The Bible and the Outsider by J Charles Hay
The Bible and the Outsider
J Charles Hay
A contribution for the
1997 Ecumenical Year of Churches in Solidarity
with Uprooted People
September 1996
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The Bible and the Outsider by J Charles Hay
PREFACE
The Inter-Church Committee for Refugees (ICCR) is profoundly grateful to the Rev. Dr. J. Charles Hay
(Charles) for producing this booklet. Charles writes about the "Bible and the Outsider" out of anger,
experience and solidarity with refugees. His anger is directed at those who quote selected verses of the
bible to justify a position or belief without understanding or acknowledging the full context of their
quotations and claim "the bible says...". This misrepresents the bible and misleads the faithful.
Charles' experience is threefold. First, he brings scholarship as new testament teacher and Principal
Emeritus of Knox College, Toronto School of Theology. Second, he is a minister and former moderator
of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. From this experience, Charles brings a sensitivity and a
profound respect for the average member of the congregations he knows and serves. Third, he is past
Chair of the Inter-Church Committee for Refugees. From his work with ICCR, Charles is familiar with
the global politics which cause uprooted people - outsiders - and he knows the injustices and insults
which confront them.
Charles has been true to the best in modem scholarship. The bible gives a history of the struggle of one
nation with the dilemma of how to honour one's own traditions and at the same time how to embrace
the stranger who inevitably brings different values and traditions. Jesus, in the parables, lines up with
those forces on the side of the stranger. Here, Jesus' teaching challenges all those who set up systems
which isolate and demonise the outsider. Clearly this challenge of Jesus to some in his own society is
not a licence for anti-Semitism. In our society, the teaching would challenge anti-semitism. At the same
time, Jesus teaching does indicate that all communities, even communities of chosen people, are
accountable.
Finally, Charles has stopped short of a theology of the outsider, leaving this task to challenge others.
Yet his exciting discussion of the parables gives some pointers in that direction. His discussion
suggests that our journey with God requires the insights and perspectives of the outsider. In other
words, our own path of faith can only be clearly seen in radical solidarity with the stranger.
Gloria Nafziger, Chair, Inter-Church Committee for Refugees. September, 1996.
The late Dr Charles Hay was a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Canada
The booklet was written for Canadians but is easily read by all nationalities.
Reprinted for e-mail distribution by Stanley H Platt, Methodist Church (Britain) Advisor on Refugees
December 2002
KairosCanada 129 St Clair Ave. W Toronto. On M4V 1NS
Tel 00 1 416 463-5312 FAX 00 1 416 463 5569 mhayes@kairoscanada.org
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The Bible and the Outsider by J Charles Hay
The Bible and the Outsider
Canada from its beginnings has struggled with the question of national unity. Until the Second Great
War the struggle focussed on the need to build a Canada independent of British institutions. Our French
compatriots have struggled with what it means to be faithful to their traditions in the midst of an ocean
of English speaking peoples. Those who since the war have come from outside the European context
perhaps struggle hardest of all to discover who they are in a culture almost totally foreign to them.
It is this latest wave of immigration, composed largely of those who speak a different language, who
represent very different cultures, and who bring with them religious traditions that seem strange to
North Americans, that Canadians of European origin, even if immigrants themselves, often find
threatening. They see their own traditions and culture under attack from those alien factors. This
pluralism confuses their own sense of who they are.
Not everyone feels this way about the presence of the stranger. There are those who see the presence
of strangers as a positive factor, and who are prepared to welcome them warmly. In consequence there
is an ongoing debate over this question: with respect to strangers, are they to be welcomed or
interdicted? Is the nation's policy to be one of inclusion or exclusion?
Does this describe the situation in Canada? The United States of America? Europe? Australia? New
Zealand? The answer is clearly yes.
And the excluders appear to be winning. The barriers are going up. The rules for admission are
becoming increasingly stringent.
The Hebrew Scriptures and the Outsider
There is however nothing new about this debate, or the fear that underlies it, or the method often used
to deal with it. For this debate goes on in the Bible itself. And, within the Hebrew Scriptures especially,
in almost identical terms. For the attitude to the foreigners within Israel is, to say the least, ambivalent.
There are times when they are to be welcomed. And there are
occasions when they are rejected outright.
At the basis of the rejection is fear. Fear for the alien and alienating influences that they exercise. Fear
especially of the strange religions that they bring with them. For it is in religion that Israel's identity is
most firmly rooted.
At the heart of that faith is the call to holiness:
Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel,
You shall be holy, for I the Lord Your God am holy (Lev. 19:2).[1]
The issue of the exclusion or inclusion of the foreigner focuses on the means by which this call to
holiness is to be effected in the life of the nation.
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Marginalizing the Outsider
For many in ancient Israel the call to holiness can only be realised either by marginalizing or excluding
the stranger.
For the stranger is seen to be a major threat not only to the purity of Israel's faith, but to the customs,
traditions, practices and mores that accrue to that faith.
The greatest threat to that faith, and therefore also to Israel's sense of identity, came during and
immediately following the Babylonian captivity (587-538 B.C.E.). For it was in that period that the
people suffered major exposure to foreign influences, when the nation's own faith and traditions and
sense of what it meant to be an Israelite faced the greatest challenge. That challenge continued in the
period of the restoration through the presence of the foreign women whom the men had married while
in exile, and the children who had been born to those women and who returned with them to Judea.
One of the clearest expressions of this fear is found in Exodus:
(for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),
lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and when they play the harlot after
their gods and sacrifice to their gods and one invites you, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take
one of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters play the harlot after gods and make
your sons play the harlot after their gods (34:14-16).[2]
A parallel text in Deuteronomy expresses this same fear:
You shall not make marriages with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their
daughters for their sons.
For they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods...(7:3,4).
Foreign treaties and foreign marriages may produce the same result; unfaithfulness to Yahweh. That
temptation may come from any direction. And the prescription for resisting it is horrific.
If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your
bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, "Let us go and
serve other gods" which neither you nor your fathers have known.
You shall not yield to him or listen to him...but you shall kill him; your hand will be first
against him to put him to death... (Dt.13:6.9).
The basis for these prohibitions against marriage to the foreigner is fear; fear that any connection with
anything foreign, whether personal (marriage or friendship) or national (treaties) will lead to idolatry,
and idolatry strikes at the very heart of national identity. Therefore any measure is appropriate to
eliminate the polluting influence of things foreign- including execution (Deut. 13:8-10) or even
genocide (Deut. 7:2).
It is this fear that led to discrimination against and the marginalization of the stranger, expressing itself
in the many ways. some serious and some just pesky, that disadvantaged people are taken advantage of.
Thus certain rights are given to the native Israelite that are denied to the stranger, thereby clearly
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The Bible and the Outsider by J Charles Hay
manifesting his second-class status. The debt of a Jew is to be cancelled every 7 years, but not so for a
foreigner (Dt. 15:1-3); where interest on a loan cannot be levied against a Jew, it is permissible to
charge interest to a foreigner (Dt. 23:20); a foreigner cannot become king (Dt. 17:15).
