When I was in seminary, I had a professor who told us stories about the wild days of the Sixties on the campus of Drew Theological School. Once, he recounted an incident that occurred during all the protests against the Vietnam War. At one point, a group of students from the university attracted a lot of publicity by announcing that, to protest the war, they were going to burn a Bible on campus. Of course, their plans sparked outrage and anger in the community. In response, the Dean enlisted my professor to go and have a talk with this group of so-called revolutionaries.
The first thing my professor told them was, “Listen, before you burn that Bible, you may want to read it because you’ll discover it has a lot to say in support of your cause.” The protesting students were shocked to hear that. For them, the Bible was merely a symbol of the Establishment, of “The Man,” and was a target for indiscriminate attack. They assumed that the religious establishment always endorsed violence and war. They had not stopped to consider the parts of the Bible that speak about peace, Jesus’ call to love our enemies, or to turn the other cheek. In their headlong rush to be revolutionary and shocking, they almost destroyed a powerful ally in their cause.
Think about that word “revolutionary.” What comes to mind? Those Bible-burning rebels without a cause at a college protest? An angry wild-eyed fighter holding an AK-47? Our Founding Fathers? A socialist or communist? An iconoclast? Someone with completely new and never-before-heard ideas? The leader of a cause who fights an enemy? A cause with distinct insiders and outsiders?
When we hear Jesus described as a revolutionary, some of us may recoil a bit because of those kinds of associations. Yet, we must face the historical fact that Jesus was considered a revolutionary in his day. In fact, he was executed by the Roman government for being one. In Jesus’ time there were plenty of revolutionaries who fit my previous description. But Jesus was not like the other revolutionaries. That’s what made him so…well, revolutionary.
Nowhere is this as clear as when Jesus begins his public ministry in his hometown synagogue. The first thing we notice is that the Jesus Revolution comes out of his roots, not out of the blue. Jesus’ message and ministry were not some novel new idea, but emerged out his Jewish tradition and history.
Over the years, some specious books have been published claiming Jesus got his ideas by spending his mystery-shrouded young adulthood in India studying Buddhism or some other Eastern religion. I don’t believe those theories. It’s not that I think there is anything inherently evil about Buddhism, it’s just that there is neither the evidence nor need for such a theory. There is as little evidence or need to suggest the source of the Jesus Revolution was an Eastern religion as there is to suggest it was aliens. Such suggestions miss the point and context of who Jesus was. All of the components of the Jesus Revolution can be found within Judaism.
The scene described in Luke 4 takes place in a synagogue. Jewish people began meeting in synagogues, sometime during the Babylonian exile, at a time when their Temple was destroyed. After returning to their homeland, and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, they continued to meet in these public assemblies in towns where distance prevented them from worshipping in the Temple. Rather than focusing on the altar and the sacrifice, as was done in the Temple, these synagogues focused on the book of the Law. It was from this context and tradition that the Jesus Revolution emerged.
It is significant that Jesus does act like our stereotype of a revolutionary. He doesn’t just disrupt the proceedings of the synagogue by standing up and shouting, “I have a new revelation from God! Everything we Jews do is wrong and needs to be changed! Here’s my new way!” Instead, Jesus, the good Jewish boy who regularly attended synagogue, participates through the custom of reading a familiar piece of ancient Scripture from the prophet Isaiah. Everyone in the room had heard that text before hundreds of times and perhaps had even memorized it. It was the text of an ancient hope that God restore people physically, economically and spiritually. In other words it was God’s ancient promise of revolution. It was nothing new or out of the blue. What was new was that Jesus was claiming the story was coming into fulfillment in him.
The Jesus Revolution was firmly rooted in the story of the God of history. Jesus was not calling for the overthrow of the Jewish religion. He was not replacing a Jewish God of violence with a Christian God of love and compassion. Instead he was calling his own community to get back to its roots of a liberating and transforming God. That’s what angered the crowd so much.
Nothing can disturb us as much as discovering what we already know to be true. As people of the Christian tradition nothing is quite as disturbing as that which we already know about Jesus’ radical message. Consequently, many of us try to avoid it or escape it. We mistakenly look for God or spiritual experiences outside of Jesus, whether it’s by mixing and matching other religions, self-help books or New Age philosophy. Many of these sources will tip their hat to Jesus, but fail to grasp the transforming reality of the Jesus Revolution.
Sometimes you may feel a little OD’d on Jesus. There’s nothing new about him for you. Consequently, you find appeal in every new conspiracy theory about him, as if the only true Jesus must be some closely guarded secret that’s been kept from you. The truth is, the Jesus Revolution has been in our texts all along. Like the people in Jesus’ synagogue, we just refuse to see it. If we want join the Jesus Revolution, we, like him, must do so by diving deeply into our roots and not searching for something new to come out of the blue.
Even within our church, we continue to innovate, not by blindly doing away with tradition, but by exploring our roots more deeply. The idea behind Vision is not do away with everything that came before us in the church. The idea is go back to the roots of the Jesus Revolution and find those areas that connect with our context.
