Jesus – the original secular humanistic Jew?

Posted on November 6, 2009
Filed under Getting ready for Sunday, Worship | by Don Leave a Comment

To members and friends of St. James UCC . . .
. . . getting ready for Sunday, Nov 8

Sunday will be a bit of a change of pace for us because we have invited Ms Patti Maslinoff to come and reflect with us on her faith life out of a context of Secular Humanistic Judaism. And if that’s a foreign concept you might do a little googling on the name Sherwin Wine, a former Reform Rabbi who founded The Society For Humanistic Judaism… and look at the Wikipedia site about him and the movement he founded.

Now there are also some of our own traditional contexts that might introduce us to the concept as well… so I invite you to look at a very short story in Mark 12:41-44, the narrative of the traditional ‘widow’s mite’… and if we were doing our normal biblical reflections that would be our reading. But to fully appreciate that story you need to put it in a larger context that goes back to Mark 10:45 and Jesus’ words to his disciples about true greatness and power in terms of service (to humanity)… and how that leads into the entry into Jerusalem and the ensuing dialogue with religious leaders in the Temple. (Mark 11 & 12) The whole narrative is really about the essence of the faith – in Judaism’s terms, The Torah – and how it gets summed up in Mark 12:28-34 in terms of the love of neighbor.

What it all suggests is that Jesus may very well be the original secular humanistic Jew. With a careful reading of the exchange between Jesus and one of the biblical experts in 12:28-34 it is clear that they both arrive at where transcending secular humanism has arrived – that the need for God disappears, especially when folks are tempted to thinking in terms of worshiping or serving God with rituals and sacrifices, or when folks think God will intervene in human affairs, in concerns for the neighbor, because that’s our responsibility.

Staying in touch with a religious tradition… including the biblical tradition… can help us in discovering our responsibility in the contexts of today. But that’s its only relevance… and the only relevance of including any kind of God talk in our reflections on living out our faith in the contexts of today.

Patti Maslinoff’s story will help us to understand all of that a lot better!

So hope to see you on Sunday . . .

don prange

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