Up Against the Empire: Celebrating the Rebel Jesus

[Karmadillo]

http://www.counterpunch.org/roth12242010.html

Up Against the Empire
Celebrating the Rebel Jesus
By ROBERT ROTH

"Tell me, say – what kind of man this Jesus is, my lord?"

– Buffy Ste.-Marie, "Ananais"

The media distorted parts of Jesus' message right from the start. The Gospels, and the first generation of Jesus' followers, effectively altered or hid his more radical teachings, and what has been preached from a million pulpits and that we still get from many today is a gross distortion. Jesus was not preoccupied with individual "sin" but with systemic injustice, in opposition to the commercializing empire of his time. The historical Jesus disclosed by contemporary scholarship appears to be fundamentally the same as the Jesus who is preached and practiced in the Catholic Worker movement, for example. And the parallels between his conflict with Rome and our own with imperial America are striking indeed.

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In the Kingdom of God, it is not the rich who are favored, but the destitute. As destitute people flocked to Jesus to hear his teaching and to see or be cured by his mighty works, he taught them by the example of his life, as well. Be compassionate as God is compassionate. (Luke 6:36; see Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again 46, text and fn. 1.) Judge not, lest you be judged. If you have two coats and your brother has none, give one to your brother. Never refuse alms to one who asks for them. What you do for the least of these, you do for me. Love your neighbor as yourself. And who is my neighbor? A broken stranger lying by the side of the road. Eating and drinking, Jesus practiced open commensality, shared table fellowship, that mirrored many of his stories in their radical egalitarianism. He practiced free healing, declining to set up a brokered healing business that would stay in one place and let his disciples mediate access to him for a fee. Instead, he was always on the move for the next town, personally and directly accessible, and always performed, as it were, free of charge. He didn't make people dependent on his power: he empowered them.

The stories of Jesus' interactions with women are remarkable. First century Judaism was deeply patriarchal. Women had few rights; they could not be witnesses in a court of law, or initiate a divorce. They were not to be taught the Torah and were to be separated from men in public life. Respectable women did not go out of the house unescorted by a family member; adult women were to be veiled in public. But Jesus defended the woman who entered an all-male banquet, unveiled and with her hair unbraided, and washed his feet with her hair. While being hosted by Mary and Martha, he affirmed Mary's choice of the role of disciple. And of course, he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. Women were apparently part of the itinerant group traveling with Jesus; the movement itself was financially supported by some wealthy women. And the evidence is compelling that women played leadership roles in the early post-Easter community. Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time 57 (1995).

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We are called upon, in the present age, to oppose these forces of injustice and oppression, and to defend the commons, our common humanity, and the common good, and with them our neighbors, including and especially the most vulnerable among us. We are called upon by our very nature, our needs as human beings for fulfillment through relationship and community. But in answering that call, we also have the powerful and heroic example of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth – as Jackson Browne has aptly called him, the rebel Jesus.

[Taverner]

1. Like I've said, Capitalism and Christianity are not compatible

One tells you to sacrifice for the group, and the other tells you to sacrifice the group for you.

[xchrom]

2. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the prisoner,

Lift up the widow and orphan, etc.

Christians are not called to do much else - other
Than to do it in with Christ in mind.

[phasma ex machina]

3. "Christianity originally challenged the system of Roman power."

The Roman legions had enslaved much of the known world, and their power seemed invincible. Yet Christianity identified with the slaves, with those who had been subjected to torture and crucifixion. Our God, the Christians proclaimed, had become incarnate in a human being, a Jew, who died on the cross, and transcended all that pain through resurrection to a higher realm. The real power, then, was not in the hands of those who defiled the earth with their instruments of oppression, but rather with human beings who stayed faithful to a higher spiritual truth.

Christian spirituality was a renewal of the original spiritual vision of human beings as connected to each other through love, and as loved by the universe - in short, a return to the deepest spiritual aspirations of the human race, which had originally been articulated in the Jewish Torah. No wonder it spread like wildfire, winning to its midst those whose experience with religion lacked this sense of outrage at injustice and hope for a world more consistent with our fundamental spiritual being. - Spirit Matters

[msongs]

4. everyone goes back to behaving as usual on Sunday lol nt

[kgnu_fan]

5. I LOVE listening the story of Jesus turning the table of money changers

[phasma ex machina]

8. Jesus challenged temple banksters, who retaliated with a sanctioned Roman crucifixion.

Note how supreme power flows FROM banksters TO government officials. Just like today.

Some Sadducee (temple bankster) blood probably flows in Lord Mayor's (City of London bankster) veins. The bankster's bankster travels about in gilded carriage.

[tavalon]

6. The middle of that article

explains why this Wiccan allows Jesus into my pantheon. I don't allow his father, because his father doesn't play well with others, but Jesus exemplified those traits I find to be spiritually noble.

[madrchsod]

7. he was and that`s why they hung him...

he was a threat to the powers in the land.