Jesus, Pacifism, and Resistance - I 

Jesus, Pacifism, and Resistance - I

-Part One

In many ways, the term “let’s roll” has been commandeered by a vast portion of the American Christian community as a worthy, if not clear cut, response to the fact of terrorism around the globe. These words, of course, were some of the final words of confessing Christian Todd Beamer as he and other passengers aboard the doomed September 11, 2001 Flight 93 readied themselves to undertake action against a group of terrorists who had overtaken the plane’s controls.

There is no question that the actions of those aboard a flight destined for mayhem were brave enough to contemplate the action of physically prying controls away from the terrorists in order to crash the plane into the Pennsylvania landscape. The alternative to this action was sitting idle as the plane caromed into an occupied superstructure somewhere in the United States. There is some question, however, of the suitability of the ‘let’s roll” response when used in a different context.

While the laying down of already doomed lives cannot be ethically or philosophically challenged in a context where there is no alternative other than certain death, we may have many more options at our disposal when our feet are firmly placed on the ground. When we take into account the choices available to those not confined to an airplane, we find that alternative responses to violence may indeed save lives with the same effectiveness of the crash landing of Flight 93. As Christians facing a world with both terror and oppression, we should consider these options. “Let’s roll” is no longer the clear choice when we weigh upon the scales of morality and ethics options other than violence and militarism. Also, and more important for Christians, than the philosophical or political arguments which may or may not sway the moral being from militarism to pacifism, or vice-versa, are the ideas of absolute truth as revealed by God through Holy Scripture and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

Though unpopular amongst mainstream Christian intellectuals and the moralists of the postmodern era, absolute truth can be identified in many areas that philosophical thought or situational ethics fail to conquer. The truth of nonviolence as the command and example of Jesus Christ is one such example. In this book, I will explore various aspects of Christ-centered pacifism and peacemaking, not only as an appropriate response to terrorism, but as the vocation of Christians who are serious about seeking justice and equity across the globe in the name of Jesus, and often, in spite of the church. My goal is to show that nonviolence is truly Christlike, and upholds the image of the Creator.

We must begin by refusing to accept the use of the word “just” (as in justice) in accord with the word war. For Christians, the idea of justice and war should be viewed as incompatible, but for a majority of Christians and philosophers alike, they are not.

The idea of “just war” is a favorite amongst those who view violence and militarism as a way of dealing with, or resisting, injustice and evil. Unfortunately, the moral right to use force is almost universally accepted, and that right has been extended to nation-states as a means of defending everything from national sovereignty to economic opportunity. This reality has evolved due to the lack of central political authority in a world of sovereign states. The United Nations has been rendered somewhat ineffective in its pursuit of global security/stability.

“Just war” theory is loosely defined by a varying set of standards that are generally in alignment with the following: A legitimate authority has established a need, or just cause to defend innocent life. War must be the last resort, even though an authority is not required to exhaust all measures if it is apparent they will fail. It also does not condemn first use of force. There must be an explanation by an aggressive nation for its departure from diplomatic measures. There must be a reasonable chance of emerging victorious, with the achievement of goals requiring a minimum of casualties, and innocents and non-combatants must not be targeted.

James Childress of Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute wrote in Theological Studies that “war can be more or less humane, and civilized. War and politics, or peace, are not two totally separate realms or periods.”

Childress continues to suggest that many proponents of “peace” wrongly believe that peace is the total absence of conflict. In war, states Childress, we may override the prima facie obligation against killing or injuring others when the ultimate goal of hostilities is peace.

Finally, Childress claims that no prima facie wrong, such as maiming or killing another person, stands alone. “Not all duties can be fulfilled in every situation without sacrifice…it is sometimes necessary and legitimate to override some prima facie duties.”

The Christian church, has in modern times, nearly unanimously conceded the just war theory its place in what has become the theology of conflict. Bryan Hehir quotes Catholic just war theologian John Courtney Murray as assuring that because “the church does not look immediately to abolish war…” some form of just war ethic must be maintained. As far as the church is concerned, Hehir himself states that because we are in a world where powers that be no longer acknowledge divine authority in politics or religion, the just war mandate is necessary.

My intention in raising these arguments is not suggest legitimacy in opposition to my own view, only that when conflict is debated in the political or ethical realm, there are arguments that will consistently allow for the use of military force under a set of guidelines that are arbitrary and unenforceable in warfare. The church, in most cases, has followed suit with this theology of conflict. Since September 11, 2001, just war theory has been defined as such: “…concerning the war on terrorism: It will not be enough to eliminate the bad actors responsible for particular acts of terror…(we must) have the will to repress and eliminate them preemptively whenever intelligence is sufficient to warrant such action.”

This suggest that just war criterion now be expanded to include reliance on intelligence that is simply deemed “sufficient”, not to mention how civil rights will certainly be jeopardized as intelligence officials “repress…preemptively” suspected terrorist. One need only view the weapons of mass destruction charges and pre-war Al Qaida-Iraq connections that have yet to surface as an example of what reliable intelligence working for the United States can accomplish. Attorney General John Ashcroft is constantly fending off charges of civil rights abuses committed by his Justice Department as well.

Nevertheless, the Christian is always faced with the argument that just war is necessary to combat evil because stopping the transgress of evil and protecting innocent life takes importance over the obligation to refrain from killing or injuring, especially against those who are committing the evil act. It is my contention, however, that the Christian response should be quite the opposite. Just war is not in the interest of justice, nor is violence and militarism a reliable way to prevent the spread of evil. The Christian response should mirror the scriptural documented response of Jesus Christ.

