A Facebook exchange recently in which I argued that the economic vision of Jesus was a direct criticism of contemporary capitalism has spawned some thoughts I have on Jesus and political economies generally.
It's rather unambiguous from the four New Testament Gospel accounts that Jesus was viewed as a criminal. He was crucified. So this claim seems rather banal. Of course Jesus was considered to be a criminal.
But I want to push back a bit and claim that he actually was a criminal.
My problem is with the notion that most folks have that Jesus "was considered to be" one. Lots of folks envision Jesus as innocent. He was crucified as an innocent, and his crucifixion was a miscarriage of justice.
But I disagree.
Jesus was -- really, truly -- a disturber of the peace and a political threat. I say Jesus was, according to the testimony in the Gospels, a criminal. He wasn't just a nonconformist, a protestor, a militant, or a dissident. What's more, if we take Luke 23.1-2 seriously, from the eyes of the State and its Religious Institutions, Jesus was the most dangerous and reprehensible form of criminal. He was found as one "subverting the Nation" and "forbidding taxes" to the Roman State (which entailed also a commitment to Caesar as divine king). That makes Jesus guilty of sedition; he was a criminal revolutionary. He didn't just talk about revolution, his existence was a full-on assault to the "powers that be".
Jesus Christ was, so far as the established authorities and, in the end, so far as the people were concerned, the most loathsome of criminals. And he was so accused, and he was so condemned, and as such he was executed in an aptly ignominious way.
Church folks like to envision that Jesus was innocent, because his otherwise-guilt would be the relativization of political and economic power. Instead of using a simple exegesis that allows Romans 13 or Mark 12.13-17 to be the basis for a Christian political-economic theology, we would have to find a balance with Revelation 12 and 17.
Contrary to the full evidence of the New Testament, the Innocent Jesus wasn't simply fingered by Judas, abandoned by disciples, and suffered pointlessly. In the eyes of nearly everyone in his world, he was a criminal. Never, in fact, has a man been apprehended, tried, convicted and executed who has been more guilty.
My point, though, isn't to highlight Jesus' guilt. My point is to highlight human political and economic guilt. That is, when the legal and political find the innocent guilty, something's wrong with The System. As I tweeted yesterday, "That God had a mugshot in Jesus as a political/economic revolutionary means we cannot trust State in judging right/wrong".
In the eyes of The System and its on-looking public Jesus was guilty. My point here is that "guilty" isn't a very helpful category when it comes to thinking morally. And yet that's our default assumption: To be guilty is to be wrong.
I argue that such an equivalence is itself a form of idolatry. Right and wrong may finally be adjudicated by God, not by the State. God has a mug shot. Thus the criminality of the Jesus stands as a historical and prophetic witness that the State cannot be the ultimate moral authority. There will be times when being right means being guilty.
Thing is, my claim then raises the awful specter of violent revolution. This is why I think the Gospels are so quick to contrast the revolutions of Jesus and Barrabas (Matthew 27.11-26 and pars). Sure, Jesus is guilty. But Jesus' revolution is one of nonviolence and life.
Jesus is a revolutionary. Barrabas was a revolutionary. But those are very different revolutions. That distinction is illuminated, I think, if we also remember that, while Jesus took the place of Barabbas, Barabbas was released and, in a sense, he replaced Jesus. In days alive with ferment called "revolutionary" in this society and elsewhere, the Christian must be alert, and others must be warned, about the issue of mistaken identity symbolized, in the New Testament, by Barabbas taking the place of Jesus in the world. In the turmoil and excitement of Barabbas' revolution, it is easy to be seduced into supposing that the revolution of Barabbas is actually the revolution of Jesus.
Let me put it another way. The Christian revolution -- the revolution of Jesus -- is one of human beings freed from death to live life. The Christian revolution frees us from the political and economic slaveries of sin and death. This revolution, as I tried to hint toward on Facebook the other day, is established in Jesus' own words in Luke 4.18-19. Following the Temptations of Jesus in 4.1-13 -- which were political, economic and spiritual, all rolled into one (as they usually are) -- Jesus' statement of God's Jubilee (see Leviticus 25) establishes God's mission of life for the poor and oppressed. Again, this revolution frees us from death to live as human beings, fashioned in the image of God.
Death, as we all know, is the ultimate power behind the State. According to the biblical witness, death is not the decisive moral power in history, but it is the only moral power the State (or any other principalities) can invoke as a sanction against human beings and against human life as such. That is, also, plainly to be seen now in the US.
The powers of Stately death are all over the place and named well: Economic inequity, the abandonment of the poor, drone warfare, the mass incarceration of minorities, capital punishment, the dehumanization of immigrants, wars in the Middle East, billions in military spending, the American embrace of torture, the continuing damage to the environment ... and on, and on, and on.
To live as Jesus lived -- to be a Christian -- is to live the resurrected life. It is to live as a human being, a living one in the image of God (Colossians 1.15-23). Why's there such a hostility between Jesus and the State in the Gospels? Why is he so threatening to the nation? Why is he found guilty?
It's because of something Jesus claims of himself: Jesus is the King (Luke 23.3).*
If Jesus is King, that relativizes political powers. Jesus as King means we're no longer human slaves to political, economic, technological masters. Jesus as King means we're not subjects to ideologies and institutions. Jesus as King means we're free from violent revolutionary causes, and the idolatries of Caesar. Jesus as King also frees us from enslaving religious "virtues" that dehumanize us.
This is why I think NT Wright is correct: Unless we get this part right, we're going to miss the point of the New Testament stories about Jesus. The revolution of the King Jesus is the revolution that nonviolently challenges the deathly powers of the State. Or any other power. The revolution of Jesus is being a human being in the midst of death's works. And the important point here is this: Being a human being in a world run by death has political implications.
Being alive -- living as a resurrected person -- in the midst of death can make you a criminal. When death rules, living resurrection violates all the laws that death has on the books.
This is why the book of Revelation says that Christians endure with patience (3.10; cf Hebrews 10.36-39). Injustice, alienation, brutality -- those are all weapons of death that ultimately hold little power in the face of life that overcomes death.
The mark of the Christian is, simply, that he or she is a matured and freed human being. The direct political implication of this risen character of the Christian is that, as contrasted with other revolutionaries, of which Barabbas is the example and symbol, the Christian is an incessant revolutionary. The Christian is always, everywhere, in revolt -- not for himself or herself but for humanity. There is something inherently, invariably, persistently, perpetually, inexhaustibly, inevitably revolutionary in the suffering of reconciliation -- in the experience of one's own personhood as humanity in society -- which constitutes the Christian life in this world. The Christian as revolutionary is constantly welcoming the gift of human life, for himself and for all others, by exposing, opposing, and overturning all that betrays, entraps, or attempts to kill human life.
That's the Christian prophetic critique of capitalism. (A critique, by the way, that doesn't demand we embrace socialism. Check out the papal Rerum Novarum and the economics of Distributism for one alternative.)
The Christian who lives this resurrected life can't help but be regarded as a criminal. That's how it was with Jesus, so, like he warned, why should we expect differently for us (Matthew 10.22; John 15.18)?
To be truly free is to be a criminal. Jesus is that criminal.
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* This is why I've maintained, for nearly 25 years, that the primary confession for Christians is "Jesus is Lord". This is a confession that confronts all other claimants to power -- Caesar, for example -- while also rooting the hope of Israel firmly in history. This confession, then, makes a radical claim about God: This story of self-emptying, obedience, suffering, death, and exaltation was how Israel's God would get himself noticed among the world. This is how he would get the Empire to take him seriously -- by giving authority over all things to Jesus (Philippians 2.5-11).