June 10, 2021 John 5: 47
43I
have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; if another comes in
his own name, you will accept him. 44How can you believe
when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes
from the one who alone is God? 45Do not think that I will
accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your
hope. 46If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he
wrote about me. 47But if you do not believe what he wrote,
how will you believe what I say?’
6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of
Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd
kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the
sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his
disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was
near. 5When he looked up and saw
a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy
bread for these people to eat?’ 6He said this to test him,
for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread
for each of them to get a little.’
He is infuriating.
That is how I perceive Jesus from the point of view of the Leadership
that is in challenge with him. The
Leaders claim Moses as their foundation for their faith. It is in distinction to all challengers,
including this upstart Jesus of Nazareth who, apparently, would be welcomed as
a fancy teacher, but NOT as someone claiming the authority of God.
Fair enough, these Leaders are the ones responsible for
the maintenance of the faith of the Jews through an extraordinarily difficult
time. I do not think we really
understand that as Christians. We have
the context of our religion, our faith, our Christianity. But it is not a national identity. Despite everything we might claim about the
United States being a Christian nation, Christianity is NOT a nationality. It is a faith system. That is where it is fundamentally different
from Judaism.
Israel is a Jewish nation. To be Jewish is to offered citizenship. That is not the case in the United
States. The idea of the Christian nation
held sway at one time. Before the Enlightenment,
the nations of Europe were Christian nations.
For a long part of their history, they were all Roman Catholic nations
in the west and Eastern Orthodox in…the East.
That broke down with the Reformation.
Some nations remained Roman Catholic, like Spain and
Portugal. Great Britain eventually broke
with the Roman Catholic Church and formed the Church of England. Scotland went Presbyterian. Germany, at that time a collection of smaller
states, not the united nation we know today, varied between Lutheran and
Catholic and a few Reformed. France was
Roman Catholic but tolerant of Protestants until a certain point where the ‘door
of orthodoxy’ slammed shut.
It is interesting how this is reflected in the American
colonies. Freedom to practice religion
in their own way was one motivating factor is setting the colonies up. The Puritans settled into Massachusetts. Pennsylvania was predominantly Quaker in its
inception. If I understand my history,
Maryland was Roman Catholic while Virginia was very much Church of England.
The difference in Israel is that the Jewish national
identity transcends religious sectarianism.
There are secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox, we might know them from
the news by their traditional black hats and living side by side under one
flag.
With this national identity invested in the Leadership,
Jesus is not simply challenging faith-based authority, but their very political
authority. And the political authority
for the Jewish Leadership is very much at the whim of the Romans. So the challenge coming from Jesus is of a
different sort than we might understand in our own political context
today.
More later.
Peace, Pastor Peter
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