But this policy of exclusion and discrimination reaches its climax in Ezra and Nehemiah.[3] Under
threat is the traditional understanding of Jewish identity; an identity that focuses on the call to holiness
(Lev. 19:2). For the Chronicler, if Israel were to be free to obey that call, exclusion of the alien was a
primary prerequisite.
Note the context. The exiles have returned from Babylon to Judea to find devastation everywhere. The
Temple is destroyed and the protective walls that once provided (limited) security for the people are no
more. Hence Ezra is commissioned to rebuild the Temple and Nehemiah the walls.
But other walls have also been destroyed; i.e. those that protect Israel from the influence of foreign
gods and foreign traditions and foreign practices. The people who had remained in Judea, peasants for
the most part, are largely syncretistic in religion and pluralistic in tradition and practice. The exiles for
all those years were exposed to foreign gods and a foreign culture. Syncretism threatened them too.
Hence Ezra and Nehemiah were faced with a task much more difficult than building a
Temple or rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem: rebuilding the nation. Instilling in the returnees a renewed
sense of who they were and what they should be about. In short, what was needed was a revitalised
sense of identity.
But how? Rebuilding the Temple and the walls would not do it. By reminding them of that which lay at
the heart of Israel's self-understanding; the Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26).
Out of Ezra and Nehemiah's understanding of what that meant, or rather how that was to be
accomplished, came their policy of exclusion. Out of it came the prohibitions, the building of barriers,
the establishment of boundaries. Discrimination.
All kinds of boundaries; from kosher observances to the forbidding of intermarriages to the demand for
racial purity. Ezra and Nehemiah saw racial purity as the only effective guarantor of religious purity.
Out of that strategy, designed to re-establish Jewish identity in the face of all those factors that had
robbed them of their sense of identity, came this appalling demand: get rid of your foreign wives. But
given the role of the mother in the lives of children, even the children could exercise a baleful influence
in matters cultural and religious. So get rid of the children too (Ezra 10. Nehemiah 13). And to make
sure that this happened a list is published of those returnees who had brought foreign wives with them
to Israel (Ezra 10:18ff.),
Perhaps the most chilling conclusion to any book in the Bible is the closing text of Ezra.
All these had married foreign women, and they put them away with their children (Ezra 10:44).
What happened to them? How did they survive? Where did they go? Who would receive them?
From Ezra, not a word!
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But then we know the answers to these questions. Imagination and experience can fill this gap. We
know what happens to women and children when, stripped of home and husbands and fathers, they are
turned loose in the world. Exploitation and rape, hunger and hopelessness.
Eighty percent of the 14.5 million refugees in the world today are women and children. These women
and children have been forcibly, and cruelly, expelled from their homes and separated from their
husbands and fathers. Their stories make the heart sink and the stomach turn.
Anne Roiphe is a Jewish novelist in the United States. Like all thoughtful Jews she has struggled with
the question of Jewish identity. And she has reflected on this particular attempt to re-establish Jewish
identity.
Beneath the text of Nehemiah we can hear the children of the exiled wives calling for fathers who
had disowned them. We can hear the women... who disrobed and gave their bodies in trust (as a result
of this exclusion) alone in the night, wandering in a no-man's land between the nations, betrayed and
abandoned because of an accident of birth... We cannot shut our ears to the weeping.[4]
The motivation for exclusionary policies is commonly a national feeling of insecurity born of perceived
external or internal threats. This feeling of insecurity begets a rigid need for a clear identity, which in
turn leads to intolerance of differences.
In this case concern over the threat to their sense of who they were, or who they were in process of
becoming, was indeed a significant factor in the development of this policy of exclusion.[5] But what
provided an irresistible imperative to their attempt to establish an identity with clear lines of
demarcation was the fact that religion formed the essential core of their national self-understanding.
Sadly, religion is often evoked to provide nationalism with an ultimate legitimacy.
The quest for national identity is both understandable and legitimate. But a quest for identity that leads
to exclusion will inevitably have disastrous moral and spiritual consequences. Witness BosniaHerzegovina.
Anne Roiphe again, speaking out of centuries of Jewish experience:
We who...have suffered the edicts of medieval cities, we know that despising the stranger...is
digging a well right into the geyser of human cruelly. We know too well where it all leads when
the state becomes an idea at whose feet one throws the blood of citizens and non-citizens ...
because we know that nationalism is a rock and if you pick it up and look at its underside you
see murder and torture and villainy of every kind.[6]
The exclusionsists did not by any means have it all their own way. There were other voices, who saw
openness to the stranger and the elimination of barriers as a significant element in Israel's selfunderstanding. Thus it is apparent that this was an ongoing debate within Israel society.[7]
Including the Outsider
There are three major texts in the Tetrateuch and in the Deuteronomic work that take an entirely
different approach to the presence of the stranger even going so far as to insist that the stranger must be
treated in exactly the same way as any native Israelite (Lev. 19:34); a revolutionary idea even by today's standards. Perhaps especially by to-day's standards.
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The first of these texts is Exodus 22:21-27. in that portion of Exodus known commonly as the
Covenant Code ((20:22-23:33). The second is found in Lev 19: 33,34 (see also v.10), from that section
of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code (17:1-26:46). The third is from the work of the
Deuteronomist. (Deut. 24:17-22). again from a designated section called the Deuteronomic Code (1226).
These three blocks of texts on the place of the stranger share three distinct elements.
A significant component of many of these texts is not only concern for the stranger but concern for
other elements in Israel society who suffered from exclusionary policies: the poor, widows and
orphans, the ritually unclean. Thus the fate of the stranger is conjoined with that of the widow and the
orphan and the unclean. Why so?
Surely because the stranger and the widow and the orphan share one thing in common; they lack any
support system within this society and are therefore vulnerable, subject to oppression, exploitation and
discrimination. But oppression, exploitation, discrimination, are directly contrary to the law of God,
wherever and in whatever form that law finds expression.
Basic also to this linkage of stranger, widow, orphan is the underlying concept of justice (tsedaqah) that
permeates these texts. Justice is operative when the covenant community is willing to share the
blessings that come from God with all the members of the community, regardless of rank or privilege.
Justice is present when the covenant community fulfils its obligations to God and to one another. The
condition of the poor and oppressed in fact becomes the test of God's redeeming presence and of
human justice. When God liberates Israel, when he protects the unprotected, when he delivers the
captive or vindicates the right of the poor, he is exhibiting justice.[8]
In each case, either as a part of these texts or in close association with them, some practical illustrations
are given of what it means to execute justice for all; no interest on money loaned to the poor, a pledge
of a cloak must be returned before sunset, so that the borrower will be able to stay warm at night
(Ex.22:25-27), no cheating via false measures (Lev. 19:35,36), unharvested grain, olives and grapes are
to be left for the stranger and the widow (Deut. 24:19:21).
All of these instructions are designed to offset those ever present and very incapacitating ways in which
the unscrupulous so easily take advantage of the vulnerable in any society. Even the vulnerable have
rights.
