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Indictment of the politics of holiness
Jesus' role as a revitalization movement founder and prophet overlap. As a founder of a renewal movement, he pointed to an alternative path; as prophet he specifically indicted his people's present path. The issue was not individual sinfulness, but allegiance to a cultural dynamic that was leading to historical catastrophe. Advocating the politics of compassion, Jesus criticized the politics of holiness.
The politics of holiness had made Israel unfruitful and unfaithful. Like the prophets, Jesus used the image of a vineyard to speak of Israel's relationship to God. Israel was like the tenants who refused to give the vineyard's produce to its owner, (TUB 173:4) or like the unfruitful fig tree given one more year to bear fruit. (TUB 166:4.6) He also used the imagery of Israel as the servant of God. Israel was like the cautious servant who buried his talent in the ground in order to preserve it. (TUB 171:8) He used other images of things not performing their proper function--salt that had lost its salinity, light that was not giving light but had been hidden. (TUB 140:4) The Israel of his generation, living by the ethos of holiness, was no longer what it was meant to be--the vineyard of God yielding fruit, the faithful servant of God giving light to the nations.
Jesus attacked the Pharisees concern about purity and tithing, two of the issues most central to the ethos of holiness. Purity was not a matter of externals, but of the heart, and the emphasis upon separation of pure and impure created division within society. Similarly, in the Pharisees meticulous concern with tithing, the politics of holiness had led to a neglect of what was most central: "Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God." (TUB 175:1)
Indictment of the politics of holiness also underlay one of Jesus most famous parables, the Good Samaritan. The story is very familiar--a man attacked by robbers was left half-dead on the road. A priest and a Levite passed by, and then a Samaritan stopped to help. The parable ended with Jesus asking a question, "Which of these three proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?"
Though the parable has a timeless relevance with its characterization of what it means to be a neighbor, in its original setting it sharply criticized the dominant social dynamic of the day. The priest and the Levite passed by out of concern for the standards of holiness, for in that situation they both could have been ritually defiled in a number of ways through proximity to death. In passing by and avoiding such contact, they actually followed the demands of holiness. Like the Pharisees they were not "bad" people, but acted in accord with the logic of a social world organized around the politics of holiness. Thus Jesus was not criticizing two particularly insensitive individuals but was indicting the ethos of holiness itself. The Samaritan, on the other hand, was commended specifically for his compassion. (TUB 164:1)
Jesus also indicted those who benefited from the politics of holiness. He ridiculed those who derived their self-esteem from the honor achieved in their culture. "Beware of the scribes who like to go around in long robes, to have salutations in the market places, the best seats in the synagogues, and places of honor at banquets." (TUB 175:4.9)
For the self-righteous he had especially harsh words: "Tax collectors and harlots are entering the Kingdom of God before you." Often times Jesus' criticism of his social world was seen as an indictment of Judaism itself. But it was not. Jesus was simply the voice of an alternative consciousness within Judaism calling his Jewish hearers to a transformed understanding of their own tradition. It was not Judaism itself which he saw as unfruitful. Rather, it was the current direction of his social world that he saw as blind and misguided.
The conflict between Jesus and his contemporaries was not about the adequacy of Judaism or the Torah, or about the importance of being "good" rather than "bad," but was about two different visions of what it means to be a people centered in God. Both visions flowed from the Torah--a people living by the politics and ethos of holiness, or a people living by the ethos and politics of compassion.
Threat--a historical catastrophe: Jesus foresaw that the politics of holiness with its division of the world into pure and impure, righteous and outcast, rich and poor, neighbor and enemy, was leading to catastrophe. Like the prophets before him, he warned that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed by military conquest unless the culture radically changed its direction. To see the full significance of these threats we first need to understand the role that Jerusalem and the Temple played in the Jewish social world.
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