| JESUS' TEACHIN REGARDING
LOVE FOR ONE'S NEIGHBOUR
In our relationships with others we generally observe what might be designated the 'law of mutual interaction': Do as much for your neighbour as he makes the effort to do on your behalf; love him as much as he loves you. In the Jewish understanding of the law no more is expected of us than that. This is alluded to by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
Love for one's enemies is, however, contained in the OT ordinances. In Exodus 23:4-5 we read:
The attitude of love for one's enemies which Jesus displayed was further testimony to his being a genuine "Son of David". We read in 2 Sam. 19:6 how the commander of David's army, Joab, rebuked his master with the words, "You love those who hate you!" Love for one's enemies in the Old Testament, it must be conceded, makes only sporadic appearances. The idea of loving one's neighbour in the Bible is founded upon the twice repeated injunction in Leviticus 19: "Love your neighbour as yourself" (vv 18 and 34). Jesus interpreted this as an active challenge: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31 and Matt. 7:12). In some modern translations attempts have been made to substitute "as much as you . . ." for "as you . . .", but the Bible is not speaking about measuring the amount of love, rather about its correct motivation. There are two stories in the Talmud which touch upon the interpretation of this ordinance. A certain man of Gentile birth went first to R. Shammai, an exponent of the more rigorous line, and asked:
The Jerusalem Targum also says, "Do not do to your neighbour what you yourself hate," and in the Didache, the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles", we read:"What you do not wish done to yourself, you should on no account do to others" (I,2). This little guide to the teaching on baptism, written, it would appear, at the beginning of the second century and known to the church historian Eusebius, contains an issue which is of importance for our day: "Do not destroy the foetus, neither kill it after it has been born" (II 2). The Rabbis' exegesis of the law generally aims at establishing the minimum expected from us by God, which is why love for our neighbour is seen from the negative point of view of "Thou shalt not!" Jesus taught an active, unreserved attitude: Do, Love, Give, Lend, Pray, Have mercy! Could it be that Jesus was familiar with the words of R. Hillel above, since the final cadence to his instructions is, "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Mt 7:12)? As the Messiah Jesus also gave the teamei Torah, a new impulse to its teaching. Twice in John's gospel we find a phrase which raises neighbourly love to the new level of the ideal. We read in 13:34: "A new commandment I give you: Love one another. AS I have loved you, so you must love one another," and in 15:12: "My command is this: Love each other AS I have loved you". This commandment to love one another is not actually new, but it is given a fresh impetus in following the example of Jesus: "as Jesus did"! Love is not self-seeking but makes the affairs of others its own. Love does not search for those who are on a par with it, but raises its object to equal status with itself. Jesus alone has realised the royal commandment of love in giving his life as a ransom for it. Jesus' teaching on fasting and prayer The whole of our religious life, according to the Sermon on the Mount, was to take effect naturally and without external display. Fasting, alms-giving and prayer can easily degenerate into mere outward observances in which nothing more than the person's own merit is displayed. Jesus said, "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen of them". "How can you believe if you accept praise from one another...?" The Rabbis too spoke often against hypocrisy. R. Jeremiah Bar Abba (ca. AD 250-290) made it clear that, "There are four groups of men who cannot receive the Presence of God [the Shekhinah]: blasphemers, hypocrites, liars and slanderers."21 Rabbi Eleazar said, "He who practises righteousness in secret is greater than Moses."22 On the other hand reminders were given that "He who gives alms to the poor in public does so to his own disgrace".23 Every Christian too faces the danger of falling into duplicity and "eye-service". Once in a men's meeting in my younger days, when we had exchanged views for over an hour on "just where these Pharisees might actually be found", a distinguished member of our company stood up and said, "Phariseeism is never far from us. It resides in our own hearts!" These words left an indelible impression on my young mind. Fasting in the Bible is represented as intrinsically good. King David fasted when pleading with God in his grief "for the child" who had fallen ill (2 Sam. 12:16). The friends and family of the sick sometimes fasted in this way (Ps. 35:13). The condition of the church can lead to it (Ps. 69:9-10, Dan. 