Not of This World.

In his conversation with Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor who will shortly condemn him, the Lord Jesus says his Kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36).  He is answering Pilate’s query about whether he is a “king” or not.  This political question is the only thing Pilate cares about: “Is this guy a threat?”

Jesus’ response about his Kingdom not being “of this world” has been widely (and often intentionally) misunderstood.  People use it to claim that Jesus’ Kingdom is “heavenly” in the sense of not relating to issues and problems, policies and promises, of daily life.  I recently heard someone use it to argue that Jesus was not political and had no concern for social justice, therefore his disciples are not to be concerned with these things either.

This attitude leads elements of the Church to understand, say, evangelism and mission as bringing people to verbally confess Jesus as their Savior and thereby gain a ticket to heaven when they die.  But the idea that the Church has a responsibility to meet human needs — or worse, that the Church should advocate for (gasp!) government to help people — is largely rejected.  We are not of this world; we are beyond and above all that.  Apparently, we’re about heaven, a place we only access after death.  This world is a lost cause.

But when Jesus is himself confronted with human need — hungry, sick, oppressed, excluded, even dead people — he does not send them away with the explanation that they should not bug him because his Kingdom is not of this world.  He heals and feeds and welcomes people in this world.  Indeed, it is his healing, restorative, and liberating ministry that he lifts up as the sign and proof of his Messiahship (eg. Matthew 11:4-6).  So, while his Kingdom may not be “of this world,” it certainly is busy in this world.

Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God, though it is not of or “from” this world, it is also nevertheless near, which is to say present and available, to this world.  It is having an impact in this world here and now.  It is something that we are called as his disciples to live in as it comes, which is something Jesus has his disciples pray for (Matthew 6:10a).  Pilate apparently recognizes that, whatever “kingdom” Jesus is talking about and wherever it may be from, it is enough of a factor in this world to warrant executing him for sedition.  People doing otherworldly and therefore harmless and irrelevant things don’t get hauled in front of him early in the morning on a holiday weekend.

The Lord’s statement about his Kingdom being “not of this world” does not mean Pilate should relax and understand that he is not a threat.  Just the opposite.  His Kingdom is “not of this world,” and it is invading this one like an alien power.  In a few short centuries the disciples of this hapless convict would overthrow Rome.

It is the job of his disciples now to embody this Kingdom from elsewhere that Jesus proclaims.  It is to live in and express in our actions the humility, compassion, justice, equality, inclusiveness, generosity, sharing, and forgiveness that Jesus reveals at the heart of Reality.  We are witnesses to the truth of this Kingdom which is now within and among us.  We are to live here and now according to the values and practices of God’s coming future.  We are to be that other world, breaking into this one.

Far from an authorization to do nothing, faithfulness to Jesus’ not of this world Kingdom is a license to participate in God’s emergence in this world by doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with the Creator, in this creation, here and now.  It means being that Kingdom, being that change, and serving as salt and light, influencing and flavoring life in this world.

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Why the Church Must Talk About Politics.

Time was, many people thought there should be no talk of politics in church.  I get that.  I don’t agree with it; but I understand it.  Sort of.  There was a basic agreement in the churches that one could be a faithful Christian and also a Democrat or Republican.  This reflected a consensus in our country about truth and democracy.  Both of the major parties agreed on the basic framework of the American republic, and neither was considered incompatible with Christianity.  Then it could be argued that political advocacy was not appropriate in church, and that churches should not “take sides” in political arguments. 

Those days are over.  Now it is absolutely imperative that we talk about politics in church.  Because today democracy itself is at risk.  And followers of Jesus Christ are committed to advocate for a broadly inclusive, egalitarian democracy.

The Lord Jesus, during his lifetime, is famous for his radical inclusion of all kinds of people, especially those dismissed by the establishment as sick or sinners.  He lifts up and empowers women, he feeds the hungry, he welcomes children, he summons sick people into his circle, he affirms workers, he associates with Samaritans and other people considered alien.  His movement is wildly inclusive of all kinds of people. 

Democracy, of course, was not a thing in the first century; politics in Palestine was locked down by the Roman Empire.  But Jesus demonstrates in his ministry a democratic sensibility in which all are equal under the One God, the arrival of whose Kingdom Jesus comes to proclaim.  In the Kingdom of God, all are equal, all are welcome, all have their voices heard and receive what they need.

Therefore, advocating for a radically inclusive democracy is itself a witness to Jesus Christ.  

When Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement, it was under this basic assumption about both Christianity and America.  King appealed not just to the Constitution and the democratic vision of the founding Fathers; his was also and primarily an explicitly Christian movement.  American democracy is thought to be fundamentally rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that begins with a band of slaves whom God liberates from Pharaoh’s Empire.  If America was founded on Christian principles, as some like to affirm, the main Christian principle upon which it was founded is this inclusive equality of all before God, Thomas Jefferson’s primary self-evident truth.

