This semester, I’ve been looking at the Law of Moses throughout the Bible, in the Old and New Testaments. When we begin to think about how our faith relates to politics, I get the sense that we often are at a loss with how exactly the Bible should inform our political lives. But we forget that the Bible quite literally contains a perfect synthesis of politics and religion: the Mosaic Law.
Currently, I’ve been looking at how Jesus thinks about the Law, and about politics in general. If He did not come to abolish the Law, what about it did He fulfill? If we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, is there ever anything that belongs to Caesar that we should object to?
Recently, looking at the historical context of Jesus once again, I think we have a good place to start when we ask what it means to be a politically engaged Christian. As always, the answer to every question is simple. Jesus. The politics of Jesus is our model.
Jesus Was Not a Political Revolutionary
It is becoming quite common for pastors to bring up Jesus’s socio-historical context. Especially with Palm Sunday being so fresh on our minds, plenty of pastors are very open about the reality of Jesus’s “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem (which is what Palm Sunday commemorates).
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is greeted by a “large crowd” upon his entry into the city of Jerusalem. They took up palm trees, and cried out, “Hosanna!” (John 12:12-13, ESV) This seems like a good moment for Jesus. So often throughout the Gospels (and especially in Mark), Jesus catches flak from religious leaders and misunderstanding from the crowds that follow Him. And this moment is no different.
See, there is a high likelihood that the crowd who welcomed Jesus and blessed him, these people could very well be the ones chanting, “Crucify him!” in front of Pontius Pilate (John 19:6). And Jesus, because He is God, foreknew this.
Imagine Jesus’s thoughts as He entered Jerusalem. “These people are chanting for me, but later on, like Judas, they will betray me.” Why did these people switch teams?
Messianic Expectations for a Political Revolutionary
Now, here is where the preaching gets good. During Jesus’s time, people had desperate expectations for the messiah that the prophets of old had promised Israel. For centuries and generations, Israel was without their own king. They were always under the control of some foreign power, like Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome.
The messiah was supposed to be either a king, a priest, or a priestly king. But a recurring motif in messianic expectations was that the messiah would come to overthrow Rome. Not just in a temporally political way. Rome was the final boss that would stand against God.
If you read the apocalyptic writings of the time (such as the books of Enoch, the Animal Apocalypse, Revelation, and so on), the messiah, understood in different ways, was supposed to put an end to Roman domination and finally free the people of God from the throes of empire. (To read more on these texts and others, see Frederick J. Murphy’s Apocalypticism in the Bible and Its World.)
And so when Jesus the messiah came strolling into Jerusalem on a donkey (a horse would have been more fitting for a messianic priestly king!), these people were projecting these expectations onto Him. And these expectations were not exactly what Jesus came to fulfill.
But often times, we only stop there. We only go so far as to say, “Yes, Jesus did not come to be a revolutionary.” But then we are at a loss as to what exactly Jesus came to do in a political sense. So it is no wonder that we are at a loss when we ask ourselves how our faith relates to politics!
A False Dichotomy
As part of my research, I picked up a book by the American theologian Marcus Borg, titled Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus. Borg opens up the Introduction with a discussion of the scholarship on Jesus’s politics.
Borg discusses how during the middle of the twentieth century, Bible scholars like L.H. Marshall, W. Lillie, and A.H. M’Neile, and more famously Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer, forced Jesus into a false dichotomy of being either political or apolitical. (A false dichotomy refers to a false and limited choice between two options, when other options could be chosen. “You must either run a thousand miles, or never run at all,” is a false dichotomy. Because you could choose to run a mile, a block, or a couple of steps. There are more options than the two that I presented to you.)
Basically, these scholars argued that because Jesus didn’t meet people’s expectations of being a political revolutionary, that therefore He was not a political figure. But as Borg points out, this is not the case. If we think about all the different ways that one can be political, there are so many more options than being a revolutionary! One can be democratic, capitalist, communist, anarchist, and so on.
The question when it comes to the politics of Jesus is not whether Jesus is political, but rather how Jesus is political. Doesn’t that sound similar to the question we must ask ourselves?
A Foray into the Politics of Jesus
In the coming articles on this blog, we shall explore the politics of Jesus. The next article on Jesus’s politics will be on Jesus’s political context. We will explore the politics of the other Jewish sects that set the pace for messianic expectations of a coming messianic liberator.
Briefly, there were the Sadducees. Though they are not discussed in the Gospels as frequently as the Pharisees, the Sadducees were the most prominent and most powerful sect. They valued the Temple and saw its upkeep as the solution to Roman domination.
Next were the Pharisees. Readers of Scripture will be most familiar with this group. They stressed obedience to the Law. Their ideology was reminiscent of the authors of Deuteronomy: obedience to God is followed by blessing (for example, being an autonomous state) but disobedience is followed by curses (such as being dominated by foreign powers).
Then, there were the Essenes. This is the group that made up the Qumran community which preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls. Though the Essenes are famous for being isolationists, people who escape the broader society to be by themselves, segments of this sect remained in urban areas in Judea.
There were also the Zealots. These were more staunchly militants who sought to repeat the earlier revolt that allowed the Jews a brief period of self-rule (this is known as the Maccabean Revolt). The Zealot uprising against Rome in the 70s (not the 1970s) led to their mass suicide at the fortress of Masada. This defeat coincided with the disappearance of the Essenes at Qumran, leading historians to believe that the Essenes joined the militants. But more on that later.
Conclusion
Jesus lived among lovers of the status quo (Sadducees), moralists (Pharisees), separatists (Essenes), and militants (Zealots). He also lived among the mass majority of Jews who simply did not know what to do about the Roman occupation.
Just from this information alone, we can get a good idea on what Jesus’s politics was not. He didn’t suck up to Rome. He didn’t think that obedience to God would cause God to topple Caesar. Jesus didn’t want His followers to separate from society and disengage from political life. In His teachings, He forbid the use of violence.
But that doesn’t mean that He was not political. That is where we get it wrong. Just because Jesus was not political like that doesn’t mean He wasn’t political at all.
That being said, happy Holy Week! This week, we remember the last supper that Jesus ate with His disciples. We remember His agonizing prayers in the garden of Gethsemane that the Father might spare Him from the death He was about to die. Together, we meditate on His trial before Pilate, His humiliation and crucifixion at the hands of those He came to save. But we also remember His resurrection and the empty grave.
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