Barney Wiget's Blog, page 32

The Will To Hope

In the dark I began to realize that Jesus was nearby, furiously digging through the rubble of my caved-in life, slaughtering my adversaries. It seemed that as I worshipped he poured his refreshing Spirit into my darkness and gave me the will to hope for a better day.

God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything, even—and maybe especially—in the deep fathoming of our fallings and failures. Richard Rohr

[These are the final paragraphs describing a life-changing vision I had during the darkest season of my life including a divorce, a broken neck, and a cancer diagnosis. See the book for the rest of the story…]

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway

Holy Obedient Activists

Jesus the Activist (Part 4 of 4)

“It should not surprise us that the One we follow was executed as a criminal, and that there will be times when we are called to break unjust laws ourselves.” Tim Keller

Augustine famously said, “An unjust law is no law at all.” Sometimes good people have to break bad laws and when possible, change those laws. Jesus always prioritized people over precepts. Since he did only what he saw the Father doing, his “civil disobedience” could be better described as “holy obedience.”

In Part 1 we set the stage with “What Makes Jesus Angry?” In a word the answer is: “injustice.” When the powerful take advantage of the powerless, Jesus gets angry! Then in Part 2 we saw the sociopolitical reason Jesus turned tables over and drove out the animals from their Temple stalls. In Part 3 we showed how Jesus was anything but passive in his nonviolent revolution. Lastly, let’s look at the right, no, the “mandate” we have as his followers to be holy obedient activists.

You’ve probably noticed that there are protests all around the globe right now. Though they’re not all for the same reasons, by the same side of the “aisle” (so to speak), or necessarily reflect the way of Jesus, the protestors want something from their government that they are currently not receiving.

The protests in Asia, Europe, South America, the Caribbean and the Middle East reflect a worldwide frustration at inequality, corrupt governments and broken promises. Some describe them as “last straw” riots. In Hong Kong, it was an extradition dispute involving a murder suspect. In Beirut, it was a proposed tax. In Chile, it was a hike in subway fares. None of which sound very big by themselves, but they came at a time following a long line of other disappointments big and small.

I myself have attended a number of marches, protests, and demonstrations for such things as more strict gun control laws, to end family separations at our southern border, promoting better earth-care practices, and opposing late-term abortions. Protest of one kind of another about injustice is not only a right in our country but a mandate for people of conscience.

In their protests, marches, and boycotts civil rights activists in the 60s did something quite similar to what Jesus did a the temple. In the 1964 March on Washington, for instance, they demanded that America live up to its creed of “liberty and justice for all.” They were nonviolent yet unyielding in their disruption of the systemic racial and class injustice in the country. During his speech that day in essence Martin Luther King Jr. called the men and women sitting in seats of power a “den of thieves.” He claimed that they had issued to the poor and the black community a “bad check… a check marked ‘Insufficient Funds.’” He preached that the “inalienable rights” of all people didn’t seem to apply to them.

“But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice!”

It’s in these collective statements of outrage that the powers are exposed and the powerless are empowered and has contributed to social change. This is what the God-inspired prophetic voice, the Church, the “conscience of the state,” does. It speaks to injustice, to inequitable systems and calls for them to be brought into closer alignment with the intentions of our founding fathers and the Author and Finisher of our faith.

In the same way that Jesus’ symbolic foot-washing episode invites us to “go and do likewise,” his confrontation with the powers by shutting down the Temple that day was an example for us to follow as well. Though we have no record of the disciples turning over Temple tables later on, we can surmise that something sunk into their consciences that day. Later when they included Paul into their apostolic ranks the only thing they wanted him to be sure to do was to “remember the poor, which was the very thing [he] had been eager to do all along.” (Galatians 2:10).

I’m of the opinion that such a Spirit-infused outrage toward the unjust systems of governance and Mammon-addicted culture is what we need to see today in the Church. Such a task is never popular with those who prefer to preserve their earthly privilege and conserve their prosperity at the expense of those endowed with less socioeconomic clout. For Jesus and a long line of other God-called agitators it meant rejection, ostracism, and death. He made it quite clear that anyone who follows in his steps are signing up for some of the same.

