In the ministry of Jesus we receive two living streams that sustain and nourish our lives. In the first, we have the words of Jesus that inspire us to an ideal by which to live. This ideal gives us a goal and an aspiration that all human beings need in order to thrive and flourish. Without such ideals and words we are lost and without direction as people.
The second stream is the pastoral work of Jesus in the individual lives of people who fall short of that ideal, a group that includes all human beings. So here we find Jesus engaged with the Samaritan woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery. He does not condemn them. He does not exclude them. He engages with them and finds a path of inclusion, participation, and communion with them
We cannot find full satisfaction in only one of these streams, for we will have only a rigid legalism on the one hand or a lax libertine life on the other. We also cannot have a two tiered ethical system that shows no pastoral mercy for lay people while providing an infinite supply of creativity for clergy. Jesus calls us to a high ideal in our ethical conduct, and a high ideal in the showing of mercy to all people - raising them up and encouraging them again and again to a life of love and virtue.
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