Rebellion

“Let not the rebellious exalt themselves.”

A line from an ancient lyric, aka Psalm 66:7

There exists a beautiful land, glorious and yet simple, where people live happily in their homes and raised their children in peace.  Once, years ago, there was a terrible dictator who forced people to pay high taxes and there was misery everywhere.  

But since that time the Kingdom of God came in, swept away the evil dictator, and since then there has been peace and harmony.  All people work together for a common purpose and they are all free from the evil of the past.  Every family has a strong leader and the children are raise in the ways of truth and justice.

            But there are still a few, occasionally, who oppose the ways of the Kingdom of God.  There are a few who feel, in their greed, that they do not have enough, so they steal from those who have more.  There is, once and again, those who hurt others in their anger.  There is, on occasion, those who are overwhelmed by lust and hate and rape their object of disdain.

            And once, just once, was a woman so that she would kidnap children, selling them to the Kingdom’s enemies.  She confessed to every one of her crimes, yet she remained unrepentant.  Here is the transcript of how justice was done:

Judge:  It is for the sake of your soul that we are concerned.  Please, repent and we will have leniency.

Johnson: I don’t deserve your leniency.

Judge: Then you admit your crimes?

Johnson: I admit that I kidnapped children.  And I would do so again. Happily.

Judge: Do you not realize that you are destroying our community?

Johnson: I do so gladly.

Judge: To take our children from us and hand them over to another nation is to undermine all we have worked for.

Johnson: Don’t I know it.

Judge: Please, all we want to know is where you have put these children.  We just want them restored to their parents.

Johnson: I will not let you know.

Judge: Think of the families you have torn apart!  If you could see the tears of the fathers!

Johnson: I would spit in their faces, if I ever met them or saw them on the street.

Judge: Why?  These men did not abuse the children…

Johnson: Ha!

Judge: Why do you doubt this?  We have their testimony, as well as the testimony of their brothers…

Johnson: Doubt it?  The children themselves told me of the abuse!  Did you ever take testimony of the wives?

Judge: Surely you would not completely trust the word of children?

Johnson: And why shouldn’t I?

Judge: From my twenty years of experience on the bench, I can tell you, children are not always clear about events in the past.  They misremember, they are easily swayed. 

Johnson: I can trust my own eyes when I see an eleven year old pregnant.

Judge: By her father?

Johnson: By her “husband”!

Judge: And what is wrong with that?

Johnson: Apart from the danger to herself because of the pregnancy?  The fact that The General married these children off to his soldiers and they raped little girls…

Judge: They were not raped

Johnson: Not according to your laws, no.  They were legally, forcibly, married to men three times their age and then taken into the bridal chamber and the men had their way with them.  No matter that the man already had two other wives.  No matter that the child has barely had her first period.

Judge: But they all have had their first period.

Johnson: And I’m sure that your male supervisors took great pleasure observing that.

Judge: Don’t be grotesque.

Johnson: You are the ones who are grotesque!  You have kidnapped small boys and girls...

Judge: We are not the kidnappers, you are.

Johnson: Where do these small children come from?  Just as many as die in battle or in childbirth you capture from villages you pass through!  The boys you convince to be mighty warriors for your Kingdom of God and the girls are married to the adult soldiers as prizes.  It is an affront to God!

Judge: You are an affront to God.  You are so self-righteous.  You are not humble before the authorities.

Johnson: I need not be humble before you, you hypocrite!  You support the rape of young girls by calling it “marriage,” and legalize the warping of innocent boys to be war machines by calling it “boot camp”.  You kill the righteous and make it all legal by declaring yourself a government.  You oppress the poor and blame them for your policies.  You bomb cities and declare them to be in rebellion.  The fact is—you are the rebel.  You are the ones who are opposed to God, not I.  Repent!

Judge: This trial is not about how our society is run, it is about your…

Johnson: Repent!

Judge: Ms. Johnson, I need to ask you to calm down…

Johnson: Repent of your sins before God!

Judge: Bailiffs please take her away.  Yes, go ahead and silence her.  Thank you.  Silence truly is golden… ha, ha.  Take her to the range and do what you must.   What is the next case?¹⁴

^Notes

^14.  This is based on true events happening in North Africa.  There is a group called God’s Army who kidnap children and train them to fight and the girls are given to soldiers to rape and to call their “wives”.  Some of these children escape and others are taken by brave saviors and brought into refugee camps.  In a corrupt society, that which is good is declared illegal and the good are killed for doing good. 

Law of Justice #1: All rebellion is punishable by separation.

The soul who sins will die. But if a man is righteous and practices justice and righteousness…he is righteous and will surely live.

An ancient aphorism, also known as Ezekiel 18:4-5, 9

For any society to run by justice, there must be agreed upon mores and laws, based upon what is good for society at large.  These laws are created and enforced by authorities.  Sin is a rejection of the law of the authorities by disobedience.  Rebellion is an all-out rejection of the authority of society by a blatant disregard for that authority to uphold the standards of society. Thus, for there to be justice in society, there must be acceptance of authority.  To reject authority is to reject what is good for society.

Those who reject society are those who are dangerous to justice.  The rebellious must then be separated from society.  This separation could be prison, it could be exile from the society or it could be death.  Separation is not rehabilitation, although it could be if done with gentleness, nor is it strictly punishment.  It is protecting society from those who would harm it.  The one who harms society cannot be a part of society.