But why should this kind of concern be shown for these two groups of the vulnerable? Because the
Israelite should know what it's like to be subjected to this kind of abuse. "You shall not wrong a
stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" is repeated like a mantra through
all these texts. Of all people. Israelites should know what it is like to be oppressed. How then could
they become an oppressor? A former victim must never be a source of victimisation.
The Prophets Speak to the Outsider
Perhaps the most powerful voice raised in opposition to a policy of exclusion came out of the exile,
and that voice belonged to the prophet known as II Isaiah.[9]
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As a prophet of the exile, II Isaiah was witness to the devastation that the exile caused among the
people of Israel. There was no Temple to provide a focus for their faith. Even the language of that faith
was under threat, especially among those who knew only life in exile.[10] The practice of the faith was
much harder to maintain in the presence of all the foreign customs and religions. And yet it is in II
Isaiah, more than any other writings in the Hebrew Scriptures, that one finds a universalism that in
embracing the foreigner is a rebuke to a narrow nationalism.
II Isaiah's vision of the future was inclusive in a much larger sense than we have seen before. His
primary concern was the deliverance of the people of Israel from their exile and their restoration as a
nation in Judea. But in the process of offering this hope his offer goes beyond Israel, and through
Israel, to the world. Hence his promise of restoration has Israel front and centre, but that restoration is a
means to a much larger end: that all the nations, because of his redemption of Israel, should
acknowledge the sovereignty of God. And, given this theme, appropriately enough, he has chosen as
his instrument a foreigner; none other that Cyrus himself.[11] But why has God chosen a foreigner?
... that men may know. from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside
me; I am the Lord, and there is no other (45:5.6).
God's offer of redemption is not just confined to Israel. It is for all peoples. This theme is judged to be
important enough to bear repetition. "...I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the
nations, to open the eyes that are blind..."(42:6.7)."Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!
For I am God. and there is no other" (45:22)." Listen to me, my people, ...for a law will go forth from
me, and my justice for a light to the peoples" (51:4).
God is not only the God of the nation Israel. He is the God of all creation and therefore of all creation's
creatures. Indeed II Isaiah's initial stated basis for this hope is his appeal to Israel's knowledge of God
as the Creator (40:12-2!6. See also 45:18). This appeal is made to assure those in exile that fulfilment
of this promise of restoration is not beyond Yahweh's capacity to deliver. But it also lays the
foundation for this larger promise to include the nations among his subjects. It is this understanding of
God as Creator, responsible for all his creatures, that puts all nationalisms in perspective.
At least two of the four servant passages in II Isaiah reflect this inclusive vision, and the fourth at least
hints at it.
From the first servant passage:
...I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands
wait for his law (42:1-4).
And from the second:
listen to me, 0 coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar...
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob...
I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth
(49:1,6)
And even the fourth servant song, with its focus on the suffering of this servant of Yahweh, foresees
the time when:
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(The servant) shall startle many nations, kings shall shut their mouth because of him (52:15).
What does this inclusive envisioning of the future of the nation, this acknowledgement of God as the
Creator who embraces all his creatures, this understanding of Israel's call to be the instrument through
which God reaches to redeem the world, do to Israel's self-understanding?
The last section of Isaiah was written after the exile, but with the exile and the problems of the
restoration still very much to the fore. This ongoing theme, focusing on what kind of nation Israel
should be, how it should understand itself, what it means to be holy in response to the divine call.
is still very much in process.
Again the fate of the foreigner is linked to the fate of other disadvantaged members of society. The
treatment of the foreigner, like the treatment of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the physically
disabled, is a justice issue. and there is no doubt at all what Israel's response should be. Where the
excluders often understood holiness to be a matter of fidelity to designated religious observances, or the
exclusion of those who according to the ritual law lacked wholeness, whether spiritually or physically,
the prophet understands holiness in quite different terms.
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
The Lord will surely separate me from his people;
And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord...
These I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in the house of prayer (56:3,6,7). [12]
And III Isaiah can be quite biting in his response to those who thought that merit accrued to the people
who adhered to the rituals while ignoring the ethical demands of the call to holiness. You think that
fasting will help you gain favour with the Almighty. Let me tell you what fasting is about.
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the
yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the
hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover
him...(58:6,7).
The prophets do not speak of human rights. To treat the stranger, the widow and orphan in this
inclusive way is understood simply as a fundamental responsibility, divinely sanctioned.
We have other words for this now. We speak of human rights; the right to freedom, to security, to those
necessities that allow men, women and children to live in a truly human way. But there is no firmer
basis for the contemporary concept of rights than the prophetic attack on the sources of power in the
community that foster, or even permit, discrimination against its powerless members.
Hugh McCallum is a Canadian journalist who has written on the role of the churches in the genocide in
Rwanda, and about the humanitarian response of the churches in the west. His judgement? "...we did
what we have always done and tried to help the victims rather than stop the victimisation.[13]
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The prophetic protest is more than a call to charitable acts. It is indeed an attempt to stop the
victimisation. It is an attack on those "powers" whose policies and practices produce victims. It is a
demand for justice.
And There Are Other Voices.
The book of Jonah is one of them; a book ordinarily classified with the prophets and yet, since it is a
book about a prophet rather than a book with prophecies, it scarcely belongs in that category. Since he
as a person is placed in the reign of Jeroboam n, 786-746 B.C.E. (II Kings 14:23-27), scholars place
him in the eighth century B.C.E., along with Amos and Hosea. It is impossible to date with any
precision the composition of the book itself. One commentator places it somewhere between the eighth
and second century B.C.E.[14] The book's vision of a redemption that reaches out to Gentiles has more
in common with II Isaiah, although Jonah embraced that vision with the greatest reluctance.
Indeed this is a picture of a prophet in a stubborn state of rebellion. He did not want to take any
message to Nineveh, for he was afraid they might act on the warning it contained, and afraid therefore
that forgiveness might he offered them.
...for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast
love...(4:2).
The thought that this mercy and love might also embrace the foreigner was just too much for him. As it
would have been to many of his contemporaries.
In spite of our inability to place Jonah in this ongoing debate about the focus and the limits of God's
concern, there is little doubt that he was a participant in it. And the book emphatically comes down on
(he side of inclusiveness, and in opposition to the exclusiveness of a Nehemiah and Ezra.
And there is one more voice from the Hebrew Scripture.
And it is heard through a beautiful little novella, known to us as the Book of Ruth.
This book is post-exilic, which brings it within the orbit of Ezra and Nehemiah's opposition to the
inclusion of the foreigner. Indeed for the contemporary reader it sounds as if it were written
purposefully to present the contrary view.
For what is its theme? Intermarriage! Ruth the Moabite is married to an Israelite, and Ruth's
foreignness is stressed (1:22, 2:2, 6, 10, 21, 4:5,10). But this particular intermarriage is seen as a
beautiful thing, of benefit to all. And it is the benefits to Israel that are stressed. Indeed, the author rubs
this point in with malice aforethought. For out of that marriage came Obed. who was " the father of
Jesse, the father of David" (4:17).[15]
In determining what should be our attitude to the stranger, the Hebrew Scriptures present us with a
choice.
