Part XXII Matthew 
Jesus through the Lens of Yom Kippur

Matthew observes Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, with a flashback story in which John the Baptist, the quintessential Rosh Hashanah figure, although in prison, sends messengers to Jesus asking him to verify his claim to be messiah: “Are you the one that should come or do we look for another?” If my role, he was saying, is to prepare the way for the messiah to come, then I need you to confirm that you are the expected one or my life will have had no meaning.

Jesus responds by quoting from Isaiah 35, the lesson from the latter prophets regularly read at Rosh Hashanah in which Isaiah describes the things that will mark the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Isaiah’s vision was one of a fulfilled world. Water will flow in the desert, causing even the crocus to bloom in that sandy wasteland. Then, he continues, the kingdom will be seen when brokenness is replaced with human wholeness: “The blind will see and the deaf hear, the mute will sing and the lame leap.” Matthew, we have previously noted, has just spent the time in his gospel between the Sermon on the Mount, his Shavuot celebration (Matthew 5, 6 and 7,) and Rosh Hashanah (chapter 11) portraying Jesus as doing exactly the things which indicate that the Kingdom of God is dawning in him: he has caused the blind to see and has enabled the deaf to hear. He has loosed the tongue of the mute and has healed those crippled or those with “withered limbs.” The claim for recognizing him as messiah did not lie in religious theory, but rather by looking at the results his life was achieving. Now, with Rosh Hashanah fully covered with a Jesus story, Matthew begins to chart his next Jesus interpretation. In chapter 12, he arrives at the Jewish day called Yom Kippur and he begins to develop this next theme.

First, Matthew portrays a contrast between the attitudes of the official leaders of the established religion, who seem intent on keeping the religious rules intact and those who see the in-breaking of the kingdom. Does one violate the Sabbath by picking grain in the fields to satisfy one’s hunger? The religious leadership puts the priority on the Sabbath while Jesus places it on alleviating human need. Jesus is made to quote the ultimate Jewish hero, Kind David, who ate the “showbread” in the House of God (read the reserve sacrament in the ambry) to satisfy his hunger. He asks: “Does sacrifice take precedence over mercy?” If one who is greater than David is here, must he be bound by rules that even King David set aside? Have we in the name of religion confused our rules with God’s call to wholeness? Are we calling evil that which is good? If so, then where is the uncleanliness that should be set aside and avoided at Yom Kippur?

Next, Jesus moves this discussion from theory to deed. He enters the synagogue on a holy Sabbath and does “work,” by which Matthew means he healed a man with a withered hand. It was not an emergency. Presumably the withered hand would still be withered on the day after the Sabbath. Why not postpone healing to serve the religious rule? Jesus reverses the equation. Is it unlawful, he asks, to do good on the Sabbath? Once again, the authorities had confused “good” with “being lawful.” Jesus’ critics, challenged by his freedom, take “counsel against him to destroy him!” How can one be cleansed from sin at Yom Kippur if one has identified sin with that which is virtuous?

Next Jesus is portrayed as healing one who is both blind and mute. Instead of rejoicing at the signs of wholeness, his critics begin to question his origins. He cannot be of God, they assert, if he does not work within the boundaries of our religious rules. He cannot be messiah, the son of David. He must, therefore, cure by the power of Beelzebub, becomes their conclusion. This confusion between good and evil is intense. How can one be cleansed of evil if one does not recognize evil, if one has confused evil with good? That confusion means that one’s sins cannot be forgiven. Yom Kippur will do no good. This is the place in the Bible where that enigmatic phrase occurs, which says that a sin against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven. Through the ages that “sin against the Holy Spirit” has created great anxiety. Have I done it? The “unforgiveable sin,” however, is not a deed, it is the inability to distinguish between God and Satan, between good and evil, between religious rules and expanded life. One cannot be forgiven if one does not recognize the need for forgiveness, or if one calls evil good, or God Satan. The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, will not work until this confusion is straightened out so the drama of this dialogue continues.

Gentile readers of Matthew’s gospel did not know that one of the popular readings from the prophets in the Yom Kippur liturgy was the book of Jonah. So they are surprised that Matthew now turns the conversation to this book. Matthew and his original Jewish audience, however, would not have been surprised. The theme of Jonah is that he confused his own vision of what is holy with God’s vision of what is holy. He saw the people of Nineveh as those who had no worth, while God saw the divine image in all that God had made. Jonah, like Jesus’ contemporary critics, was calling evil what God had called good.

