The Holy Man
But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Luke 5:8 NASB
Go away – Do you know the story? Yeshua asks the men to pull out into the deep water of Lake Kinneret. He tells them to cast out their nets. Peter replies that they have been fishing all night without a catch, but they do as Yeshua requests. Suddenly the nets are so full of fish that they are about to break. Simon Peter recognizes the miraculous event as an unmistakable sign of the presence of someone who is not like ordinary men. But his reaction strikes us as a bit strange. How would you and I have responded?
I probably would have said, “How did you do that?” I would look for some hidden cause because in the world of my upbringing, everything must have a “natural” cause. I might have been startled by the event, but it’s unlikely that I would have wanted this man to leave. I would have wanted him to explain, and perhaps do it again. But that’s because I live in a desacralized world, a world that doesn’t see extraordinary events as divine occasions. And because my world has been stripped of the divine, I am not afraid to be in the presence of the holy.
But I should be.
Simon Peter lived in a different world. In his world the holy man was a man to be feared. Why? Because if someone got too close to the divine there was the very real possibility of being extinguished. The presence of holiness seared. The presence of holiness killed. No man could look on the face of God and live—and any man who came near that face in the presence of holiness was in mortal danger. In Simon Peter’s world, just being close to someone who revealed the power of YHVH was enough to cause immediate distress.
“I am a sinner.” That’s reason enough to avoid a man of God. “I haven’t lived up to the standard. I have missed the mark. I have chosen unrighteousness.” Simon Peter knew himself. He didn’t use any excuses or justifications. Confronted by the specter of a man of God, he was undone. Something in that boat made him feel very threatened. Peter essentially asserts that he has not kept Torah and he knows he is guilty. Being close to a holy man reveals just how desperate his condition is.
Unfortunately, two drastic changes have occurred in the intervening centuries. First, instead of recognizing the threat of holiness, we have been taught that God welcomes our sinful condition. Instead of pleading for the Messiah to depart, we think our disobedience is the vehicle of korban (drawing close). We forget that sin is defilement and leaves us vulnerable. We imagine that Yeshua came to rescue us as sinners, and therefore we diminish the awe of the holy. Since we don’t acknowledge our true desperation, we ask the holy man to stick around in case we need him.
The second tragic result of centuries of desacralization is that we think that a holy man is no better than a moral policeman. We see his holiness as a condemnation of our lack of holiness. His presence is not a threat to our existence. It is a threat to our arrogance. It’s fine to have a rescuer as long as the one who rescues doesn’t make us feel bad about our true state. We want a welcoming God, not a holy Judge. Of course, there is a sense in which YHVH and His Messiah do welcome us, but they do so on the basis of holiness, not tolerance. Until we realize how threatening holiness really is, we probably won’t realize what grace is all about.
It’s a good thing that Yeshua doesn’t “go away.” But it’s a better thing to have come to the place of asking him to depart and then seeing that he stays.
Topical Index: go away, depart, exerchomai, sinner, hamartolos, Luke 5:8
Thank you Skip, this is very much in line with the death of Nadav and Avihu in the Torah portion.
Last week Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said:
“Enthusiasm “thinks itself sufficiently qualified to approach the Divinity, without any human mediator.” The person in its grip is so full of what he takes to be holy rapture that he feels able to override the rules by which priestly conduct is normally governed. “The fanatic consecrates himself and bestows on his own person a sacred character, much superior to what forms and ceremonious institutions can confer on any other.” Rules and regulations, thinks the enthusiast, are for ordinary people, not for us. We, inspired by God, know better. That, said David Hume, can be very dangerous indeed.
That is why holy places, times and rituals must be guarded with rules, the way a nuclear power station must be protected by the most careful insulation.
