And Who Is My Neighbor? Holiness, Compassion, and Marching

Credit:  Andrew Tonn, El Paso, Texas

'“Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law?  What do you read there?”  He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?””  [Luke 10:25-29; NRSV]

Jesus was a Jew.  A righteous Jew, in fact, and a scholar.  As such he often challenged the prevailing views of the patriarchal and hierarchical Judaism of his time, especially surrounding the ritualistic practices regarding the temple as he found it in Jerusalem.

Marcus Borg has pointed out that the two words that are key to understanding what was most central to Jesus are Spirit (experiencing God as a real and intimate reality) and compassion.  “For Jesus, compassion was the central quality of God and the central moral quality of a life centered in God.” [Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, 46]  “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” [Mark 6:34]  Borg describes this kind of compassion as “feeling the feelings of someone else in a visceral way . . . . feeling the suffering of somebody else and being moved by that suffering to do something.” [47]

Judaism, as with Christianity today, had two competing social visions: one built around holiness: “be holy as God is holy,” and the other around compassion: “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  First century Judaism emphasized the former, Jesus the latter, and therein lies most of the conflict between him and the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders.  Furthermore, compassion was not seen by Jesus as only an individualistic, moral quality. “For Jesus, compassion was  . . . the core value for life in community. To put it boldly: compassion for Jesus was political.” [49]

The primary way this holiness emphasis manifested itself in Judaism was through the purity system: what was deemed clean vs. unclean.  Today when we hear that distinction we probably think of it in relationship to food: what is kosher and what is not.  But what Jesus was primarily concerned about was the social dimensions, which labeled so many people as unclean and thus not allowed into the temple and not welcomed into the synagogue community.  This was dramatic, because the spirituality of Judaism is built not so much on individual morality as on participation in the community, seen as chosen and loved by God.

So, who was unclean?  There are several categories: ethnicity and religion, such being a Samaritan or a Gentile; illness or disability, such as being a leper or unable to walk, hear, see; profession, such as being a tax collector or shepherd; economic status, such as being poor or in debt. [See Borg, 50 ff]

Credit:  Andrew Tonn, Women's Cooperative, Juarez, Mexico

And then there was gender.  To be a woman did not automatically make you unclean.  However, women were clearly second-class socially when it came to inheriting property, divorcing, etc., and were “unclean” whenever menstruating or in childbirth.

If you read through the many times Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees, it is usually because he is challenging the purity system.

He eats with sinners and the poor, heals the diseased, calls a tax collector to be one of his twelve, closest disciples, interacts with Samaritans, and welcomes women into his movement.  As Borg summarizes it, “Jesus deliberately replaced the core value of purity with compassion.  Compassion, not holiness, is the dominant quality of God, and is therefore to be the ethos of the community that mirrors God.” [53-54]

The early church also struggled with this issue, but it tried to follow Jesus quite literally in embracing the outcast, allowing women into leadership roles, and attempting to win over those different through love rather than power.  St. Paul, once a Pharisee himself, eventually embraced this understanding of Jesus, as we see in his description of the Corinthian church, describing it as being made up of people who were not wise, not powerful, not of noble birth.  Instead, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” [I Corinthians 1:26-28]

When my wife, daughter, and I participated in the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, I was surprised by what a joyous event it was, the love I felt in the crowds, how inspired I was, and the way in which it instilled hope in me.  As I reflected on this, I realized that one of the reasons is because I was part of an inclusive rather than an exclusive community, with people acting in the way Jesus taught us to act: trying to understand, embrace, and support, rather than judge, condemn, and ostracize.  There we were: gay and straight; white, black and brown; Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Christian; most walking but others in wheelchairs or being carried; every imaginable profession; and women of every age and culture.

Yesterday my son, who works on immigration and border issues for the ACLU in New Mexico, was in New York City for meetings, and was able to participate in the immigration march, and he felt the same kind of empowerment and hope the rest of my family experienced in DC.

Whenever we decide who is welcome, and who is not, based on religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, social and economic status, or profession, we are laboring once again under the purity system.

Immediately after Jesus’ exchange with the attorney quoted above, he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.  A man is heading to Jerusalem and is beaten, stripped, robbed and left half dead beside the road.  The first two people to pass by were a priest and a Levite, both clean according to the purity system.  They both see the man who has been beaten, but do not stop to help him.  Then comes a Samaritan, unclean according to the purity system.  He is the one who feels compassion (“moved with pity”).  He stops, binds up the man, takes him to lodging, and pays for his care.  Jesus ends the parable: ‘“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  He [the lawyer] said, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”’  [Luke 10:36-37].