Thread by @AnnaCaudill4

This popped back up in my mentions this morning, & I am grateful any time I’m reminded that @DavidDark asked this question. Howard Thurman has an illuminating word. 🧵

https://twitter.com/daviddark/status/1398587099473920000

2. I’ve wondered for a while how the conversation between Jesus and a woman known to us not by her name, but by her ethnicity, could help 21st century readers of Jesus better understand the structure within which he lived, moved, & had his being.

https://twitter.com/annacaudill4/status/1305217480252678144?s=21

3. I didn’t realize how much of myself I was imposing upon the person of Jesus (white, American, woman, Gen X, etc) until I read Thurman’s “Jesus & the Disinherited”. If you haven’t read it, you are missing out on a deeply explored theology.

4. Thurman contextualizes Jesus as a Jew from a background of poverty (his family had to offer doves as a sacrifice in the temple at his birth, indicating they couldn’t afford the required lamb), living in a Roman occupation that threatened the wholistic culture of Judaism.

5. He also notes Jesus constantly faced a twofold demand: “to love those of the household of Israel who...regarded him as a careless perverter of the truths of God [&] to love those beyond the household of Israel—the Samaritan, & even the Roman.”

6. Thurman describes the retreat of Jesus & his disciples to Tyre & Sidon as semi-retirement amid increasing opposition, & it’s this respite that the woman breaks into. The regard for how this interaction grew “Jesus’ love-ethic” is 🔥