THE FALLACY OF PATCHES
Luke 5:36 "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.
Luke 17:11-19 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!" When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him--and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."
It is strange indeed that in our time Christ’s teaching should meet with resistance.
Jesus had a very hard time during his ministry. The miracles of relieving sickness and afflictions he performed were great attractions to the people. He was followed from town to town and into the hills as he attempted to find rest and a quiet time to teach his disciples. Some people, such as the one leper, were grateful for their healing but there were others who accepted their healing such as the nine without expressing gratitude.
We know about the man who returned to Jesus as soon as he realized he was healed. He did the right thing and we can guess that from then on, in health, he was devoted to Jesus, the healer, and beyond that, Jesus, the man of God. He had a new sense of reality out of his personal experience. He had gone through a period of illness and was a social outcast during that time. Now suddenly he was released from all of the restrictions. We might think he would pinch himself to feel the pain just to be sure he wasn’t dreaming. He might have said "ouch," and smiled out of sheer joy that his experience was unbelievably real. He was cured of an incurable disease. Now the reality of it all has to be explained.
He could be thinking that through his own experience of being unaccepted, he understands how Jesus is feeling when his teaching is rejected by the priests and the teachers of their law. He could ask the question, "How can this be? A man capable of healing a disease that is a permanent scourge in society is not welcome everywhere. Why? And those nine people who suffered the same disease as I did and because of it, we understood each other and stayed together. Why did they not come back with me and say something to show their gratitude for being released from the awfulness of a sickness that made them a social outcast?"
Can we imagine the experience of the nine? They all met the same man who they called out to by calling him, "Master." As they were hurrying to show themselves to their priest, of course they became aware of the radical change that had just happened to their bodies. The point of the story to us is, they did not return to Jesus to thank him. We can dismiss them by saying they were ungrateful but there is more to consider.
The one was a Samaritan, a foreigner, who normally would not associate with the Jews. The nine, we may assume were Jews. They went on and obediently showed themselves to their priest or we might think since they did not bother to thank Jesus, they went on home. They would have a surprise for their family and friends and they couldn’t wait to get there.
They could have accepted their healing without seriously thinking about what it would take to heal the incurable lesions on their bodies. To them, Jesus could have been a popular magician who went around surprising people with unusual tricks; yet, their cure was real. They would not be concerned about the details and the man, Jesus, he would be around and they would see him again. This is how it might have been. The real fact is they did not return to Jesus and they are not heard from again. In all probability, they resumed their former life’s activity and the qualities of Jesus' message are totally lost on them.
We can surmise they accepted Jesus’ service and promptly went about their own business. The message Jesus had for those nine was not given and they were ever impoverished without it. But they had a life, did they not? This is the fooler. Their life was normal, they worked at something for a living, had friends and a social life. They went to the temple and did what the crowd thought was proper and believed the customary things and eventually died. The experience of being healed of leprosy is just a pleasant memory but they missed Christ’s kind of life.
Let us suppose they are not different from present day people. They would go about making a living using the accepted ethics, which means they are guided by the general mores of their society, as the norm. The ethics are not stable and their trend is to less demanding control of conduct. Individuals gain the conviction they are self-sufficient and so do not think in terms of interdependency. They become assertive and less subject to other opinions. In other words, they are a power unto themselves.
The religion of our time is not a single religion but an infinite conglomeration of ideas, opinions and sources. Many leaders have left their mark on the Christian religion and no one disputes the idea that it is still subject to the influence of strong individuals. The evidence is ever before us in the list of churches, all of who claim independence from each other in their declared methods of loyalty to the one God. The importance of the individual is unquestioningly recognized without also realizing the Church, like society, is a unified body of individuals moving in concert. Here we have joined the Church and society deliberately.
The concept of secular and religious divisions is strictly man’s idea. Religion has been isolated into a compartment of life and secular life is well established. It finds its expression in law by the two associated words, Church and State. There is no similarity of the two because there are two separate supreme powers in control. However, we are seeing some great exceptions to the independence of these two pillars. The powers within the State have no compunctions about regulating where the Church may speak and what it may say when outside its regular place where people may freely go to it. This is not being challenged nor resisted because the law of the State claims superiority. The mass of people, including the people of the Church recognizes this and is subject to its dictates.
Now we see Church and State, not as equals but as two principal entities in our society and the State dominates. A lot of argumentative points can support this reality. We need go no further with this idea because we are already familiar with it. In all probability, most people would agree that this is the way it should be.
We will not pursue this now but this is just opposite of what it should be.
Jesus came into the world at a time when the Romans preempted the State of Israel. It seems there was no question that the religious function of the temple and its personnel were undisturbed and the people were not restrained from worship. Jesus did not disturb it either in any way with what he taught. He was teaching God’s word that was instruction beyond the Scriptures. Now, as Christ Christians, we follow his teaching alone for our guidance to the life that he says will live eternally with him.
The powerful leaders, men of religious authority, who were delegated by the people and the hierarchical system would not listen to Jesus but took active and final measures to silence him. Jesus was executed as a blasphemer.
The parable of a patch from new material is appropriate to illustrate a condition the religious community was in at the time. Jesus was teaching in the temples as well as in the hills and seashore. He did not dispute any feature of the Jew's religion simply because he was its principal object, the promised Messiah. He did teach God’s Word that is an extension of the Scriptures that tell about him. His positive statements were to be believed and their religion was to be modified by it. It was to be because it was God’s word that was being given. Of course it was God’s intention for the Jews to believe Jesus’ every word and to be guided by it. God is both willful and purposeful.
What happens when new material is sewn to old? It does not match and the new piece will shrink at a different rate from the old because the old material has already shrunk close to its maximum. They are incompatible.
Though Jesus was presenting God’s word and because it was different, the authorities rejected it. It was treated as a patch of new material on their centuries old material. The authorities saw their religion as something apart from themselves and the people as though it was a thing. They did not want their thing changed or modified. It was what they were using as a vehicle to maintain their positions of power and influence. If this seems too harsh, consider the length to which they went to keep the whole world from going to Jesus, as the Pharisees said to one another in John 12:19.
We can observe that Jesus knew all the time how he was being accepted and who was rejecting him. His material was not understood as the life giving prescription, prescribed by the same God of the ages that the priests were worshiping.
What is the lesson here for us? We do not want to be unkind but we must be realistic. The experience of rejection we have had of Christ’s teaching and him as sole authority for its application to our lives and the way to salvation, is the same experience that Jesus had and for the same reasons. The religion of this day cannot accommodate any change. It is not really a change but a return to Jesus’ original intentions. The modifications that an infinite number of people have made, beginning with Paul, are now firmly established in the fabric of today’s religion.
The simplicity of God’s forgiveness, made clear by Jesus and his call to all his followers to travel the narrow road of obedience to his commands, is rejected. Jesus tells us that all of his intentions for us will be experienced if we believe and obey him.
Some present day religions make it more complicated. One great modification that has been made to Jesus’ teaching is that the best of our hopes, eternal life, is free as a gift. Jesus made it clear that we must pay a price for his benefits for as he said in Luke 9:23-24, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."
Now the lesson for us and all Christendom. Let us take Christ’s teaching, not as a patch on our old ideas, trying to adapt them to the old fabric of many men’s changes. Instead, let us take his teaching as a whole fabric and understand it, and give ourselves to it, live by it and trust Jesus’ word that everything is already prepared for our life that becomes new and finally, eternal.
Ralph B. Folsom
June 1, 1996