The whole people of God is meant to be a holy people. Thus holiness always encompasses also the community-social dimension with which the individual person is inseparably connected. Not only must the human heart be holy: so must life’s conditions and relationships, the social structures and the forms of the environment in which human beings live and into which they constantly project themselves. But that is precisely what the material-ritual prescriptions of the Torah regarding cleanness and uncleanness always intended.
Belief in one God who is Lord of all must also shape the world around people. It is not enough to believe with lips and heart while despising one’s own body, allowing the living space in which one is at home to deteriorate, and destroying the environment. According to the words of the prophet Zechariah, in the Israel of the end time even the horses’ bells and the household utensils will be holy to the Lord: “On that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, ‘Holy to the LORD.’… and every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the LORD of hosts” (Zech 14:20-21). This means that a day is coming when all Israel—not only its people, but also things and especially the conditions of life—will find themselves in the state willed by God for them and reflecting God’s rulership. To the extent that they correspond to the will of God and are formed by God’s nearness they will then find their identity and support life. This is precisely where the biblical concept of clean and unclean is pointing. The intent of the Torah of clean and unclean in the book of Leviticus is that faith should shape and transform the world, and as far as this real direction and goal of the Torah of clean and unclean is concerned, we are far from having fulfilled it. The laws of clean and unclean in the Old Testament deserve to be read anew, considered anew, and questioned about their original meaning.
Obviously that is not possible unless we continually make distinctions. Does the commandment of those times still match the historical dynamic in which we are placed? How could it be translated to our situation? But making precise distinctions is the Torah’s purpose: it is meant to teach Israel to distinguish. To view all things in the world critically, that is, by the power of faith in the one God to differentiate among them, has indeed become a basic feature of Jewish existence. Because Israel, in light of the Torah, learned to distinguish continually—and that meant also, for example, not mixing objects and things that are different38—it was able to maintain its identity among the Gentiles. Assyria and Babylon, once states that stood victorious on the ruins of Israel, vanished and were absorbed into other nations, but Israel, defeated and continually persecuted, even scattered throughout the world, has remained one people.
Israel’s power of distinction is part of the miracle of its identity. The church needs this constant distinguishing as urgently as does the synagogue. It must not fall into that sick condition of the spirit in which everything is the same, nothing matters more than anything else, indifference is the norm. Where no distinctions are made any longer, the old gods return.
So we may say at the end of this chapter: the Torah is the endeavor set in motion by God himself, never out of date and based on the people of God, to view all things in the world with the eyes of God, to distinguish what is right from what is false, to change what is false, and so to place everything under the rule of the one God. Frank Crüsemann, a Christian theologian, has dared to say, “The identity of the biblical God is dependent upon the connection with his Torah.”39 He is right. Therefore the church can and may not ever give up the Torah, not even parts of it. True, it must read and live the Torah in the spirit of Jesus—that is, out of the strength of the new thing that came into the world with him, out of his freedom and rationality, his radicality and reverence for God.
Chapter 13
The Life of Jesus: Living Unconditionally
In the previous twelve chapters we were concerned primarily with “what Jesus wanted.” “Who he was” was indirectly visible. From now on, the second part of this book’s subtitle will be more in the foreground. Who was Jesus?
The Eye Torn Out
We repeatedly find in Jesus’ words and actions a positively alarming absoluteness and lack of ambiguity. We might even have to speak of “ruthlessness.” For when someone who wants to follow him asks first to be allowed to take leave of his family, Jesus says to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). In his clarity and exclusivity, as shown in this statement, Jesus was ruthless. He was so toward himself and could be so toward others. Many of his sayings testify to it. Here is no soothing, no calming, no pacifying, no watering down; instead, the unadorned truth is spoken—truth about human beings and the situations in which they find themselves. It is always a situation in which far-reaching, indeed, final decisions are to be made. Therefore Jesus has to say:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. (Matt 5:29-30)
This text works with a point of view of that time according to which the very limbs of the body entice to sin: eyes, ears, lips, hands. The Markan parallel speaks of the foot as well (Mark 9:45). But why here in particular the right eye and the right hand? Very simply because everything “right” was considered by people of that period as better and more important. This makes the argument even more pointed: better to lose a part of the body, even if it is an especially important and precious part, such as the right hand, than with one’s whole existence to go to hell.
Plucking out one’s own eye, cutting off one’s own hand—the double saying speaks piercingly and with a fearful severity: better to be crippled and disfigured than to be in further danger of sinning! Matthew 5:29-30 is eons removed from the Greek ideal of the harmonic person, nobly formed in all respects.
The same kind of severity and pointed meaning is found in the so-called violence saying. In this case, by way of exception, I am quoting from the easily reconstructed wording of the Sayings Source:1 “The law and the prophets [were] until John. From then [on] the kingdom of God breaks its way violently, and the violent seize it” (cf. Matt 11:13, 12 // Luke 16:16). There are very few sayings of Jesus whose meaning has been so long disputed among exegetes. This one has often been translated and interpreted in a negative sense: “From then on the reign of God is violated, and the violent plunder it.”2 This would mean that the reign of God, as Jesus proclaims it, is being rejected and made an enemy by its opponents. They take it away from the people who listen to Jesus and who want to follow him.
From a purely grammatical point of view this negative translation is possible. But that does not say much. We need to examine the context: “the law and the prophets,” which extend to the time of John the Baptizer, are, after all, something positive. What comes after them, namely, the reign of God, is still more positive. Therefore there can be no question here of a violation of the reign of God, especially since there are no parallels in Jesus’ sayings for such a statement.
Moreover, if we note the provocative way Jesus constantly spoke, and if we pay special attention to the language of his parables, where any number of “immoral heroes” represent the kind of discipleship Jesus is demanding, it seems still more likely that we should interpret the “violence saying” in a positive sense, as the wording certainly allows: the reign of God is not violated; rather, it is breaking its way with power. No one can stop it, because it is God’s work. But only those who dare everything and put everything in play will have a part in it. They are like violent people who do violence to themselves and their own bodies. They are ruthless with themselves.