Wow! It's been almost two months since my last post. Oh well, a breather every so often is probably a good thing, a "blog sabbatical," in this case. However, I wanted to share some intriguing insights from Walter B. Shurden's journal. Dr. Shurden was one of my church history professors and a life-long friend. . .
In his national bestseller, Blink, (at last count on the NYT best list for 146 weeks) Malcolm Gladwell spoke of “thin-slicing.” “Thin-slicing,” he said, is “sifting through the information in front of us, throwing out all that is irrelevant while we zero in on what really matters” (pp. 34-35).
One day long ago in Jerusalem Jesus of Nazareth “thin sliced” two thousand years and 613 laws of his revered Jewish faith (Mk 12:28-31). He cut through the density of theological history, the thickness of valued ritualism, the mass of doctrinal formulations and he went for essence. And he did not plead for more time “to think about it.”
“Love God,” he said. “Love neighbor,” he said. In the blink of an eye, he thin-sliced Judaism and all genuine faith movements, including Christianity.
And the Sadducees, then and now, retort, “But what about the work of the Temple? What about the liturgy? And the sacrifices?”
And the Zealots, then and now: “Yeah, sure! Love neighbor! Tell that to the cross-building Romans!”
What do you think? Was Jesus impractical? Can we really follow him?
