247 - You Already Know These Things

You Already Know These Things
By Hugh T. Kerr

ELSEWHERE in this issue there is a visual illustration of religion's perennial tension between the old and the new. The eight religious buildings selected for special awards by the Preservation League of New York State symbolize the pull and tug of tradition, on the one hand, and the challenge and lure of the future, on the other.

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All too often, as we well know, our religious buildings of whatever faith or denomination can become museums, repositories of religious relics. They can also be renewed, revitalized, and stand for something fresh and creative in the local community. So, it can be said of the theological traditions represented by the buildings that they, too, must struggle with the religious tension between the old and the new. And that is one way to look at Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism at the present moment. All three in their own distinctive ways grope for an answer to Samson's ancient riddle, namely, how something good can come from something old and decadent (Judg. 14: 12-18).

But for us today the temptation is not so much to forget our traditions as we look for some new thing. Ours is a timid, conservative, repining age in almost every area of life and thought. The kind of vaulting forward-looking liberalism of the 1920s that disdained the past because the future looked so bright enrolls few believers and fewer followers- perhaps to our great impoverishment.

The problem for us today, whether in Judaism, Catholicism, or Protestantism, is to resist the temptation to hide behind our traditions, seeking cover in safe and secure certainties, skeptical of those who dare go beyond the Holocaust, Vatican II, or the World Council of Churches. What we do with what we have, and how we live today and plan for tomorrow out of our resources-this represents a crucial assignment for our religious traditions today. Let us see if a little exercise in the teaching of Jesus regarding his own Jewish tradition can illuminate this point.

248 - You Already Know These Things

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The conventional Christian premise about the teaching of Jesus assumes that what is said and taught in the Gospels bears a distinctively unique trademark. The caption of this kind of interpretation would be the refrain-"You have heard that it was said … But I say …" (Matt. 5:21-22, etc.). This signature would identify, according to this view, not only certain passages such as the Sermon on the Mount, but the whole range of Gospel teaching.

Leaving this specifically Christian apologetic to one side for the moment, we also know that much of what Jesus had to say to his disciples and to his contemporaries related directly, to their Jewish religious traditions and sacred Scriptures. Here the text for many such passages, as perhaps in some sense for the whole of the evangelical didache, would be-"Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, I have come … to fulfil them" (Matt. 5: 17).

Let us look even more closely at this second approach and observe just what Jesus seemed to imply by, reminders of what was, after all, common knowledge.

When Nicodemus involved himself in an argument about the prospects for a new beginning in his life, Jesus put it to him-"So you are a teacher of Israel, and you do not recognize such things?" (John 2:10, Phillips, et passim). In the complicated conversation about how knowing the truth can set us free, some bystanders boasted that they, always had been free, and didn't need any, instruction from Jesus. To which he replied: "If you were the children of Abraham, you would do the sort of things Abraham did" (John 8:39). When Dives suggested that someone warn his family, about the terrible things that might happen to them, the reply came-"If they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they would not be convinced even if somebody were to rise from the dead (Luke 16:31).

There are many more such instances where Jesus seems to be saying, "You already, know these things." When the rich young ruler asked about finding eternal life, Jesus told him to keep the Commandments (Matt. 19:17). The point of the story about the good Samaritan was immediately taken by, the lawyer who wanted a precise definition of "neighbor." But the narrative implies that he should have known this anyway. without asking (Luke 10:25-37). When Jesus upset the tables of the temple money-changers, he said to those who took offense: "Doesn't the Scripture say, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations"?" (Mark 11:17; here as so often in the sayings of Jesus there is a direct or indirect reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, in this case to Isa. 56:7 and Jer. 7:11).

Whatever the evangelists may, have wanted to imply about the miracles of Jesus or his Messiahship, Jesus himself seems to take it for granted that the signs of divine power and presence ought to be as obvious as casual conversation about the weather (Matt. 16:l-4). If some paralyzed person is healed, isn't that a sign that God is at hand?

249 - You Already Know These Things

"Why must you argue like this in your minds?" (Mark 2:8). If curiosity-seekers inquire as to credentials, Jesus replies: "The blind are recovering their sight, cripples are walking again, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing … " (Luke 7: 18-23). We can paraphrase his answer: -You already know these things. What do you make of them'?" And on another occasion, when queried about himself, Jesus said: "Even though you have no faith in me personally, then believe in the things that I do" (John 10:38).

It is tempting to imagine how this reading of the Gospel teaching could be applied. We are suggesting that our religious resources represent the accumulated data-bank of revelation and experience. We may need to learn many new things, and we may need to experiment with various kinds of doctrinal, hermeneutical, and ethical retrieval-systems to get at what is already there. But we have more than enough available to draw on for any faith-venture required of us.

What would it mean to translate this notion into, say, Bible study, theological education, pastoral care, personal spirituality, and-in this Presidential election year-into social, political, and economic policy'?

In our day, the ancient, familiar Proverb seems all too true-"Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Prov. 29:18 AV; the Jewish Publication Society of America rendering of the whole verse reads, "For lack of vision a people lose restraint, but happy is he who heeds instruction"). An accurate paraphrase of the Hebrew might be: "If the Word of the Prophets and the Law of Moses are not heard in the land. the people will fall for anything."

With that threatening us, wouldn't this year be a perfect time for our religious traditions to come alive again) Moses and the Prophets) We already know these things.