Jesus’ Jewishness

A Parable About Judging

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Judge“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned… For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Luke 6:37- 38

What did Jesus mean by “do not judge?” Interestingly, other rabbis of Jesus’ time taught ideas close to this concept of “do not judge,” with an adage that said, “judge every person on favorable terms,” and a parable was told about that idea:

A man went to work on a farm for three years. At the end, he went to his employer and requested his wages. The farm owner said to him “I have no money!” So he said to him, “Well, give me some of the crops I’ve helped grow,” to which he replied “I have none!” He then asked to be given some sheep, and the farmer told him again that he had nothing to give him. So he gathered up his belongings and went home with a sorrowful heart.

A few days later his employer brought him all his wages with three carts of gifts. The farm owner said to him, “When I told you I had no money, what did you think?” He said, “I thought you might have lost it in some bad business.” Then he said “What did you think when I said I had no crops?” He said, “I thought perhaps they were leased from others”. He then said, “What did you think when I said I had no animals?” and the man said, “I thought that you may have promised them to the Temple.”

The farmer answered, “You are right! I had dedicated all of my possessions to the Lord because my son wouldn’t study the scriptures. But yesterday I was absolved of the vow so that now I can pay you. And as for you, just as you have judged me favorably, may the Lord judge you favorably!”

This story has elements in it of not condemning another, and also a parallel of “For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Could this be the gist of what Jesus is saying?

If the idea to “judge others favorably” is always applied, it is impossible to have a critical or cynical spirit towards others. It is difficult even to remain angry or bear a grudge against someone once you start thinking of what might have motivated them to do whatever you are upset about. It is a lot easier to reach out in love when we let God judge other people’s motivations, and not do it ourselves.

Jesus’ saying “Do not judge!” becomes the best wisdom for any situation when we know that people are sinful and may have wrong motivations, but only God knows their heart.

Photo: http://ferxtreme.hu/wp-content/uploads/birosag.jpg

How Will God Judge Us?

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. – Jeremiah 17:10

Jesus grew up hearing parables, and when he taught, he used this colorful method to illustrate his ideas. In a Hebraic culture which didn’t usually use abstractions, but rather talked in stories and pictures instead, parables were a way for them to develop and explain complex ideas about life and God.

One parable from the Talmud (1) gives a clever answer to a difficult question that we still discuss today. How will God judge us in light of the fact that our flesh tempts us? For instance, how does God deal with an alcoholic who has a family tendency toward alcoholism? How does he look at a man who struggles with homosexual thoughts? They tell this parable:

FigsTo what may this be compared? To a human king who owned a beautiful orchard which contained splendid figs. Now he appointed two watchmen, one lame and the other blind. One day the lame man said to the blind man, “I see beautiful figs in the orchard. Put me on your shoulders so that we can pick and eat them.” So the lame man got on the shoulders of the blind man and they gathered the figs and ate them.

Some time later, the owner of the orchard came and asked them, “Where are those beautiful figs?” The lame man replied, “Do I have feet to walk with?” The blind man replied, “Do I have eyes to see with?” What did the owner do? He placed the lame man upon the blind man and judged them together. So the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring the soul, replace it in the body and judge them together…. (Sanhedrin 91a-b)

The king in the parable is God, which is usually the case in parables, and gives us a clue to who the king is in Jesus’ parables. Each of the two disabled men represent part of a person – the lame man is the person’s will, and the blind man is the flesh. Neither part is capable of sinning on its own — both act together in order to do anything. The point is that when God looks at us, he sees us as a whole — he knows what we are made of. We are a combination of factors including family history, mental make-up, religious upbringing, etc, and both our background and our own will work together to influence our actions.

Looking at YourselfKnowing this can give us wisdom for living. On the one hand, realizing that we have a background or personality type that will tend to lead us into a certain sin (like an abusive family or a tendency to anger), we must go out of the way to avoid what we might do impulsively. We can’t plead innocence, because we are responsible for what we have been given and what we have done with it. We’re capable of overcoming our weaknesses, at least to a point.

