As institutions and norms we thought solid melt, we all have to figure out what reality grounds our lives. It is ultimately money, power, violence and the grab? Does my family’s life depend on me wearing a red hat while being silent as park rangers, doctors and elected allied leaders are humiliated? Is that how it works? An unknown number of Americans think so; about half are silent.
The current administration have had an impressive 5 weeks ploughing through the American institutions like the Germans through Belgium. That Reich, expecting 1,000 years, disappeared in five. But it took a global war, Holocaust and vaporizing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end it. The revulsions produced the United Nations, World Health Organization, Marshall Plan, NATO, the European Union, liberating colonies around the world and a hundred other laboriously wrought agreements.
But if all those agreements are just undergirded by overwhelming US military force, why bother pretending otherwise? If we want “rare earth minerals,” why not just kick Ukraine to the Russians and take them? Is reality just that way?
Raw power isn’t just “over there.” I’ve never been mugged over my politics or faith. But the same thugs who attacked our Capitol are disrupting policy meetings in Washington now. Some time this Spring tens of thousands of normal Americans who miss democracy (or their Medicaid check) will be marching. They will vastly outnumber the thugs, but so was the Klan, and people got hurt.
It takes a vast outpouring of coordinated civil resistance to overwhelm the violent outliers. It works. As Tutu said, “anything war can do, peace can do better.” But this isn’t a video game. Some of the non-violent folks get injured; some die. So, you’d better be sure you want to bet your life on a loving God who guarantees mercy, justice and decency. Or go find a hat.
Most bands of thugs claim to have God on their side. The Klan burned…crosses. Putin has an obsequious Bishop. The Afrikaners had Christian Nationalism, as does MAGA.
This brings us to Jesus, the most inconvenient figure in all history; a vexation to every king, and pretender to royal privileges (I’m looking at you Bezos). Jesus has always tripped up bullies coopting the name “Christian.” The actual Jesus had a very inconvenient idea about power—don’t use it for yourself.
After an earlier blog, an actual Gideon told me that I needed a better Bible. They have warehouses full of them; I’ve only got a few dozen. But I have read mine, so let me be clear about three exegetical moves I am recommending in this radical moment:
First: Read Jesus before you skip to Christ. The latter is a nuanced theological construct that may or may not have anything to do with the Jewish Jesus who taught and was killed in Palestine. There is more than one “Christ” found in the New Testament, much of which was written a century or more after he walked. We’ve had hundreds of conclaves across millennia to sort this out. Most of those meetings ended up taming Jesus to be more useful to the Emperor Constantine or another one like him at the time. Every wannabe king has not only a chaplain, but a customized Christ.
Jesus life has cosmic implications which take a lot careful theology to figure out. Hence, seminary professors of different sorts.* That’s not blog work. And it doesn’t go fast.
My point is that, as important as it is, Christology and all the other -ologies can distract us from the basic call to follow Jesus’ Way of non-power, non-violence, pro-compassion healing.
Second, if your mental Jesus looks like you, you’re wrong (unless you’re a Palestinian Jew). He was from Nazareth, which was barely on the map of ancient Israel; rubble at the moment. Barn-born among the sheep, remarkable for all the privileges he did not have. Good news to the poor because he exposed the powerlessness of power. So, the King wanted him dead and slaughtered every boy under two to get him; his canny parents believing a dream about a different kind of power ran across the border.
Why bother with this old history? Jesus actually looked like the ones Christian Nationalism wants us to fear, despise, humiliate and, in the end, allow to be slaughtered in silence.
Third, the Jesus in the Bible wants it all. No to violence, but also to possession (one cloak for decency, but not two). Makes me a little nervous about my life. But it’s totally impossible to justify a violent kleptocracy on him. That’s why they talk vaguely about “Christian,” not Jesus.
This Jesus has implications for the movement now rising up to restore the damage to norms of modern constitutional democracy, checks and balances and law. Jesus didn’t enjoy any of those things. But he did pay taxes and ate with an IRS employee. So, he was ok with functional government as long as it wasn’t perverted to serve the rich. What make him angry were those who sold out the Temple to steal from anyone God so loves.
Find another god, if you must. But those who follow Jesus–even in a soft modern American kind of way—will stand against you without fear. Because love drives out all fear when you believe, as Jesus showed us with his life, that love of all is the ultimate power.
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*I am part of a Divinity School with some very smart colleagues, if you want one.
Thank you!!!!