The policy of exclusion, evident in those laws which made of the strange a figure of suspicion whose
existence within the community must therefore be circumscribed, is based on the fear that the stranger
will lead the members of the community to betray the covenant that binds it to God. It is this fear,
exacerbated by the years in exile, that lead to the extreme exclusionary policies of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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In clear opposition to the exclusionary policies that this fear creates is another demand that is the
primary product of the covenant; justice for all. None is excluded from this demand; not even the
stranger, the widow, the orphan.
This demand that justice is for all flows from the understanding of God a the God of all creation and
therefore of all creation's creatures. Oppression and poverty have no place in the divine design; and
therefore national policies that lead to injustice for any are contrary to God's intention for all his
creatures, "...the faithful exercise of justice, the test of which is concern for the poor and unprotected,
coupled with the acknowledgement of God's exclusive claim on their loyalty and obedience, become
the twin criteria for right government and the primary focus of national identity."[16]
The Gospels and the Outsider
When we move into the New Testament, and more specifically the Synoptic Gospels, so much is
different, and yet so much the same. The exile, though not out of mind, no longer impacts their
experience. Now they are indeed established in their homeland, with the Temple and the Temple cult
firmly entrenched, and the Pharisees, representing a renewal movement within Israel, as the guardians
of appropriate conformity to the demands of the faith.
And yet the threats to that faith, and therefore also to Jewish identity, though taking a different form,
are still present. For the alien is now in control of Israel. A Roman Governor, Roman legions, Roman
customs are everywhere present and therefore an ever present threat to the purity of that faith.
And therein lies the sameness. For purity is still the central dominating concern of Israel's leaders.
Certainly its religious leaders.
Purity has been defined as
...the orderly system whereby people perceive that certain things belong in certain places at
certain times. "Purity" is the abstract way of indicating what fits, what is appropriate, and what is
in place..."Purity" is a cultural map which indicates a "place for everything and everything in its
place".[17]
This certainly describes Judaism in first-century Palestine. This is the world of the Synoptic Gospels,
and therefore also the world within which Jesus conducted his very brief ministry. And that ministry is
better understood when placed within this context.
Out of this concept of purity came the principle of separation. Our survey of the place of the stranger in
the Hebrew Scriptures has already given us some idea of what this can mean in practice.
This principle of separation, designed to safeguard the purity of the faith and of the people, determined
not only whom they associated with but even what they ate. And Jewish ritual symbolised this
emphasis on purity.
It determined whom they could not associate with. Gentiles, for one. Gentiles had embodied idolatry
and inappropriate practices (Ex.34:10-16. Acts 10:28). Thus the Roman occupation clearly represented
a threat to the purity of Israel's faith.
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But threats were not confined to Gentiles. They came also from within the nation. From those who by
virtue of their occupation, their behaviour, or even their physical stale were classified as unclean, and
therefore to be separated from the community of faith. Those who co-operated with the Roman
occupiers (lax collectors) and those who sold their bodies for gain (prostitutes).
Those who lacked physical wholeness. For holiness had to do with wholeness. Hence those with
damaged bodies (the sick. the handicapped) and even those with damaged family lines (slaves, children
born outside a marriage) were denied full rights as members of the community." [18]
The purity system found expression in other ways; the dietary laws, Sabbath observance, fasting, the
washing of hands. All those rituals that symbolised what was fitting.
This whole concept of purity, with its emphasis on the need for separateness, led to the establishment
of boundaries, the building of barriers, the practice of exclusion. And therefore also, on the part of the
excluded, to a sense of alienation and rejection.
This is the social and religious world out of which Jesus came and within which he ministered and into
which he sent his disciples.
And this inevitably meant conflict with virtually every aspect of this purity system; with its policy and
practice of exclusion, the building of barriers, the establishment of boundaries.
Jesus deliberately associates with those thus excluded. With the ritually unclean; lepers (Mt. 8:2,3, Mk.
1:40-45); a menstruant woman (Ml. 9:20- 22. Mk. 5:25-34. Lk. 8:43-45); a prostitute (Lk.7:37-39); the
physically handicapped (Mt. 9:2, Mk. 2:2-5. Lk.5:18-20); the demon possessed (Mt. 8:28-34. Mk.5:216,7:24-30); the tax collectors (Ml. 9:10-13. Lk. 5:27- 29). He even invites a lax-collector to be a
disciple (Mt. 9:9. Lk. 5:27,28), and associates with Gentiles ( A Roman officer, Mt.8:5-13, a Canaanitc
woman, Mt. 15:21-28, a Roman soldier's servant, Lk.7:2-10).
He challenges the importance of fasting (Mt. 9:14-15, Mk.2:18-20) takes issue with their strictness over
the Sabbath (Mt. 12:1-2, 9-14, Mk.3:l-6, Lk-6:l-5,13:10-17), and manages to get into an argument over
the ritual of washing the hands (Mt. 15:1-9, Mk. 7:1-8).
In the midst of all of this. he has some things to say to them that can only heighten the tension and fuel
their fears, for he challenges the basic presuppositions that lie behind their strictures. Of the washing of
hands:"...there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which
come out of a man are what defile him" (Mt. 15:11, Mk. 7:15). Of association with tax collectors and
prostitutes: "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before
you" (Mt. 21:31b). And most telling of all. a biting indictment of the many ways in which they
transgress their own rules (Mt.23, Lk.l 1:37- 53).
Think how they must have reacted to this comment:
They tie unto people's backs loads that are heavy and hard to carry, yet they aren't willing to help
them carry those loads.(Mt 23:4)
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The Parables and the Purity System
And these repeated attacks on the purity system with its resultant exclusions are reinforced by so many
of Jesus' parables. Too many to consider here and some selection is inevitable.
The parables of course are capable of varied interpretation, and the interpretative process is evident in
the Gospels themselves. The evangelists have devised their own ways of putting their own spin on
their meaning, in order that the parables might be made to address the particular contexts within which
they were compelled to witness to the person and the claims of Jesus.[19]
For many today some of the parables are seen as example stories. The church, even in the process of
receiving and applying the parables, was ready to turn them into advice on good behaviour, lessons on
prudential morality for the community of faith. But "No one would crucify a teacher who told pleasant
stories to enforce, prudential morality".[20] Only stories that clearly affront the powers that be will lead
to that result, and the reaction of Jesus' hearers indicates that this is exactly what the parables did.
But why? The context for particular parables provided by the evangelists, or by their sources, suggests
that they were directed against the Pharisees, with the result that the name itself is virtually equated
with self-righteousness and hypocrisy. But this is a very one-sided portrayal, for the Pharisees were the
leaders of a lay reform movement within Judaism, scrupulously ethical, and totally committed to
obeying, and enforcing, obedience to the laws governing purity within the nation. Great respect was
therefore accorded them.
