Last weekend I attended the Wild Goose Festival and had the opportunity to experience lots of amazing preachers, teachers, musicians and other artists. One of the speakers, and I admit that I forgot to note which one, said something like “if Jesus only had one TWEET it would likely say something like “Everything, except LOVE, in the sacred text is midrash.”
There are 613 Laws in the Bible, and we tend to get pretty hung up on about 6 of them, but that’s a message for another day. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the passage “You have heard it said…but I say to you….” in a series of examples as he is emphasizing a new dimension of spiritual awareness that he was teaching and demonstrating. Jesus was not trying to abolish the law, but he was seeking to move these earliest disciples from a simple, fear-based obedience to the law upward to a higher dimension of spiritual awareness.
In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus is asked,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.‘ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
That last sentence is where the Midrash comes in. Midrash is an interpretive act that the Jewish Rabbis used (and still use) to seek answers to religious questions. The text is often general or ambiguous when presenting laws. Midrash attempts to clarify or extend a law beyond the conditions assumed in the Bible, and to make connections between current practice and the biblical text. Jesus is making it clear that ALL of the text should be considered through the lens of love. Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. Everything else is commentary to be wrestled with. That’s why it’s often called “Living Text”. Before we attempt to interpret the text, we must interpret the context. And most importantly we need to follow the greatest commandment that Jesus offered us. ALL of the other scriptures outside this greatest commandment are to be considered through the lens of love.
Jesus invited the earliest disciples to a higher level of spiritual awareness, inviting them to think deeply, to release fear and to embrace the true Source of love, and to allow that loving energy to make them more loving, and to stop worrying so much about all the rest. Let it be so with us as well.
Shalom y’all,
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Claire – If Jesus Had ONE Tweet
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https://capitaldistrictnc.org/claire-ificaton/