What do we discover when we look to our roots, when we take a fresh look at the Jesus Revolution? We discover huge difference between Jesus and the other revolutionaries of his day, and of ours. Scholars refer to these other revolutionaries as zealots. The word zealot is derived from the word zeal. In the Hebrew Bible, zeal for God and God’s Law is celebrated. Unfortunately, that zeal often expressed itself in violent ways. In the Hebrew Bible, the zeal of the prophet Elijah and King Jehu is praised because they killed the prophets of other gods.
That violent religious zealotry continued into the first century. In Jesus’ day, zealots were known for creating violent insurrection against the Roman powers who occupied their homeland of Judea. The people of Judea were agitated and dissatisfied with things like high taxes, political oppression, and incompetent rulers - nice that things have changed , huh? Sometimes these zealots would mingle in the crowd of public assemblies and randomly stab someone in the crowd in order to incite a riot. Their goal was to rid their land of the Roman occupiers and gain power for themselves. The zealot revolution was one of power and violence.
In contrast, the Jesus Revolution was one of service, not power. Jesus said he came to serve, not be served. What kind of revolution is that? Where’s the T-shirts, bandanas and machine guns? The Jesus Revolution was one of love and compassion, not of violence. The agenda Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah was for people to be transformed, healed, liberated, to hear good news - not to over power or destroy their enemies. Even though a zealot named Simon, was counted as one of Jesus’ disciples, most zealots saw the Jesus Revolution as nonsensical and ineffective.
Even today, it is easy to dismiss Jesus as hopelessly idealistic and naive. Nations still interact through waving big sticks and missiles. When people preach about God, too often they do it through the outright violence of terrorism or the subtle violence of a God who will send you to Hell or leave you behind. Even in political discourse, snarkiness and personal attacks rule the day. The rancor of today’s revolutionaries, whether at tea parties or anti-war protests, seldom reflects the love and compassion of the Jesus Revolution.
On a personal level, we may all want to be more spiritual, to have a revolution in our life. But we want a spiritual path that promises success, not sacrifice. We want to self-actualize, not serve. We want us and our kind to win and them and their kind to lose.
We humans love revolutions that define our enemies instead of love them. We get onboard with revolutions where we can be an insider, at the exclusion of outsiders. The zealots of Jesus’ day were masters at that. Scholars tell us that zealots were motivated by a jealous desire to protect their own group, self, space or time against violations. They wanted to rid their land of uncleanliness, so God’s wrath would not be provoked against them. Unfortunately, even those who were not zealots bought into that mindset of “revolution is fine - as long as it’s for my own group.”
The crowd in Jesus’ hometown synagogue was upset with him because they heard he had performed healings in another town, Capernaum, a town where many non-Jews lived. “Why can’t you do that here for us, your own people?” it is implied. Jesus responds with two examples from Scripture of God reaching out to Gentiles, again, not our of the blue, but from their own tradition. Then he quotes an old proverb about a prophet not getting respect in his hometown (How true I know that to be, but that’s a story for another day). His response angers the crowd so much, that they try to stone him. Not in the traditional way of throwing the stones at him, but by throwing him at the stones.
Unlike the revolutions of his day, the Jesus Revolution was for everyone. To the zealots, tax collectors were the enemy. They were sell-outs, collaborators with the Romans. Yet Jesus ate with them, drank with them and even had one of them, Matthew, as part of his inner circle. Just imagine how Matthew got along with Simon the Zealot. The Jesus Revolution broke down social barriers. It didn’t create them.
In his book, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan describes the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ eating habits. Sitting down with tax collectors, prostitutes, and so-called sinners was more revolutionary than any protest march could ever be. It was not just a symbolic act, but embodied or incarnated the very Kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke. Not only that, Jesus revolutionized healing. He just went around healing people, for free. He went around pronouncing people forgiven, for free. The Jesus Revolution continually sought to create followers, not define enemies, to bring people in, not push them out.
The Jesus Revolution continues today, in the form of the church. As the church, our mission is to form disciples, not define enemies. Like Jesus, we must be about the business of giving away ourselves freely to everyone. In a finger-pointing culture, we must be a source of grace and forgiveness. That’s revolutionary.
The passage which Jesus read in the synagogue, makes allusions to something called the Year of Jubilee. We might be more familiar with that term because of Bono than because of the Bible. But the two are related. The debt relief Bono sought for developing countries had its roots in the Hebrew concept of Jubilee. It was a time every seven years when all debts were cancelled, indentured servants set free and land reverted back to its original owners. It was a revolutionary concept and there is some debate as to whether the Hebrew people ever put it into practice. Yet it captures the essence of what our liberating God is all about. It captures the essence of Jesus’ ministry to turn the world upside down, to bring down the powers of this world and replace them with the fair and just reign of God.
New Testament scholar Fred Craddock notes that in the Gospel of Luke, the first word Jesus speaks as an adult is “Today.” Today this scripture is fulfilled in your midst. Not someday. But today.
That’s what makes the Jesus Revolution so different. It is a revolution that always takes place today. It’s not a dream of a distant man-made utopian future. It’s a response to a God-initiated revolution in the present.
That’s the Jesus Revolution. It emerges from our roots and doesn’t come out of the blue. It is a revolution of love, compassion and service - not power, violence and victory. It’s for everyone, not a select group. And it happens today, not someday.
Forget everything you knew about revolutions. This is the revolutionary revolution.
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