Learning More About Jesus

Awhile ago, after a priest suggested that I read the gospel of Matthew, I posted some of my reactions (and received varied responses in the comments).  Since then, I've returned to talk to the priest.  His explanations were pretty interesting, I thought, so I'm posting them here:

Parable of the Two Sons:  I was completely puzzled by this parable, even after I looked at several different translations of it:

For example (Matthew 21:28-32) a man had two sons and he asked both of them to work in his vinyard.  The older son told him that he would not do it, but then changed his mind and did.  The younger son said he would, but didn't go.  Jesus asked, "Which one of the sons obeyed his father?"

"The older one," I thought to myself, and sure enough, Jesus' listeners answered the same.  Then Jesus told them, "You can be sure that tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you ever will!"  In other words, wrong answer.  But why?

Father C explained that it wasn't the wrong answer--it was the right answer.  But two different audiences were listening to Jesus ask the question.  One audience, the answering audience, contained tax collectors and prostitutes.  The other audience, the eavesdropping audience, contained members of the religious establishment.  Jesus was telling the religious establishment that the tax collectors and prostitutes would get to heaven first because they were willing to believe.

Fig Tree:  I also remarked on the way Jesus became much more crabby as the crucifixion approached.  Since I hadn't thought much past the smiling, gentle Jesus of popular culture, I was quite surprised to see him attack a fig tree in Matthew 21: 18-22.  He encountered a fig tree that didn't happen to have any fruit at the moment and angrily told it, "You will never again grow any fruit!" and the tree dried up. 

Father C suggested that either the fig tree was a metaphor or symbol used in other myths of the time, or the fig tree was flawed and barren.  Farmers know better than to care for a plant that will never bear fruit, he pointed out.  Later, my husband offered a different, narrative explanation--that the point was that Jesus didn't attack his crucifiers as he attacked the fig tree.  He clearly had awesome powers, but didn't use them.  All of these explanations seem plausible to me.

Open-Mindedness: I was impressed by the open-minded nature of Jesus in Matthew.  I just couldn't believe that this Jesus would insist that non-Christians would be inevitably damned--he so clearly respected faith in all people.   Commenters found this particular observation to be controversial . . . but Fr. C agreed with me!  Wow.

So I was going to read the book of John next . . . I even have a complete set of podcast readings . . . but so far it's rough going.  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  Whew.   I need frequent breaks to uncross my eyes.

Comments

[fausto]

On the Two Sons:

Jesus is praising the difficult struggle to find a sincere, honest faith, and condemning superficial but false piety. He does this on other occasions as well.

On John:

Check out my thread for an unconventional take on John 14:6 and the intent of the author in writing the whole gospel when there were other, more factually accurate ones already circulating:

http://socinian.blogspot.com/2005/09/reinterpreting-john-146.html

WHat a lot of literal readers of John miss is that it was written as a theological treatise, not as a history. The narrative form is merely a literary device.

[Mommyprof]

Wow, John is a hard one because of the metaphorical language. Do you have a good commentary or at least the little chapter in the front in your Bible that tries to explain what is going on?

It sounds like you have a great priest, btw.

[James]

Yeah, the fig tree story is embarrassing for a number of reasons, and if you arrange the Gospels in the order in which they were written, you'll see that the story is trimmed back and trimmed back until it basically just disappears. Bishop John Shelby Spong did an wonderful job dissecting that and other issues in an excellent series of essays he wrote on Sukkoth and the Passion. Those are well worth seeking out, if you can.

As for the dense reading, I would suggest keeping a copy of The Message Remix to hand when working your way through the Bible. It's an actual translation, as opposed to a paraphrasing, and therefore is far more reliable than all the contemporary language editions of the Bible you'll find out there. I tend to read the New Revised Standard version for content, use the King James for its poetic (though highly inaccurate) renderings, and The Message Remix for straight reading. This may be a combination that'll work for you.

[Scrivener]

I would have sworn that I'd left a comment on that earlier post, but it's not there now. I must have stopped to go hunt down this link and never gotten back to leave my comment?

Any way, just before I read your earlier post, I had been listening to This American Life and heard a very similar piece. I'm almost certain it was "Godless America" (http://207.70.82.73/pages/descriptions/05/290.html) but I don't have Real Audio on this computer, so I can't listen to it now to double-check. It's Julia Sweeney's commentary in Act 2.

Here's the description from the site: God Said, Huh? Julia Sweeney, a Catholic, tells the story of how her faith began to crack after reading a most alarming book ... called the Bible. Her story is excerpted from her play, "Letting Go of God," which ran in Los Angeles. Her other one-woman monologues are "God Said, "Ha!" and "In the Family Way." (29 minutes)

[Scrivener]

Dang it, but it included that closing parenthesis in the url.

Trying again:
http://207.70.82.73/pages/descriptions/05/290.html