They are the enemies of the cross of Christ whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame

 

 

 

 Had the upper part, to the middle, been of human shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it?

-- John Locke

Jesus believed only a few in Israel would be saved, Paul believed all Israel would be, along with many Gentiles

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. ... For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

-- Romans 11:25ff., 32

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ... Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

-- Matthew 7:6, 13f.

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

-- Matthew 10:5f., 18, 23

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:16

For many are called, but few are chosen.

-- Matthew 22:14

Both things cannot be true.

A pearl trampled by swine

 

 

If we see right, we see our woes;

Then what avails it to have eyes?

From ignorance our comfort flows,

The only wretched are the wise!

-- Matthew Prior

The partiality of Jesus: Good news for the lost sheep of the house of Israel

"For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs."  -- Mark 7:25ff.

"And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." -- Matthew 15:22ff.

"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." -- Matthew 10:5f.

"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." -- Matthew 7:6

"Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." -- Revelation 22:14f.

Paul's Gentile Mission: The Original Schwein Hunde?

"Look out for the dogs, look out for the evil-workers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the true circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh."

-- Philippians 3:2f.

"Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you."

-- Matthew 7:6

People Are Swine

"For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests."

-- David Mamet, 2008, here

The Ethics of the End of the World

Sunday upon Sunday can stack up after a while into something which amounts to not much of a muchness, and one must try to put all that out of one's mind for a moment, lay everything aside and re-read an entire Gospel at a sitting to regain one's sense of interpretive proportion. Usually when I do this I end up shaking my head over the stark contrast a Gospel represents just in its urgent tone of voice compared with the satisfied demeanor evident in the denizens of any given church. Whatever may be said of our religion of forty years ago, let alone twenty centuries, its moral tone was more distinct, its own sense of urgency more palpable. Was it because we were not as rich then? And did not live as long? Or was our connection to the sources of Jesus' inspiration somehow more substantial? Did we actually preach Law and Gospel in those days, instead of about Law and Gospel?

The conviction of the imminence of the end of the world has its basis in Jesus' moral vision of God's coming judgment. A studious peasant on the periphery of society, he brings to bear the powers of a gifted critic whose observations are steeped in the language of the Law and the Prophets but whose experience is that of the outsider looking in. His contemporaries are repeatedly said to be astonished at this mere carpenter's son who suddenly appears on the scene filled with an urgency to tell all who will listen to repent and follow him. Jesus is at pains to urge radical change in attitudes and behavior, to invest life with a moral sense it has come to lack, because he is convinced God is about to intervene decisively and justly in human history, in contrast to contemporaries who were content to acquiesce in the status quo, or who more widely thought we should enjoy it while it lasts because human life simply represented a fleeting point in time. For Jesus "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die" must give place to "take up your cross and follow me" because God surely is coming. Apart from this constellation of presuppositions, the character and force of the teaching of Jesus itself becomes distorted and misunderstood.

The earthly Son of Man of this early tradition, who has no place to lay his head, looks besieged by hangers-on though supremely in command in comparison with the ascended Jesus of the later tradition, who sits at the right hand of God's power in heaven, from where he seems oddly unable to find the kind of competent help he is looking for, even among The Twelve. The latter he had commanded "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not." Suddenly all that is changed, and he at length hits upon a young fanatic, one Saul of Tarsus, to whom he complains from heaven of being persecuted and whom he subsequently directs in his travels, first here and not there, to spread the message beyond the Jewish confines where it had produced what must be considered an anticlimactic result. But after a good beginning even this Paul disappears for upwards of a decade before he reappears and produces the history with which we are now familiar from the New Testament.

Since God's decisive judgment of men had failed to materialize in the conclusion of Jesus' earthly career, it is not surprising that the re-interpretation of it should find new expression in such formulations as "it is appointed unto men once to die, and then comes judgment," which amounts to an attenuation of the original eschatological expectation of Jesus. And unlike Jesus' missionaries of Matthew 10 (The Twelve) who went out provisionless with the promise and expectation that they "shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come," Paul takes no support from anyone but funds his own missionary activity by practicing his trade, going among the Gentiles, planting churches and visiting them, retracing some of his steps multiple times, being closer to the end of all things only by a day, each and every day that passes.

