From : Chris Ayers (Liberal Preacher) who isn’t getting enough questions sent his way
Dear Liberal Preacher,
Jesus says, “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.” (Matt 21:31) If that wasn’t shocking enough here’s the second kicker. Notice to whom Jesus was speaking, the chief priests and elders of the people (Matt 21:23).
Signed,
Chris Ayers (Liberal Preacher)
Dear Chris,
What’s your point?
I’m a preacher. You don’t think I’m going to be last in line do you?
Liberal Preacher
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Chris, You were soliciting questions and I’ve been reading your blogs lately (appreciating them as well, I might add) so I thought I would follow up on your last post.
Lately, I’ve been thinking much along those same lines – the prostitute and the relgious establishment scenario. And, I’ve been wondering what is it that makes the prostitute (or any of the other so-called “sinners” in the eye of the establishment) so coveted by God. Is it because the religious establishment has elevated the moral above the relational? Is it because the “sinner” is so oppressed by established religion and we know how much God fights for the oppressed and abhors the suffocating acts of oppressors?
Wondering what you think…Thanks for your time. Trey
Here’s what I think: I think you are doing some good thinking. Seriously, I would encourage you to swim down both those rivers: moral/relational and oppression of sinners by established religion. I recommend Greg Carey’s book, Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers. Also, a study of church history of how sin,perfection, etc. got screwed up would be good. I’ve been reading Luther lately and the man got grace right. He didn’t buy the Church’s sin/perfection routine. Amazing person. Monasticism had its good points, but like with many things, the church messed it up. I think bad monasticism also “hurts the whore.”
Finally, I’d encourage you to keep thinking of other reasons Jesus chose the whore and reasons why the whore is so threatening to the church/established religion types?
So here we are starting to get into religious do-gooders and self-righteousness, and Jesus’ propensity to be exactly opposite of the established order, in some regards. He healed people, for example, with non-emergency conditions on the sabbath. Why couldn’t the man do his healing on another day? And why did he talk about the kingdom of God in terms of yeast? Hadn’t he read the foundational story about unleavened bread? And while Greg Carey will disagree with me about Jesus and Leviticus and think Jesus ran roughshod over Leviticus. See Willilam Loader, Jesus and the Fundamentalism of his Day, and, William Loader, Jesus’ Attitude towards the Law. The former is a more popular version of the latter. See Hannah Harrington, The Purity Texts, and Karen Wenell’s Jesus and Land: Sacred and Social Space in Second Temple Judaism. Better check Wenell’s book out from library; it’s very expensive. It’s very good, though. In Carey (and Amy Jill Levine’s defense), there are different Jesuses in the gospels and some of them are more Torah observant at least in word. As Loader points out, Matthew’s Jesus is not as big of a scripture believer as his words would indicate, but alas Carey and Levine have some good points, but ulitmately I do not find them convincing on the matter of Jesus’ relationship to the law.
This I know: a lot of the Christians get the hell on my nerves. A lot of the people the church despises or does not want I like to hang out with. At first it was because I was trying to be like Jesus. Now it’s just because I really like them and I don’t care for the high and mighty Christians.