Briefly, the story of the prophet Jonah was that he was called to proclaim God’s message to the people of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians were those who destroyed the Northern Kingdom of the Jews, reducing that nation to what we still call the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” They were not only Israel’s enemies, but they were also Gentiles, ignorant of the Torah, worshippers of a false deity, uncircumcised and therefore unclean. To associate with them was to become unclean oneself. Surely, Jonah reasoned, the people of Nineveh are outside the boundaries of God’s love. So, he responded to God’s call by fleeing to Tarshish, the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. Jonah had judged God’s call to be not worthy of God and thus beyond the limits of true religion. Jonah, however, could not escape this call. A storm came up, his boat was in peril. The captain, assuming that God must be angry with someone on that ship, was determined to identify that person and then to rid the ship of him. Jonah was identified by drawing lots as fleeing from the call of God so he was thrown overboard and the storm ceased.

Jonah’s adventures were, however, not yet complete, for the call of God cannot finally be refused. So instead of drowning, Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. He lived, we are told, inside that great fish for three days and three nights until that fish, unwilling to tolerate this foreign presence any longer, spit him up on a small sandbar in the middle of the ocean. There God’s call to Jonah was renewed. Jonah must bring God’s truth to the people of Nineveh.

Jonah, overpowered, but still resistant goes and preaches to the Ninevites, but he does it in whispers and only in the back alleys of the city where no one would hear. They did hear, however, and they responded, begging God for forgiveness and mercy. The conversion rate was about 100%. Jonah, now the world’s most successful evangelist, was not pleased; instead he was irate. He abandoned his hoards of new converts and stormed out of town. Why, God, Jonah asked, can you not understand the limits of human prejudice, the limits of human religion? Why is your love not bounded by the limits of my love? Why do you not call all of the things evil that I call evil? It was a powerful Yom Kippur reading.

Jesus’ critics, unable to embrace his vision, responded to him by demanding that he show them his credentials. Give us a sign, they said, that you are who you say you are. Jesus responds that it is only an evil generation that always asks for a sign. Matthew has filled his gospel, by surrounding Jesus with what Isaiah called the “signs” of the inbreaking of the kingdom. These critics of Jesus are not able to see them. Because they are not able to see the signs that were all around them, they must look, Jesus says, at the sign of Jonah, who spent three days and three nights in the belly of a whale because he could not believe that God’s love could embrace those Jonah called unclean. The people of Nineveh, he continued, will rise up at the day of judgment and condemn this generation. The “unclean” Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah. This generation, unaware of its own uncleanness, is not able to repent even though one greater that Jonah is here. The Yom Kippur message in Matthew becomes even more obvious. Jesus then expands that message. The Queen of the South (Sheba), Jesus says, will also condemn this generation at the judgment for she, an unclean Gentile, came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of King Solomon. This generation, however, does not repent even though one greater than Solomon is present.

If one calls God Satan, if one calls good evil, if one believes that religion places limits on the love of God or that the claim of being God’s chosen means that all others are unclean, then there can be no atonement and Yom Kippur will be a failure. God can enter that which others call unclean and God does not become unclean in the process. The status of being unclean always fades away before this divine presence.

It was a powerful Yom Kippur message. Matthew continues to relate Jesus to the liturgical calendar of the Jews. When we enter into the life of God, we can no longer call unclean that which God has made and those whom God loves. We can no longer use religion to suggest that there is anyone that God has made who is condemned to live beyond the boundaries of the love of God. Prejudice dies in that moment and universalism is born. That is what atonement is all about. How badly we have misread its meaning. God’s love is not and can never be bound by the limits of our love.

Next week we will look at how this insight must change the way that we Christians worship. We are not “miserable offenders,” we are incomplete people seeking the wholeness of the love of God. It is time that Christian liturgy recognizes that.

~John Shelby Spong

Read the essay online here.

Dusty Namaste, via the Internet, writes:

First let me say that I am reading all your books. I enjoy reading Michael Goulder's influence in them. My Jewish friends, who have read the New Testament, say: "Well, it's about time. It took you only 2,000 years to understand!" Your books have totally revised my conception of the Divine Source and of Scripture, especially the New Testament. You and the Jesus Seminar have brought me back from the Christian Alumni Association. With your books under my belt and in my heart -- and with Joseph Campbell’s admonition to read as myth and metaphor and to consider that Jesus was a Bodhisattva, which can explain a lot of things in interesting ways, including the healings and the crucifixion and the resurrection and perhaps even the ascension -- the Bible has become one of the great sources of spiritual wealth for me.

