Israel, but to the entire creation as God continued the process of redeeming all of creation. Once again however there came a hitch in the process. As the people of God began to reconstitute themselves as a people and a nation they were face with the ongoing dilemma which all communities face; do we focus on our own needs and survival or do we risk everything and fulfill our greater role as agents of the redemption of the world? The leadership of the people chose the former…that their job was about the local needs of the people and not the redemption of the world.

In the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah we read of the Jewish leaders separating the people of God from all outsiders. Even those Jews who had remained in Israel during the exile and married non-Jewish women were to divorce their wives in order that God's people somehow become a cultically and racially "pure" people. This separation was the beginning of the isolation of God's people from the rest of humanity. This separation almost insured that the larger vision of the redemptive purpose of God's people would be lost. The world would have to take care of itself because Judaism was going to take care of itself and its own survival. In essence all politics and all religion became centered on the survival of the community. All religion was local.

While it would be nice to believe that it was only the Jewish people who focused on the survival of the community rather than the redemption of the world we would be wrong to do so. Time and time again congregations have also made survival of the "local" the locus of their life. Congregants want to make sure that their needs are met before the church reaches out to meet the needs of the world. Recently I had a retired pastor tell me that the purpose of the church is to worship…not to reach out in worldwide redemptive work…in other words all religion is to be local. The challenge for us as a community of Jesus followers however is to remember that Jesus called us to follow him out into the world, not simply to remain comfortably behind our beautiful walls. While religion is to be local…it is to be balanced with our commitment to the poor, the hungry, the stranger and the child whose voices are often hard to hear.

The Road to Redemption: Return from Exile

    So what now? So what is God going to do about God's redemption of the world? That is the question that any student of the Bible ought to ask themselves when they arrive at the end of the Books of II Kings and Jeremiah. They ought to ask about God's redemption plans because the end of those books describes the people of God being carried into exile, their capitol city being burned, their Temple being thrown down and hope leaving the building (so to speak). The people had been carried to a foreign land whose customs and religious affinities were much different from those that were required by God of the children of Israel. In other words the people through whom God was supposed to redeem the world were homeless, Temple-less and leaderless. It would appear that the powers and principalities of the world had defeated this part of God's plan and so perhaps God would have to choose another way. This seems to have been not only a detour on God's Road to Redemption, but a dead end.

    The marvelous thing about God however is that there are no dead ends on God's Road to Redemption. While this was not clear in moment in which God's people watched their lives be torn apart, it would become clear as time progressed. It would become clear for a number of reasons. The first was that they began to realize that the Prophet Jeremiah had been right; the demise of the nation was not caused by foreign gods defeating the God of Israel, but was God's punishment for the nation's failure to trust and obey. Second, the words of the prophet Ezekiel made it clear that even though the geographic location of the people had changed (Israel to Babylon) God's love for the people had not. He did this through a series of prophecies in which he witnesses the glory of God actually traveling from the Temple to the people in Exile. Finally the powerful words of Second Isaiah (a prophet who claimed the mantel of the original Isaiah) declared that God would not only forgive God's people, but would bring the people back to the Land of Promise in order that they continue their role on the Road to Redemption.

    It was only slightly more than 40 years after the people had been sent into exile (583BCE – 538 BCE) when God used Cyrus of Persia as the liberating agent of God's people. Cyrus and the Persian army obliterated the Babylonian Empire, sending it into the dustbin of history. Cyrus then declared that all captive peoples (including the children of Israel) would be allowed to return to their homelands. Over the next few decades (until around 515 BCE) the Israelites returned to their homes and began to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Along the way home however something happened which once again might have short circuited God's Road to Redemption. As the people gathered in Jerusalem two of their leaders, Ezra and Nehemiah began to enforce the complete separation of the people of Israel from all other peoples. These leaders made Jews who had married foreign women, divorce them. They also made all of the people promise to maintain absolute purity in order to once again be a completely distinct people. This re-emphasis on purity and separateness was another detour along the Road to Redemption because the focus of the people was on cultural survival and not on being a part of God's redemptive work.

    Last week we spoke of the Road to Redemption being long and winding. This week as we recall the people returning from exile we witness those who are to be redemptive agents forgetting their purpose. None-the-less God remains true to God's promises of redemption coming through Israel (an achievement which comes through the Jewish messiah Jesus of Nazareth). Hopefully this fact will continue to give us hope that even at those moments when we lose focus on our role in God's redemptive work, that God will always bring us back to our true task: working for the reconciliation and redemption of the world.

The Road to Redemption: Exile

    I realize that even the title of this piece, the Road to Redemption: Exile seems as if it is an oxymoron (a figure of speech that contains contradictory terms such as living dead or new classic). On the one hand we have the image of exile, meaning to be sent away from one's home, land and people to a foreign location. On the other hand we have redemption which implies that we have been set free from our bondage or exile. The question becomes than how does exile move forward the redemptive plan of God?

    In order for us to gain a handle on how these terms work together let's begin by taking some time to learn a bit more about exile in the scriptures. To being with we need to remind ourselves that the stories in the scriptures about the history of God's people did not take place in a vacuum. The history of Israel and Judah (the northern and southern kingdoms of God's people) were lived out in the midst of the geo-political upheavals of their times. The initial rise of Israel/Judah took place in a moment in history when the major powers of the East (Hittites, Samaria, Egypt, Assyria and Babylon) were all weak and consumed with internal struggles. Once those struggles were completed these nations began to assert their power over neighboring nation states, including Israel/Judah. The issue for Israel/Judah was how to remain independent, while at the same time acquiescing to the demands of their more powerful neighbors. This struggle, as you might imagine, was one that was not easily resolved.

    The concept of exile began when the northern Kingdom Israel refused to pay tribute to Assyria, and aligned itself with Samaria and Judah in resisting Assyrian domination. The results were disastrous. Assyria obliterated Samaria and Israel (721 BCE). The people of Israel who were not slaughtered were taken into exile never to return. In a sense their exile was permanent. A little more than 100 years later (598-586 BCE) the southern kingdom of Judah was faced with a similar situation. This time it was the Babylonian Empire which dominated the Middle East. And once again the people of God believed that by aligning themselves with another power (this time Egypt) that they could successfully become independent. Though the prophet Jeremiah warned them that the alliance would fail, the people and their leaders refused to listen. History proved Jeremiah to be correct. Judah withheld tribute and was destroyed by the Babylonians. All of the leadership of the nation which was not killed (the king had to watch his sons executed before his eyes, then he was blinded) was taken into captivity in Babylon. This was the exile.

    The question presents itself then, how does the exile play a role in the Road to Redemption. After all it would appear that the exile was more of a detour along the way than anything else. Which, in actuality it was. However, one of the most important lessons of scripture is that even detours can teach us something. What this detour tells us is that the Road to Redemption is not a super highway but a long and winding road (to borrow a phrase from the Beatles). As 21^st century people we like getting to where we want to go in a hurry (by plane, phone, text or tweet). While some of us may enjoy a long, meandering walk in the woods, if we have something to accomplish the shorter path the better. God on the other hand appears to not be in that big of a hurry. God is willing to allow God's people to mess up, get sidetracked, and go into exile in order that they learn to trust God and not political or military might. Needless to say such lessons are not easy to learn. As human beings we are predisposed to yearn for absolute freedom (redemption). Waiting does not come naturally. Yet, God appears willing to take whatever amount of time is necessary to help us learn the lesson.

    The good news of the exile then is that while it is not God's desire for us, we as the people of God can survive whatever the world throws at us…and still find our way back to the Road to Redemption.