Enthusiasm can eventually become a raging inferno, spreading destruction and claiming lives. After many centuries in the West, we have tamed enthusiasm to the point where we can think of it as a positive force. We should never forget, however, that it was not always so. That is why Judaism contains so many laws and so much attention to detail – and the closer we come to God, the more we need”
TW also reminded me of how, on the one hand, we as kids were taught in Sunday school of the ” dearest, sweetest or “Luvy Jesus” ( there’s no other English translation, I think) and on the other hand the Charismatics that made Jesus your best friend and swept you up in a enthusiastic state of worship. Holiness was the way you felt( and had nothing to do with God). I had more respect and fear of the minister/pastor than “Jesus” or God.
From the Tanach, as well as the later writings( NT) it seems that everyone (the Pharisees, Samaritans,disciples) had a clear understanding as to how to treat a holy man (or felt threatened by him). Do you think our problem understanding lordship, divinity, holiness,not only has to do with the definitions of the words itself, but also the fact that we don’t have living examples of these men(or women)? The closest our society come to this is the way we see and treat celebrities?
—
Now to get from:
“In sin God is alone” – Abraham Heschel
to:
“God isn’t absent no matter where I am.
I am my sin!
He loves me—the sin that I am.” – Skip
I was reading, yesterday, the saga of David running from Saul for decades. He was often not very noble about it: on occasion he lied, dissimulated, pretended insanity, and lost the faith. Still, when he was faced with the opportunity to kill Saul, he desisted, saying that he dared not touch YHVH’s annointed. Yes, he was afraid in the flesh of Saul: so much that he sinned repeatedly because of that fear, but that was not the fear he chose to manifest when he was given the chance to strike back. Then, he made the right choice to fear God instead of acting out his fear of man. In the process, he demonstrated his own anointing, causing Saul to admit his abject terror of David and its cause. Again and again Saul admitted that he understood David could not be beaten because of that anointing: in fact he was insane to the extent that he did not act on that understanding. David may have been afraid of him, but he was terrified of David – not because he thought David would kill him, but because David represented a higher authority than what he claimed.
I think we do not fear heaven because we have had long centuries of indoctrination into the essence of humanism, which, when I distill it down, reverses divinity. In humanism, I am the locus point: it all starts with me. I personally have such a hard time with what people are calling now “praise” music, and I think it is because so much of it seems that, no matter how much glory gets directed at heaven in it, the focal point is still the human. The human determines the praise heaven ‘deserves’; the human precipitates the encounter, and heaven gets yanked around by the fleshly emotions and desires of the human. If you honestly went through a lot of the lyrics, and put the real words to such whiney, self-centered music, it would go something like “Me, me, me-me-me and me”. Boring. Please forgive me, but what I really want to do when I hear such stuff is to put the singer out of all their misery!
“I am a sinful man” exclaimed Simon Peter.
“Isaiah in 6:5 said- Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, יְהוָה צְבָאֹות ”
Having a clear conscience recognizing who we really are, reveals true humility begotten from a transformed heart.
We ought to feel our defilement, to so desire to be holy/set-apart, to be cleansed, to seek YHWH. Amein.
El Hombre Santo
Al ver esto, Simón Pedro cayó de rodillas delante de Jesús y le dijo: –¡Apártate de mí, Señor; soy un pecador! Lucas 5:8 NVI
Apártate de mí – ¿Conoces la historia? Yeshua les pide a los hombres que boguen mar adentro en el lago de Kinneret (Mar de Galilea). Le dice que echen las redes. Pedro le dice que han estado trabajando toda la noche pero que no han pescado nada, pero hacen lo que Yeshua les pide. De repente las redes están tan llenas de peces que están a punto de romperse. Simón Pedro identifica el evento milagroso como una señal inequívoca de la presencia de alguien que no es un hombre común y corriente. Pero su reacción nos puede parecer algo extraña. ¿Cómo hubiéramos reaccionado tú y yo?
