Jesus=Justice=Love=Peace
Is This Who We Are Expecting?

Anton DeWet

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

There are a million different interpretations of who Jesus was today. Everyone who claims him also claims the right to explain him to others. The question in this time of Christmas is, “Is this who we are expecting?”

You see, even here in a small community such as this congregation we all have different views of who Jesus was. But generally there are a few trends which are relevant to you and me.

Very generally speaking, when one looks at what institutional Christianity has done with the Jesus of history you see that he was created as an entity that can bring answers to our paranoia and fearfulness about life. He becomes a parachute out of trouble and fear.

The result is, in the words of  John Petty[1], that…

“Religion is perceived as judgmental, clueless about its own hypocrisy,
hostile to basic science–and curiously obsessed with sex, at least as much as the popular culture it so often criticizes.  When “Christian leaders” appear on television, you can bet they’re getting ready to bash somebody for something. There’s always somebody (else) who is not “pure” and needs to get shaped up.”

Very early on as the early church took shape they appear to have taken his life and twisted it into a story of miracles and superstition which the generations of church leaders and scholars through the millennia mostly took and elaborated upon coming up with the most improbable of dogmas and teachings that end up leaving us fearful of God but promising us the way to everlasting bliss, snugly condemning everyone else to everlasting damnation.

On the other hand we who reject such fundamentalism and religious fantasy often create a new Jesus who equally snugly fits into our world and our expectations. Usually this Jesus loves our country and understands that we have no option but to allow the status quo to reign supreme, especially when we convince ourselves that its worse elsewhere, which is true. This Jesus validates us all the time. He’s OK…I’m OK. We domesticate Jesus.

The question is whether there can ever be a truly balanced position regarding who Jesus really is? Is it even possible? Is there any way of finding a more probable middle ground that can offer us a foundation upon which we can build our hope?

Perhaps not. Perhaps our inbuilt cultural and personal prejudices will always skew our understanding of Jesus. But at least, we ought to try to understand who he was and what the implication of his life and teachings were, if we are going to claim the title of Christian…or follower of Christ.

I am convinced that his life was lived in great tension with the status quo of his time. He was a rebel. He was a straight shooter. But he was someone who had grasped the greatness of what we so easily call God…that mysterious power which we can never qualify or quantify. He was someone who saw the blindness of the theories of God as expressed through his religious contemporaries. And his followers eventually understood, but it cost his life and the trauma of this loss to open their eyes to see what he had been preaching and teaching while he was with them.

That is why Paul can proclaim as he does in this letter to the church in Corinth, that of all the spiritual qualities we can ever hope to master, love is the ultimate goal.

This is no great revelation by Paul. The Jesus legacy was one of defying all the traditions…all the theology…all the dogmas…all the institutional religious layers of power…and simply proclaiming that enlightenment was needed to recognize that LOVE and God were synonyms. Nothing less and nothing more.

Simple.

Many progressive Christians end at this point with a “yeah! No can we go home!?”

Not so fast. Not so fast.

This is the prickly part of our faith. Mostly its easy to commit to a religious vision of love if that is a shallow, sentimental love that really just acts to make us all feel OK about ourselves, assures us that our challenges in life are understandable and generally let’s us off the hook for any clear commitment of any kind.

But that cannot be what Jesus lived and died for.

What was it in his quest to have LOVE reign supreme that led to a regime of brutal oppressors scheme with those who hated them, namely the religious establishment in Jerusalem, and end up having him killed?

It was their understanding that the LOVE he taught and preached was a power that threatened to disrupt their society. Imagine that. A LOVE so powerful that it would destroy their status quo.

Jesus disrupted the religious establishment telling people that the old traditions of their religion were irrelevant if the principle of love did not come first. He literally made gourmet burgers out of all the sacred cows in his faith community. Out went everything people always thought was the foundations of their faith expressions and in came the new and unexpected demand that LOVE must trump everything.

