June 06, 2006
Jesus...Lower Class?
In his book Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society, Anthony J. Saldarini references an analysis (by Lenski) of the social class system of the agrarian (agricultural) society. Of the nine classes, five belong to the upper classes and four belong to the lower classes. The Pharisees fit best in the upper class because of their religious and political interaction with the governing class. However, I was blown away to find that in this society both Jesus and Paul were in the artisan class, just one step below the peasants. Carpenters and tentmakers were neither powerful nor influential in Palestinian society. The lowest class mentioned was labeled ‘Expendable’. How’d you like to be in that classification?!
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Gail;
----Jesus and Paul were both expended, one by religious leaders and the other by government leaders. Apparently, Jesus and Paul agreed with their expendability, since they each expended their own lives for a Kingdom from elsewhere. What they left was permanent: an accepting, loving way of thinking stirred by the Holy Spirit.
----Two thousand years later their way of thinking is still being stirred by the Holy Spirit. And that way of thinking is still found in the expendable ones. As in Jesus and Paul's time, government and religious leaders are still trying to expend them.
----The indissoluble contract which they wrote is called, in political circles, a living document. Then attorneys and judges conspire to graft into it what was not planted there by the expendable ones. And that which they did plant in it this disrespectful conspiracy prunes away.
----So also in the church do the clergy and influential conspire to prune away the cultural statements upon which the expendable ones expended their lifetimes crafting. Then they graft into the remaining vacant hollows little twigs of expression that may or may not someday grow up to fill the lost sentiments of those that were expended.
----Indeed, as in Jesus and Paul's day, we must still turn to the expendable ones to find meaning with real depth, I think maybe, because they know the true love which says, "I am expendable."
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