Even John who “came neither eating nor drinking” wondered about
his cousin Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone
else?” (Matthew 11:3) but then Messiahs are held to higher standards than mere
mortals. The people who institutionalized the Exodus, ritually recounting God’s
intervention through plagues and parted sea, expected the great I AM to show up
in the same way the second time round. No one expected that God’s anointed would
turn out to be a drinking man and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Oh
vey! What was God thinking? It is clear that in Jesus God is operating outside
the religious box of his day which should give the wise and intelligent of our
time reason enough to rethink the ways we try to make the one accused of being
a glutton and drunkard more respectable. Not that wisdom is vindicated by
excess in food or drink but rather in extravagant hospitality that befriends even
those who burdened their own people for a profit or whose lifestyle made them
ritually unclean. There is no where God will not go to invite the weary and
heavy burdened to come and find rest and in doing so hopes Pharisees of every
generation will do the same.
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