Jesus for President?
Amidst the often circus-like claims of the 2016 crop of presidential candidates I find myself wondering what might Jesus’ platform be if he were to run for president today? I suppose that such a question might strike you as absurd given that Jesus was curiously flippant when Pilate asked him, “are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “You say so (Matthew 27:11).” In John 6:15 the apostle says, “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” Again, in Mark 12:17, Jesus spoke about paying taxes, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” which for some delineated the difference between God and emperor and perhaps laid the foundation for the separation of Church and State. At first blush, it seems as though posing a question like “Jesus for President?” is at best ironic given the biblical evidence against such a proposition, and, perhaps even absurd given the paradoxical separation of Church and State in our “one nation, under _ _ _, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” How could the man who denied being “king of the Jews,” fled the crowd who wanted to take him by force and place him on the throne, and who drew a distinction between what belongs to the emperor and what belongs to God throw his hat into the 2016 presidential the race?
But, while these observations from the biblical witness seem to foreclose on the possibility of Jesus making a run for the Oval Office, there are deeper aspects of the tradition that are worth exploring. Let us begin with a quote from Acts 17:7 which levels a criticism against the uproar that Paul and Silas caused in a Roman occupied territory, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also… They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus.” Paul, as you may know, spent a lot of time in jail not because of his beliefs, but because of what he did on account of his beliefs. According to Luke, the author of Acts, Paul and Silas were “acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor” because they had another king named Jesus!
1 Corinthians 12:3 and Romans 10:9 cite the early and shortest Christian creed, “Jesus is Lord.” Jesus is often referred to as Lord in the New Testament. The term “Lord” is a title usually associated with royalty, i.e., the king. To call Jesus “Lord” means to call no one else your “Lord/king/leader.” According to the preeminent New Testament scholar from the University of Oxford, N.T. Wright, “Israel’s king was always supposed to be the world’s king (http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Paul_Caesar_Empire.pdf).” Wright then cites scripture to back up his claim, “His dominion shall be from one sea to the other; from the River to the ends of the earth (Ps. 72.8).” “The root of Jesse shall rise to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope (Isa. 11.10, cited Rom. 15.12).” One of the earliest creeds that we have quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians and Romans calls Jesus Lord and Paul, as noted above by Luke in the book of Acts, was reported to have been disobeying the Roman Emperor in the name of king Jesus. “Jesus is Lord!”
Archaeology has opened up some of the New Testament’s terminology ascribed to Jesus as having imperial overtones. First of all, the title “son of God” was not only used in referring to Jesus, but it was actually used to describe Caesar long before it was ever used for Jesus. “Divi fillius” or, son of the divine/god was what people said when they worshipped Caesar. It is well documented in New Testament studies that the world that the apostle Paul inhabited was filled with shrines and temples populated by huge swaths of Roman citizens who were part of the “cult of the emperor, the son of god (c.f https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome), I am not a huge fan of wikipedia, but in an attempt to use online resources it will suffice).” To call Jesus “the son of God” subverted the claim that Caesar, the Emperor of Rome, was the “son of god.”
The term “Gospel” itself, used in the New Testament as both the title of the four stories about Jesus’ life (The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) as well as another way of saying Good News, “was used [first] to describe what actions or events associated with various Roman emperors had occurred for the welfare of the world. Thus in the inscription from Priene… we read of the “gospels”—the announcements of good news—that the birth of the emperor Augustus brought to the world (http://www.augsburgfortress.org/media/downloads/9780800699116Chapter1.pdf).” So, the title “Gospel” carries with it Roman imperial overtones as does the title “son of God.” And when the two titles, “gospel” and “son of God,” are used to describe Jesus, and not the emperor, a political claim has been made which would be both treasonous and seditious to the Roman Empire. Mark 1:1 says, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Amen.
What I have listed above is a small sample of contemporary scholarship and archaeology that reifies rather than contradicts Christian Orthodoxy. Each week we confess the faith of the Church in the 2nd article of the Apostle’s Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only son, our Lord.” It is important to note that the Apostle’s Creed was used in the early Church’s baptismal liturgy long before the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized and legitimized Christianity in the Roman Empire during the 4th century AD. The book of Revelation affirms, “…and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.” The New Testament, from the beginning (Mark, the earliest canonical Gospel written) to the end (Revelation) affirms that Jesus, not the king, emperor, or president, is Lord of all. And, recent 1st century archaeology develops and expands on the latent claims by New Testament authors that to confess Jesus as “Lord” and “Son of God” are political terms denying the sovereignty of all others.