Probablemente yo hubiese dicho, “¿Cómo hiciste eso?” Yo hubiera buscado una causa escondida porque en el mundo en que fui criado todo debe tener una causa “natural”. Quizá me hubiera sorprendido mucho por el evento pero muy difícilmente hubiera querido que ese hombre se fuera. Hubiese querido que él se quedará para explicar, y quizás hacerlo otra vez. Pero eso es porque yo vivo en un mundo desacralizado, Un mundo que no veo los eventos extraordinarios como ocasiones divinas. No tengo temor de estar ante la presencia de lo Santo.
Pero debería tenerlo.
Simón Pedro vivió en un mundo diferente. En su mundo el hombre Santo era un hombre que debía ser temido. ¿Por qué? Porque si alguien se acercaba mucho a lo divino había una verdadera posibilidad real de ser extinguido. La presencia de santidad quemaba. La presencia de la santidad mataba. Ningún hombre podía ver el rostro de Dios y vivir – y cualquier hombre que se acercase a ese rostro de santidad estaba en un peligro mortal. En el mundo de Simón Pedro, el simple hecho de estar cerca de alguien que revelaba el poder de YHVH era suficiente para causar angustia inmediata.
“Soy un pecador.” Esa es razón suficiente para evadir al hombre de Dios. “No he llegado al estándar. No he dado en el blanco. He escogido el pecado.” Simón Pedro lo sabía. No utilizó ninguna excusa o justificación. Al estar confrontado por el espectro del hombre de Dios, estaba destruido. Algo en ese bote lo hizo sentirse muy amenazado. Pedro esencialmente declara que él no ha guardado la Torá y él sabe que es culpable. Estar cerca de un hombre Santo revela cuán desesperante es su condición.
Desafortunadamente 2 cambios drásticos han ocurrido con el pasar de los siglos. Primero en vez de reconocer la amenaza de la santidad se nos ha enseñado que Dios recibe nuestra condición pecaminosa. En lugar de rogarle al Mesías que se aleje, pensamos que nuestra desobediencia es el vehículo de korban (acercar). Olvidamos que el pecado es una profanación y que nos deja vulnerables. Nos imaginamos que Yeshua vino al rescate de nosotros los pecadores, y por lo tanto disminuimos nuestro asombro de la santidad. Como no reconocemos nuestra verdadera desesperación le pedimos al hombre Santo, que se quede en caso que lo necesitemos.
El segundo resultado trágico de los siglos de desacralización es que pensamos que un hombre Santo no es mejor que un policía con buena moral. Vemos su santidad como una condenación de nuestra falta de sentido. Su presencia no es una amenaza nuestra existencia. Es una amenaza a nuestra arrogancia. Está bien tener un rescatador siempre y cuando el que nos rescate no nos haga sentir mal acerca de nuestra verdadera condición. Queremos un Dios acogedor no un juez justo. Claro Hay un sentido en el cual YHVH y su Mesías nos dan la bienvenida, pero lo hacen en las bases de santidad, no tolerancia. Hasta que no nos demos cuenta cuán amenazante es la santidad, probablemente nunca nos daremos cuenta de qué se trata la gracia.
Es algo bueno qué Yeshua no “se aparta”. Pero es mejor llegar al punto en que le pedimos que se aparte y luego ver que se queda.
~ he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” ~ Luke 5:8
Yes, we all will come to the place, the same place Peter was: “depart from me for I am a sinful man.” Paul’s plight was similar: “Oh wretched man that I am.” Two extremes and two themes are at work here – the sinfulness of man [all have sinned] and the holiness of God. God is thrice holy. Ask the angels, – all of them. They all testify to the “otherness” of God. Peter said, “depart from me.” But what does Yeshua say? “Draw near.” “Come unto Me..” Yeshua my friend, embraced the leper!! Move over Paul.. “Christ died for sinners!! Of whom I am chief!!
Yes. Sing it o’er, and o’er again! Christ receiveth sinful men! ” [How] Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2bwIK5txds