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Today is the day after Easter, when Christians have walked the Holy Week Way of the Cross and celebrated Jesus' triumphant
resurrection. The cross and resurrection is typically presented as a path of personal transformation, and that it is -- an
invitation to die to an egocentric way of life in order to rise to a new life based on grace, the unmerited love of God for
us all, liberating people to live in the compassionate Spirit of Jesus.
But the crucifixion was also a political event. Jesus was executed with two other rebels as enemies of the Roman state.
Death on the cross was a form of imperial terrorism saved for those who were convicted of subverting Roman law and order.
Crucifixion was not simply capital punishment, but an especially cruel punishment reserved for people like runaway slaves
or rebel insurgents. The upright portion of the crosses were permanent fixtures, situated just outside a city gate on a hill
or prominent site. Part of the horror was that there was usually nothing left of the body for burial, the corpse hanging
low enough for scavenging dogs to join the carrion birds. Rome hoped the extreme measures would serve as a deterrent to others.
What about Jesus was seen as a threat to Rome and the ruling authorities? Jesus' words and actions challenged the central
economic and political institutions of his day. He attracted followers and took them to Jerusalem during the Passover feast,
a time when Israel remembered its liberation from another empire.
Jesus' central metaphor was a political one -- the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is what life would be like if God
were in charge rather than Caesar. His teaching raised the contrast between God's rule and what scholars call the "domination
systems" -- rule by a few, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation. He proclaimed God's justice in the face
of the injustice of the empire and its allies.
The stories of Holy Week include Jesus' entrance on Palm Sunday fulfilling Zechariah's prophecy that a king would enter
Jerusalem riding a donkey. "He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle
bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations." (Zechariah 9:10) The procession with royal trappings
happened right under the tower of the Roman military headquarters. The political significance could not be missed.
The next day Jesus shut down the business of Rome's Jewish collaborators, challenging the Temple authorities, calling
them robbers who were defrauding the people's devotion. His parable of the greedy tenants indicted these wealthy families
who were stealing the produce of God's vineyard, Israel. When they tried to trap him with a question about taxes, he discredited
them with their possession of the profane coinage of the emperor, and he challenged them with a reminder that everything belongs
to God.
Jesus' teaching about debt forgiveness and daily bread exposed the injustice of exploitative economic practices that victimized
peasants and concentrated land holdings and wealth into the hands of a few elites. Jesus announced a nonviolent alternative
Kingdom of God where everyone has enough and systems are just. An inclusive table hospitality became the symbol of his fellowship.
The central characteristic of his life and message was compassion: personal compassion exercised as love; corporate compassion
manifested as justice. Jesus' Kingdom of God was manifestly anti-empire. Those who profited from the empire could not let
his challenge stand.
In a way there was nothing unusual about the reaction of the authorities. There is no reason to think of the Temple administrators
as wicked people. Rome was not so bad as empires go. But injustice and inequalities are just the way domination systems
behave. It is part of the normalcy of civilization for the rich to become richer and the poor to be weak and ignored. Power
structures maintain their power in whatever ways they deem necessary. This is so normal that it is hardly recognized as injustice.
Indeed, it is the "sin of the world" for which Jesus died.
But Easter proclaims that God has vindicated Jesus. Jesus lives. God has spoken a decisive "Yes" to Jesus
and to his Kingdom and a decisive "No" to those who killed him and their systems of domination. The early church
recognized the political significance of his life by making their confessional cry "Jesus is Lord." "Jesus
is Lord" means that the Emperor is not. In Jesus, the politics of empire is replaced by the politics of compassion.
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