Those who confront the empire’s sins and speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves are not well-liked among those at the top of the social heap. Clarence Jordan asks why American Christians are not persecuted to the extent the early Church members were. “Is it because unchristian Americans are that much better than unchristian Romans, or is our light so dim that the tormentor cannot see it? What are the things we do that are worth persecuting?”

Those who find power in the truth are obligated to speak truth to power. “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’” says Martin Luther King Jr. “Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there are times when you must take a stand that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but you must do it because it is right.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “Apple is about changing the world. It became clear to me a number of years ago that you don’t do that by staying quiet about things that matter.” In many ways I see the Church muzzled and afraid to give voice to the things that matter.

If not us, who?

If not here, where?

If not now, when?

It seems to me that God is challenging us to confront our culture rather than cower in the corner. We might have to turn over some tables, gum up the corrupt system, and say, “No more! Do you hear me? No more!” We can’t confront the system and be cozy with it at the same time. It’s hard to turn over the tables at which we ourselves sit.

As John F. Kennedy said, “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.”

Questions? Thoughts? Objections?

Civilly Disobedient

Jesus the Activist (Part 3 of 4)

“Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land…skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” (Amos 8:4-6)

In Parts 1 and 2 we talked about the sociopolitical realities of first century Israel and what Jesus said and did about it. I’m proposing that Jesus’ saving work, first and foremost impacts our sinful souls but also confronts our sinful systems of injustice. He’s a Savior and a Revolutionary.

As a prophetic announcement to Rome and its wealthy Jewish cronies he aimed his Temple takeover at Israel’s center of power, calling them out to repent of their religious trespasses and social cruelties. Their profiteering enterprise had abused the public’s trust and exploited them in the name of God! Jesus couldn’t let it go on unchecked. It wasn’t the vendors he blamed most for turning his house into a thieves’ den, but the people at the top of the food chain, the culprits behind the curtain who profited most at the expense of those who had the least.

Jewish peasants from the north in Galilee who could scrape enough money together to make the long trek to Jerusalem for yearly pilgrimage “would have found themselves in the humiliating position of handing over their meager sacrifices to wealthy Temple priests,” says Reza Aslan, “some of whom may have owned the very lands these peasants and farmers labored on back home.”

By this one act of prophetic protest Jesus confronted those in power at the very seat of their power, discredited their authority, and gave a voice to the voiceless. The dramatic action by one of their very own kind, a peasant carpenter from Nazareth, communicated loud and clear that they too could challenge those who dominated them. Even the poorest of the poor had the right and the power to call the powers to account.

Vendors hawking souvenirs, sacrificial offerings at exorbitant prices, and exchange rate-gouging, all to make a buck at the expense of the poor sincere worshipper. What’s not to dislike about that?

As evidenced by the failed hit that Herod placed on the baby Jesus, from the very beginning his mere existence challenged those in power. This one Temple episode spoke truth to power and may well have been the final camel’s spine-shattering stalk of straw that led to his execution. He exposed the empire’s crooked economy and threatened the sovereignty of its emperor. Jesus would have to go and be made an example of in order to quell any other subversive movements that he might foment.

In order to retain their unchallenged dominance, the Jewish aristocracy collaborated with the Roman power structure in a plan to take him out. When they finally came for him they made an enormous show of force with a cohort of armed Roman soldiers and an angry crowd of Jews. They had no intention of letting this seditious menace slip through their fingers again.

The Temple was meant to function as “a house of prayer for all the nations,” not as a corrupt religious institution complicit with the plight of the poor and marginalized. In other words, instead of taking advantage of the poor, the Temple was a place they should be praying and providing for the poor from all nations.

With the thieves all on the run, the only ones left were the victims of their thievery. The Temple can now be that place where the poor can be prayed for and be healed (Matthew 21:14). Jesus healed the sick that very day in the very place from which the greedy fled! The place where greed reigned, where the rich guard their power and grow their net worth, was cleansed, at least for the moment, and reset as a place where the sick are healed and the poor are fed.

By discrediting the authority of those in power, Jesus empowered the marginalized to fight for justice. One might come to the conclusion that some form of this is every Christ follower’s sacred duty to emulate.

As Craig Greenfield says, “We need to amplify the voices of the oppressed so that others can hear their stories. We must use our liberty and privilege to benefit those who lack such freedom and power.”

