I can see myself meeting this man, and, with courtesy, arguing with him. It is my form of respect, the only compliment I crave from others, the only serious tribute I pay to the people I take seriously. I can see myself not only meeting and arguing with Jesus, challenging him on the basis of our shared Torah, the Scriptures Christians would later adopt as the “Old Testament.” I can also imagine myself saying, “Friend, you go your way, I’ll go mine, I wish you well–without me. Yours is not the Torah of Moses, and all I have from God, and all I ever need from God, is that one Torah of Moses.”
We would meet, we would argue, we would part friends –but we would part. He would have gone his way, to Jerusalem and the place he believed God had prepared for him; I would have gone my way, home to my wife and my children, my dog and my garden. He would have gone his way to glory, I my way to my duties and my responsibilities.
Why? Because the Torah teaches that the kingdom that matters is not in heaven, but the one we find ourselves in now: sustaining life, sanctifying life, in the here and the now of home and family, community and society. God’s kingdom is in the humble details of what I eat for breakfast and how I love my neighbor.
Can the Kingdom of God come soon, in our day, to where we are? The Torah not only says yes, it shows how. Do I have then to wait for God’s Kingdom? Of course I have to wait. But while waiting, there are things I have to do. Jesus demanded that to enter this Kingdom of Heaven I repudiate family and turn my back on home: “Sell all you have and follow me.” That is not what the Torah says.
On Sinai Moses told how to organize a kingdom of priests and a holy people, conduct workaday affairs, love God–how to build God’s kingdom, accepting the yoke of God’s commandments. As a faithful Jew, what I do is simply reaffirm the Torah of Sinai over and against the teachings of Jesus. Moses would expect no less of us. So when I say, if I heard those words, I would have offered an argument, my dispute would have been with a mortal man walking among us and talking with us. Only the Torah is the word of God.
I think Christianity, beginning with Jesus, took a wrong turn in abandoning the Torah. By the truth of the Torah, much that Jesus said is wrong. By the criterion of the Torah, Israel’s religion in the time of Jesus was authentic and faithful, not requiring reform or renewal, demanding only faith and loyalty to God and the sanctification of life through carrying out God’s will. Jesus and his disciples took one path, and we another. I do not believe God would want it any other way.
