Gospel Radicalism: The Hard Sayings of Jesus. By Thaddee Matura. Orbis Books, 1984.
If you want to get bothered again by Jesus' teachings, this scriptural study will surely do it. Thaddee Matura, a French Franciscan scholar of the New Testament, has spent much of his life dealing with the challenges of the gospel, trying to live them in community, and through his teaching gift trying to spread this unwelcome word to others.
Most of the book is just hard work—both because of the demanding and perhaps discouraging subject matter for most of us, and because it is largely done in the classic and somewhat dry manner of the professional exegete. He tries to be objective and true to the text and context, but the necessary result is a lot of slow reading with repetition, endless nuance and distinction, cross-referencing, and very faithful avoidance of editorial comment. The result is an excellent reference book or commentary on these texts of Jesus, a very helpful companion piece of Synoptic study, but a book that very likely could not hold your attention for light or even inspiring reading.
However, the very objectivity is what makes the book necessary and important in dealing with teachings that bring forth great subjectivity, fears, emotional responses, and volatile conversations. He expects this response as he states his purpose: "to make an inventory, to classify, analyze, and interpret exegetically the ethical teachings of Jesus bearing radical traits—that is, unusual, paradoxical, decisive, or absolute characteristics."
Radical for Matura refers to attitudes or deeds that diverge from the ordinary human or religious ways of acting. He believes, and I think conclusively proves, that Jesus is mandating and inviting the world—not just an elite—to a great deal of radicality, much of which has been singularly avoided or mystified by almost all of the churches.
The author divides his material, largely from the Synoptic Gospels (with many references to the prophets and the Epistles), into an initial presentation of the radical texts, a large middle section of textual analysis, and a final overview and presentation of open questions. The questions are about the nature and demands of discipleship: Jesus' sayings on renunciation of family and on sexual expression, his attitude toward riches and material possessions, his radicalization of the law, and a set of independent sayings on violence, and the risk and cost of discipleship. These radical passages are usually found in one or several of four contexts: the call to simply be like Jesus—to follow him; the call to love our neighbor; the call to truth and unpretentiousness; and the call to give, share, and distribute who we are and what we have.
Matura is wise to admit in the book's third section that his presentation of the ethical and behavioral teaching of Jesus could leave an unbalanced picture apart from the entire message of Jesus. Even these passages could make an appeal to the doer and the idealist in each of us and allow us to hide from God behind radical good works. The inflated ego, behaviorally radical and religious, could still avoid the simple proclamation of the kingdom and its resultant freedom, the manifestation of God and God's tenderness, the incarnation of Jesus in the fleshly and the human. He reminds us that even radicals can avoid the call to change their lives.
The fact is that Jesus' basic proclamation entails his absolutely most difficult demands: to be converted, to reorient one's life completely, to receive Jesus' message fully, to simply believe the gospel at all, to remain watchful, and to pursue the big "secret" of Jesus—which turns out to be the necessary purification of opposition, failure, and suffering. The teachings on radical decision and behavior "are only condensed and crystallized intransigent formulas about metanoia and the commandment 'You will love the Lord your God with all your heart ... and your neighbor as yourself.'"
The love commandment left to itself has no blunt words or verification to check its tendency toward generalization, abstraction, or individualism. Jesus knew that the false self would find endless subterfuge—pious and always proper—to maintain its illusions about itself.
On the other hand, radicalism, if detached from the primary proclamation, "quickly becomes rigid, narrow, ascetic feats." It will eventually lose its freedom, its joy, its contemplative giving-it-back-to-God, its capacity for simple compassion. Without first-hand kingdom experience, gospel radicalism can far too quickly become angry and ideological, part of the problem instead of part of the solution.
As old-fashioned and probably "new-fashioned" as it sounds, none of this will happen in a rich and personal and life-giving way unless we place Jesus at the center of everything, unless we are involved in a great love. Only then will possessions, family, physical life, and our very selves become unnecessary baggage and obstacles to the central relationship that engages us, the love of God.
Finally, Thaddee Matura gives us little ones hope as he points out a way to live and not to deny these radical teachings of Jesus. He says we must "live with the reproach and the tension associated with this ever-present yet never completely attainable ideal." He continues:
Radicalism taken seriously creates a tension without which Christian life stagnates. It is the disturbing element necessary for the dynamism; it is the dissatisfaction that becomes expectation of what is to come but is not yet. Rather than alleviate the pain through soothing exegesis, rather than relegating it to a favored "elect" with a special calling, the Christian accepts being disturbed, dissatisfied, troubled, and never completely at home with this inexhaustible demand because it is impossible to regiment or measure it.
In the last inspiring summary pages, Matura sounds amazingly like his French sister, Therese of Lisieux, who struggled with this same Jesus and this same demanding gospel. Against the therapeutic and feel-good gospel, she said, "If anyone is willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to herself then she will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter." This gospel study again reminds us of how unwilling most of us have been to simultaneously carry the burden of a Great Love and the burden of loving in return.
Richard Rohr, O.F.M., a Sojourners contributing editor, was a pastor of New Jerusalem community in Cincinnati when this article appeared.
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