Sermon Library
“The Politics of Jesus”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
March 14, 2010
Service Theme: Lent IV - 2010
Source: Mark 11: 12-19
Lent IV – 2010 March 14, 2010
The Politics of Jesus
Mark 11: 12 – 19
Do you accept Jesus as your political Lord and Savior? This is the essential question Borg and Crossan ask in their book The Last Week. This question is a provocative twist to the more typical question, “Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” This later and well known question is typically loaded with very specific interpretation and expectations. Borg and Crossan believe that a personal relationship with Jesus as the Christ is important, but add what they believe as an equally important question, “Do you accept Jesus as your political Lord and Savior?”
Borg and Crossan have added this question and dimension to the life of Jesus because of their vast historical and contextual research. One of Jesus’ primary purposes was to counter the controlling and dominant Roman kingdom of Ceaser Augustus and to re-usher in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of justice, equality and peace.
Savior
I am going to lift up a specific example of this, but before I do, let me make a comment on the word Savior according to Borg and Crossan in their book called The First Christmas. “In the first century Savior did not yet mean what it means for many Christians today. Because Christians have for centuries spoken of Jesus as saving us from our sins through his death on the cross, many Christians automatically connect Jesus as savior with atonement for sins. This concept is a much later projection. When Christ was crucified he was specifically crucified for all of his conflicts with the authorities. There was no concept of dying for sins when Jesus was crucified.
When the Bible was written, the primary meaning of the term Savior is ‘rescuer,’ and/or ‘deliverer.’ For example, Psalms speaks of God as Israel’s Savior who had done great things in Egypt . . . and awesome deeds by the Red Seas. So also Hosea connects God as savior to the exodus; ‘Yet I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior.’”
There are many other such references to this term which means deliverer. A Savior who provides a sacrifice for sin is a much later projection predominantly by the Apostle Paul and concretized in the Nicene Creed. To look specifically during the time of Jesus life – it has different connotations, and specifically political connotations.
Last week I again mentioned the two processions into Jerusalem: the pomp and circumstance of the militaristic entrance of Governor Pontius Pilate through the main gate of the city; and the humble and passive entrance of Jesus on a donkey at the back door of the city. The next day Jesus enters the temple. This is the specific example I wish to mention of the political role played and epitomized by the historical Jesus.
The Next Day and Entering the Temple
The very next verse in Mark is “Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? but you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.”
Traditional Interpretation
We typically and traditionally interpret this popular passage as Jesus being angry at people using and abusing the temple to sell their wares for personal and selfish profit. And the people who were exchanging money for foreigners to pay taxes during Passover were doing so at an illegal profit. And they were also selling doves for the temple sacrifices. We have used this popular text to discredit the concept of sacrifice. Jesus was mad about all of this and so mad that he allowed his anger or righteous indignation to be seen by all.
New Intepretation
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan provide a more specific and historical perspective to this passage which places this incident in a different light and greater understanding. They say that the fig tree illustration just before this report of Jesus entering the temple is a specific prelude to the point of the temple. Just as the fig tree did not produce real fruit so also did the people at the temple not produce real fruit.
According to Borg and Crossan the concept of animal or blood sacrifice was not a bad thing and a most acceptable way of relating to God at the time. Sacrifice is a common yet complicated concept historically and contemporarily. The etymology of the term sacrifice is from the Latin sacrum facere. The word “facere” means “to make.” The word “sacrum” means sacred. The word sacrifice simply means to “make sacred.” Borg and Crossan do not believe Jesus’ anger was over the selling of doves to be sacrificed. Nor do they think it was necessarily over the money changers because they were providing a necessary service as taxes needed conversion to Roman coinage. And it would be customary to do this in the temple square for it was considered both a holy temple and a Roman seat.
Instead Borg and Crossan focus in on the term “house of prayer” taken from Isaiah and the term “den of robbers” more than likely borrowed from Jeremiah. Jeremiah has made accusations about worshipping without practice. He writes, “If you truly amend your ways and your doing, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever . . . Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jeremiah 7: 5-7, 11)
In this context the meaning of the phrase “den of robbers” is pretty clear. The people’s everyday injustice makes them robbers, and they think the temple is their safe house, den, hideaway, or place of security. The temple is not the place where the robbery occurs, but the place the robbers go for refuge.” When people are just performing their ritual without acts of charity and compassion they are robbing the word of God.
