The politics of Jesus

[Johan Maurer]

April 3 2004 at 5:41 AM Johan   (no login)

This weekend (April 2-4, 2004) I'm teaching a short course at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre on "The Politics of Jesus." One of the books I'm using in the course is John Howard Yoder's book of the same name. Here (below) are some good excerpts from this book, followed in the next post by a political chronology of the Gospel of Luke, based on Yoder's book.

In the course, we're also dealing with the legitimacy of the very concept of a Jesus-centered politics, as well as the reliability of the written Gospels in advancing anything like a definable "politics of Jesus." I'd be glad to send anyone a booklist from the course.

58-60 … Spiritualistic-apologetic exegesis has always emphasized that the Jews, or the Romans, or the Zealot-minded disciples, had Jesus all wrong; he never really meant to bother the established order. Then the illegality of the proceedings and the impropriety of the accusation must be demonstrated. Even then it would need to be explained why a Jesus whose main concern was to be apolitical would be misunderstood in just this way instead of some other way, and would not protect everyone against such a radical misperception of his intent. Granted, the trials are recounted are irregular in procedure, and normal due process according to either Jewish or Roman law might have disculpated Jesus by virtue of the lack of armed insurgent actions. Still the events in the temple court and the language Jesus used were not calculated to avoid any impression of insurrectionary vision. Both Jewish and Roman authorities were defending themselves against a real threat. That the threat was not one of armed, violent revolt, and that it nonetheless bothered them to the point of their resorting to illegal procedures to counter it, is a proof of the political relevance of nonviolent tactics, not a proof that Pilate and Caiaphas were exceptionally dull or dishonorable men.

In a sketch of this kind there would be no profit in dealing with the ancient yet constantly recurring discussions of the legality of the condemnation and execution of Jesus by the Romans or by the Jews. Nor need we catalog the incessant efforts, by combining higher-critical, novelistic, and apologetic techniques in ingenious ways, to reconstruct a brand new picture of “how it really happened” which is much fuller, surer, and less complimentary to the Jews or to the Romans or to Jesus (or to the Gospel writers) than the canonical reports. It is perhaps significant – but to seek to prove even this much would divert us – that any such serious effort at hypothetical reconstruction does move toward taking more seriously the economic-political threat Jesus posed to the Romans than does the traditional ecclesiastical interpretation. But for our purposes the titulon on the cross is sufficient testimony. Whether the legal procedure was proper or not, whether or not the Jewish authorities shared a portion of responsibility, all that needs to be affirmed to make our point is that Jesus’ public career had been such as to make it quite thinkable that he would pose to the Roman Empire an apparent threat serious enough to justify his execution.

“We had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel” (24:21) is not just one more testimony to the disciples’ obtuse failure to get Jesus’ real point; it is an eyewitness report of the way Jesus had been heard. Jesus’ rebuke to the unseeing pair on the road to Emmaus was not that they had been looking for a kingdom, and should not have been. Their fault is that, just like Peter and Caesarea Philippi, they were failing to see that the suffering of the Messiah IS the inauguration of the kingdom. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” “Glory” here cannot mean the ascension, which has not been recounted yet, and in fact is not clearly described in Luke’s Gospel at all. Might in not then mean (as with the concept of “exaltation” in John’s Gospel) that the cross itself is seen as fulfilling the kingdom promise? Here at the cross is the man who loves his enemies, the man whose righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees, who being rich became poor, who gives his robe to those who took his cloak, who prays for those who despitefully use him. The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come.

62-63 Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political implications; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-Man whose divine status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e., promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships. His baptism is the inauguration and his cross is the culmination of that new regime in which his disciples are called to share. Men may choose to consider that kingdom as not real, or not relevant, or not possible, or not inviting; but no longer may we come to this choice in the name of systematic theology or honest hermeneutics. At this one point there is no difference between the Jesus of Historie and the Christ of Geschichte, or between Christ as God and Jesus as Man, or between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus (or between the Jesus of the canon and the Jesus of history). No such slicing can avoid his call to an ethic marked by the cross, a cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life.

 

A political outline of the Gospel of Luke, based on The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972. Footnotes omitted here.

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The case I am seeking to make has to do not narrowly with the New Testament text but with the modern ethicists who have assumed that the only way to get from the gospel story to ethics, from Bethlehem to Rome or to Washington or Saigon, was to leave the story behind. [Yoder, p. 25]

THE ANNUNCIATION Luke 1:46ff, 68ff, cf Hannah in 1 Samuel 2 [Yoder 26-27]

COMMISSIONING AND TESTING Luke 3:21-4:14 [Yoder 30-34]

We need not speculate about how explicitly in the mind of Jesus – or of John, or of Luke – these words from heaven were understood as an allusion to Psalm 2:7 or to Isaiah 42:1b. If the double allusion is clearly intended, this is then an explicit merging of the themes of enthronement (Ps. 2) and suffering servanthood (Isa. 42). Be that as it may, with or without explicit messianic cross-reference, we certainly have to do here with the conferring of a mission in history. “Thou art my Son” is not the definition or accreditation of a metaphysically defined status of sonship; it is the summons to a task. Jesus is commissioned to be, in history, in Palestine, the messianic son and servant, the bearer of the goodwill and the promise of God. This mission is then further defined by the testing into which Jesus moves immediately.

