A TOAST AT A FEAST

At the feast in the house of Levi, we know what Yeshua said to the Pharisees, but what did he say to Levi and the other guests? (Luke 5:27-32)

            Note that Levi had just been called, and had got up and followed Yeshua, giving up his job and his booth as a Mokhes (a tax-farmer). Note also that there is no sign that he is giving up his house and his money – yet. Instead, he is giving a party for his new teacher. So I imagine him, toward the end of the meal, standing up, raising his glass or goblet, and making a speech, more or less as follows:

            “Yeshua Ben-Yosef, it is an honour to me and my family to receive you in my house. I am aware that by coming here you risk being hounded by the religious: I’m sure they are already gnashing their teeth outside. So it was extraordinarily kind of you to come under my roof and to eat and drink with us outcasts. I believe that you are a good man and a fine rabbi, and I should be grateful if you would accept me as your disciple.” (Loud – but in some cases ironic -- applause from all the mokheses present.) Then Yeshua gets up, smiles, and waits for the noise to die down.

            “Levi Ben-Levi, I thank you for your kindness in inviting me – indeed, in having called together this party in my honour. You and your friends are very good company, even if you are not approved of by – er – certain people of unblemished reputation. Some of you may have heard, just now, the reproachful words of that Pharisee. If you did, you may also have heard my answer to him – and you may not have been best pleased. After all, I told him that it was not the healthy who needed the doctor but the sick; and that implied that you, my hosts, were not in the best of health. 

            “Those of you who, like Levi here, have already heard me speak in public know pretty much what I‘m about. You know that I say a lot of dour and dire things as well as nice ones, and that, rather like Yochanan the Dipper, I sometimes tell people that they are in a bad way and need to turn their lives around. So, are you sick, and am I the doctor? And if both are true, what’s my diagnosis, and what’s my cure? As you know, I’ve nothing to give or to spend, except my teaching; so any good I can do you will have to come from that.

            “So, to begin: all right, yes, I think that in spite of your good nature you are not the healthiest or the happiest of folk. Many of you are mokheses, which is not a job to make you loved. And quite a few of you have not done that job in the kindest or most righteous way. There are a few other faces here that I’ve seen in bad places and in bad company. You may have got used to it, but deep down I think most of you would like to be in harmony, in shalom, with the world and with Adonai.

            “And this is where Doctor Yeshua comes in. Believe it or not, it can be done. You can get your moral virginity back. Some people find it depressing that I tell them they have to be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees; and when I tell them that this can be done without conforming to the 648 ordinances in Scripture they think I’m selling snake-oil. But it’s true. There are only two commanments that matter. One: Adonai loves you, he is the Father of Love. So the first commandment that matters is to love him back, with every fibre of you. Then: Adonai loves every one of his children equally. So commandment no. 2: you love your neighbour just as much as yourself. And who’s your neighbour? Anyone.Anyone in trouble, sorrow, sickness or misery. X. Be there for X whenever you meet him or her. 

            “And you can condense that still further: follow the two commandments by telescoping them into one: Follow Me. I’m the one Adonai sent to help his children clear up the mess they’ve made. And right now we – you and I – are here;  the place is Here and the time is Now. If you respond, as Levi has done today, then you will not only make tov, make shalom, you will be shalom. You can forget the 648 ordinances, because you will already be what they were written to make you. 

            “So if you take up your account-books and follow me, we can all drink a toast to the terrific man who got us all here: Levi Ben-Levi, l’chaim !” 

image: The Feast at the House of Levi, detail (1573) by Paolo Veronese

 

FACING STONES, CLAWS, AND TEETH

 

Fortunate are they who are persecuted because of righteousness, because theirs is the kingship of the heavens.

Makarioi hoi dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunès, hoti autōn estin hè basileia tōn ouranōn.

 

Interestingly, the second part of this sentence is an exact copy of that in the first Beatitude: the kingship of heaven there belonged to the beggars in spirit, here to those who are persecuted for their righteous, or just, behaviour. So either these two share the heavenly reign, or they are the same people; or, conceivably, there is poetry and hyperbole at work here. For later on, in Matthew 14:19, he says of the little children that “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”.

 

There is no confusion about the words. Basileia means ‘kingdom’ in the sense of the office, not the geography – so ‘kingship, dominion, reign’. The heaven, or heavens, is/are the seat of divinity. So if this basileia is variously attributed to the poor in sprit, the righteous victims of persecution, and ‘such as’ little children, it is the thought, not the words, that needs to be teased out. Let us try to imagine that it might refer to the same people. Who would they be?

 

We have seen that the ptōchoi tōi pneumati are likely to be those who in their love for the Father tend to be simple, uncomplicated; and in fact the expression that instinctively occurred to me was ‘as children’ who trust their parent without complication. So the first and the third indications of who is referred to here agree.

But what about the persecution?

 

Why are they being persecuted? hekenen dikaiosunès: for the sake of – the translations say ‘righteousness’ but the noun can also mean ‘justice’ of ‘(the things of) the law’. They are being persecuted (the verb can also mean ‘prosecuted’) for the sake of, because of, justice – being just, being righteous. They practice that which, in an earlier Beatitude, people hungered and thirsted for. And for doing so, they are persecuted. By whom? The answer is not given, but there are plenty of examples in the New Testament (and in the Old, for that matter). It might be the religious authorities, the Scribes and Pharisees, the High Priests, who after all were on the way to persecuting Him for the very same reason; it might be the Romans, whose persecution of Christians reached a paroxysm under Diocletian and Galerius (303-311 AD), but who persecuted them for nonconformity to new Romanising edicts: among the Christians themselves, such nonconformity may well have been considered ‘righteous’.

 

So what it amounts to is that the simple, the innocent, the poor in spirit are those who know instinctively how to react to the Father’s love, and who therefore are likely to be victims of the kind of authority that demands obedience over any other behaviour, and punishes those who obey a different lordship: ‘my basileia is not of this world’ says Yeshua to Pilatus. 

 

What we see happening at this point in the Sermon on the Mount is the movement away from the declaration of good fortune to those of a certain nature or those in a certain condition, and toward a similar declaration toward those to whom certain grim realities are happening. Yeshua is modulating toward the beginning, and in future overwhelming, pattern of opposition that He will undergo first, and that awaits His followers afterwards. We see here the seeds of the martyrs’ blessedness.

Image: Execution by wild beasts (Ziten mosaic ca. AD 200)