I note that you will be at the Pacific School of Religion in July. Because our church has a supportive relationship with PSR, some of us hope to be at PSR when you are there. I have just finished The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic - well, I will tonight for I still have about 20 pages remaining to read. I attend the First Congregational/UCC Church of San Jose, where you, Borg, Crossan and Levine have spoken. Unfortunately, I was not a member when you and they were there.

Dear Dusty,

Thanks for your letter. My assignment at The Pacific School of Religion will begin on Monday, July 14 and conclude on Friday, July 18. I always look forward to it because the class is made up of incredibly impressive people who come from three distinct and different sources. Some are students seeking divinity degrees in one of the constituent seminaries that make up the Berkeley complex. They range from Roman Catholics to Unitarians with everything in between. The second source of students in the summer session is a distinguished number drawn from the ranks of ordained clergy in a variety of traditions. who come back each summer session to do additional study. They provide me with my primary insights into organized religion in the western part of the United States. The majority of those from this group are serving churches in California, but we usually have five to six states represented. The final constituent part of my class traditionally has been drawn from lay people for whom the Christian life is a serious journey. They bring little agenda except that of seeking the truth. When these three groups come together the results are impressive. It is a privilege for me to be there for them and with them.

The faculty and the administration of the Pacific School of Religion work hard to make this week a positive learning experience. It is easy to be their “visiting scholar” for a week.

It is also the hardest week that I have in every year that I am there. I believe this is my 8th time on the faculty of either the Graduate Theological Union, which started this summer school, or the Pacific School of Religion, which is now responsible for it. It is an academic course for which credit is given to those who seek it, so the class is required to meet certain academic standards. This means that we have four hours of class time each day from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. That gives us 20 hours of class time over five days. I will present two formal forty-five minute lectures each day (or ten lectures for the week), with the balance of the time being spent in discussion, sometimes in groups, sometimes in a “committee of the whole.” For those taking the class for credit, a ten-page double-spaced paper is required. I must also read and grade these papers before I leave on Saturday. These papers consistently offer me amazing insights into the things which engage the clergy and churches of this generation. I will also deliver an open public lecture for the Berkeley community on Tuesday night of that week in the PSR Chapel.

My topic this year will be the Gospel of John and will be based on my most recently published book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. My work on this gospel changed my attitude totally about John’s gospel. I once thought of it, first, as the one gospel which removed from Jesus his humanity and left him as something like a divine visitor from outer space, perhaps being related to God in the same manner that Clark Kent is related to Superman-- that is, Jesus is presented as “God in disguise.” My second objection to John’s gospel was that it appeared to me to be the primary source of anti-Semitism in the New Testament. My work in preparation for this book changed both of those perceptions radically. I now regard the Fourth Gospel as the least literal book in the New Testament and as the most profound portrait of Jesus ever written. I loved writing this book and regard it today as my best and most original piece of work. I say “original” though I am deeply indebted to such New Testament scholars as Rudolf Bultmann, C. H. Dodd, Sandra Schneiders and John Ashton, each of whom authored one of my favorite books on the study of John.

I shall look forward to meeting you and members of your church in Berkeley in a little more than three weeks.

~John Shelby Spong

Bishop Spong is a guest lecturer at Pacific School of Religion this Summer for 5 days.


Topic: The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

Dates and Times:  July 14-18 (1 wk), 9:00am-1:00pm

PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION PSR,
Chapel, 1798 Scenic Avenue Berkeley, CA US

Credits: 1.5 academic credits / 2.0 CEUs (20 contact hours)

Course Number: NT-2221 (for credit) or NT-0001 (for CEUs)

Description: This class will lift the Gospel of John out of the Bible in general and away from the other gospels, in particular, so that it can be studied in its own integrity. We will identify the unique themes found in the Fourth Gospel and seek to understand those themes in the light of the context of the history of the late first century when this gospel was being written. This means we will spend some time analyzing the different patterns of thought revealed in the Fourth Gospel, from the low Christology of the earlier part of this book to the higher Christology of the latter parts. We will speculate on the number of authors that might be revealed in the analysis. The course will proceed by breaking John’s Gospel into its constituent parts and studying each in turn.