But the actions and the teachings of Jesus were seen not only as an affront to this respected community
within Israel, but to all that the Pharisees stood for. It called into question their attempts to take a
legalistic interpretation of the Torah into every aspect of Jewish life, which led to a strict application of
the laws governing purity and therefore also to a judgmental rejection of those who failed to conform.
But most offensive of all, it attacked the purity system itself, which provided the rationale for the
barriers, the boundaries, the exclusions to which the Pharisees were so devoted.
It is the recognition of this context that enables us to see the shock effect that the parables' reversal of
expectations has on the hearers. For reversal of expectations, the challenge to assumptions, are clearly
characteristic of so many of the parables.
Parables are supposed to overturn one's structure of expectation
and therein and thereby threaten the security of one's established world.[21]
The parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Mt.20:l-16) is clearly a parable about the reversal of
expectations; a reversal that is as shocking to a contemporary reader as it was to the original hearers.
The parabler makes sure that all concerned would be exposed to its shock value by reversing the order
in which the workers would ordinarily be paid (v.8). It offends the most elementary sense of fairness, a
fact to which our attention is called at the beginning of the story when the owner negotiates a "fair"
wage with the initial workers.[22] It would be especially upsetting to those for whom good order in
society was of paramount importance. For them merit should receive its due reward. In their world
there is a place for everything and everything should be in its place. But something is seriously out of
place in this story.
And that of course is the point of the story, at least within the context of the world of the religious
leaders. The principle of merit, leading as it does to haves and have-nots, to distinctions of persons, to
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barriers, to exclusions, is not the bedrock on which the Kingdom of God is built. Another factor takes
precedence. The graciousness of God! A graciousness which embraces all without distinction.
This degree of inclusiveness was simply too much for those who hear this parable. And it may be too
much for us.
The parable of The Great Feast (Ml. 22:1-10, Luke 14:15-24.) is also a parable about reversals.[23] The
locale in Luke 14 is a meal at the home of a prominent Pharisee, and this provides an opportunity for
Jesus to deal with an issue that arises often when he meets the Pharisee, namely the appropriateness of
healing on the Sabbath. It also elicits some advice offered to guests on the way to behave at meals, and
provokes a small parable, directed to hosts, about whom they should invite to meals, namely the "poor,
the crippled, the lame and the blind"-a theme repeated in the larger parable (v.21).
The more immediate introduction to the parable is the comment of one of the guests about "the feast in
the Kingdom of God" (v.l5); an allusion to what is known as the Messianic Banquet. Isaiah makes
reference to this concept (Isaiah 25:6-9), and there makes it clear that this is a banquet for "all the
nations of the world" [24]
As with so many of the parables of Jesus, this one lends itself to easy allegorising; that is to identifying
the actors in the drama with those around Jesus. Thus those who used various excuses to escape
accepting the invitation are easily identified with the religious leaders who also had their excuses for
rejecting the message of Jesus (he breaks the Sabbath, does not fast, eats with unwashed hands, eats
with sinners), and those who do finally get invited are easily identified with those very sinners so
despised by these same religious leaders.
But it is not necessary to allegorise this parable to feel its impact; once more a radical reversal takes
place, this time with cause, since those initially invited refuse the invitation. Once more the unexpected
arc included. Once again the insider is left outside and the outsider is brought within.
The parable of The Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32), unlike the parables considered above, is not a parable
about exclusion, for the elder brother, too easily identified with the Pharisee, is very definitely
included. It has been suggested that one can find in this parable a kind of inclusive universalism. "The
Kingdom is universal, not particularist".[25] But it has in common with these other parables a rejection
of the kind of particularism that is characteristic of traditional Jewish piety: categorisation,
judgement, rejection. The latter obviously reflected in the attitude of the elder brother.
The backdrop for all three parables in this chapter is the Pharisees' complaint about the way in which
Jesus associates with the outsider.
What does come through very clearly is the emphasis on the sense of joy and celebration that all should
feel when the outsider is brought within (vv.23-24,32). Celebration is an appropriate response when the
lost is found (w.6.9,10).
The parable of The Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:9-14) is often understood as a parable about
prayer, and without doubt it does indeed promote an attitude that is entirely appropriate when praying.
But the context for this parable is the Temple, and the Temple is not only a place of prayer (Lk. 19:46),
but the focus of that purity system that led to the attitude displayed by this Pharisee and to the
judgement against and consequent exclusion of the tax-collector.
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In Crossan's words, it is "...the institutions and conventions of his society" which are challenged in this
very brief story.[26] Once more Jesus stands over against the basic presuppositions of his own society,
and in the process he is "...taking sides with human beings in a concrete situation where the existing
politico-religious structure has dehumanised people".[27]
Two other parables, one exclusive to Luke and the other exclusive to Matthew, epitomise the way in
which, in both act and word, Jesus opposed a religious system, which, in its passion for categorising,
robbed so many of their full status as members of society.
The first of these is the parable of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Luke has given this parable a
setting that almost immediately turns it into an example story; that is, a model of behaviour that is
given for the hearer to follow (v.37). Most of us would have no hesitancy in agreeing that our world
would be a lot better of if it did follow the example provided here.
But there are problems.
It is often noted that the characters in this story constitute a triad: the Priest, the Levite, and a
Samaritan. But if an example is what Jesus had in mind, then the third member of this triad would
surely have been a Jewish layman, who for the most part constituted Jesus' hearers. But he is a
Samaritan, an apostate Jew, and thereby excluded from any kind of connection with orthodox Judaism
(2 Kings 17:33); therefore anathema to the keepers of the faith. Hence expectations evoked at the
beginning of this story are totally reversed.
It would have been disturbing enough if the victim had been a Samaritan rescued by a Jew.[28] But if
this were intended simply to be an example of neighbourliness, then it would have been better if the
rescuer had indeed been a Jew, whose readiness to be merciful would have been an example to all. But
then, in Donahue's words, this would have turned the good news into good advice.[29]
If Jesus were simply giving an example of appropriate behaviour, then using a Samaritan as a model
would make it more difficult for his hearers to learn the lesson. Asking a Jewish hearer to identify with
the Samaritan would indeed have been a virtually insurmountable stumbling block.
This story is a reordering of Judaic reality, a blow against categorising, classifying, erecting barriers.
This story is indeed, in Crossan's words, a "polar reversal", and he goes on: "The point is not that one
should help the neighbour in need...", but rather "The metaphorical point is that just so does the
Kingdom of God break abruptly into human consciousness and demand the overturn of prior values,
closed options, set judgements, and established conclusions".[30]
And, one must add, those prior values and set judgements, in this particular case, had to do with a
system that allowed its leaders to place ritual purity, or any other kind of exclusionary policy, before
justice and mercy and compassion.[30]
The final parable scarcely qualifies as a parable, and indeed is little more than a simile- the simile of
The Sheep and the Goats (Mt. 25:31 -46). This "parable" of the final judgement has had a powerful
effect on the church's understanding of its role within society, and has provided impetus for its
acceptance of responsibility for ministering to the needy within society.