            However, we all have more than one authority.  God is the ultimate authority, while governments are a lesser authority and a soldier or police officer a lesser one yet.  If a lesser authority commands the rebellion against the higher authority, then it is the lesser authority in rebellion.  To participate in the rebellion of a lesser authority is to rebel against the higher authority.¹³

^Notes

13. Some might feel uncomfortable with this description of the law, which is, fundamentally, “Do the crime, pay the time.”  It seems so… conservative Republican, so fundamentalist Christian.  So far from the message of Jesus.  What we need to remember is that this principle, also known as the principle of karma, is the foundation of all spirituality.  There is almost no spirituality that stays with this principle, which says that grace is simply unnecessary.  But it is the principle of government justice.  This is why spirituality is always popular, because this principle is how the world actually works.  Religion and spirituality is really the idea that the world can work in some other way than karma.                       Since I’ve got your attention here, I want to point out a social and ethical experiment that was made about this very subject.  It was done to indicate whether cheaters or the altruistic succeed in the long run.  It was a game that was developed in which some people would always cheat, some people would always be generous and some people would only do bad if bad was done to them, and some would do good if good was done to them.  It is that third group that had the most success in game.  It was concluded that, ethically, then that approach—the karmic approach—is the successful one for life.  

The Prisoner's Dilemma

The Story of Stories

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

A rather dense paragraph of an ancient theological treatise, also known as Romans 3:23-26

A long time ago in a land far, far away there was a story.  It was, so to speak, the greatest story ever told, and best of all, it was true.  It was politically and culturally subversive, and explained much of what was wrong with the world, and pointed toward a solution that could really work.  It was told in many ways and many languages and thousands of people believed in this story.  It was beautiful, and the reception of this subversive story by so many was marvelous.

            But there was a problem.  This story was translated into many languages, and crossed many cultures and so it wasn’t as clearly understood by later generations as it was the first.  The story was still openly received, and was clearly subversive, and it was still beautiful.  But there was some disagreement about the point of the story.  Some people thought it was judicial, some thought it was religious, and some thought it was ethical. That’s often the way of stories.  They get over-analyzed and the further from the original cultural context it gets, the harder it is to say what the story is really about.

It was as if the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” was told in the context of a culture in which red hoods was a clear symbol of radical communism.  The details of the story would still remain the same, but the point of the story could be radically different.   Suddenly, Red becomes a naïve socialist activist, the wolf is the capitalist system, the grandmother is the helpless proletariat and the hunter is the Revolution.  Or, if someone is a capitalist sympathizer, the whole story turns upside-down and the wolf is the victim and the hunter the evil Red Army.

This is what happened to the story of the cross.⁴

In different contexts the story of Jesus became a variety of things that wasn’t intended by the original storytellers.⁵  To be honest, the original point was SO subversive, SO radical that it couldn’t be understood at all by those not trained to look for it.  Thus, the greatest minds in each culture set about deciphering the meaning of the Code of the Cross.  And many of these meanings continue to have significance to today.

In the Ancient world, only a hundred years or so lived a Christian named Alexander.⁶  Alexander was a Gentile convert from paganism.  And frankly, he understood paganism pretty well.  Gods in the heavens controlled armies and major events on earth, creating chaos.   Gods need to be placated and appeased in order to reduce that chaos to a minimum.  However, many of these gods are capricious and just evil-minded, so pain, suffering, disease and death exist.  Alexander then heard the gospel and realized that all of these gods are actually under the control of this mojo-evil god named Satan.  And there is only one God in heaven, the Father, who has mercy on humanity, and who rules over Satan and all these evil gods.  Jesus died to save us from our sins, which we committed under the rule of these gods.  Alexander believed this wonderful story, and became a Christian—a completely subversive act in his day.

But he was still confused about one thing—how could Jesus dying actually save us from our sins?  Yes, Alexander believed it was true, but it was all a little confusing.  The sacrifices were used to placate these evil gods—what could Jesus’ sacrifice do to deliver us from sins?  Alexander read most of the New Testament, but he was still confused.  Then, in prayer one day, it was revealed to him what the story actually meant.

The real enemy of the story is Satan, the king of the gods, himself.  Although the devil appears in the gospels rarely, all the evil characters were ultimately representing him.  It is clear that all of these people, except Jesus himself, were enslaved to Satan— trapped, tortured and lied to.  How did they get trapped?  By their sin, of course!  People’s sin against God transferred the rule under which they live from God to Satan.  This is because Satan is the Father’s prosecuting attorney and executioner.  Since sin results in death, God has the responsibility to take all of sinful humanity—all of humanity, in fact—and give them over to Satan. 

But God was not content to leave humanity in this place, because he loved them so.  He wanted them to not be under Satan, but under His own rule, His kingdom.  But what could he do?  Satan had legal rule over humanity, due to their sin.  Ah, says God the Father, I know!  The only way to release the captive is to placate the evil god, to offer him a ransom for the captives.  What price would be equivalent for all humanity?  Why, the death of his son, of course.  And so God sent his son to die to pay the price to Satan to release humanity from captivity.  And since Satan actually arranged Jesus’ death, he was ultimately defeated as ruler of humanity.  Thus, through Jesus’ death, all of the pagan gods are defeated.  And because Jesus willingly died, he becomes the Lord of all heavens at the side of God the Father.⁷

This is a great interpretation, and very attractive to those who were released from pagan beliefs.  Alexander passed this understanding of Jesus’ death on.  It moved like wildfire among the second century churches.  Alexander never wrote this story down because the most effective means of communication in his day was not books, but oratory.  So the story was passed on word of mouth.  It wasn’t until Ignatius and Tertullian and others that this understanding was placed in a book.  And by then, it so represented the meaning of the “gospel” that it was never actually explained, just referred to.

