Politics of Jesus: Chapter 1, Part 1

This is the second part of our series reading through John Howard Yoder's Politics of Jesus John Howard Yoder’s initial chapter begins with, “the observation that Jesus is simply not relevant in any immediate sense to the question of social ethics.” Yoder recognizes that neither the academy, nor the Church has been able to hear Jesus in any discussions around politics or how one acts in the world. Not much has changed. We are still in a very similar predicament, even in a church culture that “values Scripture” we have been unable to make the jump to connect our social lives with the Jesus of the Bible. Yoder rightly decries this situation and blames it both of Biblical scholarship, and their intense naval gazing, and on Church leaders who refuse to do the Biblical work necessary to hear Jesus speaking to us now.
Yoder spends a significant amount of space in this chapter laying out ways in which we miss Jesus all the time. Yoder wants us to understand better how it is that we come to expect Jesus to be irrelevant. Yoder initially recognizes six key ways in the first edition of Politics of Jesus and then adds two more ways in the second edition.

Eight Ways of Making Jesus Irrelevant (In some particular order)
1. First amongst these is what we will call, “Temporary Jesus.” This argument assumed that Jesus thought He would be gone for a little while, only to return after a brief hiatus. Because of how temporary the in between time was, Jesus simply had no stake in the overall health and stability of society as a whole.
2. Second is what we will call “Farm Boy Jesus.” Jesus was an essentially rural figure who never saw fit to involve himself in the political systems of his day. “There is thus in the ethic of Jesus no intention to speak substantially to the problems of complex organization, of institutions and offices, cliques and power and crowd.” In asking Jesus to speak about politics, we would be asking him to do something he is unqualified for.
3. Third is what we can call “Powerless Jesus.” The option for any sort of political power never existed for Jesus, and thus he is unable to speak to politics today in which the church has some sort of power. This is particularly problematic for those of us in democratic societies where we are convinced political power lies with the individual.
4. Fourth is what we will term “Spiritual Jesus.” This is perhaps the most insipid version of Jesus we have. Central to this picture is “the inwardness of faith” in which Jesus is really only concerned with our hearts (More on the dangers of this version in just a bit). Because of this radical spiritualizing, Jesus simply has nothing to say physical, political sort of things.
5. Fifth is what we shall name “Theological Jesus.” This one on the surface does not seem so bad, but when it is finally completed is quite dangerous. This version of Jesus emphasizes the “radical discontinuity between humanity and God,” and distinctly because of this difference it makes all human ethics flawed. We must never accept a finite system of action in place of God’s infinite hopes for the world. The infinite hopes are almost entirely expressed as principles and values.
6. Sixth is what we can call “Sacrificing Jesus.” This picture of Jesus emphasizes the truth that Jesus came as a gift of grace and sacrifice for our sins. The key piece here is that because the work of Jesus is grace for us, it would be wrong to turn his life into something like a work that must be followed politically or otherwise. “How the death of Jesus works our justification is a divine miracle and mystery; how he died, or the kind of life which led to the kind of death is therefore ethically immaterial.
7. Seventh is what we can call “Cloudy Jesus.” This picture of Jesus is way less prevalent in evangelical circles, though it does seem to be on the rise. This version says that Jesus is irrelevant simply because we do not have a clear enough picture of who Jesus was and what he did. The accounts we do have are sparse and at times contradictory, and this is certainly no way to build a coherent set of political actions.
8. Eighth is “Overly Important Jesus.” This version is related closely to “Theological Jesus” and centers on an odd bit of Trinitarian logic. Trinitarian means relating to the Trinity, which is the Christian way of speaking about who God is in himself, namely Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the Western church we speak of God in this language and acknowledge that all three “persons” of the Trinity are equally God. The argument then comes that to privilege Jesus above the other two members of the Trinity is to give him a status that is inconsistent with who God is.
These eight pictures of Jesus taken together can be a bit daunting, though the response I tend to get from other evangelicals is simply that none of these categories actually apply. Before we move away from this series of pictures and onto what Yoder has next, lets take this objection seriously by looking at a specific passage. Turn to Luke 6:27-31 and let’s see what Jesus says about money. In this passage Jesus says “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
The question we must ask is, “Does Jesus mean it? Is it relevant for what we do with our money now? Why not?” Whatever we answer to the why not question, is our picture of Jesus that makes him irrelevant. Whether its because Jesus is talking about our spiritual heart attitude towards money (Spiritual Jesus) or he is simply giving us a principle like be generous (Theological Jesus) or Jesus’ teaching here is interesting but it actually gets trumped by Paul’s teaching on money because of dispensations (A combination of Spiritual Jesus and Sacrificing Jesus) or maybe because there is a huge translation question (Cloudy Jesus). When really pushed on this, it seems that Yoder may be right after all.