The conflict we are experiencing in America now is way beyond mere “politics.”  This is past being something concerning which reasonable and faithful Christians might disagree.  It is not just disagreement about different methods to achieve good, common goals.

The conflict today is what we call a status confessionis.  That is, this is a matter of the integrity of our confession of faith as Christians.  In short, to reject the basic principles of inclusive democracy is to reject Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.  

The Church is therefore required to talk about politics in this situation.  When one side of the political conversation is opposed to democracy itself, and advocates in effect for dictatorship, intentionally inventing, following, and justifying falsehoods, then we have to mention and condemn it.  We have a duty to guide church members away from such ideologies and practices.  Indeed, the Church is even bound to cut off from its communion anyone persisting in advocating such views. 

           

Had the Church been more willing to have political conversations before, during the decades when one party was sliding down the gutter away from democracy, inventing lies about things like “voter fraud,” weaponizing the practice of gerrymandering, militating against equal rights for all, demonizing opponents, and stoking racial division, we would be better off today.

But we are where we are.  Now the Church must explicitly embrace and advocate for democracy, which means rejecting one of the two major parties.  More specifically, the Church has to renounce the bigotry and lies that led to the deadly riot against the U. S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  It must separate itself categorically and unequivocally from what is called “Trumpism.” 

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The "Love" Temptation.

The second* temptation of Jesus is this:

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you’, and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:5-7).  

* The order of the temptations is different in Matthew and Luke.

On the one hand, the devil is tempting Jesus to endanger himself, thus daring God to intervene to save him, thus proving his Messiahship.  But why go all the way to the Temple for that?  The same point would be made were Jesus to jump off a readily available cliff in the wilderness.  But the Temple was a highly visible, busy, public place in the middle of a city.  Were God to intervene miraculously on his behalf, it would have been a spectacle that would amaze and convince many onlookers.

That is why I suggest that this temptation is really about fame, reputation, and popularity.  I extend it to relationships generally.  It concerns what we do to get attention, make a name for ourselves, win people over, to attract and impress.  It is not unlike a mating dance; something we do to attract another.  It has to do with getting the appreciation and love from others we feel we need.  

The three vows of traditional monasticism — poverty, chastity, and obedience — may inform us here.  I contend that they are based on these three temptations.  Poverty means having no money.  Obedience means we relinquish power.  And between them, chastity means a shutting down, or redirecting, of our desire for physical and emotional gain and acquisition.  We let go of that need, transforming it so that we are not shaping our whole life with strategies to get affection, admiration, adulation, and acclaim.  We stop trying to earn love by means of entertainment or service.

Jesus frames it in terms of tempting God.  He rejects the temptation to be tempting.  He refuses to win loyalty from others by acting in an alluring or calculating way.  He refuses the transactional ways we devise to get love, like when we take risks, daring the other to reject us, or when we provide some kind of service expecting to be owed.  

We see this repeatedly in his ministry when the Lord appears to do and say intentionally unpopular things.  He largely refuses to accept grandiose titles for himself.  The miracles he does are generally private matters in small groups with individuals; sometimes he doesn’t even want all the disciples present.  It’s like he does everything he can to avoid the limelight.  Of course, he becomes wildly famous anyway, but that is not his intention.  He criticizes the practice of doing anything for show.  He doesn’t go around explicitly proclaiming his own divinity or messiahship.  In John 6 he infamously preaches such a bizarre sermon that a mob that had been ready to make him king walks away in disappointment. 

What people will do to get love is endless.  They will threaten to destroy or harm themselves, conversely they will dedicate their whole lives to producing a timeless monument in art, or sports, or science, or politics.  We will often do whatever it takes to acquire, to extract from another — a parent, a lover, a friend — the attention and affection we need.

Jesus is saying something very radical here.  Just as we have to detach from our pursuit of wealth and power, here he insists that we have to avoid dedicating our lives to acquiring the benefits of relationships.  This doesn’t mean we do completely without.  Jesus did not starve himself.  Neither did he decline to wield power and influence.  And he certainly engaged in personal relationships.  This is not about the self-punishing deprivation of extreme asceticism.

In Psalm 119:36, we read “Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.”  So it is a matter of where our hearts are focused, what we have dedicated our lives to, what we “seek first.”  Jesus wants us to have and receive what we need.  God provides.  We give thanks.  But we are not to orient ourselves to acquiring, gaining, getting, and receiving, but to God’s law.  We are not to put ourselves and our feeling, needs, and desires at the center of our world.  We are to put God at the center of our world.  If we orient ourselves to God’s law, Jesus is saying we will then receive what we need. 

If we sacrifice the feeding of our egos and follow not our own wants but the commandments of Jesus, we will be provided for.  This makes no sense to us if we continue to think of ourselves as isolated, independent individuals.  But the relinquishing of our desire for acclaim, affection, attention, adulation, attractiveness, and love, means that we think of ourselves instead as members of integrated communities.    

