Jesus said to him, “You must learn what is even more important than that. From now on you will learn that heaven is open and that people can communicate with the powers of heaven. From now on, God will no longer be separated from his people.”
And Jesus returned to the place of his birth in Nazareth. And on the holy day he went, as always, to the meeting and began to read. He was given the book of Isaiah. He opened it and read what was written in the book: “The spirit of the Lord is within me. He chose me to proclaim goodness to the unhappy and the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the bound, light to the blind and salvation and rest to the exhausted. To announce to all that this is the time of God’s mercy.”
He closed the book, gave it to the attendant, and sat down; and everyone waited to hear what he would say.
And he said, “Now this verse has been fulfilled before your eyes.”
Chapter Two GOD IS A SPIRIT
And therefore man should work, not for the flesh, but for the spirit.
WHO ART IN HEAVEN
Considering themselves to be orthodox believers, the Jews revere the external God, the creator of the flesh. According to their teaching, this external God had made an agreement with them, wherein he promised to help the Jews, and the Jews had promised to reverence him, and the main condition of this agreement was the observance of the Sabbath. Jesus rejected the observance of the Sabbath. He says, “The Sabbath is an institution of man. A living man is more important in his spirit than all external rituals. Observance of the Sabbath ritual, like all external worship, contains a fallacy at its core. It is impossible to do nothing on the Sabbath. A man should do good deeds at all times, and if the Sabbath is preventing the doing of a good deed, then that means the Sabbath is a lie.”
The orthodox Jews considered another condition of this agreement to be the avoidance of interaction with non-believers. To this, Jesus says that God does not want sacrifices from people, but love between them.
They considered one more condition of the agreement to be the rules of ablution and purification. Addressing this, Jesus states that God does not demand external purity but demands only charity and love toward other people.
Jesus makes the point that external ordinances are harmful and that church traditions themselves are evil. Church traditions make it so that people throw out the most important acts of love—for example, love for one’s father and mother—and justify it with church tradition.
Concerning all things external, all the rules of the previous law that determined those situations in which a person might become defiled, Jesus says, “You all know that nothing can defile a person from the outside; only what he thinks can defile a person.”
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, a city considered to be holy, and he goes into the temple, where the orthodox believed God himself lived, and he says that it is unnecessary to make sacrifices to God, that a person is more important than the temple, and that all one must do is love and help his neighbor.
One need not worship God in some special place, instead one must serve God in deed and in spirit. The spirit is impossible to see or to show. The spirit is a person’s consciousness of their status as a son of the endless spirit. A temple is not necessary. The true temple is the world of people, united in love. All external worship is not only false and harmful when it facilitates evil deeds, but it is harmful because the person that fulfills external ordinances considers himself correct and frees himself from the need to perform any acts of love. The only person who strives for goodness and performs acts of love is the one who feels his own imperfection. External worship leads to the error of self-satisfaction, therefore all external worship is unnecessary and should be thrown out. It is impossible to combine acts of love with the fulfillment of ordinances and impossible under the guise of external worship to perform acts of love. Man is the son of God in spirit, and therefore he should serve the father in spirit.
It happened that once, on the Sabbath, Jesus was walking through a field with his students. The students had gotten hungry and along the way had torn off some heads of grain, plucked the kernels with their hands and began to eat. But according to the orthodox teaching, God had established a covenant with Moses that required all to observe the Sabbath and to do nothing at all on the Sabbath day. According to the orthodox teaching, God had commanded that whoever worked on the Sabbath should be beaten with stones.
The orthodox saw that the students were plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath and they said, “That is not to be done on the Sabbath. We are forbidden to work on the Sabbath and yet you are plucking ears of corn. God established the Sabbath and commanded that its violation be punished by death.”
Jesus heard this and said, “If you understood what these words of God mean, ‘I want love and not sacrifice,’ you would not be condemning them for something which bears no guilt. Man is more important than the Sabbath.”
It happened on another Sabbath as Jesus was teaching in a meeting that a sick woman approached him and asked him to help her. And Jesus began to care for her.
Then, an orthodox church elder became angry at Jesus for this and said to the people, “In God’s law it is said ‘There are six days in the week for work.’”
And at this, Jesus asked the orthodox legalists, “What, then, in your opinion, is it also forbidden to help another person on the Sabbath?”
And they did not know what to answer.
Then Jesus said, “Deceivers! Don’t each of you untether your animal from the manger and lead it to drink on the Sabbath? And if someone’s sheep falls into the well, then of course, does he not run and pull it out, even if it is the Sabbath?”
Once, Jesus saw a tax collector gathering taxes. This tax collector was named Matthew. Jesus spoke with him and Matthew understood him, came to love his teaching, and called him to his home as a guest, preparing refreshments for him.
When Jesus came to Matthew, some acquaintances, tax collectors and non-believers, were visiting him. But Jesus did not shun them and sat down himself, as did his students.
And now the orthodox saw this and said to Jesus’s students, “How is it that your teacher is eating with tax collectors and these other wayward people? On the contrary, according to orthodox law, God has commanded us not to communicate with the non-believing.”
Jesus heard this and said, “Whoever rejoices in his health has no need for a healer, but whoever is sick needs one. Understand what God’s words mean: ‘I want love, not sacrifice.’ It is impossible for me to teach those who consider themselves orthodox to change their faith, so instead I teach those who consider themselves wayward.”
The orthodox legalists came to Jesus from Jerusalem. And they saw that his students and he himself ate bread with unwashed hands. And the orthodox legalists began to condemn him for this, because they themselves behaved strictly according to church tradition, such as their requirement for washing dishes: if they are not washed properly, they do not eat off of them. And also, after making their purchases, they will not eat anything if they do not wash it first.
And the orthodox legalists asked him, “What is your reason for not living by church tradition but taking your bread and eating it with unwashed hands?”
And he answered them, “How is it that you break the commandments of God by living the church traditions? God has told you: honor your father and mother. And you came up with the idea that everyone can say: I offer to God what I would have given to my parents. And then you can go without feeding your father and mother. That is how you break the commandments of God with church tradition.