Many, many years later it was felt that Alexander’s explanation was inadequate.  It was okay, in the eyes of many, but it had some holes in it.  Over the years the story was revised and changed and adjusted and tweaked in such minor ways, that no one really thought they were changing it at all.  Just making an adjustment.  Finally, a guy named Anselm realized that the explanation of Jesus sacrifice was really quite different from what the early Christian writers understood.   So he thought he would put it all down in one full story, along with all necessary explanations. 

The story Anselm told had quite a different beginning point from Alexander’s.  The significant figure that was harming humanity was not seen as Satan, as much as God the Father.  This is not because God the Father hated humanity, on the contrary, he had a real emotional attachment to humanity.  But, you see, God is a judge, and his hands are tied by the laws of the universe.  The law of the universe is that if anyone acts in rebellion against the judge—God himself—then they must die.  It is as simple as that.  It is an automatic judicial process.  God the Father would like to change the rules, but he can’t.  Death must be paid for sin.

However, God also knew that the law had a loophole.  You see, the way the law was worded—Death is the penalty for sin—doesn’t clearly say whose death was required.  Ah ha! says God.  This means that another can die for humanity.  But who would pay this ultimate price?  It must be someone innocent—someone who doesn’t have to pay for their own death.  And it must be someone powerful—powerful enough that the one death would be payment enough for all of humanity.  Who would do?  Well, actually, thinks God—it must be Me.  No one else can pay the price required.

 Of course, God the Father can’t die—he’s awful busy judging and sustaining the universe. So it conveniently works that God actually has three persons—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  So the Father caused the Son to become a human and to die, so that all of humanity might be delivered from death, the penalty for their sin.⁹

This is a powerful story, and one that took the Christian world on fire—even as Alexander’s did—and endures as the most popular understanding of Jesus’ death to this very day.  This story became so significant culturally that it has been forgotten by the masses of believers in it that as an interpretation, it is not actually found in the New Testament. 

And the story has been deemed inadequate by many Christians over the years.¹⁰  They do not like the image of God as judge, enforcing the ultimate death and torture of every human being.  They do not like the fact that believing in Jesus’ death as the substitution for their penalty of sin doesn’t change people to be any better than before they believed in it.  In other words, it speaks of how the penalty for sin is set aside, but not sin itself.  So much of this story—as powerful as it is—seems so inadequate.

Abelard was a teacher and monk who didn’t live too many years apart from Anselm.  He had a pretty spicy personal life that was told all throughout the medieval world—he and his girl Heloise—a nun— really had the hots for each other and wanted to get married.  They chose to remain faithful to their vows of chastity, rather than break their covenant with God.  Heloise was never completely satisfied with this solution, but Abelard—so deeply involved in theological circles—became as content as a cow in a field of clover and a nice looking bull just across the way. 

Perhaps because he was trying so hard to forget Heloise, or perhaps his love for her colored all of his theology, Abelard took his frustrations out on Anselm’s understanding of Jesus’ death.  Every time he read it, it made him upset.  Where, Abelard complained, is the love?  Isn’t God love?  God is full of mercy and forgiveness and redemption—so why does Anselm’s story of atonement so lacking in love?  It is a story of judicial wisdom, perhaps, and of theological mysticism, but there is no passion, no emotion.  Also, Abelard says, everyone who believes in this story is grateful to such a God, but they remain in their sin.  They have received an unbelievable grace, but there is no requirement to do anything different, to act as God desires us to act.

And so, Abelard wrote in Latin to his other companions in theology, let us set aside the myth of God’s jurisprudence.  God’s desire is not so much that we have a penalty paid, but that we change behavior.  Jesus’ primary message is not “receive grace” but “repent”.  Jesus was sent, not as a scapegoat, a sacrifice for someone else’s sin—after all, sacrifices really did nothing in reality.  Rather, Jesus was sent as the ultimate example.  The ultimate example of love.  Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself to show humanity that we need to live for others, not for ourselves.  Jesus’ example is so extreme that anyone who desires to be like him even to the smallest degree would so love others that their lives would be changed.  Jesus’ example was so powerful, that many saints lived their lives according to his principles and they showed others how the Christian life should be lived.¹¹ Abelard was seen to be a heretic by many.¹² 

And the debate rages on, for centuries, for millennia, as to the real meaning of Jesus’ death.  One story gets passed for another which is revised for another.  But the truth is so hard to find.  Unless, of course, one looks at the gospels. 

The “gospel” is often understood to be whatever interpretation of Jesus’ death is accepted by those who speak of it.  Proof texts are pulled out, the more vague the better.  And, somehow, those who believe in that interpretation are considered to be “saved”.  Not, God forbid, if they just believe in Jesus himself, but in penile substitution, or Christus victor or ethical example atonement.  As if often the case, Jesus is often traded in for the latest fad “gospel” that is to preached, enforced and sold. 