“Jeremiah is not inventing anything new with that indictment. There was an ancient prophetic tradition in which God insisted not just on justice and worship, but on justice over worship. God had repeatedly said as reported by the prophet, ‘I reject your worship because of your lack of justice,’ but never, ‘I reject your justice because of your lack of worship.’”
Jesus would have been well aware of this relatively recent prophecy of Micah. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6: 6-8)
Jesus’ primary concern was not necessarily the exchange of money, the selling of doves or this even being conducted in the temple square, but it was the lack of justice and equality. People perform sacrifices, but do not practice compassion. This is why the symbol of the fig tree immediately before the scene at the temple is purposeful by Mark. The fig tree and the temple coalesce. The tree was shut down for lack of the fruit Jesus demanded – and so also was the temple shut down for the lack of deeds after words.
“There is nothing wrong with prayer and sacrifice – they are commanded in Torah. That is not the problem. But God is a God of justice and righteousness and when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God’s temple – or, for us today, God’s church. Jesus’s action in the temple was a symbolic fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophetic threat about its divine destruction if worship [and ritual] substituted for justice.”
The Entrance Into Jerusalem Along With The Entrance Into The Temple
Combining the meaning of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and then his entrance into the temple, Borg and Crossan conclude that “those action-word combinations proclaim the already present kingdom of God against both the already present Roman Imperial power and the already present Jewish high-priestly collaboration. Jerusalem had to be retaken by a nonviolent messiah rather than by a violent revolution, and the temple ritural had to empower justice rather than excuse one from it. What is involved for Jesus is an absolute criticism not only of violent domination, but any religious collaboration with it. In that criticism, Jesus stands with the prophets of Israel such as Zechariah for the anti-imperial entry against violence and Jeremiah for the anti-temple action against injustice, but he also stands against those forms of Christianity that were used throughout the centuries to support imperial violence and injustice.”
Peace and Justice
Peace and justice, righteousness and compassion, have always been essential themes throughout the Hebrew testaments and in the life of Jesus. It is significant to have Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan place the passion of Holy Week within historical, political and contextual perspective. It brings greater meaning to the life of Jesus. An important part of Jesus’ life was to, shall I say, remind people of their religious tradition and spiritual faith.
Without minimizing anyone’s belief in Easter and even Resurrection, we might consider not minimizing the message of Easter to only meaning “On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Borg and Crossan historically explain the cultural conflicts between Jesus and the authorities. What happens if we consider the politics of Jesus as importantly as we do the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus?
Jesus spoke much more about establishing the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven on earth than he did about resurrection. In fact, he spoke about it one hundred more times if you count them up in all four gospels. Is it possible that Palm Sunday and Holy Week are as much, if not more, about peace and justice, than dying for sins and resurrection? I am beginning to believe it is and it should make a difference in how we live today and not just where we will be later. What do you think?
The Politics of Jesus
I woke up abruptly at 5 o’clock on Saturday morning with a thought out of the blue, having no idea where it could have come from. I was working on my sermon and bulletin just before going to bed, so maybe it was not unusual to wake up thinking about it as well. Actually this happens often, but my mind woke me up with a very specific book which I read maybe thirty years ago. The title was The Politics of Jesus. I got out of bed and went to my wall of books in my small office and within a few minutes I found it and began to read.
The author writes in the beginning, “My hypothesis is that the ministry and the claims of Jesus are best understood as presenting to men not the avoidance of political options, but one particular social-political-ethical option.” He concludes this book by saying, “A social style characterized by the creation of a new community and the rejection of violence of any kind is the theme of New Testament proclamation from beginning to end, from right to left. The cross of Christ is the model of Christian social and political efficacy; the power of God for those who believe.”
Now the end of this story is to say that this book is by an author whom I have met and visited at his home in Goshen, Indiana where he was President of Goshen Biblical Seminary and Director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies. His name is John Yoder, a man and a teacher who lived his life as he taught his students. This Chapel has some strong Mennonite influences and I firmly believe the question presented this morning is one in which the founders would affirm.
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior? I hope you have in the way in which we have described Jesus this morning. And then I also hope you have accepted Jesus Christ as your political savior as well. One will make a difference in how we believe. The other will make a difference in how we live. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 8111
http://www.aspenchapel.org