(The Nationalist, February 2006)
Almost from the beginning of his public life, Jesus encountered opposition and misunderstanding. What is remarkable about this is that most of it came, not from atheists or agnostics – there were few of them at the time – but from the religious leaders of his day. He was killed by an alliance between them and what we might today call the forces of law and order. The very people who should have been the first to receive him were instead the first to reject him.
I don’t think this was because the Pharisees and other religious leaders were a malicious body of people. On the contrary, biblical scholars tell us that they were mostly devout, conscientious people who sincerely wanted to follow the law of God, and were committed to it. But they had too limited a vision.
For them, religion was a matter of rituals and routines, of practices and observances. Jesus wanted it to be a celebration, like a wedding party. Why don’t Jesus disciples fast? Because there’s a wedding on. Jesus saw it as something new and fresh, with all the power and danger that this involves. When Jesus taught, people said, ‘Here is a teaching that is new – and with authority’. (Mark 1.27) The Pharisees were cautious, careful conservatives: their signature tune was, ‘Give me that old time religion; it’s good enough for me’. Jesus used the image of leaven in dough.
For the religious leadership, that was too risky. Jesus spoke of putting new wine into new wineskins, knowing that new wine, still fermenting, could, perhaps, burst old, desiccated skins. A new spirit needs new structures. They said, ‘The old is better’. For them, every ideal had to be fenced in by law and sanction; it could not be left alone: that was to trust people too much. For them, absolute values required absolute rules, and agreed values could point only to agreed conclusions, approved by legitimate authority.
For them, order and discipline were dominant values rather than occasional helps in moments of need. They started with God as their ruler; they ended with rules as their God. They had reduced religion to a control system. Religious people sometimes become active and willing accomplices in that process.
Religious systems are sometimes road-blocks instead of road-signs on the way to God. They take away freedom, while affirming a commitment to it; they take away joy and celebration, leaving only the dead hand of formalism. What of today? The Pharisees are dead, but is pharisaism?
Jesus added that an old cloak can’t be patched with new cloth; that would simply tear it more. He called for, and he created, a new situation, new facts on the ground. There is more than one way of killing Jesus, not only on the cross, but by stultifying his message. May we not do so through lack of vision, courage or imagination.
For those in a hurry: ‘All that is necessary for evil to flourish is that good people do nothing’. (Edmund Burke).