Theologian Ronald Sider writes that “Jesus’ decision to use nonviolent means is visible at every crucial point in His career. At His temptation Satan offered Him all the political power in the world. Jesus faced and decisively rejected…violence” as a means to establish His messianic kingdom.

As Jesus ushered in God’s kingdom, it offered new possibilities in the quest to overcome evil. In opposition to the just war theory - which we have shown above acknowledges neither a central political or spiritual leaning toward nonviolence - Christians must offer the kingdom of God as the response.

James D.G. Dunn, however, notes that the “territorial connotation of ‘kingdom’ should be qualified by the recognition that ‘reign of God’ or ‘rule of God’ better captures the Aramaic ‘kingdom of God’.” Walter Wink states, “the reign of God, the peaceable kingdom, is (despite the monarchal terms) an order in which the inequity, violence and male supremacy of dominator societies are superceded.” As such, so goes the just war theory. Biblical pacifism, however, as we will find, calls for sacrifice. Not only at the personal level, where of course everything starts, but at the national level where sacrifice of lifestyle and the politics of dominance must give way to the kingdom of God.

In order to witness God’s reign, we must not only make sacrifices personally and nationally, but we must revamp the church and return it’s focus to what made the Acts 2 church grow by leaps and bounds. The power of the Holy Spirit over the politics of power and force, and the theology of conflict.

In the earliest church, reaching across the first three centuries of its existence, the standard of pacifism and nonviolent response to persecution built the Body of Christ into a substantial entity - despite extreme oppression.

There is no firm evidence, from the close of the New Testament period until about 170 C.E., that places any Christian in any army. When we do have evidence of Christians serving in the military - which gradually increased from 173 onward, yet did not result in evidence of widespread service - it can be certain that it contradicted the church’s vision of what Christian behavior entailed. According to John Driver, the early church did resist the temptation to lower its teaching to the level of some members practice. The convictions of early Christian were without a doubt nonviolent.

Driver writes that scholars believe many early Christians opposed military professions mainly because of the idolatry inherent in Roman military service. The very titles that Rome bestowed upon its Caesars - such as savior and lord - were those Christians had reserved for Jesus, whose ministry was a direct challenge to not only to the authority of the temple cult, but even more so to Rome.

Also, early church leaders wrote of deeply seeded testimonies against violence. “The Christian lawgiver…nowhere teaches that it is right for His own disciples to offer violences upon anyone, however wicked…Christians…were taught not to avenge their enemy.”

From circa 170 - 236 C.E., the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus seems to have expressed an early Christian consensus toward warfare in three articles. The first directs the soldier of inferior rank not to kill anyone, even if ordered. If the soldier did not accept this mandate, he was dismissed from the church. Another article declared anyone with the power of the sword, or the magistrate of a city “who wears purple, let him give it up or be dismissed.” The third article stated that Christians who wished to join the army be dismissed from the church because “they have despised God.”

Another early church leader, Tertullian, opposed military service, capital punishment and abortion. This based on the belief that ‘humans are the unique centerpiece of God’s creation…that they bear the divine image, and therefore life is precious.”

After three centuries of organized Christianity, however, the world dominated by Rome took a drastic change in relation to the church. Walter Wink describes emperor Constantine’s battlefield conversion to Christianity as “Christianity’s weaponless victory over the Roman empire,” which, says Wink, “eventuated the weaponless victory of the empire over the gospel.” Christianity soon became the state religion of Rome.

Beginning with Constantine, says Wink, “…the Christian church began receiving preferential treatment by the empire it had once so steadfastly [and nonviolently] opposed, which had once seemed so evil, now appeared to be a necessity for preserving and propagating the gospel.” Just as one now had to be a Christian to serve in the Roman army, Christians needed to devise a plan for defending a militaristic defense of both empire - and gospel.

Enter the just war theory. Just war is set in some practices that some affirm as justice, but others, as we should, view as no more than a Constantinian bastardization of the nonviolent work of Jesus Christ.

Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo who was converted in the fourth century, has become the most well known apologist for the just war theory, couching the doctrine in the inspirational language of Christian sacrifice. Just war theologian Elizabeth Elshtain writes that for Augustine, “the most potent justification for using force is to protect the innocent. If one has compelling evidence that harm will come to persons unless coercive force is used, the requirement of neighborly love may entail a resort to arms.” Augustine, however, also stated that self-defense was a violation of Christian principles. As for just war, the Bishop is quoted as saying “when war is undertaken in obedience to God, who would rebuke, or humble, or crush the pride of man, it must be allowed to be a righteous war.”

Centuries after its development, Augustine’s just war doctrine was used in support of the Crusades. In 1095, Pope Urban II exhorted Christians by stating “You will go forth, through the gift of God and the privilege of St. Peter, absolved from all your sins…They who die will enter the mansion of heaven…” The question remains, however, whether or not fighting a war can be described as obedience to God.

Many will point to the First Testament as proof of God’s support of righteous and just war. The so-called, or presumed, problem of violence in the Hebrew Bible is often raised by opponents to Christian pacifism. The ancient texts clearly show, they argue, that God condones necessary violence in certain circumstances. Anti-Christian sentiments amongst the liberal peace movement are sometimes fueled by the biblical accounts of the Hebrew conquest of Canaan. The First Testament is used by many to justify everything from the death penalty to military aggression.

