Encroaching Conceits

Jesus says that his disciples individually must attempt discreetly to correct a person who is in the wrong.  If that does not avail, then the offended disciple in question must bring one or two witnesses from the assembly of believers.  If that does not avail, and the offender will not listen to the assembly as a whole, then the assembly is to treat the wayward party as one would a gentile or a tax collector.  This raises, then, a pertinent question, that is, how is one to treat a gentile or a tax collector (as this general classification is to be one of "offender"?)

Elsewhere, Jesus says that we are to forgive an offending person "seventy times seven."  Taken together, Jesus' instructions about the status of another annihilate--in the ultimate sense--any true notion of "othering" a person.  To come to view, in times of alienation, another person as distantly as one would a "gentile or tax collector" is to view that person in the intimate sense of an incipient friend.  The circle has closed upon itself, and the notion of alienation has been shown to have valid status only as part of an all-too-familiar cycle of frustration and exhaustion.

The notion of distancing oneself from another dissolves by necessity in the glare of Jesus' supervision.  In truth, the notion of distancing oneself from another is a shameful prospect.  "Distance," indeed, whether in terms of location, time, or any other conception, is--if seized upon as a supposed necessity--an affront to the ever-present Creator.  All of Creation shrinks down into the person of Jesus, and Jesus extends himself to all of Creation.

John says that Jesus came to his own, but like all concepts applied to the divine, it is the dynamic of momentary and passing contemplation of such an idea that is important, not its establishment as a dictum.  Who are Jesus' own?  The Creation he created?  The humanity, pre-Flood and post-Flood, that ever walk the earth?  The offspring of Noah?  The children of Abraham?  The child of Abraham (excluding, by brutal assignment, Ishmael?)  The tribe of Judah?  The tumbled-together and unequal remnants of the first century?  Galilee?  Nazareth?

It is of course conventional to say that Jesus came to the Jews, who rejected him.  Even if we regard as incidental the very fact that "Jews" or "Judea" as terms hinge upon the unequal proportion of ancient strains of Jacob's surviving progeny, we are left still with pointed questions about Jesus' "own."  Are not Samaritans of particular import to the Jesus stories precisely because they have in their mixed heritage that essence--questionable, to say the least, in our more expansive moments--of "Judaism" distinct from religion?  If "own" is a matter of kinship, is it not possible that many of the Samaritans were more of Jesus' "own" than were the Idumean though ostensibly "Jewish" Herods?

If descent (as a rough correlation, given the possibility of intermarriage or conversion) is the precipitating element of the description of Jesus' "own," then we can say that the broad range of humanity's primordial past contracts in the accounts into that tiny cohort called first-century Judaism.  As I wrote above, all of Creation shrinks down into the person of Jesus, and Jesus extends himself to all of Creation.  Neither Jesus nor his mission (and particularly as we consider here his mission, with its universal implications) can be contained within points of reference.  Of course Jesus strides into the territory of the Samaritans.  Of course Jesus ventures farther, into the realm of the gentiles.

On the fringes of Judaism's conceptualization of humanity, Jesus uses an analogy of scavenging dogs to describe gentiles, and a gentile woman draws up an image of those dogs as part of a master's household.  The "part" element is all that is necessary--humanity is not divided finally into distinctions except in the ravings of ideologues.  Here we find the rub of notions about inheritance and family connections.  Such things, rightly handled, are passed on and passed beyond.  Indeed, such things pass readily into the realm of the ridiculous--especially when the things of God are considered.  As said by John the Baptist, God might turn stones into children for Abraham.

So, in the musings above as in all concepts, we can see that the divine, when rightly considered, cannot be considered among points of reference.  Think of God in some connection, and have it revealed to you that all connections are broken, and it is only in the momentary experience of their sundering that any contemplation can occur.  We do not generally want God-experiences that are momentary and passing, and shamefully we engage in shameful conjuring of idea-schemes that allow us--though in final futility--to frame our religious experiences.  This is why shame, of all candidates for our assiduous examination, is of such importance.  Shame is without context, and in contemplation of shame we can be reminded of the encroaching conceits that are our attempts to define the divine.