9:3). The threat of war, drought and famine were all factors which made people fast. The Jews held compulsory fast days on the Great Day of Atonement and on the day of remembrance for the destruction of the Temple. The Pharisees fasted voluntarily twice in the week. Since Moses, according to tradition, had gone up into Mount Sinai on the fifth day of the week, Thursday, and come down on the second day, Monday, these days were chosen as optional fast days. The early Church, so we read in the Didache, fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays. In Hebrew the words used for 'fasting' are either tsom, which means abstaining from food, or ta'anith, 'self-affliction'. Usually water is drunk when fasting. The Jews never fasted on the Sabbath as it signified for them a day of celebration given by God. Fasting makes us more sensitive to both good and evil. We can see this in, for example, the account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. It nevertheless has its own blessings when it is combined with the word of God and with prayer. Jesus could even say of the healing of a difficult illness that, "this kind can come out only by prayer and fasting" (Mark 9:29). Jesus also taught the principles of prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. Prayer was to be secret communion with God:
The Jews traditionally stress that prayer should happen bekavanah, 'concentratedly'. The root behind this speaks of 'direction', kivun. When praying one directs his whole mind to encounter God. When alone, the orthodox Jew prays the "silent prayer". Public prayer, said aloud, is in principle only possible when there are at least 10 men present, the minyan. This number is based on Abraham's prayer for Sodom, which God had promised not to destroy "if there were ten righteous people there" (Gen. 18:22-32). Jesus established a new minyan, which is not limited to male participants, when he said, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I with them" (Matt. 18:20). The Jewish background of the Lord's Prayer. The beginning of the eleventh chapter of Luke tells us that the Lord's Prayer was a response to a request of the disciples. They said to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." And thus the "Pater noster" was born, a prayer which might be considered Jesus' most precious bequeathal to his flock. The Jewish prayer literature does, it must be conceded, contain disjointed parallels to this prayer, but it nevertheless forms a whole which is without peer. Former Chief Rabbi of Stockholm Gottlieb Klein wrote about the Jewish background to the prayer in two separate studies.24 In Klein's words, it has a Messianic feel to it . . . All the hopes and expectations of Jesus' ardent heart are cast in a unified substantial form in this prayer." It fulfils certain requirements characteristic of Jesus' own time for a prayer. Every prayer in that day had to comprise seven requests. On the other hand it had to be of a tripartite structure. Prayer always began with praise to God, the Shevah. To this were appended the individual's own pleas, the tephillah, and the prayer concluded with the giving of thanks, the hôdayah. Klein analyses the prayer as follows: Shevah.
2. Thy kingdom come 3. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
5. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors 6. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
In Klein's opinion the prayer taught by Jesus makes veiled reference to the belief in the resurrection:
The Sidur prayer-book's Aramaic qaddish sections, which appear at many points throughout the book, resemble the shevah part of the Lord's prayer:
While discussing Klein's reference to the resurrection, it is worth noting the interpretation of the "Seal of the Midrash", Rabbi Tanhuma, of Genesis 12:1, "Leave your country . . . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you":
The Lord's Prayer contains a detail of which the significance and origin have been questioned. We ask that God will not "lead us into temptation", but will "deliver us from evil". These words are from an ancient prayer form which is still in use in the Sidur prayer-book. Early in the morning, the orthodox Jew prays:
The Lord's prayer reflects the same childlike carefree quality
which Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount. It was he who said, "Do
not worry about tomorrow". . ."do not worry about your life". . ."Why do
you worry about clothes?" (Matt. 6:25, 28, 34). Now his disciples were
learning to ask, "Give us this day our daily bread". The guilt of yesterday
and the cares of tomorrow can step aside, for he who is God's lives on
the reality of this day. Perhaps it was this "one day gospel" which became
clear to a certain businessman, making him have the words of Psalm 118:24
put on the wall of his office: "This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it."
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