ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 14.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> PAUL: It just occurs to me to ask was Jesus ever critical of the liturgical life of Israel. >> DR. ARTHUR JUST: Earlier, I spoke about the Sanhedrin which was the council that was in charge of the religious life of Israel. And we talked about how the two religious parties, the Sadducees and Pharisees, were much different in their theological orientation and their responsibilities. Jesus has very little to do, as I said, with the Sadducees and even with the temple itself. But his entire ministry, his entire life as one who is now publicly showing himself as Messiah, is involved with the Pharisaical party, and he is extremely critical of many of the things that they're doing. For example, Jesus has a totally different perspective than they do on the purity codes, who is clean and who is unclean. He is critical, for example, of the kinship laws, who is a Jew and who is not a Jew. Jesus is much more inclusive. Table fellowship laws, who can and who cannot sit at the table. Again, Jesus is in controversies with them over this particular issue. And then things like the Sabbath laws, what one can or cannot do on the Sabbath. We find Jesus in a number of Sabbath controversies. In fact, in Luke's gospel, there are three of them. Now, these controversies with the Pharisees show Jesus to be extremely critical of their way of understanding the religious life of Israel. And, in fact, I think it could be said that one of the reasons Jesus is crucified is because he does have this different perspective than the Pharisees on many of these questions. That is why, when you look it Jesus' life and the context of the liturgical life of Israel, in temple and a synagogue, it is remarkable how uncritical he is of that life. One sees him submitting himself completely to the temple liturgy and the liturgy of the synagogue. Now, some of you might ask, how about the cleansing of the temple. Well, that is a good question because it appears there as if Jesus is being critical. But if you look at the temple mount itself, you'll see that it is a huge space and on one side of that space they had what is called the *Royal stoia where they had the marketplace. Now even though this was on the Temple Mount, it had nothing to do, really, with the liturgical life of Israel. This is where the animals were sold that were used in the sacrifices. This is where the Sanhedrin met at one end of the *Royal stoia. And what Jesus does is cleanse out this section of the temple, particularly because of the corruption of the money changers and the like. But really, it is completely devoid of any kind of relationship to the liturgical life that going on in the sacrificial places, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies. Jesus submits himself to the liturgical life of Israel because he recognizes that the temple, as he says at twelve years old, is his father's house. He also recognizes that even though the preaching of the Pharisees may not be what he would do or what he would accept as being consistent with the character of the Old Testament, the synagogue is a place where the word of God is read, where there is prayer and there is song. And he sees these as completely legitimate ways in which one now receives the gifts from the Father and respond back with worship and praise. And so as we follow Jesus in his life, and particularly in his ministry, we see that he is a humble servant of God who is essentially just fits right in to the liturgical life of Israel as one who is faithful and reverent to the presence of God in these places where gifts are given, received, and thanked for.