Examining the Difficult Words of Jesus

by | Sep 29, 2021 | Author, Blog, Books | 0 comments

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To access a digital copy of The Difficult Words of Jesus, click here. Jesus provided his disciples teachings for how to follow Torah, God’s word; he told them parables to help them discern questions of ethics and of human nature; he offered them beatitudes for comfort and encouragement. But sometimes Jesus spoke words that followers then and now have found difficult. He instructs disciples to hate members of their own families (Luke 14:26), to act as if they were slaves (Matthew 20:27), and to sell their belongings and give to the poor (Luke 18:22). He restricts his mission (Matthew 10:6); he speaks of damnation (Matthew 8:12); he calls Jews the devil’s children (John 8:44).

In The Difficult Words of Jesus (Abingdon Press), Dr. Amy-Jill Levine shows how these difficult teachings would have sounded to the people who first heard them, how have they been understood over time, and how we might interpret them in the context of the Gospel of love and reconciliation.
 
In this second part of Dr. Levine’s interview, we dive right into some of those difficult words.
 Part 2 of an Interview
with Amy-Jill Levine,
Author of The Difficult Words of Jesus
Q: The rich, young ruler found it difficult to hear Jesus tell him to sell all that he owned What was Jesus really trying to get across to the man with his response? Does this same instruction apply to us today?
 
The fellow—he’s rich in one Gospel, young in another, and a ruler in a third—initially asked Jesus what he must to do inherit eternal life. Jesus first reminds him that he already knows the answer because he knows the commandments: do not murder; do not commit adultery; honor your father and mother, and so on. But Jesus adds to the familiar list of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not defraud.”
 
He asks us to consider not only how we spend our money, but also how we gained it in the first place. More, Jesus seeks to refocus the man’s attention from eternal life to life abundant on earth. Jesus recognizes that certain things hold us back from loving our neighbors, but those stumbling blocks are not the same for all people. Jesus recognizes the people he encounters as individuals, each with distinct needs.
 
Q: What other questions—which can also be considered difficult words—related to economics follow this question from the rich, young ruler in Mark 10?
 
Jesus states that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. This is not a reference to camel contortions as they try to get into a narrow gate, and it is not a metaphor for having to unload some of your burdens. We find a similar statement in ancient Jewish literature, where an elephant rather than a camel is the large animal facing the small opening. Jesus wasn’t kidding. Jesus also states that one cannot serve God and Mammon [wealth]. Indeed, many biblical translations capitalize the Aramaic word “Mammon,” to suggest that it can have the power of a god. Jesus insists that the first will be last and the last will be first, which puts us all on a roller-coaster: those who strive to have more money, more power, more beauty, more fans… are striving after the wrong things.
 
Q: Luke 14:26-27 reads, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” With so much of the teaching of Jesus being about love, how are we to decipher the word hate in this passage?
 
First, the focus on love is not as prevalent in the Gospels as other matters, including that of justice. Second, the commitment to follow Jesus can make it look like one hates one’s family; the commitment is that strong. Third, Jesus is setting up a new family based on commitment to him and his message, where the “mother and brother and sister” are those who do the divine will. We find similar concerns for a new family, what we might call a voluntary family or an intentional community, among the people who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the followers who gathered in Jerusalem after the death of Jesus, and in communities of the faithful throughout history.
 
Q: Slavery is a sensitive topic and makes us uncomfortable, and the term “slave” appears more than 100 times in the New Testament. When we boil it down, what can we draw out of the Bible about the morality aspects of slavery?
 
The Gospels are first-century texts, and for most people in the first century, slavery was normative. Already Deuteronomy makes it impossible for Israelites to enslave other Israelites, and some groups, such as the Essenes, rejected slavery. Gospel passages depicting slaves give us the opportunity to wrestle with this legacy. Whether these passages are irredeemable, or whether they are messages of freedom—since to be a slave to God means that we have no human master—is a question worth discussing. Some biblical metaphors continue to work for us; some—such as the equating of blindness and deafness with lack of spiritual insight—might best be rephrased.
 
Q: When Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all,” did the connotation of slavery mean the same thing in the first century as it does in modern times?
 
Slaves are, regardless of the century, human beings owned by other human beings. Regardless of the century, to be a slave means that one’s body, one’s identity, and one’s time, belonged to someone else. Slaves could be bought and sold, bred, and abused. Slavery in antiquity was not based in racial categories, and in antiquity slaves could in various ways gain their freedom, but the similarities are far greater than the differences. The New Testament insists that slaves obey their masters and that they suffer silently; it lifts up the slave as the model of service to others. A rich, privileged person in a position of authority might find such an image helpful; a person struggling to take care of a family on very limited income may have other views.
 
Q: Does Matthew 10:5-6 contradict the Great Commission given at the end of Matthew or was there a reason not to go to the Gentiles for a period of time?
 
The Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20 is not a contradiction of the mission restriction; it is an extension. Jesus understood his mission as directed to his own people, the Jewish people. Yet as a Jew, familiar with the traditions of Israel, he also knew that in the messianic age, the gentile nations would turn from their idols to worship the God of Israel. His followers, believing that the messianic age had begun with Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, then began proclaiming the good news to the nations.
 
Q: How do the views of Christians and Jews the afterlife and hell vary?
 
The more the followers of Jesus talked about salvation and damnation, heaven and hell, and post-mortem rewards and punishments, the more the Jewish community focused on sanctification in this world. We should also consider how we might understand Jesus’s images of unquenchable fire or outer darkness. Do we think of God as willing eternal torture that serves no purpose other than to make people suffer, or do we think of God as a merciful parent who wants what is best for all people?
 
Q: The last chapter of The Difficult Words of Jesus takes a look at verse that can cause some issues in our world today. Can you share just a little bit about the final verse you examine?
 
Jesus refers to “the Jews” as “children of the devil.” I have personally been asked, twice, in churches, by Christian ladies, when I had my horns removed, since they thought: Jews are children of the devil so we must have horns. Demonization of any individual or group is a heresy, given that we are all in the image and likeness of God. Words do hurt; words can lead to death. We do well not to dismiss John’s difficult language but to engage it. We also do well to realize that we do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good since Jesus speaks out of the heart of Judaism rather than over and against it. Hearing how our words sound in other people’s ears is often a helpful move.
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The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings
 
Available August 3, 2021 from Abingdon Press
 
Paperback ISBN: 9781791007577 / $16.99
eBook ISBN: 9781791007584 / $16.99
 
Leader Guide Paperback ISBN: 9781791007591 / $14.99
eBook ISBN: 9781791007607 / $14.99
 
DVD ISBN: 9781791007614 / $39.99
  About the author Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences.
 
An internationally renowned scholar and teacher, she is the author of numerous books including Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week, Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent, and Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven. Her latest release is The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings. She is also the coeditor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament.
 
Professor Levine has done more than 500 programs for churches, clergy groups, and seminaries on the Bible, Christian-Jewish relations, and Religion, Gender, and Sexuality across the globe.
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