Fusing the Horizons: Human Effort versus Divine Help
Simon Peter and his partners worked all night long and returned emptyhanded. Imagine the tone of this seasoned fisherman when he told Jesus that they caught nothing. Was there a note of resentment, disappointment, or embarrassment? After all, effort should yield proportionate result; so says my Chinese upbringing. According to my cultural work ethic, diligence can compensate to a large degree for the lack of genius. Even Albert Einstein concurred that genius is one percent inspiration but ninety-nine percent perspiration.
When things do not go the way we expect, we look for a logical explanation. Did I miss something in the planning? Did I lack know-how? What should I have done instead? Peter did not appear to be guilty of any of these. His perceived failure was not because of sloth or ineptitude. Returning empty-handed after a night of fishing was more than an inconvenience. Not only was there no income from selling fish that day, Peter also may have taken additional loss from owing his crew their wages. Given Peter’s frame of mind, Jesus’ suggestion to drop the net again in deep water was like rubbing salt into a wound. Thankfully, Jesus was not asking for wholehearted enthusiasm on Peter’s part but simply a crack of openness. Although Jesus’ suggestion seemed to go against wise fishing practice and recent objective data, and Peter had to risk seeing a repeat of the previous night’s failure, his consent—reservations notwithstanding—led to a theophany and a catch that covered his economic loss and some!
The availability of divine help is not a license for idleness, as though we should simply sit back, fold our arms, and watch God do all the work. More often, however, it is not our inaction but impatience that gets in the way. We forge ahead with our ideas and plans, and when things do not go our way we frantically try one thing after another in the hope of turning failure into success. When we fail to wait for the green light from the Holy Spirit and take the lead from our own hunches or ambitions, we miss out on the unexpected blessing to witness God at work.
The miraculous catch of fish went beyond bounty provisions to a changed life. It all began with an ambivalent consent, “If you say so, Master.” At that time, Peter had barely met Jesus. There was no deep faith of which to speak as yet. He was an ordinary fisherman with just enough willingness to override his resistance, and that was enough for Jesus to begin his good work in this disciple. Likewise, God will take our tentative and hesitant “Yes” and turn it into a surprising adventure. Is that too difficult a step to take—a small step of obedience in the right direction?
Controversy over Purity Laws (5:12–39)
After expounding on the account of the calling of Peter, James, and John (5:1–11), Luke resumes Mark’s ordering of events until the Sermon on the Plain in 6:17–49. The spotlight now focuses on the religious elites who find fault with Jesus despite the high praises he receives from the people.
Simply labeling the scribes and the Pharisees as legalistic hypocrites does not adequately explain their disagreements with Jesus. Why do learned and well-respected religious leaders fail to see God’s truth and saving actions through Jesus? If they love the law and revere God, how is it that their appropriation of the commandments differs so drastically from that of Jesus? If both sides claim fidelity to God, who holds the correct interpretation of God’s will? In order to address these questions, we need to first consider the understanding of the law, as well as larger issues of Jewish identity and praxis under the socio-political conditions of first-century Palestine.
For centuries leading up to the time of Jesus, Israel repeatedly fell into the hands of foreign rulers—the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Ptolemies, the Syrians, and now the Romans. The Jews were determined to preserve their unique identity as God’s chosen people even though their pagan overlords attempted to wipe out their national self-understanding through exile, introduction of foreign gods, culture, education, and prohibition of Jewish practices. At times God’s people were scattered from their homeland. At other times their temple lay in ruins. Even after the Jews had rebuilt the temple, the second one was desecrated by the pagans. Yet throughout the precariousness of Israel’s national existence, the Jews always had Moses’s law. The law was God’s gift and instruction to his elect. In the post-exilic period, the study and interpretation of the law became increasingly crucial for maintaining Jewish identity. The teachers and experts of the law were committed to “[making] a fence around the law” (m. ’Abot 1:1). Their deliberations on the application of the law in every aspect of life were passed down as a set of oral traditions deemed equally binding as the law itself.
Commandments surrounding circumcision, purity, food, and the Sabbath were of particular importance as key identity markers that distinguished the Jews from the gentiles. After all, God said to Israel, “You shall be holy, for I the lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2). Holiness demanded separation from everything profane—clean from unclean, pure from impure, moral from immoral. Piety and fidelity were measured by adherence to the law and the oral traditions of the rabbis. Not only would disobedience call down divine judgment upon the individual, it would jeopardize the fate of the entire nation.
The opponents of Jesus often appear in groups. The Pharisees are paired with either lawyers (nomikoi, 7:30; 14:3), scribes (grammateis, 5:21; 6:7; 15:2), or teachers of the law (nomodidaskaloi, 5:17). Lawyers, scribes, and teachers are the legal experts of the temple establishment, not to be confused with Pharisees, who are members of the laity. All of them share the same concern over the proper and meticulous adherence to the law. They form a united front in their disapproval of Jesus’ observance of purity, food, and Sabbath laws.
The sect of the Pharisees was known for its separatist attitude toward all that was ritually and morally unclean. The Pharisees held themselves to strict standards of purity and operated within a very tight circle of hospitality to avoid contamination from outsiders. They were held in high esteem for their meticulous practiced the law. Even though they were not temple personnel, they garnered the respect of the people and enjoyed high social status among the Jews.125
Were the Pharisees “legalists” then? They were, in the sense that they followed the letter of the law to the utmost detail. So did the scribes and the teachers of the law. This should not necessarily imply a negative motive on their part. To live out one’s fidelity to God by subsuming all of life under God’s law was a commitment to be admired. Most people were not as knowledgeable about the law or as diligent about its observance. In their zealousness to abide by the law, however, the Pharisees and the scribes had the tendency to overlook the compassion of God. Hence they must be brought back to the true intentions of the law, given by God to engender life and not to stifle it. The tension between Jesus and the religious elite revolved around this sort of corrective.
Of particular relevance to the Lukan narrative are the purity laws and the Sabbath laws. More will be said about the Sabbath laws in chapter 6. Purity laws contain a moral as well as a ritual dimension. While ritual impurity in and of itself is not sinful, it renders the unclean person ineligible for communion with God and God’s people. Impurity can be reversed by ritual cleansing, but the list of things that can render a person unclean is long—coming into contact with gentiles, having a physical handicap (paralysis, blindness, etc.), displaying open sores and skin lesions, being possessed by a demon (“an unclean spirit”), exhibiting a flow of blood, touching a dead body, just to name a few. Food laws constitute a type of purity law that have to do with