On the other hand, we should be careful to not to condemn each other because we can’t know all of a person’s struggles or what they might have lived through. Two people may be similar in action, but one may have triumphed over great temptations, and the other not using their many gifts. Only God knows these things, and only God is fit to judge us justly.

(1) The Talmud is the compendium of Jewish commentary gathered about 500 years after Jesus’ life.

Photo: Gyfjonas and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Did Jesus Use Parables to Hide His Meaning?

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“The sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell beside the road, and it was trampled under foot and the birds of the air ate it up. “Other seed fell on rocky soil, and as soon as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. “Other seed fell among the thorns; and the thorns grew up with it and choked it out. “Other seed fell into the good soil, and grew up, and produced a crop a hundred times as great.”

As He said these things, He would call out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” His disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant. And He said, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. ” – Luke 8:4-10

Sometimes parables make us scratch our heads, and it can seem that Jesus was using them to deliberately confuse people. But even though they seem strange to us, they were a traditional teaching method that was always used to clarify rather than obscure.

Sower and SoilLooking at this passage in more depth, Jesus is actually explaining why his parables make sense to some people and not to others. Here he tells the parable of the sower – that the same seed that grows well in good soil does not take root on the path, and produces little in rocky or thorny ground. The seed is always good, but the soil of human hearts may or may not be. The reason people don’t understand Jesus’ teachings is not because he is hiding anything. The lack of understanding is a problem with the hearer, not the speaker.

The difficulty is beyond just the ability to understand, but to receive his teaching in order to obey it. In Hebrew, the word for hear, “shema,” also means to “obey.” In fact, almost every time the word “obey” is found in English, it has been translated from “shema.” That is how one can hear, but not “hear.”

Another way he says this is by his quotation from the Old Testament. He is quoting Isaiah 6:9-10, when God commissions Isaiah as a prophet to Israel. God did not send Isaiah to confuse the people with obscure teachings, but to clearly proclaim God’s word to them. But God says to Isaiah at his commission almost sarcastically,

Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed. – Isaiah 6:10

Really, God is not telling Isaiah to confuse the people, but to proclaim the truth, even though God knows his teaching will be rejected by many. Jesus is saying the same thing – that like the prophets he speaks to clarify God’s word, but from hardness of heart, many will not hear or obey him.

Photo: Sts. Konstantine and Helen Orthodox Church, Cluj, Romania.

Why Parables?

Lois Tverberg

WHy Parables?by Lois Tverberg

All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable. – Matthew 13:34

It comes as a surprise to some that Jesus did not invent the parable, but he was employing a traditional method of teaching that was used widely in first century Judaism. Because of this lack of knowledge, at some times in history Jesus’ words have been misunderstood. At one point, it was thought that parables were allegories – stories where each character is a hidden reference to a certain person or situation. For example, Augustine read the parable of the Good Samaritan as an allegory – the man traveling on the road was Adam, the man who helped was Jesus, the inn was the church, the innkeeper was Paul, etc. Among first century rabbis, however, this interpretation would have been foreign to the way a parable was told .

In Jesus’ culture, a parable was a story from human experience that helps explain a spiritual reality. It is the product of the language of Hebrew which does not have many abstract terms to describe God, so instead uses physical imagery, describing God’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm.” The rabbis used parables especially for theology – to explain why God does things the way He does. (1)

Why Parables 2Jesus, like other rabbis, teaches theology at a very high level by describing God as a king who throws a banquet and invites the outcasts, or a shepherd who looks for his sheep. Beyond just defining him, Jesus paints a picture of God’s character in vivid colors. His stories go beyond just defining and explaining, they elicit an emotional reaction. People can feel viscerally the irony of a majestic king sitting at a table with beggars and outcasts, and sense the shocking grace the king is showing them. And they can imagine the anguish that a shepherd endures and his great joy when he finds a lost sheep. This is exactly the point – Jesus was a passionate teacher whose goal was not just to give people an intellectual knowledge of God, but to teach them about God’s powerful love for them, and cause them to return that love to Him.

1 An excellent resource is The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation, by Brad Young, Hendrikson Publishers, 1998.

Photo: Brooklyn Museum and Guercino