Importantly, John Howard Yoder reminds that when interpreting a text, one rule of thumb is that the reader should bear in mind what the original hearer or reader would have heard the text say. “Whether the taking of human life is morally permissible under all circumstances,” writes Yoder, “was not a culturally conceivable question in the age of Abraham or that of Joshua.” Take for instance, the story of YHWH sending Abraham to sacrifice his son.

Yoder writes that this story is used by modern ethicists to argue that God directs humans to break His own rules. However, when read from the perspective of the original recipients of the story, and assuming their cultural context, we may view the story differently.

“In the age of Abraham, or even in the age when the Genesis 22 account was written, the sacrifice of the firstborn was a common cultic custom,” writes Yoder. “It was no more ethically scandalous or viscerally disturbing than the killing of the villain in a western movie…”

The act of sacrifice would not have been viewed as taboo by Abraham, because it was a ritual act. It was not, as Yoder states, a command to sacrifice a loved one or to break a moral law. It was a command that tested Abraham’s faith in God’s ability to fulfill His promise of Abraham’s prosperity, and posterity, despite the ordered demise of his only son and heir. In fact, human sacrifice was first condemned not because it was deemed immoral or murderous, but because it came to be understood by Israel to be idolatrous. From this we begin to understand that violence was not only viewed differently in history than it is now - it was viewed as an accepted sacrificial aspect of living, according to the ancients, and as we see in the story of Abraham and his son, God often acted in opposition to those violent cultural assumptions.

For Israelites, even the recitation of God’s victories on the battlefield was meant to remind them that trust in the strength of the God of Israel saved them and won their victories, not their own weapons. Characteristic of Israel’s battlefield victories is the idea that military achievement would come without the aide of professional soldiers.

Yet, the conquest of Canaan, the promised land, still stands out as a collection of bloody and violent battles of total destruction.. A close reading of the text, however, reveals that it was not God’s intention that the land be taken by force, but that the sin of Israel meant a rejection of God’s nonviolent plan. Exodus 23:20-33 looks very much like a plan for peace. God states that He will first send angels and “hornets” ahead of the Israelites to drive out the adversaries of God by supernatural means, but without killing.

Secondly, God will drive out the adversaries only as fast as Israel can populate it through a natural increase, so that it would not be overrun by wild animals. The whole of God’s plan, however, relies upon Israel’s faithfulness, which failed.

When the bloodshed does occur in the conquest narrative, it must still be viewed in different terms than an anachronistic interpretation of military violence as a means to a political end.. Yoder writes that “before a battle an enemy army or city would be ‘devoted to YHWH,’” and henceforth, belonged to God, just as a sacrificial animal on the alter belonged to God.

The killing should be viewed, just as in the Abraham narrative, as sacrificial. No looting took place, but everything, including cattle, slaves, and treasures, was dedicated and sacrificed to YHWH. When we view this in light of Jesus Christ as the final sacrifice - the all encompassing sacrifice - and God’s victory over evil and death in resurrection - First Testament style violence is no longer acceptable, if it ever was, to God. Walter Wink adds to this view of “acceptable” violence by quoting French philosopher Rene Girard.

“Girard understands the Hebrew Bible as a long and laborious exodus out of the world of violence.” He also quotes Girard as writing that Jesus’ death revealed the “sacrificial system as a form of organized violence in the service of social tranquility.” The violence of the Bible, says Wink, “is the necessary preconditioning for the gradual perception of violence.”

Just as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7:7 that he would not have come to know sin except through the law, the people of God would not come to know the evil of violence without the experience of it, which lead to the final revelation of God’s plan for peace and victory over the powers that continue to fall prey to the lure of violence as a means to an end.

Finally, Wink explains First Testament violence in this light. “…violence is in part the residue of false ideas about God carried over from the general human past. It is also, however, the beginning of the process of raising the (sacrificial violence) mechanism to consciousness. In Israel, for the first time in history - God begins to be seen as identified with the victims of violence…other myths…have been written from the point of view of the victimizers.”

Part Two

Now that we have responded to “just war” criticisms of pacifism, with evidence of the nonviolent testimony of the early church, and the question of First Testament violence, we will set out to establish the political and social environment of first century Palestine. It is in this context that we begin to grasp the life and ministry of Jesus, and how it points directly to a nonviolent, but revolutionary, response to oppression.

Of the number of nations and peoples oppressed by Roman domination in the first century C.E., Judea had been a subjected nation for the past four and one half centuries of its history. This subjugation began with the Babylonian army’s sacking of Jerusalem 597 B.C.E. and the exile of the priestly and artisan classes of Judeans.

Then came the Persians, and the beginning of an economic system that reestablished old socio-economic hierarchies, and doubly subjected the Judean peasant class. The Persians allowed the Judean exiles to return to Jerusalem, and Persia ruled through the offices of the high priests. Richard Horsley writes that this demise of the Davidic leadership of the past allowed economic and political power to become entrenched in the high priestly families thus combining the temple cult with political and economic power.

In reality, power was held by the Persian imperial government, but the peasantry was found in the position of ensuring not only Judea’s ability to pay tribute to the Persians, but ensuring the financial and aristocratic stability of the priestly class. Most Judeans were under the thumbs of two oppressive systems.