The gospels are left behind.  The first, best communication of Jesus is not understood, and so deemed inadequate.  Few recommend the open reading of the gospels themselves without a guide to interpret it in accordance with the “right” interpretation.  Why is this?  Because the gospels do not clearly communicate any of these atonement theories that have been described above.  Satan, in the gospels, is a minor character, who seems to take even more of a back seat during the passion of Christ than even the small role he plays during Jesus’ ministry.  In the gospels, God is not represented as needing to punish, but as forgiving—and angry against some groups, but not humanity as a whole.  In the gospels, love is a central theme of ethics, but it is rarely mentioned in conjunction with Jesus’ death—and there is certainly something else going on besides a debate about ethics at the heart of Jesus’ death.  As it has often been stated, who would kill a guy who just said “wouldn’t it be nice if we loved each other more?” 

There has got to be something more.  Something we’ve been missing.  Something subversive—because Jesus was killed as a rebel.  Something radical—because Jesus had to die for it.  Something beautiful—because Jesus’ death was meant to deliver us.  And there is.  


Notes

4.            Well, actually, the story of Jesus never did become the story of the socialists. Depending on how you want to define "socialist", anyway.  Jesus’ story could never be the story of the radical communists without some serious rewrite because he willingly submitted to his enemies.  Marxism, Leninism, Maoism—they needed to promote the action of a violent, end-of-the-world-like revolution.  Thus, while quietly denying the passiveness of Jesus, there were some who would uphold the story of the Exodus, especially in Latin America.  Moses becomes the great leader and the violent themes become the revolution itself.  Thus was Liberation Theology born.

5.            Some would say that the New Testament clearly describes the purpose of Jesus’ death.  That may be true, but most theologians, when describing the theology of Jesus’ death, ends up describing in detail a certain word or two that isn’t understood well.  Or they focus on one word that has many meanings—whether in Greek or in English—and then demands that the word have one meaning.  It is problematic when theology sounds like a used car salesman, highlighting certain aspects so we don’t notice others.

6.            This isn’t his real name.  Frankly, we don’t know what his real name is, or if it was a single person.  However, we are going to use the name Alexander because it’s convenient for us.  Also, because we like the alliteration. Sorry.  I assume you’re reading this book because you like your theology covered with a good dollop of entertaining fiction.  That’s what I like, anyway.

7.            This interpretation of Jesus’ death is called the Christus Victor argument, and some form of it is usually understood to be the common interpretation of Jesus death from at least the time of the second century AD.  Passages that confirm this view are: Genesis 3; Colossians 2:13-15; I John 3:8; Ephesians 2:1-7; Matt 5:25-26; Matt 12:29; Hebrews 2:14.

8.            Anselm was a real person, in case you were wondering.  And he really wrote a book.  It’s called “Why Did God Become A Man” He wrote other books as well, but that’s the important one here.

9.            Verses for Anselm’s view: Anselm’s view is the most prevalent view among Protestants today, and the most heard in “gospel presentations”.   II Corinthians 5:21; Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; I John 2:2; 4:10.  Many use half of Paul’s letter to the Romans to support this view: a. God’s wrath is against the whole world—Gentiles and Jews—because of their sin (Romans 1-3); Through faith in Jesus’ death, God has established a means of salvation (Romans 4-5);  Because of faith in Jesus’ death, God has given everyone the ability to live rightly before God (Romans 6-8). 

10.          The largest theological difficulty with Anselm’s interpretation is the wrath of God that demands the destruction of every single individual without hope of God’s forgiveness without a sacrifice—it proposes an “Old Testament God” that the Hebrew Scriptures don’t propose.  Another difficulty is the acceptance of human sacrifice.  But biblically, the difficulty with the view is the assumptions that get put with certain words.  The term “for our sin” is assumed to mean “in place of us”, as if an exchange of punishments is assumed, when a more natural reading would be “because of our sin”.  Another problem is the Greek word ilastrarios which is commonly translated “propitiation”, which is usually understood as a sacrifice to appease a god’s wrath.  However, the word, in a general sense, means “the means to forgiveness” (see Louw and Nida, and the UBS lexicon).   Thus, the passages are seeing Jesus’ death, in a general sense, being the means of forgiveness, but they don’t explain how that is done.

11.          Some verses for Abelard’s view: John 15:13; Mark 8:34; Phil 2:3-11; I Peter 2:19-24.  One of the main difficulties with Abelard’s view is that he is saying that Jesus’ death teaches us how to love, while these verses all promote Jesus’ death as an example for sacrifice and humility.

12.          One of the main critiques of Abelard’s view is that it doesn’t really discuss past sin, or how Jesus obtains us freedom from that.  Abelard’s view seems most separated from a Scriptural discussion of the atonement, except that it does express a theme of imitation that is discussed in the New Testament.

The Realist

The difference between the world and the true believer in Jesus is sacrifice for others. 

The world has as their primary doctrine that they want it all, but it can’t hurt too badly.  Sure, they will send their sons off to war, and they will mortgage their house and rack up debt to go to school.  But all of this is on the blind hope that “it will all come out okay in the end.”  They will eventually pay off the mortgage.  They will get a great job to pay off school debts.  They will see their sons return from war.  It will all be okay.

            The Christian, frankly, is the greater realist.  Sons die in war.  School debts aren’t always repaid.  Houses are taken away.  Suffering is simply a part of this world, and if this world is all that there is, then there ain’t no justice.  The innocent really do spend their lives in prison.  Civilians really are the tragic victims of war.  The wealthy really do get more than they deserve.  Children really are the number one target of death.  That’s reality.

