Jesus, a critique of empire

by Levy Abad

Lately, a friend explained to me that a Christian should not engage in politics. He told me that Jesus as the Messiah is politically neutral. Really?

Jesus reminds me of the messianic idea and all the priests, pastors, and lay people martyred for taking the radical messianic road. But who and what is a Messiah? Simply, a Messiah is somebody anointed by God to be his messenger, like Moses and David. Moses led the Jewish slaves out of Egyptian captivity towards a promised land, a land that should be characterized as full of justice and peace (shalom) for all its inhabitants, whether Jews or non-Jews.

Ironically, the strange milieu for the Messiah’s birth is the Roman Empire’s rule over the Levant, based on subjugation, violence, and greed. In the midst of this, Jesus preached love, mercy, justice, freedom, liberation, and redemption. For what would be the meaning of this messianic theme in the absence of darkness, which it is supposed to subvert as Light of the World? What’s the purpose of justice if justice reigns already? To announce justice is to renounce injustice and empire!

The message of the Messiah sown in the context of injustice will grow and respond in different ways, vis-à-vis the empire that maintains an oppressive status quo. Ergo, a follower of the Messiah may retreat, cower out of weakness, but in principle, do not acquiesce to the empire.

The movement of the Messiah must advance, no matter how protracted, toward the Isaiahnic paradigm of New Heavens and New Earth in the “World to come” (Olam ha Ba). This reminds me of the line in the Lord’s Prayer, “ Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Through the ages, the messianic theme and praxis have wrestled with the reality of empire, privileges, and class. Often, people water down the message of freedom, liberation, and redemption, and try to make it otherworldly, like “a pie in the sky.”

True to gnostic heresies, passages like Matthew 22:21, “Give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s,” will be construed in the light of the later ideology of the separation of Church and State as propounded by the French Revolution of the 18th century. Such understanding is remotely distant from the context of the Maccabean revolt of 166 BC. (See “The Kingdom of God with Rt Rev Dr Tom Wright” on YouTube.)

Passages like John 18:36, where Jesus said: My kingdom is not from this world, based on the Septuagint (isn’t the sort that grows in this world in Greek according to N.T. Wright), were made into “not of this world.” This change in wording for me serves to justify inertia, passivity, and complicity with the imperial violence of Pax Romana. All these twists, witting or unwitting, of the messianic imperative of justice and peace reinforce the ideology of regimes up to the present and justify repressing dissent. Unfortunately, even believers at times become tools of the empire or openly clerico fascist apologists of it.

Usually, empires want to be first, and just like their minions, they want to be the first around the banquet to savour wealth and power, while Jesus said, “If you want to be first, be the last” (Mark 9:35), letting the oppressed and the marginalized appreciate mercy, justice, and peace. This was reiterated in Luke 4:18-19 when Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, announcing his social program, “the Good News to the Poor.” Note that messianic values always run counter to the empire.

Indeed, doing charity like feeding the poor is okay. However, a critique of the system that engenders squalor from the perspective of messianic values is what is required and completes the circle, inspired by the Beatitudes of Jesus.

So, after all the ranting about empires, what should be the response to imperialism and its gruesome and murderous form - neoliberalism, in our present century? Should a follower of the Messiah dance with the greedy oligarchs (the one percent) or should they stand idly by waiting for the bread to fall from the sky? Should the followers of the Messiah organize a resistance movement with justice and peace as a perspective, converging and intersecting with movements working essentially toward the same end?