This especially comes to light as the priestly class sought to rebuild the trappings of Jerusalem’s status, the wall that surrounded the city and the temple. The peasantry’s labor share intensified with these building projects. This reestablishment of the hierarchal social structures was addressed somewhat by Nehemian reforms but those measures were short lived.

Following the Persians were the conquering armies of Alexander the Great in 333 B.C.E. Alexander allowed the Jews to observe their religious laws, and even permitted exemption from tribute during sabbatical years. Interestingly, I have found no documentation of similar Judean observances of Jubilee laws. Then came the rule of the Ptolemies. Horsley writes that during those years “a Greek traveler, Hecataeus, found in Palestine that some ordinary people still had rights to their own land,” and that this was “unusual and surprising.” Family land ownership possibilities, once a centerpiece of the promised land, would continue to erode.

We can further assume that the Judean peasant class continued to serve under the thumb of the priestly ruling class. As the ruling elites of Judea became more Hellenized and kept up tribute, the more pious and laboring classes of Judeans sank further not only into debt, but into a religious identity crisis as well. Hellenization was seen as a looming threat. The differences between the Hellenized class and orthodox Jews came to a head as the Syrians took over rule from the Greeks. These differences erupted under the rule of Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus appointed to the high priesthood a man who took the Greek name Jason in place of his Hebrew name Joshua, and he worshipped the Greek god Hercules. At the time that Menelaus, another Hellenist, challenged the rule of Jason by force, Antiochus marched on Jerusalem.

The result of the invasion was the death of many Jews, the plundering of the temple, and the suspension of civil and religious liberties, as recorded in I Maccabees, chapter 1. As the ultimate show of contempt for Jewish culture, a pig was offered as a sacrifice on the altar of YHWH. In response to this Selucid brutality as well as the apostasy of Hellenized Jews, a popular revolt succeeded in overthrowing Syrian rule and reestablishing a Jerusalem free of imperial domination.

The revolt was started when emissaries of Antiochus expected an elderly priest, Mattathias, to offer a pagan sacrifice as a good example to his people. Instead, Matthias killed an apostate Jew who stood next to him at the altar, and then killed a Syrian official as well. Matthias and his sons from that point started a guerilla war on Syria, his son Judas the “Maccabee” (or Hammer) took leadership of the revolt, and in 164 B.C.E. won Jerusalem. For nearly 100 years afterward, Jerusalem was a free city.

The Maccabean revolution, however, was simply a respite from imperial rule. (Though not for the peasant class as the Jewish leadership could be just as repressive for those standing on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder). In 63 B.C.E. Pompey entered Jerusalem and Roman rule began.

Rome often ruled parts of its empire through the work of client kings, and Judea was one such instance. As long as puppet rulers paid the necessary tribute and showed loyalty to the emperor things ran fairly smoothly for the king. Along about 37 B.C.E. came Herod the Great, one of the most brutal client kings of the period. Herod and his sons, while answering to the emperor, could make a fortune in currency and land holdings by taxing the Judean working class to pay not only the tribute owed Rome, but to enrich Herod himself through extra taxation. Naturally, those who worked collecting for Herod also demanded extra to pay themselves.

All told, Judean workers lost nearly 40 percent of their total income to rent, taxes, tribute, tolls and tithes. By the time these Judean workers paid their obligation to Herod, they often lacked the money needed to fulfill their obligation to the temple.

This obligation, of course, was demanded by the temple priestly class, who undoubtedly supported the status quo. On top of the ruling client king and later governors, Richard Horsley states, “the behavior of the priestly aristocracy became increasingly predatory.” This must have been hardest to bear for poor Judeans. The temple priests, known as the Sadducees, are characterized by Alan Richardson as such:

The Sadducees constituted a hereditary aristocracy of an estimated 200 families tracing their decent from the High Priest Zadok, appointed by Solomon.

The fact is that the Sadducees were not religious men. They were worldly members of an aristocracy that felt at ease in Zion, having made their compromise with the Romans.

Since they controlled the temple, the Sadducees had control over the treasury. They did a lucrative trade in exchanging at profitable rates pilgrim’s money in to temple currency, with which alone travelers could pay tithes and buy sacrificial animals.

The Sadducees were conservatives in the sense that they did not want to alter the status quo. From their own view, any change would be a change for the worse. They were not the real rulers of the country, but they could pretend at the price of deferring to the Romans in all important matters.

Because the temple priests did not have an army standing behind their demands for money, they would censure from the temple any Judean who could not tithe the required amount. They reasoned that poverty and social marginalization was due to the failure of meeting financial obligations owed to God.

This brief sketch of oppression in Judea, the Maccabean period included, is meant to illustrate not so much the physical brutality Judeans experienced at the hands of imperial governments as it is to build a case defining the national character of Palestinian Jews at the time of Jesus. “When a people are under forced subjugation,” writes Horsley, “the mass psychology of the people is one of constant crisis.” Deeply impoverished and deeply religious Jews were looking for a way - a person - who could lead Israel to victory over its oppressors, just as Judas Maccabeus did a century and a half ago.

Significantly, the period of most interest with regard to popular movements and leaders such as Jesus is framed by large scale peasant uprisings against this oppression. The whole period of direct Roman rule by governor from 6 to 66 C.E. was marked by widespread discontent and periodic turbulence in Palestinian Jewish society. Between 14-37 C.E., while no major uprising necessitated intervention from Roman legions stationed in Syria, there was certainly unrest. There is plenty of evidence of revolutionary movements smoldering away through this period coming into explicit confrontation with the authorities from time to time as opportunity offered or pressure became intense. Below, we will catalogue some of the responses to Roman domination, some violent - some nonviolent.