The whole setting for Matthew's conclusion to the teaching ministry of Jesus is that section of the
Gospel known as the Synoptic Apocalypse (Mt.24. See also Mark 13. and Luke 21, with some of the
parables found in Luke 12 and 19). The emphasis in Matthew's account of the Synoptic Apocalypse is
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on the incalculable nature of the return of Christ; no one can predict when it is going to happen.
Therefore the community of faith must be in a standing state of preparedness.
Some of the parables in Matthew serve to emphasise this theme of constant preparedness.[31] Thus
through the parable of the Watchful Householder (Mt.24:42-44). and the parable of the Ten Maidens
(25:1 - 13) Matthew tells his readers that the only kind of preparation possible for such an unexpected
visit is unceasing watchfulness. Christ will come like a thief, making the kind of preparation that is
directed specifically to the hour of his coming quite impossible; and hence constant vigilance is
demanded.
The parable of the Faithful and Wise Servant (Ml. 24:45-51) also stresses the theme of constant
preparedness, but for the first lime in this discourse Matthew gives some hint about what it means to be
prepared; preparation is to take the form of the fulfilment of the responsibilities entrusted to them.
This is taken one step further in the parable of The Talents (Ml. 25:14-30).[32]
Matthew's own interpretation of this parable: "For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will
have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away" (25:29), a verse
which actually intrudes on Matthew's conclusion, is no doubt a floating text, and is assigned different
functions in other contexts (Ml. 13:12, Mk.4:25, Lk.8:18). But Matthew's use of this text here is as
legitimate as its use elsewhere, for it illustrates an essential characteristic of responsibility; the
fulfilment of responsibility now brings greater responsibility in the future, and the failure to fulfil
responsibility now brings the loss of such responsibility as one has already been given. And accepting
and fulfilling whatever responsibility has been given the faithful is what waiting is
about.
The first evangelist has thus very consciously been making good use of his sources in the development
of this theme of preparedness, in the process giving increasing substance to that theme; the parables of
The Watchful Householder and The Ten Maidens warn the community that watchfulness takes the
form of a preparedness that is exercised constantly. The parable of the Faithful and Wise Servant and
The Talents inform the community that watchfulness consists of the faithful discharging of whatever
responsibilities have been given to them. But it is this "parable" of The Last Judgement (Mt. 25:31-46)
that now spells out in concrete terms the nature of those responsibilities.
Accountability is what characterises the church while it awaits Jesus' return. That is the theme of all the
above parables. It is this last parable however that tells the community what it is accountable for: the
welfare of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned.
Thus the Christian hope leads to a concentration on Christian ethics. This call to accountability for the
poor and the powerless and the alienated is not addressed solely to the believing community; it is "all
the nations" (v.32) who are answerable in that day. This appeal has special poignancy for the church,
in that Jesus so clearly identifies himself with those in need.
Nothing of this should surprise the reader of this or any of the other Gospels. It could indeed be argued
that this passage, which is really the evangelist's conclusion to his account of the ministry of Jesus, is a
summary of that ministry. Identification with the outsider in that society, as we have already seen. in all
three Synoptic gospels, is the primary characteristic of that ministry. The elimination of boundaries, in
whatever form. was the inevitable consequence of that ministry.
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From his parables and his actions, it is clear that Jesus not only challenged those individuals (e.g. the
Pharisees) who maintained the barriers that marginalized whole groups within his society, but was
prepared to confront any system of thought or practice that created those barriers. His challenge to the
purity system itself is evidence enough. It is this challenge to the dominant, and dominating, religious
system which provides the basis for the church's obligation to call into question any system which leads
to or justifies discrimination, regardless of the form that discrimination might take; economic (hunger,
thirst, nakedness), national loyalty (foreigner), physical (sick), or social (in prison).
A Question of Perspective
But what lies behind these radical reversals of expectations, of the views that Jesus' own society
regarded as normal and normative? What led Jesus to identify with those who suffered from the
exclusionary policies of his society?
There is one word for it. Compassion!
Again and again in the Gospel stories, as Jesus was confronted by the sick, the Gospel writer tells us
that he was moved with compassion.[33]
But compassion is more than a one on one affair. It is this capacity to identify with need, whatever its
form, a capacity to identify that in the Gospels reaches its apex in Matthew's "parable" of the sheep and
the goats, that leads him to challenge the system; and therefore by implication any system, that is not
moved to meet that need; a system that places obstacles in the way of meeting that need. such as
Sabbath observance or ritual cleanliness. Anything that stands between human suffering and its cure,
whether political, economic, social or religious (again, the "parable" of the sheep and the goats) faces
Jesus' immediate opposition, no matter what it might cost him.
Walter Brueggemann has elaborated on this theme:
Compassion constitutes a radical form of social criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be
taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but as an abnormal and
unacceptable condition for humanness.[34]
This is an unavoidable legacy of Jesus to the church. Our examination of the Gospels has made this
very clear. Both the practice and the teaching of Jesus are epitomised in Luke's edition of the
Beatitudes: "Be merciful. even as your Father is merciful" (Lk.6:36).[35] This is an obvious adaptation
of Lev. 19:2, "...You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy". It is not the call to holiness that
Jesus has difficulty with, but the awesome apparatus that flowed from the contemporary Judaic view
that, in the Gospels at least, sought to place limits on Jesus' healing ministry.
The church is a community with a different perspective, a radically different way of looking at life.
And it is from that perspective that the Church is called on to challenge those factors within society
which place obstacles in the way of healing the hurts of that society. Marcus J. Borg sums this up:
Historically speaking, Jesus sought to transform his social world by creating an alternative
community structured around compassion, with norms that moved in the direction of
inclusiveness, acceptance, love and peace.[36]
The world looks different when viewed from this perspective.
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Back to the Parable of The Good Samaritan
Several commentators have noted the triad in this parable would, with normal expectation, have been
the Priest, the Levite, and a Jewish layman. But in place of the layman, a Samaritan. Where then the
Jew? The whole context for this parable is of course a Jewish community. Where then does the Jew
enter the picture?
Where else but as the victim?[37]
Is Jesus saying, in response to the introductory question "Who is my neighbour", ask the victim? It
would not be unusual for Jesus to stand a question on its head. If you want to know about
neighbourliness, ask the victims of our world. Then some of the questions you want to know about
neighbourliness become irrelevant. As a victim seeking help, would you ask any prospective helper
about his race? political opinions? religion? Would you refuse help from someone who did not meet
predetermined criteria? The questions and issues look different from the perspective of the victim.
But of course the church has more than this parable to persuade it that the victim's viewpoint must be
its own.
For there is another Victim in the Gospels. Victim because he stood with those in need. those rejected
by society, those excluded as a matter of principle by the dominating religious system. Jesus on the
cross is The Victim, through whose eyes the church views all victims. And in the name of this Victim,
must challenge all systems that victimise.
