A Partisan Jesus

Why do you suppose that such different historic leaders as the Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him) and Mahatma Gandhi found something compelling in the figure of Jesus? What do you suppose would move someone like the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh or the East Indian spiritualist Eknath Easwaran to draw on Jesus as a presumptive model and authority for their meditation practice? For that matter, why would such disparate personages as Albert Einstein and Mikhail Gorbachev find themselves enthralled by the figure of Jesus as a moral guide?

The quick answer is that each, in their own way, found a Jesus tradition that was relevant to them and served to enlarge their own consciousness of their world; something about this historical figure shaped the way they perceived their context and offered an insight into how they might make it better.

Now suppose we were to do the same. Suppose we were to attempt to find a useable Jesus, a Jesus rooted in the biblical tradition but situated within our own context. What might our circumstances in the U.S. in the latter part of 2017 look like and where might we be led with an embrace of some aspect of the Jesus tradition? Or perhaps more specifically: What would Jesus think about the intention to deprive millions of citizens of healthcare? Is there a hint in the Jesus tradition that would shed light on whether faith commitments can legitimately be the basis for differential and discriminatory treatment? If we could interview Jesus, how might he answer the question of how we should regard and deal with people whose presence in our country is unlawful? For an itinerant figure who apparently had neither a permanent domicile nor a steady income stream, what would Jesus think about a national economy that allowed child poverty to cost $500 billion a year in lost earnings potential, crime, and healthcare costs?

To be sure, it is difficult—if not impossible—to construct or discern a Jesus view on any matter of contemporary public policy in the U.S. We have to account for the differences in time, space and culture between then and now. Additionally, such an effort assumes that we have access to the mind of Jesus, and that he has knowledge of our socioeconomic and political situation. Truth be told, if we want to know what Jesus thinks, we have to go looking in the tradition for the convictions and principles he expressed about social life, then translate these into the idiom of our context by use of analogies and their limits, and identify some reason why this constructed view of Jesus has relevance. Make no mistake: This is an interpretive reconstruction.

My interest in the politics of Jesus grows out of my curiosity about what he has to say concerning life in this world. We know that his world was one of imperial occupation, extreme economic inequality, hereditary privilege, inflexible socioeconomic stratification, gender and sexual exclusion, and innumerable forms of acceptable cruelty and injustice. It was, by any measure, a horrific world for vast numbers of people, and few they were who could effectively challenge it. And yet it was into this world that Jesus came preaching a message of universal freedom and equality by drawing the attention of his hearers to the extraordinary power of an all-embracing love and an unquenchable peace. We operationalize and encapsulate the fundamental message Jesus offered as The Golden Rule, a maxim shared by all religions of the world, whose intent is to extend freedom and equality into all the spheres of life. Jesus’ message addressed what is seen in the light of day – and now to be seen differently – and what is hidden under the cover of darkness – and now to be exposed before all. What he contended for was a community of good will and the common good, the pattern of our shared life as it provides and promotes for all the general conditions – economic, social, cultural, political, and religious – of human flourishing.

It may be useful to make an important distinction here.  Over the centuries, much has been made of Jesus as a religious and spiritual figure whose teachings reveal a path to another world beyond this one. Throughout the history of the Christian tradition, there have also been those who asked about the organization of society and whether the teachings of Jesus have applicability for this world. Is it possible to accept and live by values and principles expressed in Jesus’ life and work as they are applicable to life in this world? I believe the answer is yes, but this does not mean that we should endeavor to make either society or government Christian. Nonetheless, it does require recognizing Jesus as a partisan advocate for some and a social critic of others.

The Jesus narrative that is handed down in the received gospels leaves little doubt that he was viewed as one who identified with those whose circumstances in life were oppressive and characterized by suffering. Those who were ill and diseased, maimed, blind and deaf, and, like widows and orphans, otherwise incapable of providing economically for themselves, or those whose human life was characterized by conditions and relations judged by others as befitting of social rejection, these were precisely the ones to whom Jesus was most drawn. Those who were weak and innocent and otherwise discounted and discarded in the society into which Jesus came were the fellow human beings whose tenuous claim to life was perceived by him to be worthy of honor and recognition. Indeed, these disposable ones were also the human beings whom Jesus beatified in his Sermon on the Mount; he addressed the mass of people gathered before him by the audacious claim that they were “blessed.”