There were three popular revolts in second temple and New Testament times that were prominent in Palestinian Jewish history. The first was, as mentioned above, the Maccabean revolt of 168-167 B.C.E. This successful rebellion was followed by the war in 66 -70 C.E. and another in 132-135 C.E.. In 66-70, the uprising target not just Rome, but the temple aristocracy as well. There was another significant revolt in 4 B.C.E. preceding the reign of Archelaus.

As Archelaus went to Rome to make his case to the Roman emperor as the next king of Judea, trouble was brewing at home. During the feast of Pentecost “the people got together not on account of the accustomed worship,” writes first century historian Josephus, rather they gathered in response to “the indignation they had (suffered).” During this uprising, Josephus states that “in many places…opportunity that now offered itself induced a great many to set up as kings.” He counts Judas of Galilee (son of Hezekias) as one who pulled together a force. Judas and his people broke into the Roman army at Sepphoris.

Simon of Perea was a claimant to the throne, as this royal servant gathered a force and burned down the royal palace at Jericho amongst other acts of rebellion. A third would-be king of Judea was a shepherd by the name of Anthrongeus, who raised an army to kill Romans throughout Palestine. In response to this sedition, Varus, the president of Syria marched the Roman army through Palestine from the cities of Galilee to Jerusalem, which culminated in the crucifixion 2000 revolutionaries outside of the City of David.

Josephus also reports the deadly encounters during the later reign of Roman governor Camaneus. During a Passover Festival, the oppressed Judeans protested a variety of injustices meted out by the Romans. In one instance, Camaneus sent soldiers to surround a temple protest, and, upon subsequent attack, thousands of Jews were trampled to death by one another in the ensuing panic.

In the later violence of 66 C.E., Josephus writes that during the festival of Xylophorya, where large fires were constantly fed with wood, siccari (Zealots) took control of the upper city in Jerusalem by force. In an action that not only addressed the inequity of the temple system, but was meant to invite poor Judeans into revolutionary struggle, the Zealots burned the archives and contracts belonging to creditors, thus erasing debts to the aristocracy.

Placing Jesus in such a context may make it hard to imagine a nonviolent campaign of resistance amid such stark brutality. Yoder points out, as do Horsley and Mattison that “Effective nonviolent resistance was not at all unknown in (the) Jewish experience…” during Roman rule. Horsley points to a “Fourth Philosophy” which emphasized to Judeans that there was “no master but God” and prompted many Jews not to pay Roman taxes or engage in the Roman census. The leaders of this 6 C.E. movement, Judas and Saddok, are prime examples of nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation.

While Camaneus was in power, he ordered troops to a Judean village to violently avenge the robbery of a Roman official. During the ensuing action, a soldier tore in half a Torah scroll. Judeans nonviolently marched in protest to Caesarea demanding punishment of the soldier, who was executed in response to the protest.

There were two other significant nonviolent actions during the Roman occupation, the first in 26 C.E., the second during the reign of Gaius Caligula (37-41 C.E.). Caligula, who was incensed at Judean refusal to obey emperor worship, ordered an official, Petronius, to erect a statue of the emperor in the temple. The Jewish response was to meet Petronius in protest at Ptolemais, while thousands of other Palestinian Jews engaged in a general agricultural strike. According to Yoder, the strike lasted for over a month and “the unity of the people could not be broken.” The collective mass of nonviolent resistance was the second successful act of pacifist resistance in a decade.

The following account is significant because of its proximity to, and possible influence on Jesus ministry. In 26 C.E., at the beginning of the reign of Pontius Pilate in Judea, Pilate wintered troops in Jerusalem. Along with the troops came busts of the emperor - surely idolatrous in the eyes of the Judeans. In response, Judean protesters marched to the palace in Caesarea and prostrated themselves around Pilate’s residence for five days. When Pilate called upon soldiers to remove the protesters, they collectively bared their necks to the sword rather than see Torah broken. Pilate called off the soldiers and moved the busts from Jerusalem to Caesarea.

It is apparent that Jesus came upon a tumultuous environment. Most Palestinian Jews regarded both Rome, and the temple aristocracy, as unjust entities. The oppressors were easy to identify, and passions toward revolution and religious orthodoxy as a means of liberation were commonplace. Jews were looking for a national savior to burst upon the scene, much as Judas Maccabeus had done nearly two centuries earlier. They awaited the son of God, the messiah who would restore Israel’s glory and precede the return of God to His dwelling place with His chosen people.

According to N.T. Wright, messiahship “was central to Jesus’ self- understanding.” What was surprising to Jews, and integral to our Christian understanding of Jesus, was what Jesus’ messiahship entailed. Jesus was not the great military leader who would avenge all of the injustice and oppression suffered by Israel through its history. He was the radical Jewish revolutionary who insisted Israel give up its nationalistic and material desire for glory, and instead nonviolently establish the new kingdom of God, in which the followers of Jesus, the Messiah, would usher in as a light unto the Gentiles. No longer to be separate, Jesus called upon Israel to unite with the enemy, the pagan Gentiles.