The tempter’s hypothetical syllogism, “If you are the Son of God, then …” is reasoning not from a concept of metaphysical sonship but from kingship.

ANOINTMENT Luke 4:14ff [Yoder 35-40]

… In the ordinary sense of his words Jesus, like Mary and like John, was announcing the imminent entrée en vigueur of a new regime whose marks would be that rich would give to the poor, the captives would be freed, and men would have a new mentality (metanoia), if they believed this news. [Yoder 39]

BACKLASH: [Yoder 40-41]

· AUTHORITY TO FORGIVE? Luke 5:21

· DISREPUTABLE ASSOCIATES 5:30

· SCHEMING BEGINS 6:11

PUBLIC ORGANIZING AND TEACHING Luke 6:12-16, 6:17-49 [Yoder 40]

BREAD IN THE DESERT: NOT THAT KIND OF KING… Luke 9:1-22 [Yoder 40]

COST OF DISCIPLESHIP: [Yoder 43-47]

· THE FIRE OF AN IMPATIENT JESUS Luke 12:49f

· DIVISION WITHIN THE FAMILY Luke 12:51-53

· MASSACRES, MISDEEDS, GRIEVANCES Luke 13:1-9

· ‘HEROD IS OUT TO KILL YOU’ Luke 13:31-35

There are … about the community of disciples those sociological traits most characteristic of those who set about to change society: a visible structured fellowship, a sober decision guaranteeing that the costs of commitment to the fellowship have been consciously accepted, and a clearly defined life style distinct from that of the crowd. This life style is different, not because of arbitrary rules separating the believer’s behavior from that of “normal people,” but because of the exceptionally normal quality of humanness to which the community is committed. The distinction is not a cultic or ritual separation, but rather a nonconformed quality of (“secular”) involvement in the life of the world. It thereby constitutes an unavoidable challenge to the powers that be and the beginning of a new set of social alternatives. [Yoder 46-47]

EPIPHANY IN THE TEMPLE Luke 19:36-46 [now it is clear that he must be killed… Yoder 47-53]

· ‘DAY BY DAY HE TAUGHT…’ 19:47-48

· ‘THE PARABLE WAS AIMED AT THEM’ 20:19

· ‘THEY WERE AFRAID OF THE PEOPLE’ 22:2

CONFRONTATION OF TWO SOCIAL SYSTEMS [Yoder 52-53]

· CHALLENGE TO JESUS’ AUTHORITY Luke 20:1-8

· UNFAITHFUL VINEYARD KEEPERS 20:9-18

· TAX TRAP 20:20-25

· SCRIBES WHO DEVOUR … 20:45-21:4

· TEMPLE WILL FALL 21:5-6

· COST OF ALLEGIANCE TO JESUS 21:12-19

· SERVANT LEADERSHIP 22:24-27

THIRD CHANCE TO RAISE A REBELLION Luke 22:24-53, especially v 38 regarding the two swords. [Yoder 56]

EXECUTION AND EXALTATION Luke 23-24 [Yoder 58-63]

 

Bill Samuel 

(Login BillSamuel)

Different than conventional politics April 3 2004, 7:00 PM 

I don't think Jesus was political in the conventional meaning of the term. But what he taught has profound political implications in that it uses a very different set of assumptions than any political order I've heard about. They are in fact inherently subversive of the political order without ever doing anything overtly political in the world's terms.

Bill Samuel, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

Member, Adelphi MM, Baltimore YM

Affiliate Member, Rockingham MM, Ohio YM

 

Johan 

(no login)

Re: Different than conventional politics April 4 2004, 11:23 AM 

In support of what you're saying, I appreciate David Bosch's summary in Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission - see the message topic "Books, Links, Quotes & other resources" and scroll down to "Quotations V" (March 16).

Our class included people of two very different approaches to the role of Jesus. All of us agreed that Jesus did not deliver a package of ideological or political instructions as information to transfer from himself to his followers. Many of us were more interested in the vision of the Kingdom that arose from his words and activities, and perhaps equally in the quality of the relationships he had with his disciples (and his opponents, too). The major difference among us, perhaps predictably, was in whether (to put it bluntly) Jesus was an interesting historical figure, perhaps even THE historical figure of the ages, whose actions and vision could be sought out and transferred to our own time, or whether the role and relationship he had with his disciples at that time can be experienced by us now.

Despite this major difference (and the majority were of the former opinion), we were able to compile a substantial list of the arguably political actions which we yearned for our own churches to engage in, and the obstacles we saw in church and society that would get in the way of accomplishing those actions. We spent the last session of our time together talking about the "Lamb's War" and the spiritual resources that would sustain our struggles to carry out the actions we wanted. However, a sense of unity that the leadership of the living Christ was the chief resource was not possible for us.