And like it or not, that will inevitably involve the church in politics. For Jesus clearly challenged the
existing social order, and that is politics. For politics has to do with the shape and shaping of human
society.[38] And when the church views our society from the perspective of its victims, and
seeks to reshape society so that victims are no longer victimised, then that will inevitably bring it into
contact with, and necessarily into conflict with, those institutions within that society whose policies and
practices hinder the healing process.
The Church and the Outsider
It is difficult for us to realise what a radical challenge all of this was to the Jerusalem church. For it still
felt itself to be a pan of the Judaic community, and therefore the inheritor of its laws and mores. Hence
still bound by much of the purity system. Any challenge to these inherited traditions was a threat to
peace and good order in the church. Such a threat is bound to face opposition, for peace and good order
is of the essence of community.
Hence the church from the beginning has demonstrated some resistance here. For the church is
essentially conservative, and therefore challenges to the existing order leave it feeling decidedly
uncomfortable. Jose Miquel Bonino, in his Toward a Christian Political Ethics has examined
Augustine's claim that it is justice that "gives legitimacy to any human sovereignty", and where justice
is lacking we have "organised brigandage". Unhappily, however, since all orders operate in the context
of the Fall, full justice will never be realised until we arrive at the city of God.
In the interim, justice should remain the primary quest of all orders, but not at the cost of endangering
peace and good order.[39]
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This claim has dominated the church's approach to the quest for justice right from the beginning. The
Acts of the Apostles provides clear evidence.
Peter's vision and his conversation with Cornelius (Acts 10) is a clear indication that even among the
leaders of the Jerusalem church the place of the Gentiles in the church had not been settled. Peter's
reaction to the command issuing from the voice from heaven (vv.13,14) informs us that the ritual
requirements of Judaism were still operative in the believing community, and Peter's subsequent
conversation with Cornelius tells us that the prohibition against fellowship with Gentiles still
functioned in that community (v.28). Peter's speech that follows immediately (v.34ff) together with the
outpouring of the Spirit on all who heard it, would seem to settle the question.
But when Peter visited Jerusalem to report these events, he found that in the Jerusalem church the
question was far from settled (11:2,3), until his passionate account of what had happened in Joppa and
Caesarea finally convinced them that this movement (his mission to the Gentiles) was
indeed of God.
Still the problem did not go away. The issue arose again when some members of the church at
Jerusalem visited the Gentile church at Antioch with complaints that went well beyond the failure to
comply with the prohibition against fellowship with Gentiles. The issue they raised could not be more
fundamental; circumcision in accordance with the law of Moses was a prerequisite to salvation (15:1).
This protest led to yet another trip to Jerusalem, this time by both Paul and Barnabas. Once more a
spirited defence of the Antioch community before the apostles and elders of the church led to a letter to
the church at Antioch affirming that Gentiles can indeed be accepted as full members of the believing
community without reference to the law of Moses, although, no doubt as a compromise made for the
sake of peace and good order, some prohibitions should still be acknowledged (15:29).
The very official character of the consultation and the letter that followed should certainly have settled
the matter. But that it did not is made clear by Paul himself in his letter to the Galatians, leading some
to conclude that Luke had a tendency to soft-pedal quarrels among the brethren, again probably for the
sake of peace and good order. Paul agrees with Luke's account of the results of that conference
(Gal.2;l-10). except that Luke's four caveats, all stemming from the food laws (Acts 5:29), were
reduced to one. which had its origin in the prophets (Gal.2:10).
The quarrel apparently had been much more vigorous than the record in Acts indicated. Those who
insisted on adherence to the law were still powerful enough to instil fear into Peter and even Barnabas,
for both Peter and Barnabas broke off table fellowship with Gentiles because of the presence of some
visitors from Jerusalem (Gal.2:12).
It is Paul who stands in the prophetic tradition, for he asks a different kind of question than the one that
Bonino attributes to Augustine; namely, what kind of order is compatible with the exercise of justice.
Paul is very adamant about this. He had himself faced the same temptation during his formal visit to
Jerusalem with Titus, a Greek, as his companion, when pressure was exerted to have Titus circumcised.
The accepted text tells us that Paul was resolute in his refusal to yield to this demand (2:5)[40]. The
issue of table fellowship was as crucial as that of circumcision, for had the demands of this element in
the Jerusalem church prevailed, then the ancient division would also have prevailed. The Gentile
Christians who were not circumcised would remain as second class citizens within the church. But Paul
saw that barriers had to be removed, that discrimination of any kind was a denial of the Gospel itself.
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For there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for
you are all one in Christ Jesus (3:28).
The Bible as a Mirror
The Bible provides us with an incredibly rich resource as we struggle to determine what should be our
attitude to the stranger, and in the process determine also what kind of society we should be.
The attitudes to the stranger that are evident in the Bible mirror the attitudes that are to be found in our
western societies. The fear that the presence of the strangers, with their different culture and different
practices, will adulterate the faith and traditions of Israel is reflected in our fear that the traditions that
have characterised the Canada we know will be changed beyond recognition.
And, as we have seen, when it comes to determining what place the stranger should have in our society,
the Bible presents us with options.
The simplest, and most obvious option is the one that excludes the outsider. Or, if they are already in
our midst, to make sure that many of the inherent rights and privileges that belong to us arc denied
them.
Beyond that, of course, we then must ask ourselves what kind of a society will emerge when that option
is chosen. What will be the end result? Where is it eventually likely to lead us?
To a society that classifies and categorises its citizens? That marginalizes some, relegating them to
second class status? A society of insiders and outsiders?
When we are looking for the answer to these questions. Ezra and Nehemiah should be kept in mind.
But then there is the second option; the option that includes the stranger as... "one who shall be to (us)
as a native among (us) (Lev. 19:34). A society that refuses discrimination. That acknowledges justice
as its primary characteristic. That embraces the humane.
What if this were to be the primary focus of our Canadian identity?
But for the church there are no options. When the church demonstrates discrimination, creates barriers,
practices exclusion, it quite simply ceases to be the church. For
The church is a quite specific place where large dreams are entertained, songs are sung,
boundaries are crossed, hurt is noticed, and the weak are honoured. The church has no monopoly on
these matters. Its oddity, however, is that it takes this agenda as its peculiar and primary business. In all
sorts of unnoticed places, it is the church that raises the human questions.[41]
Endnotes
1. This text is from a section of Leviticus (17-26) called The Law of Holiness. Its final edition is
likely post-exilic.
2. Exodus 34:14-26 is called the Ritual Decalogue. It should be noted that the canonical edition of the
first four books of the Bible, called the Tetrateuch, was not completed until after the exile. The same
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holds true for the book of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic history (Joshua, Judges, I and n Samuel,
I & n Kings). There is evidence of Deuteronomic influence throughout the Tetrateuch, and some feel
that this text from Exodus reflects that influence. The books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. also
post-exilic, are part of a single historical work, constructed over several stages, and generally attributed
to an editor referred to as the Chronicler. Some scholars think of the Chronicler as a single person, and
others as a school.