Wink states that “in (H)is nonviolent teaching, life, and death, Jesus revealed a God of nonviolence. The God who delivered enslaved people in the Exodus was now the deliverer of all humanity from oppression.” For Jesus, the real revolution came not from inciting armed insurrection but in displaying, as Wright states, “total obedience to, and imitation of, Israel’s [G]od.”

As we further our study, however, we should remember not to view nonviolence as legalism, but instead as an act of discipleship. Wink views nonviolence as “the way God has chosen to overthrow evil in the world.” He adds, “Jesus’ gospel…God’s answer to that system of domination [evil]…it offers an alternative (to violence) more radical and thoroughgoing than any other in human history.”

We have read above what kind of evil existed in first century Palestine. Indeed, Matthew 2:16 speaks of Herod, in his desire to ensure his place on the throne for years, slaughters every baby in the vicinity of Bethlehem who is under the age of two when he hears of the birth of a possible claimant to his kingship.

Make no mistake, there is a certain political nature to Jesus’ ministry. But in His total obedience to God, when evil tempts Jesus “with all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” Jesus dismisses the offer as idolatrous, and as such, the political and nationalist nature of such an offer.

However, this is not to say Jesus avoids responding to the politically charged environment He lived in. Jesus’ response was certain and direct. His message to Palestinian Jews - love and mercy, as practical codes of living are to characterize the true people of God. Yet Jesus requires more of His followers than love and mercy. As we will see in parts of the Gospel of Matthew known as the Sermon on the Mount, and in many of Jesus parables, nonviolent resistance to the oppressive situation first century Jews found themselves in was the ‘marching order’ for His disciples and other followers. The path of violence, Jesus preached, would bring certain destruction.

Jesus taught love. He enlarged the commandment to love in three ways. First, by inseparably conjoining the love of God and man. Second, by reducing the whole of the demand of God into the twofold commandment of love of God and neighbor. Third, extending the term neighbor to include everybody. Jesus universalized the command to love. This radical concept of love served to mount what Wright calls a “social revolution.” Persuading even small groups and villages to change their behavior in the fashion called for in Matthew 5:1ff represented a serious challenge to existing practices. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. Jesus knows only one possibility, simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it

The deeper meaning of scripture is found in the Sermon on the Mount, and this is the case in Matthew 5:21-48. The six antithesis between “You have heard the ancients were told” and “But I say to you” spells out Jesus’ commentary on the preceding Beatitudes. That poverty of spirit, meekness and peacemaking underline the crux of the text, and purity of heart and a hunger for justice are equally the concern of Jesus’ disciples.

In the middle of the six “You have heard -But I say to you…” statements, Jesus gives His listeners an idea of what revolution looks like. Beginning with Matthew 5:38-39 where Jesus’ words are often misinterpreted as a call to nonresistance, Jesus is beginning an exhortation to active resistance.

“Do not resist an evil person” reads Matthew 39a. Wink however, suggests the better translation of the Greek in this verse is found in the Scholars Version Bible. “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” This verse, far from being a call to nonresistance, is actually a call to nonviolent action. It has been shown that the admonitions of Matthew 5:39ff were understood by Jesus’ contemporaries as a call to respond to and resist Roman imperialism. Wright states the command not to resist evil is not to be taken in reference to personal hostilities or village level animosity. The Greek word used for resist - antistenai - is a technical term for revolutionary resistance of a specifically military variety. Jesus is actually declaring that in place of violence, creative nonviolent resistance is the way to respond to Roman oppression and the temple cult. We will see examples of this creativity presently.

Ron Sider writes of Matthew 5:39 that “It means two very radical things: 1) that one should not resist evil persons by exacting equal damages suffered, and 2) that one should not respond to an evil person by placing him in a category of evil.” One should love one’s enemies even at great personal cost.

The creativity of Jesus’ resistance to Rome and His command to love enemies becomes evident in Matthew 5:39b. “Whoever slaps you on your right cheek turn the other to him also.” This is, far from a call to submissive response to an oppressor, but a demand for equality!

The only way to hit someone on the right cheek is to use the back of your right hand, or a close left fist. For a superior to strike a peasant with a closed left fist would demonstrate that the peasant was a worthy equal to the oppressor. Generally, a superior - a master, husband or Roman - would use a right backhand to slap the face of his inferior - a slave, wife, or Jew. Wink states that “the whole point of the blow was to force someone who was out of line back in place.” Jesus is instructing people who are used to being belittled as inferiors by the backhands of superiors to refuse to accept this. Jesus’ way of nonviolent resistance is forcing the oppressor to use the left hand or closed fist to strike the other cheek, thus forcing the oppressor to treat the peasant as a worthy equal. “He can have the slave beaten,” says Wink, “but he can no longer cower him.”

Another example of Jesus teaching His disciples to creatively turn the tables on their oppressors spoke more to relationships between peasants and the Judean aristocracy. “If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your cloak also.”

In this instruction, Jesus is telling an impoverished party who is being sued in court for a piece of his clothing to turn the unjust system against itself by giving away their final piece of clothing as well, and standing before the court naked. “They share a rankling hatred for the system that subjects them to humiliation by stripping them of their land, goods, and even their outer garment.”

Why give away your last piece of clothing as a symbol of protest? Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell mostly on the person viewing or causing the nakedness (Gen. 9:20-27). Wink writes that “by stripping off all his clothes, the debtor has brought shame upon the creditor…(as) the poor man has transcended the attempt to humiliate him in a court of law.

