But recognizing Jesus within his Jewish context means recognizing his enormous concern for how people relate to each other on a day-to-day basis. The issue for him is not, “Here’s what you need to believe in order to get into heaven.” The issue is, “Here’s what you need to do in order to have one foot in the kingdom of heaven. Here’s what you need to do because here’s what God wants you to do, and here’s what your tradition calls you to do.”
It is his Judaism that associates love of God with love of neighbor; his Judaism emphasizes what we call the golden rule, also found in a number of different religious traditions. That’s why he talks to people about reconciliation and says that human interaction is more important than ritual. Saving a life always trumps any law of the Torah for Jews.
Jesus teaches people how to live, how to act. That’s the Jewish Jesus, and that too often drops out. It’s part of the problem, by the way, with the creeds. If you go straight from Jesus being born to being crucified, you’re missing a whole lot.
Many Catholics think that being Catholic is primarily about what you believe.
Yes, but it’s not. For people in the church over the centuries, it never has been. Take the earliest gospel, which is probably Mark. Right after Jesus’ baptism, Jesus goes out to proclaim his message: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”
I am consistently asking my students, “What’s the good news?” It’s not that Jesus died and came back, because this is only the first chapter. He hasn’t yet mentioned the passion. Nobody knows he’s going to die. The good news has to be something else.
So the good news has to be what you get from the parables. The good news has to be the Sermon on the Mount. The good news has to be the healings, which show care for people in the community.
The good news is that everyone is part of the family. It doesn’t matter what your income level is. That’s even true of sinners and tax collectors, people who have removed themselves from the common welfare by working for the occupation government, disrupting the sense of community by stealing, or destroying marriage by committing adultery. Jesus says, “You know what? You’ve got a role in this community, too.”
That’s not belief; that’s action. It is reconciliation, and it’s family values in their best form possible.
https://uscatholic.org/articles/201209/a-jewish-take-on-jesus-amy-jill-levine-talks-the-gospels/
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