22. Be Present Rather Than Pure

The Christian Statement

The Pharisees' primary concern was purity - maintaining the ritual and moral cleanness that their tradition required. This produced a community of extraordinary internal cohesion and theological precision that was also almost entirely unable to reach anyone who was not already inside it. The boundary-maintenance required to sustain the Pharisaic community prevented the engagement that might have expanded it.

Jesus's primary concern was presence. He was where the people were. He was at the well at noon when the woman with five husbands came to draw water. He was at Zacchaeus's dinner table. He was at the wedding in Cana. He was in the boat during the storm. He was in the garden when the disciples needed Him. He was on the road to Emmaus with the two disciples who were broken by the crucifixion and didn't recognize Him yet.

Presence required contact with things that a purity system would avoid. The leper. The tax collector. The woman with a hemorrhage who touched His robe. The demon-possessed man in the tombs. The Samaritan village. The Gentile centurion's house. In every case, the presence was more important than the purity - not because purity did not matter but because presence was the instrument of transformation and purity was the maintenance of the status quo.

The church that prioritizes its own purity over the presence that makes transformation possible has chosen the Pharisees' strategy. It will produce the Pharisees' results: a community of the already-convinced, increasingly separate from the world it was sent to transform, increasingly convinced of its own correctness, increasingly unable to understand why the world does not simply accept its correctness and come inside.

✔ Salt and Light: Ask: where does my need for purity prevent my presence? What people am I not in relationship with because the relationship would require contact with things my community considers contaminating? The answer to that question is the mission field the disciple has been avoiding.