Last but not least, in our final post on this topic we’ll glean from Jesus’ Temple cleansing some pointers on how we should then live. After all, he did say, “Follow me.”

Does anything I’m saying here strike a chord––or a raw nerve for that matter? Feel free to share your thoughts.

Civilly Disobedient Activists

Jesus the Activist (Part 3 of 4)

“Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land…skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” (Amos 8:4-6)

In Parts 1 and 2 we talked about the sociopolitical realities of first century Israel and what Jesus said and did about it. I’m proposing that Jesus’ saving work, first and foremost impacts our sinful souls but also confronts our sinful systems of injustice. He’s a Savior and a Revolutionary.

As a prophetic announcement to Rome and its wealthy Jewish cronies he aimed his Temple takeover at Israel’s center of power, calling them out to repent of their religious trespasses and social cruelties. Their profiteering enterprise had abused the public’s trust and exploited them in the name of God! Jesus couldn’t let it go on unchecked. It wasn’t the vendors he blamed most for turning his house into a thieves’ den, but the people at the top of the food chain, the culprits behind the curtain who profited most at the expense of those who had the least.

Jewish peasants from the north in Galilee who could scrape enough money together to make the long trek to Jerusalem for yearly pilgrimage “would have found themselves in the humiliating position of handing over their meager sacrifices to wealthy Temple priests,” says Reza Aslan, “some of whom may have owned the very lands these peasants and farmers labored on back home.”

By this one act of prophetic protest Jesus confronted those in power at the very seat of their power, discredited their authority, and gave a voice to the voiceless. The dramatic action by one of their very own kind, a peasant carpenter from Nazareth, communicated loud and clear that they too could challenge those who dominated them. Even the poorest of the poor had the right and the power to call the powers to account.

Vendors hawking souvenirs, sacrificial offerings at exorbitant prices, and exchange rate-gouging, all to make a buck at the expense of the poor sincere worshipper. What’s not to dislike about that?

As evidenced by the failed hit that Herod placed on the baby Jesus, from the very beginning his mere existence challenged those in power. This one Temple episode spoke truth to power and may well have been the final camel’s spine-shattering stalk of straw that led to his execution. He exposed the empire’s crooked economy and threatened the sovereignty of its emperor. Jesus would have to go and be made an example of in order to quell any other subversive movements that he might foment.

In order to retain their unchallenged dominance, the Jewish aristocracy collaborated with the Roman power structure in a plan to take him out. When they finally came for him they made an enormous show of force with a cohort of armed Roman soldiers and an angry crowd of Jews. They had no intention of letting this seditious menace slip through their fingers again.

The Temple was meant to function as “a house of prayer for all the nations,” not as a corrupt religious institution complicit with the plight of the poor and marginalized. In other words, instead of taking advantage of the poor, the Temple was a place they should be praying and providing for the poor from all nations.

With the thieves all on the run, the only ones left were the victims of their thievery. The Temple can now be that place where the poor can be prayed for and be healed (Matthew 21:14). Jesus healed the sick that very day in the very place from which the greedy fled! The place where greed reigned, where the rich guard their power and grow their net worth, was cleansed, at least for the moment, and reset as a place where the sick are healed and the poor are fed.

By discrediting the authority of those in power, Jesus empowered the marginalized to fight for justice. One might come to the conclusion that some form of this is every Christ follower’s sacred duty to emulate.

As Craig Greenfield says, “We need to amplify the voices of the oppressed so that others can hear their stories. We must use our liberty and privilege to benefit those who lack such freedom and power.”

Last but not least, in our final post on this topic we’ll glean from Jesus’ Temple cleansing some pointers on how we should then live. After all, he did say, “Follow me.”

Does anything I’m saying here strike a chord––or a raw nerve for that matter? Feel free to share your thoughts.

A Lynching, “in Every Sense”?!

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A lynching?! It used to be only a “witch hunt.” Now it’s a “lynching”?

This, among thousands of other despicable things that has escaped our president’s antisocial personality disordered (ASPD) mind and out through his noxious mouth, I assess this as maybe the most despicable, outdone in disgrace only by Senator Graham’s clarification that it’s a “lynching in every sense”! Neither of these, the latter in particular, is more than a simple slip of the tongue. When asked about his earlier statement went on to say, “That’s exactly what’s going on in the House or Representatives right now.” Do either of these men who are supposed to speak for the nation have any idea what a lynching is?