            The world can’t handle that, so they have to dress it up, make the facts more palatable.  Existentialism is finding the meaning of life in a life that is pointless, for no particular reason than that the other options aren’t acceptable.  The evening news tells us the hard facts—but not the hard facts that are really painful.  They tell us how many Americans died in Iraq today, but not how many Iraqis.  Not how many children died of AIDS today.  They celebrate the ball going down in Times Square, not grieving over the mass murder of drunken driving that same night.  Humans are a cowardly lot.

            But Jesus doesn’t endure cowardice.  He tells it like it is, and insists that we see reality as it is.  He tells us, “If you want to follow me, count the cost—and you will find that it is more than you want to pay.”  Sacrifice, he insists, is the only true way to gain the ultimate joy.  Cold hard facts.  The follower of Jesus is persecuted.  They lose their housing. They take up poverty. They are hated by many.  They get rejected by those whom they love. They get tortured, raped and killed.  This isn’t just some masochistic wishful thinking.  It’s reality.  And it’s ugly.

            Of course, the Christian repeats the mantra of “it will all come out okay in the end” as well.  But they don’t see “the end” as being in this life, this age of Orwellian self-deception, CEOs, push-button warfare, economic selfishness, celebrity rulers, blind nationalism, half-hearted bureaucratic welfare and immoral religionists.  The “all right” cannot be found in the midst of such a world system.  Rather “the end” is a matter of God’s making, God’s creation, after all this is over.

            And the only way to achieve this end is sacrifice.  Sacrifice of this world, this life, this false American hope.  Sacrifice of all our parents lived to give us.  Sacrifice of all the martial martyrs died to offer us.  To obtain God’s end, we must be anawim—rejects, outcasts, poverty-stricken fanatics.  We must be like Abraham.  We must be like Jesus.  Only then will we be able to walk in God’s presence and call it “home.” 

            The message of the whole Bible is that to receive God’s salvation, one must be anawim:

           

To obtain God’s security, one must be vulnerable.

            To obtain God’s wealth, one must be poor.

            To obtain God’s comfort, one must be suffering.

            To obtain God’s fellowship, one must be lonely.

            To obtain God’s utopia, one must first live in hell.

            

And for those of us who live pretty well, this means we have to give up an awful lot.  God’s eternal life means recognizing our good life and getting rid of it.

            To sacrifice, one might be called irresponsible and insane, like Abraham was.  To sacrifice, one might have to give up all that is good to accept all that is awful and shameful as the Son did when he became human.  To sacrifice, one might be accepting a life of what is unacceptable to those around us.  But it is all for that which is greater than we can now touch or see.  We will obtain the greater by surrendering the lesser.

How does one do this?  There are many ways, depending on who one rubs shoulders with, the lifestyle one lives.

 
One could be like Francis who would refuse to keep anything for himself, if it was lacked by any needy person he met.  Thus, he was given a coat, and he would pass it on to the first coatless person he met.
 
We could be like Philemon, who opened his house to whatever people in the church needed a place to live.
 
We could be like Dorothy Day, who wrote for the sake of the needy, published for only a penny and opened homes for the poor to live in until they got on their feet.
 

We could be like Jean Vanier , who created communities in which the developmentally disabled would choose to live with “abled” people who choose to live with them.  Or we could be like – who, as a famous spiritual author, chose to live in such a community.
 
We could be like Peter Waldo, who heard and obeyed Jesus’ clear statement to “sell your possessions and give to the poor” although his wealth was great, and then trained the poor to preach Jesus’ word, in opposition to the sermons of the wealthy pastors.
 
We could be like the hundreds of workers for Mennonite Central Committee, who gave up their professions to use their skills for the poor around the world at a minimal income.
 
We could be Shane Claiborne and his community who chose to live amongst the poor in Philadelphia, so the plight of the poor could be their plight.
 

We could live in community with the poor, like Viv Gregg or the many workers through InnerChange.
 
We could be like James and learn how to transform our church to be a place which is open to the vulnerability of the needy, giving honor to them above the honor we give to the wealthy, granting work and a fair wage to those who need it most.
 

We could be like Anawim Christian Community and create a space for the needy to worship and live and create their own solutions.
 
We could be like Blanchet Farms and create communities for the needy to work for themselves.

The possibilities are endless.

Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Jesus?

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.

Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.

Ancient poetry, otherwise known as Luke 6:20-26

Let’s look at the beatitudes again.

 “Ahhh,” everyone sighs.  “The beatitudes.  How lovely.  How comforting.” 

How easy to ignore.  How misunderstood. 

We are all familiar with the words in Matthew.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are the meek.  Blessed are the merciful.”  And on and on.  And we love them because they seem so poetic and so loving and so helpful to us who live quiet lives of desperation in the pursuit of just living normal lives without poverty, without hunger, with some levels of justice and peace.  We will buy plaques of the phrases and place them upon our walls to remind us of how loving and gentle Jesus’ teaching is. 

But those weren’t the beatitudes I was talking about. 

There’s another set, equally spoken by Jesus, found in Luke.  They are certainly the same set of sayings, but they seem… different.  They seem harsher, more difficult to accept, not the kind of Jesus who would comfort us.

