Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Rob Bell
while, a rabbi would come along who was teaching a new yoke, a new way of interpreting the Torah. This was rare and extraordinary.
Imagine: A rabbi was claiming that he had a new way to understand the scriptures that was closer to what God intended than the way of the rabbis who had come before him. A new take on the scriptures.
The questions would immediately be raised: “How do we know this is truth? How do we know this rabbi isn’t crazy?” One of the protections for the rabbi in this case was that two other rabbis with authority would lay hands on the rabbi and essentially validate him. They would be saying, “We believe this rabbi has authority to make new interpretations.” That’s why Jesus’s baptism was so important. John the Baptist was a powerful teacher and prophet who was saying publicly that he wasn’t worthy to carry Jesus’s sandals.10
“And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”11
A second voice affirmed Jesus’s unique calling. The voice of God.
Amazing.
A Jewish audience reading Matthew’s account of Jesus’s baptism would pick up right away on Jesus’s getting the affirmation of two powerful voices.12
Which leads to an interesting scene: In the book of Luke, what is the one question the religious leaders keep hounding Jesus with?
“Where did you get your authority?”
Jesus’s response? “You tell me, where did John get his?”13
Now imagine if a rabbi who had a new perspective on the Torah was coming to town. This rabbi who was making new interpretations of the Torah was said to have authority. The Hebrew word for “authority” is shmikah. This might not even happen in your lifetime. You would hike for miles to hear him.
A rabbi who taught with shmikah would say things like, “You have heard it said . . . , but I tell you. . . .”14
What he was saying is, “You have heard people interpret that verse this way, but I tell you that this is what God really means in that verse.”
Now the rabbis had technical terms for this endless process of forbidding and permitting and making interpretations. They called it “binding and loosing.” To “bind” something was to forbid it. To “loose” something was to allow it.15
So a rabbi would bind certain practices and loose other practices. And when he gave his disciples the authority to bind and loose, it was called “giving the keys of the kingdom.”
Notice what Jesus says in the book of Matthew: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”16
What he is doing here is significant. He is giving his followers the authority to make new interpretations of the Bible. He is giving them permission to say, “Hey, we think we missed it before on that verse, and we’ve recently come to the conclusion that this is what it actually means.”
And not only is he giving them authority, but he is saying that when they do debate and discuss and pray and wrestle and then make decisions about the Bible, somehow God in heaven will be involved.
Our Turn
Jesus expects his followers to be engaged in the endless process of deciding what it means to actually live the scriptures. And right away in the life of this new movement, we see them doing it. In Acts 15, these first Christians find themselves having to make a huge decision about what it means to be a Christian.
To understand what they are facing, we have to understand that they are Jewish—Jewish believers who are circumcised and eat kosher and recite Jewish prayers and celebrate Jewish feasts.
Jewish followers of a Jewish messiah who live a Jewish life in a Jewish nation.
But all sorts of Gentiles (people who aren’t Jewish) start becoming followers of Jesus. People who don’t eat kosher, who aren’t circumcised, who don’t dress and talk and look and live like them.
So what do they do? Do they expect all of these Gentiles to start being Jewish?
And what exactly would that mean? What would that look like? (Grown men being told that if they are really serious about becoming Christians, there’s a little surgery they need to have . . .)
The first Christians know that Jesus is for everybody, but what do they do with all of these Jewish laws they follow? So they convene a council (yeshiva in Hebrew) to discuss it.
After hearing all sides of the issue, they decide to forbid (or should we say they bind?) several things.17
Here is why this is so important: They have to make decisions about what it means to be a Christian.
They actually do it. They gather together and make interpretations of the Bible regarding what it will look like for millions of people to be Christians.
I wonder if one of them stood up at any point and said, “Jesus gave us the authority to do this, didn’t he?”
Now let’s move things into our world. If we take Jesus seriously and actually see it as our responsibility to bind and loose, the implications are endless, serious, and exhilarating.
The Bible is a communal book. It came from people writing in communities, and it was often written to communities. Remember that the printing press wasn’t invented until the 1400s. Prior to that, very few if any people had their own copies of the Bible. In Jesus’s day, an entire village could probably afford only one copy of the scriptures, if that. Reading the Bible alone was unheard of, if people could even read. For most of church history, people heard the Bible read aloud in a room full of people. You heard it, discussed it, studied it, argued about it, and made decisions about it as a group, a community. Most of the “yous” in the Bible are plural. Groups of people receiving these words. So if one person went off the deep end with an interpretation or opinion, the others were right there to keep that person in check. In a synagogue, most of the people knew the text by heart. When someone got up to teach or share insight, chances are everybody knew the text that person was talking on and already had their own opinions about it. You saw yourself and those around you as taking part in a huge discussion that has gone on for thousands of years.
Because God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.
Contrast this communal way of reading and discussing and learning with our Western, highly individualized culture. In many Christian settings, people are even encouraged to read the Bible alone, which is a new idea in church history. A great idea and a life-changing discipline, but a new idea. And think of pastors. Many pastors study alone all week, stand alone in front of the church and talk about the Bible, and then receive mail and phone calls from individuals who agree or don’t agree with what they said. This works for a lot of communities, but it isn’t the only way.
And it can’t be the only way if we take seriously Jesus’s call to be binding and loosing, which must be done in community. In fact, binding and loosing can only be done in community with others who are equally passionate about being true to the words of God.
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