Some might excuse it as a figure of speech for someone being unfairly treated, but in no universe does that even begin to cover these men, the senator in particular, who amplified what the president said (more than once!), claims that it is a lynching “in every sense”! In no sense is this in any sense what the nearly 5000 lynched people in our country’s history experienced, the last being in 1981 when several Klansmen in Mobile, Alabama lynched Michael Donald, a 19-year-old African-American.

The slayers, enraged by another case entirely chose their victim at random, beat him with a tree limb, wrapped a rope around his neck and pulled on it to strangle him while continuing to beat him with a tree branch. When he stopped moving, they slit his throat three times to make sure he was dead and left his body hanging from a tree in a mixed-race neighborhood in Mobile. That’s a lynching!

So, tell Michael Donald how the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump is a “lynching in every sense.” And tell me how Senator Graham’s saying it that was in any sense OK!

To me, this is another level of vile, and I believe that no person––regardless of color––should be anything but incensed by this sort of unconscionable rhetoric from anyone, let alone elected officials from either party.

And I mean that in every sense of the word!

Hope, a Revolutionary Patience

Hope is a revolutionary patience… Hope begins in the dark, knowing that the dawn will come. Anne Lamott

No clock or calendar can tell whether we’re at the beginning, the middle, or near the end of any bleak experience. Unlike the obsidian darkness, which arrived all at once, after six months or so the light at the end of the tunnel appeared as a pinprick in the bleakness, and increased in size at a pace proportionate to the Lord’s timing and my willing.

Oswald Chambers said:“The clouds are but the dust of our Father’s feet. They are signs that he is there. Sorrow and bereavement and suffering are the clouds that come along with God.” I began trying to believe it.

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway

Joy Makes a Comeback!

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Joy was like a distant relative I hadn’t seen since childhood. People who live in the extreme hemispheres don’t see the sun for so long that they forget its warmth and illuminating power. I remembered the term but couldn’t quite recall how joy felt. . .

Like a friend tossing pebbles at your window from below, joy invited me to open to it. I was tempted to respond, but was inhibited by the thought that it would be indecent for a person who was so sick and so recently divorced to have joy. . .

I didn’t—and still don’t—want to treat my marriage vows flippantly. I meant those promises when I recited them and never intended to go back on them. Maintaining a joyless existence seemed like the best way to remind myself of that—and at the time, it seemed noble.

But at that moment, I got a distinct impression from the Spirit, a sense of permission—if not instruction—to let myself be joyful again. “It’s okay. You can have joy without disrespecting your marriage or minimizing your loss,” the Spirit assured me. I didn’t need to maintain a dour countenance or punish myself by padlocking my heart. I could open the door for gladness . . .

So I cracked open the window for a brief visit from my old friend, and over time, joy and I have become constant companions again.

Yes, those beautiful girls are my daughter and granddaughter, both of whom have the middle name of “Joy.”

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway

Jesus’ “Occupy the Temple” Protest

Jesus the Activist (Part 2 of 4)

“As many people of faith are at the forefront of the Hong Kong rallies or confront racism in our own country, so Jesus led a rally confronting systemic economic injustice, which leapt from a vision of the kingdom he was bringing.” Jesse Borland

Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11)

Part 1 of this series is pretty important wherein we look at the context for what follows here. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read (or reread) it for some backstory.

Though Jesus was nonviolent, he was decidedly not passive. He walked regularly into the face of danger, spoke the truth, and demanded justice for the marginalized. To decent law-abiding, religious people, he was nothing but trouble. According to them he hung out with the wrong people, healed at the wrong times, accepted hospitality from the wrong places, and said the wrong things to the wrong people.

His approach was active, provocative, public, daring, and dangerous––yet nonviolent. Many of the things he did for the poor were illegal, both to Rome and to his own people. He regularly practiced what we now call, “civil disobedience.”

Not unlike many of the Church’s Popes and Bishops in the Middle Ages the aristocratic priests in Jesus’ day had both a religious stranglehold on their people and a socioeconomic vice on them as well. Theirs wasn’t just bad religion, but bad religion complicit with bad government.