In Greek, the word translated into English as “blessed” is a word that in the first instance referred to the conditions in which the gods found themselves. They were the Greco-Roman deities who enjoyed the fullness of life with a kind of special honor and wisdom that rendered their existence unfettered by suffering or burdensome responsibilities. With respect to human beings in ancient Greece, the notion of blessedness could refer to the freedom and absence of responsibilities that those who are wealthy could enjoy.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, this blessedness is characteristic of God, who may share this condition with those whom God loves and cares for. Thus, in a kind of second instance, blessedness can accrue to human beings as they participate in the blessedness of God. Ultimately, for the human partners in a relation with God, blessedness is buttressed by trust, forgiveness, and ultimately the promise of deliverance from the vexatious and arduous conditions that dominate daily existence. Thus, for deity, “blessed” underscores a freedom and transcendence of the divine life well beyond the care, labor, and death that marks all earthly sufferings; it is an affirmation of the essential impassibility of God. For the well-to-do among us humans, being blessed is characteristic of the wealthy whose riches make it possible for them to remain above the cares of bric-a-brac humanity.

But from those who are pronounced “blessed” by Jesus there emerges a distinctly different picture of others; to hear Jesus assert the condition of blessedness is to discern what can only be called a great reversal. It is not the privileged who see others as beneath them who are blessed, but rather those who are impoverished, poor in circumstances and in spirit. It is not those who have gained much to garner a life of stability and comfort who are blessed, but rather those who have lost and who therefore know only mourning. Blessed refers not to those who are high-handed, autocratic, and in control, and therefore complacent with their privilege, but rather to those who are gentle and unassuming, and who yearn to be acknowledged and justified as virtuous. It is not the ones who exploit their advantage over others and use deception in pursuit of their own gain who are proclaimed as blessed, but rather those who enact mercy and embody benevolent love and compassion for others. Those who create and aggravate conflict, who wreak devastation and vengeance in their path, are not the blessed; that is a condition reserved for those who enact peace and seek equanimity in their relations with others.

It is uncomfortable for many of us to think that this great reversal has any reality or staying power in a context where wealth and privilege seem to dominate our socioeconomic and political worlds. Having observed the rise of an oligarchy in our own country, we think it preposterous to suppose that a day might come when a reversal might actually occur and those who have been relegated to the social and economic fringes of our society are actually strengthened and empowered to take up a more just, equitable, and sustainable leadership in the effort to create a society – indeed, a world – where the prevailing conditions make it possible for all to flourish.

Perhaps one way to address this discomfort is to make the decision to look at values and beliefs that, to this point at least, have undergirded our way of life, and see in them and their practice a potential for life-giving reversal. “Do not pay too much attention to fame, power, and money,” said Rudyard Kipling to a graduating class at McGill University in Montreal. “Some day, you will meet a person who cares for none of these, and then you will know how poor you are.”

If we wish to share in the reversal, to contribute to its arrival and its becoming ensconced in our shared world, we will need to revise our understanding of the characteristics and virtues that we seek to cultivate in ourselves and in each other. We cannot think of ourselves as autonomous and self-determined, living in isolation from others. Instead, we must think of ourselves as standing with one another, seeking each other’s well-being, experiencing our encounters with one another as life-giving and love-making. We are inextricably entangled with one another, interwoven to a degree that no pleasure, accomplishment, advantage, or satisfaction can be worthwhile if it comes or is taken at the expense of another.


This attitude will mean, among other things, that we too will have to become not less, but more partisan. Like the exemplar whose life embodies a moral and partisan regard for those whose ability to fend for themselves and defend their inherent right to flourish in company with others is seemingly constantly suppressed, so we too must extend our advocacy and activism and partner with others whose cause is the instigation of a more just, more impartial, more authentic social and economic existence. For unless we are willing to commit to seeking the well-being of all and the common good for all, our joys and comforts, successes and accomplishments, are just so much dust in the wind.

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