After reading Luke’s version, we might be saying, “Who is this guy?  This isn’t my usual preacher!  No… good preachers don’t talk like this.  They use words like ‘beseech’ and ‘Almighty’ and when they say ‘comfort’ it sounds like they really mean it.  This guy, though, he sounds tough, almost mean.  I mean, who would go to a church that sounded like this?  People who were desperate might—or people that had issues with wealth—but not people who could afford to build a nice church building and give a guy a good salary and a parsonage.  No wonder Jesus had no place to lay his head!  Who would listen to this drivel more than once?  The adage makes sense—A prophet is someone who isn’t invited to dinner twice.”

            While we can critique the style or question Jesus’ propriety, we do need to remember the positive points.  First of all, it is direct.  And simple—no one can misunderstand it.  And if it is true, then the message is significant.  Oh, and one other point—Jesus is our Lord.  And these are the words of Jesus. 

            These words aren’t just there as a jumping point for our understanding of spiritual matters.  They aren’t  supposed to be a cover page for our traditional values—whether conservative (“Life is tough and you’ve got to be tough back”) or liberal (“We should really be nicer to the poor”).  They aren’t there to be politely ignored in preference to other passages that we prefer.  Nor does it help for us to retranslate them into something more palatable (“Maybe it could say, ‘Gosh, what a difficult position you rich people are in.’ ”).

            How significantly we treat these words is how significantly we treat Jesus.  This teaching is at the core of what Jesus had to say, and all that he said and did flows from this core.  If we are to accept Jesus, we need to accept this basic creed. 

            What is Jesus speaking of?  What really is the point?  If there is a creed, what would it look like, were it based on this text?  Let’s break it down into pieces:

1.      “We believe in an Almighty God who will judge everyone on the earth”

Judgment isn’t really popular to talk about.  To speak of hell or eternal dishonor or lake of fire isn’t really a popular topic, so many Christians just avoid it.  Honestly, many people have abused hellfire for their own agenda.  So speaking about God’s judgement is kind of like an uncle who was convicted of child molestation, and though he hasn’t done anything like it since, no one talks about him and at Christmas he just finds a corner to sit in and watches the proceedings from a distance. 

            But Jesus firmly believed in a judgment of God that would paste “good” and “bad” on every single person on earth.  Well, let me rephrase that a bit.  The problem with saying “good” or its antonym is that we have such distinct notions in our head about what constitutes this “not-evil.”  The early twentieth century bases of judgment seem so trite now: no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no playing cards, no skirts above the lower calf, no fraternizing with actors.   It seems trite because the values have changed so much.

            When Jesus speaks of “good”, he really means “honorable.”  At the onset, it seems so subjective.  To have honor among Nazis is to be dissed by the masses.  But Jesus gives this qualifier—the only person who counts, in giving honor, is God.  I mean, if Simon Cowell determines that you suck, who really cares?  But if God makes the determination that you are cool, or that you just don’t make the cut, then it is a more serious judgment.

            Thus, judgment is boiled down to this: God saying to one group, “You’re my kind of people” and saying to another group, “You don’t really make the cut for me.”  The first group, after the determination of the Judge, gains possession of a new nation, which is ruled directly by God, and becomes the central nation over it’s empire of the earth.  The second group, certainly the larger, is exiled from that nation and they make up the outer fringes.  Considering that almost all of the merciful are within the bounds of the Nation of God, the outer fringes just don’t sound like fun.

            This kind of judgment isn’t comfortable to a group of Christians who believe that the term “mercy” and “judgement” cannot even date, let alone live together.  They claim that Jesus hung out with lowlifes (true) and so he, as God’s representative, refuse to judge them (almost true), and so Jesus’ mercy has nothing to do with judging people (wow, you need to read Matthew 23 again).  The fact is that every sub group of Judaism of the first century (and after) determined that there must be a line drawn separating those on the “in” with God and those on the “outs”.  Jesus was no different.³⁶  What made Jesus so radical is not that he erased the line, but where he placed the line.  Which is the rest of our creed.

2.      “We believe that the disciples of Jesus who are poor and persecuted will, at God’s judgement,  obtain the greatest blessings of God.

This is the central point of both sets of beatitudes—in Matthew and Luke.  This is not to deny that those who act in a “pure and righteous” manner will not gain God’s blessings.  This is indicated in Matthew’s list, by giving a special line to the “pure in heart”.  But for Matthew—as well as for Luke in the broader context—it isn’t enough to be “pure”.  Sure, keeping your legs closed until God approves and not bowing down before a moldy statue is good and all, but it doesn’t equate the whole life that God is looking for. 

            God is actually looking for the folks who are so pure, so loving, so bold about Jesus, that they get in trouble for it.  This “trouble” looks differently in different cases.  Perhaps the trouble is rejection by people—Jesus certainly said that his community should expect that.³⁷  But other kinds of trouble also pop up.  There will be weeping in the Christian camp, and poverty.  Some of this may be as a result of persecution, some of this will be due to the system set up to exclude Jesus people from the blessings of this world.  The fact that Jesus’ people don’t collect possessions for themselves, but give them to the needy³⁸; that they aren’t cut-throat, but humble in their leadership³⁹; that they depend on God for their needs, even if those needs are just barely met⁴⁰; that they do good to those who hurt them, which may give their enemies cause to think that they can get away with anything⁴¹—that might have something to do with it.  Jesus’ requirement is a lifestyle of vulnerability.  Let’s face it, Jesus’ way isn’t easy, and he doesn’t put up well with compromise.  God might as well put up a sign, “Kingdom of God: Fanatics need only apply.”