When Jesus kicked over their tables in the Temple and drove out the corrupt money exchangers and sacrificial animals, he labeled the Jewish elite as a “den of thieves and robbers.” His act was not purely religious for the simple reason that the Jerusalem Temple was not a purely religious institution. His was a very public attack aimed at Israel’s center of spiritual and sociopolitical power. In other words, his was as much a political act as it was a spiritual one. Both their corrupt religion and their socially exploitive grift were so repulsive to him that he waged a one man, one day “Occupy the Temple” protest.

.Josephus claims the Temple at that time was being “ruined by greed,” and the high priest, Ananias, was known as “the great procurer of money.” Jesus’ protest was against lucrative profiteering of the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

I saw a photo of an Occupy Wall Street protester, who was dressed up as Jesus carrying a placard that read, “I threw out the moneylenders for a reason!” Whether or not you agree with the recent protest movement against economic inequality called “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS), Jesus’ occupation of the Temple over two thousand years earlier had a similar purpose. His was a first century version of defying Wall Street and the inequitable distribution of wealth in his time.

In his account, Mark pointed out that Jesus put the government sponsored swindlers out of business at least for the day. “He would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple courts.” (Mark 11:16) His one-man protest, like OWS, jammed up the works. He interfered with injustice.

But didn’t he make a whip and strike people with it? Whipping his enemies would be entirely inconsistent with the portrayal of the Son of God we have in the Gospels. From Cana to the cross he modeled and taught a revolution that eschewed violence.

In my view he used the whip not on the people but on their animals, even so not in a way to harm them but to get them moving toward the door. Even shepherds carry a rod and staff to corral their sheep! There were hundreds if not thousands of sacrificial goats, lambs, and doves there that day. He used the whip to shoo them out of the Temple. And, if you think about it, he reprieved those animals, deferring their impending execution for another day!

If it’s a new thought to you that Jesus was an activist and led his own protest against those who profited off the poor, stop for a minute and think about it. Next time we’ll unpack the implications of his “civil disobedience.”

In the meantime, whether you agree with my assessment of this passage or not, I welcome your input.

Permission to Feel

Tamara has suffered since birth, having had dozens of surgeries with varying degrees of torture, but with very limited success. Like the guy on those anti-smoking commercials, this precious teenager has to plug the hole in her throat with her finger in order to speak. Like many young sufferers I’ve met, she has an incredibly sweet and indomitable spirit about her.

Following one of my catharsis-filled homilies, she approached me in the parking lot. Covering the opening in her trachea, she eked out, “Thank you for sharing your story and helping me know it’s okay to feel the way I do at times. Sometimes I just get angry at God.” I thanked her for her comment, got in my car, and then cried all the way home. Sometimes we just need someone to give us permission to feel what we feel.

I don’t think that God is as offended as we might think by our honest-hearted rantings, the ones plump with pain. Emotions are part of the human condition. They’re neither good nor bad, they just are. Granted, some emotions are more pleasant than others. Give me glad over mad or sad any day. He’s the One who installed in us the “feelings chip” when he made us in his likeness. He’s a God who feels and he made us to be feelers.

What matters is not how I feel, but what I do with how I feel—how it affects my journey and how I affect those with whom I journey. Whether I am angry, sad, terrified or worried, I was endowed with these capacities at birth. They’re reactions to human circumstances, and if I’m human I’ll experience them. But how will I deal with these feelings? How will I keep them from bullying me?

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway

What Makes Jesus Angry Enough to Stage a Protest?

Jesus the Activist (Part 1 of 4)

“It is right to be angry at injustice, and problematic to be apathetic toward injustice.” Carl Gregg

In the last decade or so I have attended a number of protest marches and rallies in San Francisco and Santa Cruz regarding gun violence, immigration reform, racial equality, environmental justice, and pro-life issues. I am aware that many Christians consider such activities as unbiblical and a waste of time. I’ve heard them all:

“Jesus never marched for peace… You should just trust God to work it all out… The extent of the believer’s interaction with politics is the voting booth… Christians should only be concerned about the spiritual transformation of individuals, not gallivanting around railing against political and economic systems… If we transform enough people through salvation, the social justice issues will work themselves out.”