Under the pressures of such developments, it is still somewhat surprising that the memory of the early tradition survived. At this long remove it is easy to fail to imagine the impact that it must have made. Much of it must have seemed as unintelligible as it was offensive.

We are informed that the individuals Jesus called who became The Twelve left everything behind, including co-workers and jobs, wives and family, and, depending on the chronology you accept, wandered around following their teacher for about three years, turning most of them into what today we should call beggars and dead-beat dads, socially irresponsible men of the meanest sort. While it may be argued that some of these had nothing to lose by doing so except long hot days in the boat, at least one may have abandoned a more lucrative skimming operation collecting taxes.

But most were far more reluctant to come along. The command to cut off hands and feet or pluck out eyes if they cause one to sin can't have helped. The rich young ruler sorrowfully declined because he couldn't bear to part with his many possessions, which Jesus told him to liquidate for the benefit of the poor as the final one thing lacking. Others protested their need to bury their dead before they answered the call to follow, for which social obligation Jesus had no patience whatsoever. The man at the plow must keep looking to the future and not look back or he will plow a crooked line and miss the kingdom's sudden appearance ahead of him.

The rich in particular have difficulty inheriting the kingdom of God because wealth's many cares distract them from the impending catastrophe and the narrow way of escape. The foolish rich man is more concerned with building new barns to store his gains than with the prospect of a final reckoning overtaking him as a thief in his nightly leisure. Riches represent a wide load on their backs which makes passage through the narrow doorway to the kingdom impossible. "Narrow is the gate and difficult the way that leads to life, and few there be who find it."

Ostentatious dumping of wealth at the last second to get in won't do either, and would represent as conspicuous a sin as the lifelong propensity to accumulate wealth and ignore the needs of the poor. The improper divestiture of wealth at once exposes the insincerity of the would be follower of Jesus. It is noteworthy how often this is overlooked by our contemporaries both in the church and out of it who want to be recognized for their charitable giving. "Take heed," begins Matthew 6, "that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly."

A person who has less to give away more easily escapes detection than one who has much, and faces a task therefore much less onerous. But still he must do it, and God will see it. This is the meaning of Jesus' statement that the widow he saw from the street, who almost escaped notice when she put into the treasury two small coins, "cast more in than all they . . . even her whole life," because it was all that she had, in contrast to the Pharisees who openly and grandly deposited great sums out of their abundance. In what Jesus had observed in the woman, God had observed as one of the truest of followers.

What is remarkable about the Gospels is how they preserve the memory of this world renouncing ethic in the face of the imminent eschaton despite the trend already at work within them, especially in the little apocalypses in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, to re-interpret the urgent expectation of the end in the light of the crucifixion. Consider, for example, Luke's account of the trial of Jesus. There Jesus no longer predicts his imminent coming as the Son of Man with the clouds as in Mark, but only that he will in future sit at the right hand of the power of God (23:69). Yet in 14:33 Luke uniquely preserves in the sternest possible terms the conditions of discipleship: "So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." The latter shows against the hyperbolists that Jesus expected all his followers, not just the rich, to turn their backs on everything they owned. To the hardness of which even members of the Twelve had protested their compliance, wondering to what end.

To what end, indeed. Despite the sacred halo painted over the early community in Jerusalem in Luke's Acts of the Apostles, it was Paul who intervened to rescue them from the economic difficulties they got themselves into, and who made of The Way the Weltreligion that it became. It was his expansive missionary ambition which brought Jesus' moral vision of reality in a new form to new soils which did not have the benefit of the Law and the Prophets. Without Paul the civilization of the West is almost unimaginable, the way forward, full of danger. If ours is a post-Christian age, if we no longer know what to make of this inheritance, if we no longer care, perhaps the swine are ready to turn, trample and rend.