Jesus, Jamaica, Jews, and outsiders

WHAT WOULD Jesus do? WWJD became a thing some years ago. Unfortunately, many have not answered the question with the life and teachings of Jesus. Too many in the Church have, instead, appear to end up with ‘Jesus would do what I think (JWDWIT)’.

It is appalling to see how many have departed from Jesus’ approach to the outcasts of society. Christians who were once despised, have now seen the day when privilege has resulted in a sense of entitlement to power and esteemed status above others. The Western Church, in particular, has lost its way of being light, to becoming protectors of a selfish status quo.

While Jesus’ disciples and hearers had certain assumptions about respected society, he often shocked their sensibilities in his affirmation of a different social order. In the gospel according to Luke in Chapter 4:

“16. When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

18. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,

that the blind will see,

that the oppressed will be set free,

19. and that the time of the Lord’s favour has come.

20. He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”

This presented a vocational and philosophical theme for the life and witness of Jesus. The Pharisees were a learned and respected group in Judaism. The Pharisee, or ‘separated one’, was dedicated to study of the law. They also avoided association with the common folk, and in particular, outsiders.

Jesus cared about those who were disregarded by the religious elite. As long as you were on the margins of society, Jesus saw you, heard you, engaged with you, and sometimes even touched you. What a powerful image for our time!

Many are aware of lovely Bible stories from Sunday and Sabbath schools. Too often, many have also missed the dimension of these stories concerning the necessity for a social order in which the forces of disease, poverty, and oppression are overturned. The stories are not just about people getting better physically. Just look at Jesus’ approach to Samaritans, lepers, tax collectors, the paralysed, the dead, the ‘unclean’, and women.

Addressing taboos, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination were all at the heart of Jesus’ ministry and mission. It is painful to see how many today are agents of taboos, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination in their form of Christianity, and biblical inspiration. Jesus’ healing of the crippled woman on the Sabbath in Luke 13 flies in the face of our patriarchal affirmation of “sons of Abraham”. He refers to the woman in these terms: “Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” He was responding to a law-centred preoccupation above the celebration of freedom from disease that was ignored in the strength of taboos, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination.

Just imagine the shock to hear Jesus affirming the leper (an outsider) who returned to give thanks. Just imagine the shock to hear Jesus affirming a Samaritan (the outsider) who helped the man who was attacked by robbers, and ignored by the religious elite. There are religious leaders and churches in the world which choose to be silent or vociferous based on the political status quo. When we do this, Jesus calls us “hypocrites.”

Now place the above in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As you do so, note that there are Israelis and Palestinians who want peace. However, the Western media feeds us the diet that it wants us to regurgitate. How would you feel if your peaceful neigbourhood and home were violated, and your loved ones murdered? How would you feel if the rest of us law-abiding citizens were punished for the ills of merciless gangsters and scammers? How would you feel as an Israeli or Palestinian who just wants peace and prosperity for everyone?

With Jesus, a just social order is always a better option. Understandably, angry Israelis and Palestinians must find a way to realise this just social order for all concerned. The powerful on the international landscape must of necessity call for and facilitate blind justice for a better world.

The Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980, spoke for justice and truth. His witness lives on in his ever-so-relevant question. “A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of God that does not get under anyone’s skin, or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?”