In a world of totally one-sided distribution of economic power he attacks those who have so much and who continue to heap financial wealth upon their already accumulated wealth at the cost of those who are destined to remain poor and powerless. As Jerusalem’s power grew so the Galilee became further and further impoverished.

Jesus taught the principle of love but he also taught that a declaration of love without justice is a hollow sounding noise that only hurts one’s ears. It’s a useless expression of nothing. With the LOVE he proclaimed came consequences.

Consequences…now there is an unpopular religious thought among religious progressives.

There is a great danger for us who claim to follow Jesus in a new way that our faith becomes not a way of life, but a life of tokenism. In other words, its easy to talk about love…its very different actually claiming it and embracing it and making it the mainstay of our daily life and our everyday life choices.

This love that Jesus spoke of and which those in power feared so much is a love that disrupts the lives of everyone. It shakes us loose from our everyday life and it demands action from us. It’s a choice we have to make sooner or later. It does not tolerate those who sit on the fence.

Personally it draws us into a new form of living. A sacrificial life where we are called to truly lay our lives on the line for others. We cannot proclaim Christ with candles and pretty sanctuaries without also embracing the pain of this world and addressing it in practical ways. Tokenism is the scourge of this new life in Christ…you know, that thing we do that is just enough to still our conscience in stead of investing ourselves in others.

This new love is not just about our personal prayer time—its not just about supporting the local faith community—its not just about a ten buck gift to Wimauma—its also about our commitment to rethink our lives and our life choices every day.

It drives us to question whether we have truly looked at the poor and done something to help them, especially in a society who despises those who fall behind for whatever reason.

It drives us to question whether it is fair that some people cannot get medical care while others get way too much of it.

It drives us to question whether we have not gone too far in our worship of the ideology of wealth creation through a market system that has become brutal and demeaning. No human being is worth millions of dollars while others cannot afford to get decent healthcare. This is wrong.

No society that invests billions upon billions in military spending while education lags behind and social care of the poor and the emotionally disturbed gets snubbed can expect a healthy future.

There were consequences for Jesus in proclaiming that love overcomes the greed he experienced in his society. It should trouble us deeply if we find the status quo in our society too appealing.

Beware Friends, that we do not turn Jesus into a shallow, sentimental lucky charm who loves us and loves our way of life and all the things we do and asks very little in return because that is a Jesus of superstition, not faith.

Of course Jesus loves and but he ruthlessly demolished the established traditions of his time demanding a new commitment from his followers. A commitment that demands that we forgive each other when we sin against each other, that we learn to turn the other cheek when we are damaged by others, that we make peace in the face of strife and war, that we sacrifice our own comfort to ensure that others have enough of the basic needs such as food and shelter.

Perhaps this is not the Jesus we were hoping for this Christmas but it is the Christ of our faith. There is no others way for us but to face the reality that this man brought to our world. Either you and I accept that or we become part of the throngs who have personalized faith into a kind of superstition that is truly irrelevant to others, to our community and ultimately, to the idea that God is ultimate expression of hope.

Perhaps you are wondering what it is that you can still do to add to your life of faith. Mother Teresa[2] says:

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

Good works are a link that forms a chain.

Do not wait for leaders, do it alone; person to person.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

We live in times that have laden us heavily with the burden of anxiety. For some these days are filled with pain and even uncertainty. For others the uncertainty of our future as the world seems so angry and violent. For some there is alienation among families, painful experiences that linger. I do believe I speak for all of us when I say that we all seek peace. Peace for this world…peace for our country…peace in our hearts. On Thursday we greet the Prince of Peace and his birth automatically reminds us that we are deeply loved…deeply precious and valued…and that we are the expression of God’s love…made in God’s image.

Now let us go from here in preparation to live that witness of love in practical ways…with God’s Spirit of encouragement calling us forward into the future. Amen.

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[1] John Petty, http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/ December 17, 2009.
[2] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mother_teresa.html