I beg to differ on these justifications, if not excuses people make regarding public justice. Regardless of your view on this or your party affiliation, I hope you’ll give a short time to read this and the next few posts on “Jesus the Activist.”

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Jesus gets outraged, and maybe at the top of his list of aggravations is injustice, especially the systemic kind. Those who claim that Jesus was an apolitical preacher with no interest in addressing the socially prejudiced and politically oppressive context by which he was surrounded are, in my view, mistaken. A quick tour of that sociopolitical context might help clear up this point and substantiate my claim that Jesus cares so deeply for the vulnerable it outrages him when their dignity is diminished by unjust systems.

Speaking of unjust systems, by way of the Temple tax the priestly nobility in Jesus’ day raked in massive revenue to pay for their extravagant projects and lifestyles. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the time, deemed the priests as nothing but a band of avaricious “lovers of luxury.” Caiaphas the High priest waded head high in Rome’s money and in the power to go with it. The majority of priests formed a landowning aristocracy, tasked with extorting their fellow citizens and keeping order in their communities, a role for which they were dearly compensated by Rome.

When a Jewish peasants’ poverty became so dire that they couldn’t even feed their families, the aristocracy––“out of the goodness of their hearts”––made them loans on which they expected them to default so they could confiscate their property and reduce them to lifelong slavery. The brave souls that resisted this injustice were met with Rome’s wrath. Their heads were removed and their bodies hung on crosses to point out what happens to those who resist the empire’s gravitational pull.

Jesus and his family belonged to a class of employed peasants just one wrung above beggars and slaves. As day labor carpenters he and his brothers most likely plied the bulk of their trade in more populated cities rather than in their tiny, depressed hamlet of Nazareth. As it happened the city of Sepphoris, a mere few miles walk away, found itself in desperate need of tradesmen such as them.

Right around the year of Jesus’ birth, in order to quell a resistance movement Herod had Sepphoris burned to the ground. Then he crucified more than two thousand men and made slaves of the women and children. The Roman soldiers wouldn’t take the crucified dead down until their flesh had all but rotted away, thus providing an assault on both the sight and the stench of death to everyone nearby.

Soon thereafter, Herod’s son, Antipas moved to the burnt ruins of the city and conscripted thousands of laborers to transform it into a royal city fit for a king. Jesus would have been about ten years old when the reconstruction project began. He and his brothers would likely have joined the workforce, walking back and forth between their poor hamlet and Antipas’ cosmopolitan capital, “building palatial houses for the Jewish aristocracy during the day,” says Reza Aslan, “returning to his crumbling mud – brick home at night.”

We can imagine Jesus, while constructing lavish homes in Sepphoris repeatedly laying eyes on Antipas parading past in his royal chariot, arrayed in extravagance. This was the man whom he later called “that Fox” (Luke 13:32), the one who beheaded his cousin, John the Baptizer, the man who wished to do the same to him.

It’s no coincidence that with rare exception Jesus’ teaching and miracles benefitted those who found themselves furthest beneath Rome’s heavy boot. His words and works were intended to be a direct challenge to the prosperous and powerful Roman occupiers and their Jewish collaborators. He both practiced and preached his “gospel to the poor.” (Luke 4:18)

Though he loves all people equally, God may seem biased toward the world’s most destitute. But as Ron Sider points out, “equal concern for everyone requires special attention to specific people. In a family, loving parents do not provide equal tutorial time to a son struggling hard to scrape by with D’s and a daughter easily making A’s. Precisely in order to be ‘impartial’ and love both equally, they devote extra time to helping the needier child… (Good firefighters do not spend equal time at every house; they are ‘partial’ to homes on fire.)”

Predictably both the Roman and Jewish powers feared that the marginalized citizenry would take back control of their lives and ultimately organize to reclaim their country. They preserved the “Pax” (peace) in their Pax Romana so long as they kept their feet on the necks of those who might threaten it. Jesus and his followers posed such a threat.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we talk about what how Jesus kicks some rich and powerful Roman and Jewish a@*! I’ll give you a clue. It has to do with what looks like a crazy man chasing animals and doves with a whip, and men so traumatized they run away leaving their ill-gotten booty scattered on the floor.