There once was this unconventional Rabbi who showed up in a Middle Eastern postage stamp size country living under oppressive foreign occupation. He was born in a time of great social unrest and under the rule of the Big Dog (Rome) whose tolerance for native protest was absolutely zero. The landscape was littered with dying and dead corpses hanging on crosses for the crime of rebellion and sedition.
This unconventional Rabbi was not your every day religious leader. He opposed both the religious and political establishments of his day: unlike those smooth talking celebrity prosperity-minded preachers today whose own affluence would have disgusted the Rabbi or those who sided up with the ruling secular authorities and thus compromised their true allegiance to God.
This unconventional Rabbi focused on those at the bottom of the food chain, on the outcasts and the disenfranchised: Those whom we might call ”homeless” today; on the strangers we would call immigrants, on the poor we refer to as welfare moochers, and on women whose voices were muted and the racially mixed half-breed Jews (Samaritans) who represented the minorities of his day.
This unconventional Rabbi even called a crooked and deeply flawed government agent to repentance and then went home with him for lunch (Zacchaeus). I am certain the church lady was mortified over his “unspiritual” conduct.
For the sick and the infirmed he brought compassion, healing, and hope into their miserable lives, especially to those who had been banished to the outskirts of their own village or city because of their disease.
This unconventional Rabbi shook up the power systems of his day. There were those within his own tribe who were calling for armed revolt against the Big Dog but the Rabbi shook them off by saying that if they aspired to be called “children of God” then they would be “peacemakers.”
This unconventional Rabbi drew a sharp distinction between a faithful allegiance towards the Empire and a faithful allegiance towards God. One of his later followers summed up this allegiance in what became known as the earliest Christian confession on record: “Jesus is Lord”, implying that Cesar was not (or any other future Head of State).
This unconventional Rabbi demonstrated that the greatest power the world would ever know would not come about by splitting an atom or by Shock & Awe battlefield tactics or by building a huge military industrial complex, but rather by self-giving love. He showed the world that the most cleansing and powerful act available to us is the power of forgiveness: “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” In so doing he repudiated all forms of revenge seeking violence. He turned the ancient eye-for-an-eye ethic completely on its head. He disavowed retribution as a legitimate response to being wronged.
This unconventional Rabbi amassed a small band of followers who extended his method and message beyond the borders of his native country. Except for the one who betrayed him all his original followers gave their lives (literally) because of their allegiance to this unconventional Rabbi.
Many of the early followers of this unconventional Rabbi rejected the unscrupulous ways of the Empire and rather chose to embrace the principle of self-giving love as the guiding directive for their lives. They rejected violence and they refused to participate in the war making policies of the Empire in which they lived. In fact it was illegal for these early Jesus followers to serve in Rome’s army.
But something happened along the way: The Way (what these early Jesus followers were called) were co-opted by the dominant Roman Empire of the 4th century and the once peace loving movement inspired by an unconventional Rabbi came to be the dominant institutional religion of the Empire.
The Cross became the symbol of a tragic collusion between the State and the Church. The two became indistinguishable. Synergism had raised its ugly head for all to see. We've yet to recover from this tragic collision between Christianity and Empire.
The term “Christian Patriot” had yet to be born but the seeds for such an idea were firmly planted.
War and violence finally received ecclesial blessings so long as the proper justification could be made—and it was. Out of this unfortunate collusion was born the Just War theory that many American Christians hold so dear today.
Then we did something else to the unconventional Rabbi’s message: We turned it into an escape mechanism whereby those who believe the right things about Jesus and say a little magical sinner’s prayer get to escape from this world when they die. Life in this world was devalued and deemphasized for the sake of the afterlife promised to all who believe in Jesus.
The promise of heaven (Plato’s disembodied heaven no less) then became understood as Jesus’s primary mission rather than the God inspired transformation of life on earth. In other words, heaven became the reason why Jesus died in the first place.
So the method and mission of the unconventional Rabbi was domesticated and tamed in order to minimize the risks of becoming vulnerable because of one’s faith. In other words, it became fashionably safe to be a Christian rather than being at risk for following the upside down teachings of an unconventional Rabbi.
The unconventional Rabbi must be thinking today: “What has happened to the movement I inspired?”
That’s a question I believe many of us are going to be forced to ask in the coming days. For me I think it is high time for a fresh reading of the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament that helped inspire a movement that turned the first century world of the Way upside down.
It’s time for another such Christ-inspired upheaval.
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