Jesus, compassion and activism

by Levy Abad

During my days off, I spend my time at the Garden City Food Court and listen to the conversations of my friends. People like to talk about the hope for change in the old country because of the rampant corruption, and sometimes, Jesus Christ is mentioned in the conversation. It makes me wonder if there is still hope for the motherland to break free from bondage - the bondage of ideology/religion of empire that lives off the blood and suffering of our people?

Too often, when Jesus becomes the topic, people construe Him and His teachings as just being prayerful. They behave in the passive sense and leave the struggle for social transformation to different sorts of reactionary ideology. Some blame the church for being political, forgetting that silence in the midst of injustice is also political. Usually, they equate faith with heavenly matters, meaning “out of this world,” like a “pie in the sky in the great by and by.” This thinking reminds me of the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus said, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” Heaven in this sense is just the sky that envelopes the world. As far as the first-century understanding of this is concerned, this means that the kingdom will reign in this world -a kingdom of compassion, mercy and justice. If Jesus came down to tabernacle in this world, He is like a seed sown, and His kingdom will grow in this world as the divine milieu of his praxis. The “new earth and new heaven” will come down, as the prophet Isaiah said in 65:17-25.

Looking closely at the activities of Jesus, He frequently pronounces “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15) every time He does acts of mercy or miracles, like feeding the multitude, curing the leper, giving sight to the blind or raising the dead (Luke 4:18-19). He also told his disciples, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). In Capernaum, Jesus read from the scroll His social agenda and historical mission: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners…” (Isaiah 61:1). This was announced by Jesus in the context of the Roman Empire’s oppressive rule. Without the darkness of Empire, what would it mean?

When we look back, Jesus recruited disciples and taught them to “Love God and love your neighbour as yourself,” as contrasted with the values of the Empire, “worship mammon and dominate the weak.” That is why most of his disciples were persecuted, and Jesus himself was crucified. It is worth noting that crucifixion was a punishment meted out to subversives in first-century Judea. In the present time, some so-called church leaders wallow in wealth and power and preach theological/philosophical systems that never take the mission statement of Jesus as a point of departure for praxis. People nowadays are so confused and deceived. Most think that the otherworldly ideas were what Jesus taught us - that the Kingdom of God will be somewhere out there according to Platonic understanding or philosophy- instead of bringing the light of Jesus’ teaching to break the darkness of empire and greed.

In the old country, a lot of priests and pastors who took after the activist praxis of Jesus were vilified, demonized, and worse, tortured and murdered by corrupt regimes with their armed minions, while others were rewarded with wealth and reactionary peace and fame for conformity.

Jesus’ activism takes Luke 4:18-19 as a point of departure, with the will of the Father in mind as expressed in Love God above all and love thy neighbour as thyself. In addition, He announced His perspective of the new heaven and new earth or the coming of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1-5). Hence, Jesus’ activism poses the challenge today: whether we help usher in the Kingdom of God in a liberative and redemptive manner in fulfillment of the phrase, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Lord’s Prayer), or be in cahoots with Empire and spiritual darkness? What do you think?