MarkT

Jesus and the INCLUSION of the OUTCAST

Jesus ... encourages me to celebrate life, to suck the marrow out of existence, to explore and probe, and experiment, to venture into uncharted seas, without fear of a tyrannical and vindictive God. p.19

The gospel of Jesus came to expression in the parables and aphorisms preserved in Q, Thomas, and other gospels.  The message of the parables  and aphorisms is first and foremost the announcement of good news: sinners and outcasts are welcome in God's kingdom; indeed, God's domain belongs to them. ... God's domain was for Jesus something already present.  It was also something to be celebrated because it embraces everyone - Jew, gentile, slave, free, male, female. ... The kingdom represents an unbrokered relationship to God: temple and priests are obsolete. p. 41

According to the gospels, Jesus was a social deviant, a charismatic teacher who attracted a consderable fo0llowing.  He was apparently a nonconformist, like many of the oprophets of ancient Israel.  he seems to have criticized the temple cult and subverted some purity codes.  He was a trouble maker. p. 59

Jesus was a comic savant.  He mixed hum,our with subversive and troubling knowledge born of direct insight. ... A comic savant is an intellectual - better, a poet - who is redefining what it means to be wise.  That is the real role of a court jester: tell the king truth but tell it as a joke. ... New truth is easier to embrace if it comes wrapped in humour. p. 158

In the beginning was the parable.  The parable, for Jesus, was a window on the world. .... Jesus names this new logic God's imperial rule, or, in traditional language, the kingdom of God.  In that realm, in God's domain, people and things do not behave in expected ways. ... according to Jesus, the habituated world obscured the real world, where his Father, God, had absolute dominion. p. 165

1. In God's domain help comes only to those who have no right to expect it and who cannot resist it when it is offered.

2. Help always comes from the quarter from which one does not and cannot expect it. We might reduce these two statements to one: In God's domain help is perpetually a surprise. p. 180

Jesus was perceived as and probably was what we would call an urban partygoer.  Jesus seems to have been given to conviviality; he apparently enjoyed an open table.  He would probably have not had the means to sponsor an evening of scintillating conversation over food and drink - a symposium as it was called.  Yet he did not hesitate to attend convivial gatherings sponsored by others.  pp. 192-193

Those with whom Jesus ate and drank originally ... were all real sinners or outsiders - that is how they were perceived from the standpoint of those who adhered to purity codes and ate kosher. Sinners, outsiders in Jesus' society, included persons with a skin disease ("lepers"), the maimed, the halt, the bliond, gentiles, Samaritans, as well as petty tax officials, who were Roman collaborators, and women who did not observe the social proprieties. ... This paradox of Jesus - outsiders are in, insiders are out ...  p. 194

There is no stronger statement of Jesus' predilection for the outsider than the parable of the good Samaritan.  There is no more poignant statement of the disdain for the priests, levites, and the temple than this story. ... God has a preference for the lowly, the poor, the undeserving, the sinner, the social misfits, the marginalized, the humble. p. 196

"Whoever is not against us is on our side."  (Mark) .. Jesus .. was apparently inclusive rather than exclusive. p. 199

There appeared to be no sacred places in Jesus' world: all space had become sacred. p. 203

Jesus insisted that people can only enter the kingdom if they don't deserve to.  The poor, the bereaved, the hungry are welcojme there, buitb the self-righteous ahnd hypocritical are not.  Those who think they belong don't; those who are afraid they don't do.  The last will be first and the first last. p. 215

One may enter without permission; all that is required is boldness, confidence, the trust thatb it is acceptable to proceed.  Those who need to be authorized to pass, who feel they must have permission, are not worthy of entrance. Strictly speaking, of course, arrival in the kingdom is not even possible.  Arrival is by departure only.  Entrance into God's domain is the same thing as exodus. It is the quest of Abraham for a new ancestral home. It is Moses leading tjhe children of Israel out of Egypt in search of the promised land.  It is forsaking mother and father, wife and children, in order to acquire true relatives.  For it no map is available. It is truly an immense journey. p. 216

from Robert W. Funk "Honest To Jesus" (Hodder & Stoughton:1996)