How Jesus Moved
I’ve been spending part of today reading the gospel of Matthew and paying special attention not so much to the content of Jesus’ teaching and more the format of where he spends his time.
Famously his first big sermon is “on the mount” with crowds gathered around. But through the whole first half of the gospel the basic movement is Jesus going about from village to village and crowds gathering to or following him and teaching occurring primarily in the context of chance encounters.
He does constantly teach in the synagogues. So it’s also true that Jesus modeled regular weekly presence in the place where the community gathered (whatever shape that may have taken in diaspora Palestine).
However, and this is what is wild and instructive: the first time the gospel gets focused on “Sabbath,” it’s to show how Jesus breaks the sabbath. He and his disciples pick grain to eat and then he heals the withered hand of the man. These violations of Sabbath, unprovoked, offend religious sensibilities. But then apparently when the religious demand signs from Jesus then he is unwilling to do them.
Sabbath is wildly free.
I’m intrigued by the way things like social media posts can function somewhat like this “teaching by walking around.” It’s not an exact parallel, but perhaps we forget that what we learn here in a space like this may be more like the way Jesus taught than when we attend formal classes.
Also, the whole parables thing. Jesus mostly wasn’t leading or stewarding an institution in any static manner. He was more a guy telling stories who was particularly good at healing and he found a few folks to go out and do the same things in the communities.
I think it’s really hard for us to keep this as our model when the church has become as fixed as an institution as it is in many places, serving as a comfortable enforcer of status quo.
But it CAN be how we do church. There’s definitely a WAY modeled. It’s just so much more gonzo, chaotic, on the way with rarely measurable sustainable patterns. More like constant radical interventions. Especially with food.