            3. “We believe that the anawim should be envied, and that if we are persecuted or obtain poverty for God’s sake, we should celebrate and feel honored.”

Saints are cool—from a distance.  Some of the stories are great.  Sebastian who was pierced by a hundred arrows for speaking about Jesus.  Michael Sattler who was tortured, had his tongue cut out and then was drowned for teaching the Bible.  Peter and John who were brought to court and beaten for healing a man in Jesus’ name.  Anthony who lived in graveyards and the desert to live a life of purity.  The stories are inspiring, but, ultimately, not for us.  Not for real people.

            We are the people who pray, “Lord, teach us patience, but not if it hurts too much.”  We are the ones who want to live for God, as long as it fits into our overall plan of achieving the American Dream.  We are the ones who cry out “All for Jesus I surrender”, but in practice, we limit our surrender to that which accommodates our society’s limits and morality.

            If someone falls into poverty or persecution because of their stand for Jesus, how do we respond?  Most people in the church would recommend a compromise, a standing down.  “You don’t have to suffer like that—God doesn’t want that for you.”  The church’s positions is: Stand for Jesus, but sit down if your feet get sore.  Or, if there seems to be true injustice, there are the Jay Seculas and Rutherford Institutes who will take the persecutors to court and make them feel economic pain for the injustice of persecuting others.

            Of course, Jesus’ command is a little different.  How do we respond to persecution and pain and anguish for the sake of our religion?  Have a party.  Crank up the dancing music.  Set out the little food that you need little forks to eat it with.  Jesus’ bumper sticker is: Celebrate Poverty. 

            To be obedient to Jesus, it isn’t enough to just grit our teeth in difficulties, we need to rejoice, be happy, throw a party, invite our friends over to get ecstatic with us, watch the Wizard of Oz with the dip in bowls the shape of ruby slippers.  “It’s the happy day!” Jesus says.  “The day you get beat up and killed for God, that’s the day we’ve all been waiting for.  The day you get sick and die because you were handing out tracts in a blizzard—that’s the party day!  The day your airplane crashes because you were going to share the gospel with people in the jungle—that’s the dancing day!  The day you get kicked out of your apartment because you’ve been inviting the mentally ill to worship God with you there—Live it up!  Get some horn blowers and fireworks and make it seem like New Year’s day, because it’s better than that!  It’s the day you’re assured of being right before God!”

            4. “We believe that the disciples of Jesus who are conspicuously wealthy and honored today will,  at God’s judgment, obtain sorrow and rejection.”

The real question is not, however, what happens to those who suffer for God.  That’s a no-brainer.  We’re all pretty sure of that, God will take care of them.  They’ve got a place with God.  Okay, that’s fine.  But what about all those who hang with God and do all the religious things, but they don’t suffer?  Perhaps they are doing the… um… opposite of suffering in the present life.  There are people in God who are doing really well.

            And, let’s face it, these non-suffering folks, the ones who have an excellent bank account (“for many years, frankly, and the accumulated interest is really very healthy and can’t be given away willy-nilly”), and a really nice home (“meant really for family and friends, it just wouldn’t be comfortable to have strangers stay there”), and a car that almost never breaks down (“but I couldn’t pick up hitchhikers, because, well, who knows what they would do”) and a line of credit that doesn’t end (“and we have to take care as to what we invest in, because otherwise we couldn’t be trusted financially”)—these non-suffering folk are really the ones who pays the bills in the church. 

These aren’t vulnerable in this world, but they do their part, right?  They show up on Sunday, sing as loud as anyone else, head committees, pay for the new building, makes sure the pastor has a decent salary.  So, God has his place for them, right?

            Absolutely.  God has a place for them.  It’s called “the outer darkness.” 

            Paul and Barnabas at one point set out to do some revival meetings.  The churches they had planted were struggling spiritually, so the apostles had a powerful message to give to them.  The summary we have received is one sentence, “We shall only enter God’s kingdom through much tribulation.”⁴²  In other words, the ONLY door to God’s ultimate blessing is difficulty, sacrifice, persecution and hardship.  There isn’t any other way.

            This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t bless people on earth.  Oh, my, I have seen many people blessed.  Many rich people today are blessed in their lifetimes beyond the dreams of those who had lived on earth for more than ten thousand years of history.  I mean, indoor plumbing, a health care system that can actually cure more illness than it causes, the ability to fill rooms with such variety of entertainment as has never been seen, never without food, never thirsty, never homeless.  Such a plenty has never been seen in the history of the world for so many people.  This is God’s blessing.  And for those who are content to accept this blessing, this is all they will get.

•             For those who have all their needs met, and never meet hunger—God has for them a place of hunger.
•             For those who surround themselves with pleasantries and joy—God has for them a place of tragedy.
•             For those who reward themselves for the simple act of living—God will strip away all trophies.
•             For those who secure themselves by assuring their own wealth and separation from the poor—God will make them poor and expose them to eternal insecurity.

            No, this isn’t funny.  This isn’t entertaining.  It’s scary.  This is worse than Alien, worse than the Exorcist.  This is the real spiritual existence.  And for those who have all the world has to give—they should be grabbing someone’s arm, because the music is getting ominous.

