I have been enjoying the daily reflections emanating from the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), an institute started by the Franciscan Richard Rohr (thanks, Loretta, for passing along that link). They often provide a compass pointing us toward the peace and love displayed by Jesus Christ.
This one gave me pause. It lifts up the places in the gospels in which Jesus cites the Hebrew scriptures and interprets them. What gave me pause was not the citations from the gospels. I stumbled on, as an example, the assertion that Jesus "omits troublesome verses with which he does not agree." In this particular case Rohr refers to the episode in Luke in which Jesus does not read a verse about God's vengeance in the scroll of Isaiah.
Why Jesus omitted that verse is a fascinating question for preachers and teachers. But to say, as Rohr does, that Jesus kicked some words of Isaiah to the curb--as opposed to, for instance, saving them for later--makes a drastic assumption about the gospels.
Between the lines of this CAC post is the assertion that if the gospel writers didn't mention a Hebrew text, that text can be considered invalid. Beneath this assertion sit two dubious assumptions. First, we would have to assume that there were no steps of interpretation between what Jesus said and did and the gospel writers. We would assume that what the authors of the gospel recorded was Jesus' intention, perfect and complete. Given the various (and sometimes conflicting) reports of the four gospels, I think this is a problematic assumption. Second, we would have to assume that the gospel writers recorded all of Jesus' references to the Hebrew scriptures. Given the brevity of the gospel texts covering three or more years of public ministry, this assumption stretches credulity.
To assert that whatever Hebrew texts don't show up in the gospels can be set aside by Christians puts us on the fringes, if not well within, something called Marcionism. Marcion of Sinope, leader of an early Church movement, declared that the Hebrew Scriptures reflected the work of a different god than that of Jesus Christ. Though we may not want to ascribe authorship to another divine being, we're not far away if we say that the God of Jesus Christ does not want us to read uncomfortable texts from the Hebrew Scriptures.
I think we can embrace a new mission in Jesus Christ without claiming that he "ignor[ed] most of his own Bible," as Rohr does. Perhaps Rohr is overstating the matter to make a point, which puts him in good company with Jesus. But, like many of us Jesus-followers do, taking overstatements at face value can lead to problematic conclusions. It is a lifetime task of Christians to seek to understand how God, in Jesus Christ, is weaving all the threads of Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels, and the Epistles into a tapestry that embraces the entirety of human history. To set aside some of the story because it makes us uncomfortable or we disagree with it deprives us of opportunities to be a part of that glorious, all-encompassing work.
love,
emrys