I recently stumbled upon a post by Brian McLaren where in addition to praising our President for his naivet….er….open handed policy toward the Muslim world, mulled over how we should be less “closed fisted” (focusing on the doctrine and demands of Scripture) and more open handed…like Jesus. More thoughts of this will be forthcoming but for now some thoughts.
Jesus was open handed, coming to the common people and ignoring the self-righteous culturally “relevant” people of the day (scribes, pharisees and Sadducees), though he was also open handed to them as well (i.e. Nicodemus).
But was Jesus being “open handed” or “closed-fisted”:
When he said “I am THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life.”? (pretty exclusive)
When he told the woman in caught in adultery to go and “sin NO more”? (Open handed – he forgave her; close-fisted he did not gloss over the sin)
When the rich young ruler walked away unforgiven?
When he saved only one thief on the cross?
When he refused to negotiate with the culturally relevant scribes and pharisees?
When he preached a sermon that reduced his following from thousands to a handful?
There is danger to overemphasizing one characteristic of God and ignoring the others.
*Note: Edited to include the Sadducees who were culturally motivated to be “relevant” while the Scribes and Pharisees created their own type of relevance by placing themselves as the religious leaders of the day. While the groups were at odds with each other they both found common ground when seeking to destroy Christ. Thanks to Andrew for pointing out my ommission of the Sadducees!
Am curious as to your labeling of the Pharisees as “culturally relevant”. Where do you get that? According to anything I have ever seen, the Pharisees were about as “culturally irrelevant” as you could get. They were the separatist, fundamentalists of the day (granted, not as sparatist as the Essenes, but still separatist).
The “culturally relevant” ones would be the Saducees, who wanted to hold to Jewish traditions while embracing Greek culture. Of course, Christ did not have anything nice to say about them either…
Good point! Not sure why I left them out. I believe both groups sought to be relevant, just to different “cultures” if you will. If I’m not mistaken the Sadducee would seek to be fit in with the Hellenistic crowd while the Pharisee would seek to fit in with the more orthodox crowd. That is a difficulty with overly focused on being culturally relevant eventually you have to pick which culture to the exclusion of others. (note the use of the word “overly”)
Fortunately the gospel is trans-cultural.