In Matthew 5:41, the Roman soldier is the target of Jesus’ call to nonviolent resistance. “Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” This verse addresses the Roman military code that allowed soldiers to coerce non-citizens and subjugated peoples to carry their packs as far as a mile in distance. Forcing a person to carry the pack more than one mile would bring disciplinary action from a commanding officer.

Jesus is saying that instead of violently responding to the injustice of the forced mile, respond by using the oppressors own rules against them by carrying the pack a mile further. Either the soldier will be disciplined, or, at the very least, wonder what his forced laborer has in mind. Wink writes that in this case, “the oppressed have seized the initiative.”

More importantly, however, than this creative style of resistance, more foundational to the teaching of Jesus, is the following command to love your enemies. “You have heard that it was said ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.”

N.T. Wright explains:

Israel was not part of the chosen people for her own sake, but for the sake of the world. Part of the identity of Jesus and [H]is followers was that they would inherit this biblical vocation…The Sermon on the Mount - Matthew 5:43-48 - develops the following theme: Jesus’ followers were to reflect into the world the love of the creator [G]od, who gives sunshine and rain to Israel and Gentiles alike.

In Matthew 5:44ff, Jesus replaces the manipulative concept of neighborly love with that of love of enemy, by which He understands not as one’s personal opponent, but in general the national and religious enemy. Loving one’s enemy contains the creative, yet aggressive, element found in Matthew 5:38-42. It does not leave the enemy as he is, but seeks to change him nonviolently. In essence, we are to love our enemy just as God does.

It should be remembered that the Sermon on the Mount is calling Palestinian Jewish peasants to resist oppression, but Jesus is also calling upon Israel to do something few Judeans were willing to do. Jesus called Israel to be “a light unto the world” at the expense of Israel’s claim to the promised land. Palestinian Jewish hopes for messianic leadership rested upon Israel’s hope of deliverance from oppression, and the restoration of its national borders. This is important to remember because in the words of Jesus, we should love our enemies, not conquer them, and we should try and change them, to show them the love of God, even at the expense of a prized inheritance. However, to use violence is to invite certain destruction.

Wright states that in Matthew 6:24-34, Jesus is calling upon Israel to

…worship the true [G]od as opposed to idols: Israel cannot serve the true [G]od as opposed to mammon and anxiety about the future is a sign that she is doing just that. Those who are truly seeking the kingdom need not be afraid, whereas those whose seeking of the kingdom consists of pursuing a national or personal agenda for restoring the land, property, or ancestral rights will find that they have been serving a god who cannot give them such things.

Wright adds that Matthew 6:19-21 is not an attack on the hoarding of wealth in the first century, but a call to Israel to give up its claimed stake or inheritance in the promised land.

It is not anachronistic to interpret this exhortation that Israel give up its claim to the land in order to better serve God’s will, in a fashion that translates into North Americans and other Westerners giving up the advantages of economy we inherit in the 21st century to better serve God’s command to love our neighbors throughout the world, and bring justice to it.

We should now conclude that many parts of the Sermon on the Mount, by no means all covered in this writing, are not only a call to peace, purity, justice and humble service, but a call to lovingly change our enemies by extending the loving grace and forgiveness of God, often in revolutionary or subversive ways.

In essence, Israel, or the followers of Jesus, were to show love and obedience to God not by working to restore Israel as proof of God’s glory, but by resisting and changing evil by sharing and showing the love God has for all creation. Jesus’ disciples were the agents not of Israel’s redemption, but of God’s restoration of His whole creation, including Israel. The caveat - One must follow Jesus’ way of nonviolence to participate in this restoration.

Another event impossible to leave out of a character study of Jesus, is the aggressive action of the temple cleansing. The image of Jesus clearing the temple, in one account with a scourge of cords, should help do away with the Sunday School images of the mild and meek, squeaky clean Jesus. The cleansing, however, should in no way lead us to believe that Jesus was anything but nonviolent.

Whether or not there was one, or two cleansings, which is debated amongst some scholars, is not of the utmost importance. We can accept, if necessary, that there was one cleansing, with John moving the action to the beginning of Jesus ministry to better suit the author’s purpose. Something, however, is made clear by the differences found between the synoptic accounts of the cleansing, and the similar action documented in John.

It may be said that Jesus engaged in two distinct actions - with distinct purposes - both necessary to make clear the idea of what will bring the kingdom of God into existence. We will find that the action in John brings judgment upon the temple cult, and the versions found in the synoptics, all similar to one another, distinctly say - there is no room for violent revolutionaries when ushering in the kingdom of God. Both cleansings were highly symbolic.

N.T. Wright states:

Jesus acted, and saw [H]imself as a prophet, standing within Israel’s long prophetic tradition. One of the things that prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel did was to act symbolically. We have seen that Jesus was capable of acting symbolically, and with deliberate scriptural overtones…we should not be surprised that when faced with the central symbol of Israel, he did so here as well.

For Wright, the temple cleansing is “Jesus’ announcement that Israel’s [G]od has become king.” One of the clear focal points of the temple action in John is the return of YHWH to Zion. As Jesus clears the temple, Wright asks, “who can abide the day of [H]is coming?” As written above, Jesus message was that Israel’s self-identity had become idolatrous. Nationalism, inheritance, and temple based piety as opposed to obedience of the heart had turned the focus away from God’s intent for Israel, and its sight away from God’s justice and compassion.

