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Is the church is big enough for prostitutes (those who are excluded) and pharisees (those who exclude)? If not, what makes the church different from any other institution?

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus challenges us to be perfect as our father in heaven is perfect. The immediate context of this challenge is Jesus’ contrast between people who love only those who love them and people who love even their enemies. Our father in heaven blesses both the wicked and righteous with rain. This is what it means to be perfect.

Jesus was very critical of the pharisees, but that did not stop him from fellowshiping with them just as he fellowshiped with prostitutes and tax collectors. Jesus even ate with pharisees and prostitutes at the same time. Jesus was even willing to eat with his betrayer and called him "Friend." In fact, Jesus chose to inaugurate the new covenant "on the night in which he was betrayed."

Jesus healed sick pharisees, invited a pharisee to become born again, and called a pharisee to be his apostle to the gentiles. Most of our new testament was written by a pharisee. As a seminary-trained student of the scriptures, I am a modern equivalent of a pharisee.

No group of people should be singled out for condemnation. There is a difference between how Jesus treated pharisees and how Jesus treated demons. Jesus calls us to something higher than partiality—he calls us to perfection.

pia

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Pia,


Hey what's up?


For clarification on this thread, I wanted to ask you a similar question to the one Semeia asked me "Should we have __________(prostitutes, people who are currently murdering on the side, someone who is dipping into the tithe money, people 'living' together, obvious habitual liars etc) as LEADERS/PASTORS/TEACHERS in the church?"

Is there a line we have to draw? Anywhere?

Since we all sin and fall short, is there a higher bar we should hold for our fallible leaders? How fair is that?

thanks,
selah
ps. James 3 comes to mind (mostly because I never understood it) "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." etc..



"Then He showed me the river whose waters give life, sparkling like crystal, flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb." Rev. 22:1





Edited by - selah on 01/04/2002 11:17:55 AM

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Jesus calls the woman and the Pharisee to a new mode of life. If Simon responds to Jesus’ judgment, then he must let go of his preestablished values. letting go of one world, he must participate in the creation of another. But if his security is built up out of the very predictability of a world, if his strength is based upon the absoluteness of order and value, how can he let go? How could we? Likewise, Jesus calls upon the woman to "go and sin no more." The implication of the text is that she is a prostitute. Her very livelihood depends upon one mode of life; if she gives it up, where will her next meal come from? How can she live in a world that allows her no other route to physical sustenance? How can she dare let go? How can we?

The Pharisee requires his preestablished world for the sake of what he perceives to be his psychic survival; the woman requires her preestablished world for the sake of her physical survival. Jesus confronts them both with the demand for a new order. He dares them both to enter a new future. He turns their worlds upside down, and the overturning is fearsome and dangerous, calling for the terror of sacrificed security. It is as if he asks them both to walk upon water, for all surety and balance and safety are gone when the foundations become fluid.…

Part of the terror of a new future is the fear that it may not be a possible future…Jesus, extending a call to a new order, is himself that order, the instantiation of God’s reign, and therefore a true witness to its real possibility. Therefore, he becomes the ground of our daring to attempt such a future ourselves, and finding, in the process, that it is God’s future for us. Jesus becomes the firmness in the water, and we, too, can walk.

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I’ve got a spare cross in my trunk, and, if it turns out that we humans are responsible for the human condition, well then the law demands that we humans crucify ourselves! Let the law be done so be it! And we shall not eat any solid food until we see justice done. Third, we demand that we be let into heaven. After all we may not deserve it, but then again who does? Just because someone was born with a less anal retentive character and more free spirited doesn’t mean they deserve heaven any more than we do. What I see here isn’t fair either. We don’t deserve heaven but neither do they, and if the workers who arrived late get rewarded we make the very reasonable demand to at least pay the workers who arrived early the same wages, or at least let us eat from the crumbs of their tables. Fourth, we demand that the rich man in hell be brought a cup of water because it is the only kind thing to be done there. And besides Hell has some of the worst humans rights violations I’ve seen anywhere, worse by far then China, even worse that Illinois!

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LOL, I am envious of your brilliance. Wait, that entails I am sinning right? I guess I am a fair-I-see, I still would like your opinion if you think I can be one. Is there a membership fee?

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Fair-I-sees unite, we have nothing to lose but our damnation!

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OK, where do I sign up?

P-Diddy


Our natural greatness is seen as part of God's image, and that natural greatness has been conferred on us to enable us to achieve our supernatural destiny:to be related to God and to obey him freely.---Diogenes Allen

Edited by - faithfullservent on 01/04/2002 11:20:42 PM

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My question is: should divorced and remarried people, overweight people, and practicing monogamous homosexual people (married in states where it is possible) be LEADERS/PASTORS/TEACHERS in the church?

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Pia said: If warm and cozy pharisees do not concern you, then why do you try to convince others that the pharisees are Satan? How can you accuse them of being Satan, yet be indifferent as to whether or not they are in leadership positions?

Semeia: This really confuses me. I have always said that satan is in us - ALL of us. Now, maybe the Pharisees got a little more than their share, but I have never identified them with satan as if they were satan and we were not. We all accuse.

And I'm all for working with what we've got. If we got rid of all the Pharisees, we'd really have to do some church-building to get back up to speed. And we would lose most of our most entertaining televangelists to boot. I'm not interested in kicking people out. I've got a lot of faith in God that he's going to do just fine separating the wheat from the chaff all on his own. I say that any person that can make it through seminary should be able to be ordained or whatever you call becoming a pastor. If they are a blithering idiot or a drunk or whatever, my guess is that they will have a very small flock, and the flock that they do have will have no one else to blame if they are unable to discern their blithering idiotness.

Furthermore, Jesus was very clear that we should do what the Pharisees say, not what they do. He in no way tried to get rid of them. He actually affirmed them in their authority:

Mt.23:2-4
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

Pia said: Do you agree with excommunicated that we are damned?

Semeia: Now that's just not right, to ask that question. That's like slicing off a piece of the Mona Lisa and asking me if I like it. Now it's ruined. Excommunicated's satire is something that has meaning in its wholeness.

Yes we're all like the Pharisees; this is a part of the human condition, which yes, we're responsible for and therefore are damned, unless of course we crucify ourselves, but wait, Jesus already did that for us--now all we need to do is recognize the truth of these things, of who we are, of the absurdity of thinking we are not like this, of realizing that with the judgement we judge others is how we will be judged. And the irony that the Pharisiacal call for fairness and justice and "rights" actually brings them to their own destruction, which they are demanding because they would rather crucify themselves than accept that God's mercy has nothing to do with their concept of justice or fairness, the wage is the same if you work an hour or a day--but even that the Pharisee doesn't get, and uses it like a legal argument.

I'm sorry Excommunicated, I botched it. It's one in the morning and I tried to explain, but it's a whole piece and it should be left as it is.

Thanks,
Semeia

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