Did Jesus come to destroy the law of Moses?
Today’s first reading that gives us the Ten Commandments is something most of us are well acquainted with. And the Hollywood film with the same name has picturised for us the story as it is recounted in the Bible, where Moses goes up the mountain to meet God, and there he is given the Commandments. And perhaps because of the popularity of that movie, and without realising it, there are many who grew up believing that that was how it all happened. But like the Catholic Church has taught, when talking about the first eleven chapters of the first book of the Bible (Genesis), we need to remember that the story of the Ten Commandments is a popular way of teaching something, which in this case was the moral laws that were developed over time to guide the Jewish people. I have already reflected on this issue of how to understand or interpret such narratives in the Bible when I took up the story of Noah in a previous blog (Finding Truth In The Bible: A Lesson In History). But, admittedly, it is difficult to let go of the very graphic picture drawn for us by Hollywood.
In any case, the reason why the story of Moses bringing the Ten Commandments to the Jews is important to remember, is because in the Gospels we constantly have the members of the Jewish religious establishment challenging Jesus by asking him how his own teachings squared with those of Moses. Of course, it must be remembered that it was a common practice at that time, that not just the Ten Commandments, but all the teachings in the Torah (Old Testament) were attributed to Moses. It is perhaps because of this constant comparison between Moses and Jesus, that when Mathew gives us Jesus’ own interpretation of the Jewish moral law, he also makes Jesus go up a mount (like Moses), from where Jesus delivers what has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount. But Mathew does not hesitate to challenge the earlier Jewish moral law as being too limited, by showing how Jesus’ ‘commandments’ go above and beyond what Moses taught.
What really is the difference between the Mosaic teaching and that of Jesus? Before I go into the difference between the Jewish moral law and Jesus’, it is interesting perhaps to refer to one of the issues of a popular publication called MAD Magazine, which was called “The Ten Commandments Revisited”. In that issue it pointed out that a negative command (Do NOT do this or that), is actually a very minimalistic command, leaving us free to do much else. Thus, the example MAD gave was that if there was a command, for instance, not to enter by one particular door, it is actually not a very restrictive command because that command would mean that one was still free to enter by ALL the other doors. To translate it to one of the Ten Commandments, I could say that the command NOT to KILL one’s neighbour, does not forbid one from doing other things that harm one’s neighbour, so long as we do not kill that person. Similarly, the command NOT to steal, does not enjoin us to share generously with others. So nine of the Ten Commandments and much of the rest of the Jewish moral law are couched in negative language and therefore are minimalistic commands. They only tell us what actions we should not take.
But, for Jesus, the fulfilling of the minimal demands of the Jewish moral law was just not enough. And so in his Sermon on the Mount, he first tells his listeners: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to take them to their fulfilment.” Mathew 5:17). And then he continues with six examples of what that ‘fulfilling’ meant. Each of these examples start with Jesus saying: “You have heard that it was said…. and then referring to one or other of the teachings in the Torah. He then goes on to give his own teaching by concluding with , “…but I say to you….". (Mathew 5:21-48). For example, Jesus teaches: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. So Jesus translates the DO NOT KILL minimalistic negative command, into a positive and maximalistic command to LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR
It was the minimalistic approach taken by the Jewish religious establishment when interpreting the Mosaic law and their traditions that upset Jesus, because he felt they used this approach to go completely against the intent of the moral law, - i.e. they focused on fulfilling the letter of the law/tradition without living up to the spirit of the law. Thus, even in the case of the only positive command among the ten of Moses, namely to ‘Honour your father and mother’, Jesus would angrily point out to them how they used their subsequently developed laudable religious tradition of dedicating part of their wealth to God, as a way to refuse to look after their parents, since they could then tell their parents: ‘What you would have gained from me is already dedicated to God’. And Jesus continues in anger: “So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Mathew 15:5-8). In another instance he castigates them about how they have interpreted their law of giving one-tenth of all they own to God, when he tells them “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practised the latter without leaving the former undone. (Luke 11:42). In other words they would even count all their herbal plants and offer one-tenth of their produce to God, but refused to fulfil the weightier elements of the law like ensuring justice to all. And they did the same with the Law of the Sabbath, when they would rather have somebody suffer rather than be healed on the Sabbath. (Mathew 12:9-12)
All these ways of interpreting the Law of Moses made Jesus terribly angry. It all seemed to have come to a head when Jesus visits the Temple in Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. What made him so angry when he visited the Temple and saw the money changers in the Temple Courtyard? There was a temple rule that any animal or bird that was offered had to be ‘unblemished’, out of the laudable goal that whatever one offered to God should be the best of what one had. However, the temple authorities always had a way of finding some blemish or the other with any animal or bird brought for sacrifice from outside the temple. We find the same kind of situation today in corrupt government environments, where if a person tries to get his official work done on his/her own, then the authorities often seem to find some fault or other in the paperwork or something else, but if one goes through an official ‘agent’, then everything works out smoothly. And, as it is with corrupt systems today, in order to avoid this frustrating experience of having their animals rejected, it soon became the practice to buy the animal from ‘licensed’ vendors in the temple courtyard. Furthermore the temple tax could not be paid in the Roman currency, which was the currency being used for daily life outside the temple. Hence another business was set up in the temple, the business of money-changing (like our exchange currency offices today when one moves from one country to another), and since people HAD to exchange the money the rates offered were quite unjust and proved a great drain on the resources of the poor. So in other words, the sacrifice to Yahweh became a source of great corruption and oppression. Jesus, who had come in with many of his followers, and who had been railing against this kind of rule-oppressing approach to religion, once again (because he has seen this every year he came to the Temple) sees this open corruption of religious laws and traditions, and finally just loses his cool, and physically throws them out of the temple.
This difference between the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ commands given in the Sermon on the Mount, can be understood as the difference between a call to be ETHICAL, and a call to GOODNESS. Ethical rules, I would suggest, only ask the minimum of ourselves. For instance, if I am walking by a river and see somebody drowning, I am not ETHICALLY bound (or Legally for that matter) to jump in and try to save the person, but surely it would be really GOOD if I did do that. So the demands of GOODNESS go much beyond what our minimal ethical demands call us to do. It seems to me that for many of us (from all religions) the instinct is to do the minimum, rather than push towards the maximum. So to take one example, while we may not take bread away from the hungry (a minimalistic requirement), we do not see that we are called to work so that no one remains hungry (a maximalistic demand).
In this context we must reflect on what it means to be a sinner. Because if we look at sinning in the context of a minimalist approach, we just have to feel sorry and ask pardon (as we do in the Sacrament of Reconciliation) for not following these minimalist rules. But if we see sinfulness as an acknowledgement of how far we are from reaching the maximal demands of Jesus’ call to love our neighbour, and therefore a frank recognition of how little we have moved on the continuum from ‘self love’ to ‘love for the other’, then acknowledging our limited progress can become a way to encourage us to love more. So we are not sinners necessarily because we have done something wrong (though that could also be the case), but more because we have not done enough. Such an understanding of being a sinner is not one that makes us put ourselves down, but one that encourages us to do even more.
First Reading: Exodus 20: 1-17
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
Second Reading: First Corinthians 1: 22-25
For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part, would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone, for he himself knew what was in everyone.
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