In the Johanine version of the cleansing, Jesus is pronouncing God’s intended wrath upon Israel. Just as Jeremiah predicted God would destroy Jerusalem and the temple, Jesus is saying Jerusalem and the temple will receive God’s wrath because of the failure of the temple cult to do justice in God’s eyes. Also, in John, Jesus is cleansing the temple not only in judgment of the temple aristocracy, but of the sacrificial system in general. Does this mean that God destroyed Jerusalem in 66 C.E.? It means that Jesus issued a stern warning to the temple cult. Repent and return to the vocation God intended of Israel, or suffer the repercussions of widespread mistreatment and oppression of people of faith.

In the synoptics, where Jeremiah is quoted, we have another, later cleansing, perhaps distinct from, but coordinated with the account in John. The difference is found in the words shouted by to the temple crowds by Jesus. In John, he shouts “stop making my father’s house a place of business”, targeting the temple aristocracy and its trading practices. In the synoptic, the target of Jesus’ wrath is different. “…you have made it into a robbers den” He cries. Here we find the allusion to Jeremiah 7:11, but something sets it apart from the Jeremiah warning, and the action in John. They key word in the synoptic is robbers. The English translation of the word lestai here is used throughout the New Testament for robbers, plunderers or pirates. Lestai is used to describe Barabbas in the trial account and the two thieves at the cross in the crucifixion account. The word is also used by Josephus in description of political revolutionaries, which is what Barabbas and the thieves at the cross were charged with. In the synoptics, Jesus is cleansing the central symbol of Israel of violent revolutionaries, like those of the Zealots. Does this mean that Jesus was not a revolutionary? Oscar Cullman writes:

The temple cleansing was a revolutionary act, but not the act of a Zealot. The Zealots, like the Essenes, aspired to radically reform the temple by the existing priesthood. The Zealots wanted to destroy it by force and set up a new system.

Yet, Jesus, as we have seen, called for a radical and thoroughgoing change in the Johanine account. Certainly revolutionary, as He brings judgment on the existing aristocracy and predicts its demise. But, as the other gospel accounts show, Jesus calls for nonviolent change in the oppressive systems, and tells the ones who would use violence that there is no room for them in the process.

After study, we find the revolutionary presence of Jesus existing in the parables he used to teach disciples and other listeners as well. N.T. Wright calls parables, among others things, subversive stories told to bring to light Israel’s new vocation as the people of God. They were essentially secretive, and Wright states, “Jesus was not a ‘universal teacher’ of timeless truths” but a revolutionary leader whose movement “would grow like an unobserved seed.”

Mark Mattison writes of two parables specifically that especially point to Jesus’ subversive nature.

The standard interpretation of the vineyard tenants is an allegory in which God is the vineyard owner. However, a Herzog study of Mediterranean cultures demonstrates an alternative view. The parable in question is the story of a peasant revolt concluding in a rhetorical question designed to get Jesus’ hearers to consider the futility of violence to assert ‘land rights’ to the ‘promised land.’

In this view the tenants are the oppressed and the absentee landowner is the oppressor. When Jesus is finished telling the parable, in which the landowner sends a number of servants, and finally his son, only to have them killed by the vineyard workers, He gets quite a different response from the two groups he tells the parable to.

In Matthew 21, the listening crowd is made up of Pharisees, who in support of the wealthy landowners respond to the question of what will happen when the landowner arrives at the vineyard, “…he will bring those miserable wretches to a wretched end.” In Luke 20:16, a group of peasants respond to the fact that the owner will “come and destroy those vine growers” with the cry of “may it never be.” This reading of the parable should not discount the traditional, Christological reading that we are more familiar with, detailing God sending the prophets, then His Son, all to be rejected by the growers. It is probable that Jesus told and retold this parable, each time having a different shading or nuance that were well understood by His audience. Double meanings were certainly not beyond the stretch of Jesus’ parable telling.

In another reading of the parable of the Minas, Mattison asks four questions of the usual interpretation that God or Jesus is the nobleman or king.

First, why is the king of the text reminiscent of Archelaus? Second, why does the king, if it is God, tell slaves to collect interest on money when this practice is expressly forbidden by Torah (Ex. 22:25ff)? Thirdly, would this king present a flattering image of God - ‘a hard man, taking out what you did not lay down, and reap where you did not sow’ (Luke 19:22)? Lastly, what happened to Jesus shortly after the telling of this parable, and what happens to the servant who didn’t obey?

Mattison writes that it may well be the king represents not God, but the Roman backed Herodian authorities. Unlike God, the Father of Jesus, the Herodian ruler is a harsh and oppressive figure, this parable is about resistance to imperialism and the man who did not comply seals his fate by confronting empire - just as Jesus sealed His doom by confronting authorities in Jerusalem.

Now we have established a few scriptural truths from a look at the Sermon on the Mount, the temple cleansing(s), and two of Jesus’ parables. We have shown that Jesus was acutely aware of -and addressed - the injustice suffered by fellow Jews of His time at the hands of both the Romans and the temple authorities. Jesus warned that a violent response to this oppression would not only bring total destruction to Israel, but that God demanded a different, though still revolutionary, response.

Jesus called upon Israel to give up its nationalist and material desires in order to truly serve, and to reflect a loving God to those who needed Him most, the oppressors.