3. Ezra and Nehemiah, concerned as they are with the restoration following the exile, are clearly postexilic, and are attributed to the work of the Chronicler. Most of what is known about the restoration
comes from that work. The Chronicler's primary concern is with the Temple and the Temple cultus.
4. David Rosenberg (ed.). Congregation, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987,p. 476.
5. The tendency to develop policies of exclusion is the almost inevitable consequence of threats by a
subjugation to foreign powers. "As participation in determining the shape of their own lives is denied to
colonised people, they may retreat further into their own cultural or religious traditions. Their religious
traditions and rites take on increased importance a the only dimension of their life that remains under
their own control. As a way of preserving some semblance of dignity, colonised people tend to focus
all the more on their distinctive religious traditions, rules, and rituals as symbols of their former
freedom and self-determination. This tends to make them all the more sensitive about violation of these
symbols." Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, Fortress Press/Minneapolis. 1993, p.
128.
Ostensibly because of inclement weather, the whole issue was put in the hands of a "committee",
perhaps in the hope that the committee would turn the proposal down. "After all, the classical way of
shelving a proposal is to send it to a committee." So Joseph Blenkinsopp. Eya-Nehemiah, The
Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1988, p. 193.
6. Congregation, ibid., pp.475, 477.
7. The dating of particular texts within particular books is often so lacking in consensus that one
cannot with confidence claim that one is a direct response to the other. But beyond doubt debate was
ongoing.
8. Jose Miquez Bonino, Toward a Christian Political Ethics, Fortress Press. Philadelphia, 1983. pp. 84.
85
9. The book of Isaiah is divided into three sections: Isaiah of Jerusalem or I Isaiah, 1-39 (pre-exilic).
Deutero-Isaiah or II Isaiah. 40-55 (exilic), and Trito-Isaiah or in Isaiah, 56-66 (post-exilic),
10. Joseph Blenkinsopp, ibid. p. 363, suggests this possibility, largely on the basis of the story told in
II Kings 18:26,28 and Isaiah 36:11-15. See also Neh. 13:23-25. He adds the comment: "Language has
always been an important ingredient of national identity: whether Gaelic in Ireland or Welsh in Wales...
and in Israel during the modem period". One might add Quebec to that list.
11. This is a point that Isaiah is at pains to emphasise. See 44-28. 45-1-6 13.
12. This text is quoted with approval by Jesus. Mt. 21:13. Mk. 11-17 Lk 19:46.
13. Hugh McCallum, The Angels Have Left Us. WCC Publications,
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Geneva, p. 110.
14. James Limburg, Jonah, Westminster/John Knox Press. Louisville,
Kentucky, 1993, p.28.
15. Matthew carries it to its final conclusion: "...and Jacob, the father of
Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called
Christ" .(Mt. 1:16).
16. Jose Miquez Bonirxo, ibid., p. 85.
17. Jerome H. Neyrey, "The Symbolic Universe of Luke-Acts", in The Social World of Luke-Acts,
edited by Jerome H. Neyrey, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Mass., 1991, p.275. This chapter
provided a paradigm for the following examination of the Gospels and the stranger.
18. Jerome H. Neyrey, ibid. p.279.
19. For the several ways that the evangelists adapted the parables to their own situations see Joachim
Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1963, chapter II.
20. Charles W.F. Smith. The Jesus of the Parables, The Westminster
Press, Philadelphia, 1948, p. 17.
21. John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval. Polebridge Press, Sonoma,
California, 1988, p.82.
22. The word is dikaios. a favourite of Matthew's, possessing overtones of justice. Justice was a
favourite theme of the prophets, and Jesus commends those who hunger and thirst for justice (Ml. 5:6).
All of this only deepens the shock value of the parable. For a fuller examination of this theme, see John
R. Donahue, S.J., The Gospel In Parable, Fortress Press, 1988,p.70ff.
23. Matthew's account is fraught with more critical problems than Luke's, although the thrust of this
parable is essentially the same in both.
24. This concept is also featured in some of the intertestamental literature, specifically I Enoch, and in
the writings of the Qumran community, but in both the later instances the invitation is extended to a
very select group in I Enoch the rulers of the earth (i.e. Gentiles) will be cast out and sinners destroyed,
and then the righteous will eat with the Son of Man; in the Qumran writings it is made clear that no one
is invited who is "smitten in his flesh, or paralysed in the feet or hands, or lame. or blind, or deaf, or
dumb, or smitten in his flesh with a visible blemish". This kind of exclusion, as we have already seen,
is a characteristic of the purity system, and clearly reflected an outlook common in the Judaism of
Jesus' day. See Kenneth E. Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
Grand Rapids, Mich., 1980, p.90.
25. Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable, Fortress Press, 1989,p. 125.
26. John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval, Poleridge Press, Sonoma, California, 1988, p.84.
Crossan is quoting Alan Dundes, ed.. The Study of Folklore. Prentice-Hall, 1965, P.297.
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The Bible and the Outsider by J Charles Hay
27. F.H. Borsch is quoting John Sobrino. Christology at the Crossroads. See his Many Things in
Parables, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1988,p.229.
28. For another example of Samaritans coming to the rescue of Judeans, see 2 Chronicles 28:9-15.
29. John R. Donahue.S.J., The Gospel in Parable, Fortress Press, 1990, p. 17.
30. John Dominic Crossan, In Parables, Harper and Row. 1973, pp.64,65.
31. There is much debate about the original context of these parables, and many attempts to reconstruct
"what Jesus actually said"; e.g. see Joachim Jeremias, Tlie Parables of Jesus, chapter II. Our concern
here however is with the way in which the author of Matthew makes use of them.
32. Luke (19:12-27) has given this parable a non-eschatological context, leading to debate about where
it belongs in Jesus' ministry. Again, our concern is with the purpose that Matthew assigns to this
parable.
33. The word in Greek is splanchnizesti, used some 12 times in the Synoptics to describe Jesus'
reaction in the face of sickness, or even when faced with helpless or hungry crowds; e.g. Mt. 15:32,
Luke 7:13. This same word is used to describe the Samaritan's reaction to the roadside victim. This is
Jesus' immediate and consistent response.
34. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Fortress Press. Philadelphia, 1978, p. 85.
35. Luke uses the adjective oiktirmon.
36. Walter J. Borg, Jesus A New Vision, Hr-.-per San Francisco. 1987, p. 142.
37. John Dominic Crossan, In Parables, Harper and Rowe, 1973 p.57ff. and his The Dark Internal,
pp.85-88.
38. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, Trinity Press International, Valley Forge,
Penn.1994, p.39, fn.49, and p. 98.
39. Jos6 Miquez Bonino. ibid., p. 86.
40. The syntax leaves the exact translation in some doubt. Moreover a variant reading leaves out the
negative, which would have left Paul acquiescing to their demand. The temptation to yield would have
been great, for the sake of peace and good order. But if this is what the text means, then his passionate
denunciation of Peter as a coward and hypocrite would itself have been somewhat hypocritical
(vv.11,13).
41. Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1993, p.37.
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