I once went on a mission trip to Alamo, Texas to deliver school supplies to the very poor population of people who lived there. I remember distinctly on the way there, as we were traveling down a dusty road, passing a weird looking house. It stood alone, and had all kinds of trinkets and crosses hanging from the roof of the porch.
As we passed the house, the leader of the trip announced to everybody on the bus that "this is the house of a witch."
As I stared at the house, I was fascinated with the idea of seeing the house of a witch. From all the movies I'd seen, the only thing I knew about witches was they flew around on broomsticks and were only out at night. But later that view was changed when I watched Robin Hood. That movie showed me that witches didn't really fly around on broomsticks, but sat around and made potions with eggs, blood, and hair.
So as we passed by the witch's house, I imagined there was an old, decrepid lady inside swirling her finger around in a pot of eggs, blood, and hair, placing a curse on the passing van of missionaries.
As a young teen, I had no experience with witches in real life, so the announcement about the witch was surely a way to keep it that way. The leader might as well have said, "Stay away from the witch's house, because bad things will happen to those who go near it."
According to the author of the scripture above, the Jewish people had their own version of witches - Gentiles (people who didn't follow Judaism) and Samaritans (Jewish people who claimed the sanctuary of God was at Mount Gerizim and not Jerusalem).
If I were to translate this passage into modern, Christianese terms, it would sound something like this: "Do not go among the atheists or enter any town of the Mormons. Go rather to the lost sheep of Christianity." And not surprisingly, this is a pretty fair account of how things really have played out.
I will say one thing that strikes me as odd, even though it doesn't really fit in with what I'm trying to write. After all the writing we have about what Jesus said and did, why don't we have anything written by Jesus himself? Is there some lost memoir hidden beneath the sand dunes in the Middle East, waiting to be unearthed? In a way, I hope to never find anything written by Jesus, because I'd hate to find out that he really said some of the things that have been written. And this passage is one of those things.
Why would the author of Matthew 10:5-6 want to have Jesus telling Israel to only carry his message to Israelites? Why not non-Jews? Why not people who believed a hair differently than the "one true clan?"
Judging from the passage, there must have been a less than harmonious relationship between Jesus' Jews and the surrounding territories. Possibly, there's a hint by the author of exclusivity or racism. Maybe the outsiders wouldn't understand the message of Jesus, or maybe they'd be offended, and Jesus didn't want to stir up controversy with the neighbors.
Regardless of why this passage was written, it's plain to the reader that the Jews were to keep it in the family. No venturing outside the familial lines to "the witch's house." Bad things happen to those who go there.
If this were to be taken literally (which as a Christian it can't be taken literally since Christians weren't who Jesus was talking to), then it would obviously mean that people outside the Christian tradition weren't to be bothered with, right?
But it's so contradictory to Jesus' overall theme of carrying the good news to the ends of the earth.
Just like in one of my previous posts, I deem this passage as an example of 1st century prejudice. If it was written by Matthew, it was written at least sixty years after Jesus died. Streams of reformed Judaism (or Christianity) would've been sprouting up throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. And no doubt, the author was one of the ringleaders of the Christian tradition. So, when he (or she) wrote "the lost sheep of Israel," he must have meant "those Jews who have yet to become Christian."
The roof of Israel kept housed two siblings who didn't get along - the Jews and the reformed Jews. To the author, Jesus wanted the reformed Jews to work on converting all the traditional Jews before they ventured out to the outsider nations.
But I have such a hard time believing that Jesus's program was about conversions. I have an equally hard time picturing Jesus even caring about religious beliefs. I, however, don't find it surprising to find early Christians painting a picture of "one true religion," that excludes those outside of the tradition.
Jesus was known for going into the darkest, most sordid places to bring light and hope and love where it didn't previously exist. He was famous for congregating with the sick, the poor, and the despised, which usually meant venturing way outside the normal Jewish social boundaries. Jesus single-handedly abolished social norms everywhere he went. So why was the author of Matthew so intent on keeping Christianity inside of social norms that Jesus worked so hard to eradicate?
I think it's because at some point after Jesus died, the message transformed into a tool for conversion, but the conversion wasn't about showing compassion to the world as much as it was about getting people to believe in the right things. Get as many people as you can to join the clan, and you'll have yourself an empire in no time. You'll have an unshakeable, unwavering, powerful hold on religion, society, and politics. Onward Christian soldiers.
From what I see, the powerful, unshakeable, unwavering force we call the Christian church is still alive and strong in the conversion arena. There's no doubt about it. But I wonder, will it ever transform back into the way of Jesus? Will it ever get back to the point where the message is less about believing the right things and more about sharing a common humanity and bringing string-less love and compassion to the Gentiles and Samaritans or the atheists and Mormons.
I think only time will tell, but it's not gonna happen within the powerful, unwavering streams of mainline Christianity. It'll happen on the outskirts. It'll happen on the margins. It'll happen where beliefs aren't so rigid and headstrong that they exclusivise Jesus's message. It'll happen where Christians are meeting atheists and actually dialoguing about what the future looks like and how they can together make the dreams of Jesus and Ghandi come to fruition. It'll happen where Christians and Muslims are sharing dinner together, talking about how they can finally bring peace to each others lands. It'll happen where Christians start sharing stories with Mormons and start finding that they share more in common than previously thought. It'll happen where the doctrines of eschatology are being replaced with doctrines of hospitality, and doctrines of original sin are being replaced with doctrines of everyone's in. It'll happen where doctrines of just war and being replaced with doctrines of just peace.
No, I won't buy into the ideology that Jesus had bones to pick with the outsiders or conversion programs outlined for the unbelievers. That's just not the Jesus I see and envision.
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