Richard Rohr somewhere explains monastic celibacy as love focused not just on one person, but expanded to embrace the whole world.  Not everyone is called to that, of course.  But all disciples are called to have “the mind of Christ,” which means to understand themselves as one with all.  He is our True Self, our Essence.  In him, the truly human One, we identify with all people, and that becomes our frame of reference.

What we get, then, we get not as individuals but as participants in communities.  Our concern is therefore not for our own personal, private well-being, but for that of the communities of which we are a part.  What we need then comes to us in and through those communities.

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Re-education.

These days, presbyteries routinely bring in ministers who don’t know Greek and Hebrew.  We don’t care.  It is a requirement we readily waive when applied to ministers transferring from other denominations.  This provides cover for waiving it for everyone.  We are disintegrating into a multi-tiered system with ministers having wildly different levels of education.  And it is eroding faith in our “requirements” when they are no longer really required but easily and regularly evaded.  

We Presbyterians once prided ourselves on having well-educated ministers.  We even stuck to these guns in the 19th century when the Methodists got the jump on us evangelizing the frontier because, with lower educational standards, they could ordain and send out ministers a lot quicker than we could.  Baptists did even better with no standards at all.

Early in my career I was in a clergy Bible study with some who did not know any ancient languages.  They basically picked a Bible translation they liked and treated it like gospel.  If the study Bible of their choice said it, it was true.  At best some would find a scholar who said what they wanted to hear.  But the idea of actually reading, or at least being able to look up words in the actual Greek text was beyond them.

Education is increasingly seen as a bureaucratic “hoop” to jump through.  What we need, we are told, is shovel-ready ministers literate in Facebook and Zoom.  Ancient dead languages, ancient dead doctrines, and anything else judged ancient and dead, are a waste of our time and energy. 

Without maintaining deep intellectual roots, Christian faith blows with every contemporary trend.  American Protestantism has settled into an unremittingly “popular” religion, simplistic, shallow, and dressed-up and watered-down for public consumption.  It is refitted and ungraded to be all relevant and useful, adapted to the lowest common denominator or the latest business fad.  Maniacally adapting, not to the Word of God which becomes increasingly amorphous and translation-dependent, but to the demands of marketing and technology, we curdled into the church-of-what’s-happenin’-now, and ceased being recognizable as a Church of Jesus Christ.  The Church adapted itself to some more tangible, measurable, and socially valued models, like psychology and politics, imported from secular authorities.  It became the American Civil Religion, designed to excuse, allow, and defend the worst aspects of our national identity.  And individual Christians got it into their heads that the point is to have it their way.  Like the old Burger King commercial.  

All this can only happen if Jesus Christ gets set aside and viewed through a dense cultural filter.  Discipleship is dismissed as “works righteousness,” and all but prohibited.  It is reduced to mere citizenship, at best.  At worst it is drowned in a toxic sludge of nationalism, capitalism, militarism, and racism.  It becomes little more than a vague spiritual veneer painted over a corrupt, unjust, shallow, and violent way of life.

Of course, education per se doesn’t solve anything.  Especially when so much of theological education is forced into Modernist categories and methodologies that are inherently hostile to the gospel in many ways.  It is not like things were going splendidly back when we did enforce those old educational standards.  Knowing Greek and Hebrew, and the details of historical doctrine, didn’t generate much actual discipleship.  We were missing Wisdom, which is the core of what we are about and the inner meaning of doctrine.  But Wisdom has no place in seminaries that are essentially graduate schools.

The Reformation famously ditched monasteries for schools.  Ministers wore (and still often wear) not monastic or priestly robes but black academic gowns.  It was a scholarly, intellectual movement at least as much as a spiritual and theological one.  But schools quickly became secularized educational institutions that ultimately believed/trusted in the State, the market, individualism, rationalism, and empirical science.  In none of these places is discipleship rooted in prayer and spiritual community even intelligible.  “God” is just a stand-in for ego, which is how a fundamentally imperialist institution would work.

Such was Christendom in its Protestant form.

MY POINT IS EMPHATICALLY NOT THAT WE SHOULD GO BACK 

TO ENFORCING OUR PREVIOUS STANDARDS.  

RATHER IT IS TO APPRECIATE THIS SITUATION OF DISINTEGRATION 

AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO RE-GROUND CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

1. A stronger, more intentionally maintained foundation in basic understanding of the emancipatory spiritual and political content of both the Bible and the doctrines of the orthodox Church would benefit our mission by giving it a  reliable foundation for meeting the challenges of today’s chaotic and dangerous environment.  It would especially distinguish us from the counterfeit and corrupt versions of Christianity prevalent today.
2. It is imperative that education be wedded to spiritual practices, especially the Biblical foundation of fasting, generosity, and prayer, with prayer including a vigorous and profound grounding in meditation/contemplation.   
3. This requires expression in a revived ecclesiology that lifts up and recognizes the authority of the gospel community.
4. Finally, the point is always discipleship: we live a life together rooted and grounded in love, expressed in justice that challenges idolatries and participates in the liberation of poor and oppressed people.

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