            5. “We believe that Jesus’ disciples who are honored and wealthy should set these benefits aside for the sake of our needy counterparts, so they can receive true honor and wealth.”

But Jesus’ beatitudes aren’t one of those horror movies that finishes with “The End?”  They are more like an epic move—Laurence of Arabia, Gone With The Wind, Top Gun—the center of which you find yourself almost weeping and breathing hard in your empathy with the hero(ine).  But in the end, through some terrible tragedies and sacrifices, the hero(ine) survives and achieves glorious honor.  This is the story Jesus is telling as well.

           And the story is the same for the poor and the wealthy: the way to God’s honor and blessing and kingdom is through becoming the anawim.  That route is simpler for the poor and persecuted—they get handed their tribulation on a silver platter.  They don’t have to exercise their will to suffer or sacrifice.  For the rich, the famous, the good-looking, the educated, the white middle class folks, those who are granted all the best of the world: the route to God’s blessing is difficult. They have to give up all the blessing they have been granted.

            Have you ever worked for the needy?  Those who are really needy, those whom our society calls “the bottom of the barrel”, for whom no real help exists? To be friends with the friendless, to offer yourself to the needy, it is a daily sacrifice.  You constantly struggle with how much to give, are you being taken advantage of, what is the real need, who of all the worthies should you give to with the limited resources you have?  Inevitably, you give more than you realistically can, and personal and social conflicts arise.  Your health fails.  Your family and friends whom you trusted no longer find you to be trustworthy.  You become an alien to all those whom you have loved.  You become the avoided, the dispossessed.  The one who surrenders themselves to the needy becomes one with the needy.  The one who sacrifices for the anawim becomes the anawim themselves.

            This is the challenge to the wealthy, the well-loved, the sheltered.  Expose yourself to those whom you most fear—those whose needs far outweigh your ability to help them.  Perhaps you will gain great satisfaction doing the work.  Perhaps you will obtain prizes and be Time’s Man of the Year. 

But let me be brutally honest (as if I hadn't been before).  Of the few of you who make the choice to sacrifice all you have for the needy, to obtain God’s glory instead of security and inner peace—you will be put under the bulldozer.  You will go to doctors and they won’t be able to tell you what’s wrong.  You will be disinherited by proper society.  You will have friends who tell you “you’ve just got to stop, for your own sake” but God won’t let you.  You will wonder why you are exhausted all the time.  You will go to bed each night as if you had been beaten.⁴³  You will walk the streets and cry out to God, “Just give me rest!” but the rest never seems to come.  The needy themselves will blame you for not giving enough.  You will rack your brain to find ways to really help them, to really meet their true needs, and find no solution.  You will cry and weep and mourn and wonder why God put you in this place.  To do this work.  To have what seems to be a pointless life.

Now I’ll tell you a secret.  If you sacrifice yourself and feel all this—you’ve made it.  You’re in.  It’s time to celebrate.  It’s time to party.  Yeah, it seems pointless.  To Jeremiah speaking about the destruction of Jerusalem seems pointless because no one he could see would listen.  To David it all seemed pointless because his theocratic monarchy came crashing around his ears.  To the disciples of Jesus it all seemed pointless because their Lord, their Savior was dying on a cross.  Yeah, it all seems worthless—without resurrection.  Without God. 

“Vanity, vanity, all it vanity—everything done under the sun is vanity.”  That’s Scripture.  That’s God’s word.  But, you see, if we embrace the vanity of God, the foolishness of God, the sacrifice of ourselves for the poor and needy, the life of the anawim—then we get all that exists above the sun.  Under the sun? Screw under the sun.  I’m looking for the best retirement plan that exists.  Sure, the salary’s lousy.  But the benefits—nothing can compare to them.  And the only way to obtain them is to sacrifice one’s wealth and to stand with the anawim.  

Notes

36. The polar opposites of Jesus is that although he welcomed sinners and the outcast into the kingdom (Mark 2:16-17; Luke 19:10), yet he also condemned people to hell on the smallest sins, such as insulting another and looking at the opposite sex with lust (Matthew 5:22, 28-29).  Some people see Jesus as being the most lenient, while others see him as being the most strict.  Jesus’ point was that there are two requirements to enter into God’s utopia (Mark 1:15):  The first is repentance.  This is recognizing the evil one has done and doing what one can to change it.  This is what the religious leaders refused to do, because they refused to agree with Jesus about what sin is.  Sin, according to Jesus, is refusing to give to the needy, acting hypocritically, and making excuses for one’s sinful actions (Luke 16:19-23; Matthew 13:41-42; Matthew 5:21-29).  Thus, Jesus said, those who sinned terribly but recognized their need for repentance would enter God’s utopia, but those who refused to recognize their own personal (not theological) sin would be left out (Matthew 21:31-32).  The second requirement is to trust God to live a non-survival lifestyle in the midst of a world trying to survive. That’s what this chapter’s about.  Read on!

37. Jesus promised persecution to his disciples.  John 15:18-16:3; Matthew 10:34-39; Mark 8:31-38.

38. Luke 12:33; Acts 2:44-45.

39. Luke 22:25-27

40. Matthew 6:25-34.

41. Matthew 5:38-48.

42. Acts 14:22.  Also, see II Timothy 3:12.

43. Which is a quote from Louis Guanella.