So, if Jesus were running for President today, what might his platform look like? First of all, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution would need to be revised because, while exceptional in terms of human aspirations for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Founder’s documents nowhere state nor prescribe a way for attaining the ultimate purposes of humanity. The Founders focused on human aspirations confined by human experience. The problem with the hopes of the Constitution, though high by human standards, are simply too low for the Kingdom of God. The Founders of this country never conceived of a government nor a social ethic that sought to develop the character of humanity so as to bring all of humanity, both those within the borders of the United States and those without, to the full realization that all people bear the imprint of God, the Imago Dei. Were Jesus to run for president and win, the borders of the United States would be irrelevant because to bask in the revelation that you carry God’s image inside you is ultimately a negation of borders and a widening of an all too often narrowly conceived notion of family. Were Jesus to run for president and win, altruism and the depths of self-giving would be the most valuable characteristic of the citizenry. Such a world cannot be comprehended apart from the image of God born in and carried by Jesus Christ which is conveyed to us not by conquering all, but by sacrificing oneself for the benefit of all. Jesus’ titles alone give us a glimpse of the kingdom he has ushered in and what his political platform for the Kingdom of God might be: the King of Peace, the Good Shepherd (seeker of the lost), the Bread of Life (comprehended after feeding the poor and hungry), the Lamb of God (humility and self-sacrifice), the Author of Life (intimate connection with all life including animals and the environment), the Savior of the World (not parochial, i.e., borderless commitments), the Living Water (life affirming) etc… The world, not just the United States, longs for such a King, and yet….
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…at the same time the world also despises such a person. We already know what happened last time Jesus ran for office. He was put on trial on trumped up charges of heresy and insurrection. Sadly, given the copious size of our legal codes, it would be far easier to put Jesus on trial today. He, like so many others before and after him that encountered corrupt judicial processes, would be whisked away and his story, then as now, would be buried in the “news” behind tabloids and stories of violence parading as journalism, “history,” and a free press. So, even if Jesus were to run for president today he wouldn’t win, and neither will his disciples. Christ, and Christians, are virtually unelectable. This should not be a surprise. Christ’s convictions landed him on a cross, and Christ’s follower’s convictions landed them in jail, or worse, martyred. Christ couldn’t win an election, and the closest thing he ever truly had to one was when Pilate asked who should be crucified, “Jesus of Nazareth, or Barrabbas the murderous insurrectionist?” The votes were cast by a blood thirsty crowd, justice was aborted in the name of “democracy,” and the rest is history.
Jesus wouldn’t run for president because the office of president is too restrictive to encompass the purposes of God for humanity. He resisted being taken by force by his followers to be made king because a king has borders and God’s kingdom has none. He said, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give to God the things that are God’s” not as a tacit approval of taxation and the like, but as an affirmation that all things are God’s, even taxes, and to draw the distinction between this life, the emperor’s domain, and the next is the beginning of tyranny. While Jesus has never and will never win an election, he has elected each and every one of us to be his followers which constitutes his Church. And by electing us to be his disciples he has inaugurated the Kingdom of God which is sewn amidst nations of all lands and peoples.
For many, the political aspect of Jesus’ Lordship may be new and perhaps even disheartening given the United States’ paradoxical reality of the perpetual sloganeering about the “separation of Church and State” while simultaneously upholding we are “one nation under God” in whom “we trust.” For many Christians, “Jesus as Lord” is a harmless statement whose confession reaps benefits on the other side of the tomb. But to the early Church, to disciples like St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and St. Paul, the first Christian jailed for civil disobedience, the ability to confess Jesus as Lord with both their lips and their feet was the greatest gift one could possibly possess or be possessed by. We, the Church in the 21st century, have lost something precious if we forget or neglect the price paid for conferring and transmitting the faith to us nearly two-thousand years after the fact. Yet, for those of us who experience this essay’s brand of “Good News” as “News” instead of “Good,” there is hope for transformation yet. St. Augustine said in his Confessions:
O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me.”
The deepest aspect of the confession that Jesus is “Lord” and “the Son of God” draws deeply from the ancient and orthodox traditions of the church in that we, as Christians, call on no one else as Lord, king, leader, or sovereign other than Jesus. And, as St. Augustine notes above, we do not change confessions like “Jesus is Lord” or “Jesus is the son of God,” but rather, we are changed by them.
