Hillel<\/a> the Elder, a Pharisee, described the entire Torah in terms of the Golden Rule: \u201cWhat is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary\u201d (Shab. 31a). Hillel\u2019s contemporary, Shammai, sought to protect Jewish identity through strict interpretations of the Torah and its purity codes that shored up divisions between Jews and Gentiles.<\/p>\nAfter Hillel\u2019s death and during the days when Jesus taught, the school of Shammai had the upper hand among the working class\u2019s religious teachers in Galilee and Judea. Jesus\u2019 teachings have few parallels with Shammai and have much in common with Hillel, but some elements, in solidarity with the poorer sectors of Jewish society, are unique to Jesus himself. The Pharisees resonated deeply with the working class in Jesus\u2019 day. And I believe that much of Jesus\u2019 critique of the teachers and leaders was directed toward the school of Shammai, not the school of Hillel. Jesus\u2019 critique of the Shammai Pharisees in the saying we\u2019re considering this week could just as easily have been made by Hillel a generation before.<\/p>\n
We must also keep in mind Matthew\u2019s use of the political phrase \u201cKingdom of Heaven.\u201d The Jesus of Matthew\u2019s gospel focusses on the here and now, not the hereafter. Matthew\u2019s gospel is a very Jewish, Galilean telling of the Jesus story, and many today have noticed that rather than using the phrase \u201cKingdom of God\u201d, Matthew\u2019s gospel replaces the word \u201cGod\u201d with \u201cHeaven.\u201d Remember this: Matthew\u2019s Jesus is concerned much less with people gaining access to a post mortem cosmic heavenly realm that keeps them passive in the face of injustice now, and much more passionate about announcing the arrival of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth today. This Jesus is less concerned with getting people to heaven at some point in the future and much more focused on bringing the liberation of heaven into people\u2019s lives now.<\/p>\n
We must critique versions of Christianity that are radically privatized and\/or intentionally removed from all social politics, and we must also critique interpretations of Jesus\u2019 teachings that are opiates for the oppressed and encourage them to be passive in the face of injustice.<\/p>\n
The most striking potential connection between our passage above and the Pharisees\u2019 view of the school of Shammai is the warning about \u201cexegetes of the Law\u201d who \u201cbind burdens and load on the backs of people\u201d and \u201cdo not want to lift your finger to move them.\u201d The exegetes of the school of Shammai were meticulous in adhering to the purity codes (as we saw last week, cf. Matthew 23:23; Luke 11:42), but not very concerned about the economic burdens facing the poor among their constituents. Actually, that\u2019s a bit of a misnomer. They were<\/i> very concerned about the poverty of the poor but attached moral significance and value to it. If you were poor, you must have broken the purity codes somewhere and YHWH was punishing you. This was a way of interpreting Deuteronomy 28: if you were poor, you weren\u2019t being exploited by the wealthy, you were morally inferior to those whom YHWH was blessing for adhering to the Torah.<\/p>\n
This jumps out at me in three ways. First, it blames people for their oppression. Second, as many today do in relation to America\u2019s economic and military status on our globe, religious people often attribute wealth to being \u201cblessed by God\u201d rather than reaping the fruit of stolen or hoarded resources gained by exploiting others. Manifest destiny and the long continuing history of colonialism are examples. And third, Christianity has done both social good and social harm, like the school of Shammai. All religions can be a powerful force for good, survival, resistance, and liberation, or they can be used instead to oppress, marginalize, exclude, and extricate. The choice is ours.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m happy to be able to say that the Pharisees and rabbis later rejected the school of Shammai as harmful and chose Hillel\u2019s golden-rule-based interpretation of the Torah instead. The internal struggle among the Pharisees that we glimpse in our saying this week was resolved on the side of compassion and love rather than sacrifice in the first century (cf. Hosea 6:6).<\/p>\n
Jesus and the Pharisees of the school of Hillel had much in common. Consider the interaction between Jesus and a follower of Hillel in Mark\u2019s gospel:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell said, teacher,\u201d the man replied. \u201cYou are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.\u201d When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, \u201cYou are not far from the kingdom of God.\u201d And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:32-34 cf. Hosea 6:6 & Matthew 9:13; 12:7)<\/p>\n
Those who subscribed to the school of Shammai\u2019s Torah interpretations would have been very put off, and perhaps even angered, by some of Jesus\u2019 more inclusive choices (such as Luke 15). They were refusing to enter into what Jesus called the reign of God and they did their best to use their influence to obstruct the way for everyone around them and call that way dangerous as well.<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 last rebuke about being the children of those who killed the prophets calls to mind the work of Vincent Harding in the context of the national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Reagan Administration co-opting his memory. In Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero<\/i>, Vincent Harding uses Carl Wendell Hines, Jr.\u2019s poem:<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that he is safely dead<\/p>\n
Let us praise him<\/p>\n
build monuments to his glory<\/p>\n
sing hosannas to his name.<\/p>\n
Dead men make such convenient heroes: They<\/p>\n
cannot rise<\/p>\n
to challenge the images<\/p>\n
we would fashion from their lives<\/p>\n
And besides,<\/p>\n
it is easier to build monuments<\/p>\n
than to make a better world.<\/p>\n
So, now that he is safely dead<\/p>\n
we, with eased consciences<\/p>\n
will teach our children<\/p>\n
that he was a great man\u2026 knowing<\/p>\n
that the cause for which he lived<\/p>\n
is still a cause<\/p>\n
and the dream for which he died<\/p>\n
is still a dream,<\/p>\n
a dead man\u2019s dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
These words, first written about Malcolm X, and then applied to King, could also be applied to the Hebrew prophets and to Jesus as well. It is<\/i> easier to build monuments than to work toward the kind of world these visionaries envisioned could be.\u00a0 <\/span>Christianity, too often, has done just that.<\/p>\nLet\u2019s not simply build monuments for those whom the system has silenced and we have silenced too. Let\u2019s instead make the choice to engage in the hard work of making a better world.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is easier to build monuments than to work toward the kind of world these visionaries envisioned could be.\u00a0 Christianity, too often, has done just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[31,1719,738,28,1722,1620,1725,278,317,34,1728,1731,1491,1140,393,1734],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-gospel","tag-action","tag-blessing","tag-colonialism","tag-compassion","tag-dr-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-economic-exploitation","tag-god-bless-america","tag-golden-rule","tag-hillel","tag-justice","tag-manifest-destiny","tag-monuments","tag-obstructionism","tag-passivity","tag-shammai","tag-victim-blaming"],"yoast_head":"\n
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