Jesus vs the Holiness Movement

Pharisees

A Movement within Judaism

Aimed to encourage people to pursue holiness

By diligently keeping the Law (ha Torah = the Word)

Jesus

Matthew 23:23 (LEB): you pay a tenth of mint and dill and cumin,

and neglect the more important matters of the law—justice and mercy and faithfulness!

It was necessary to do these things ⌊while not neglecting those⌋.

//Luke 11:42 “42 “But woe to you Pharisees! for you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.“

Is believed to have been a Pharisee before he broke with them.

(Is this why he was so hard on them; that he wanted them to succeed by doing the right thing?)

Disciple of Hillel or of his school, The House of Hillel

Jesus used some of Hillel’s maxims

When asked to teach the whole law while standing on one leg (To test his legendary patience):

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation. Go and study it.”

He also taught that the Law/Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Law.

Why am I going on about this?

Because of a trap into which many Christians have fallen when thinking about this story of Dives & Lazarus.

It is about justice, concern for every person, decency toward one another, ie, charity.

It is not about condemning the rich man - Jesus says that’s taken care of in death.

Still less, about a fat, self-centered Jew.

Jesus never said that

but if we’re honest, some of us have probably thought it.

And if we’ve thought it,

That one spark of thought has repeatedly ignited one pogrom after another

until it eventually became a Holocaust.

Some people still think this way.

Generations of prophets

like Amos

have thundered the warning to deal justly with one another

and to treat each other with respect and generosity.

Just as the Pharisees of Jesus’ day

seem to have forgotten that people are more important the the minutiae of the Law;

that justice is at least as much the essence of the Torah

as tithes and fasts and ritual prescriptions.

We run a similar risk of forgetting and doing the same.

Additionally:

of abusing God’s chosen people

because of a false and cruel prejudice.

Two more things to take from this Gospel