THE PASSION OF POLITICAL LOVE

 

The Passion of Political Love

It is very difficult to read the gospels and not take seriously the question of obedience. It was primary in what Jesus was preaching and in his own self-understanding. The word obedience means, in its origins, being a good listener. It connects with much in the gospel about watching, being sensitive to the signs of the times, and to what the spirit is saying to the churches, be attentive listener. The opposite of obedience, in the Latin origins of these words, is, believe it or not, absurdity, being utterly deaf. So we have only two options, perhaps ultimate options, in life: we are obedient or we are absurd. Many have thought of obedience as having only one meaning: doing what you are told to do. There is no much reference to listening, to watching and praying. But it is dangerous to read the gospels with that limited idea of obedience in mind. For Jesus’ obedience was neither a static nor a regimenting thing; it was constantly evolving and deepening in its demands.

Obedience is not in fact simply listening nor simply doing what one is told to do. Obedience is the practical art of submitting self-interest to the demands of the reality and truth, insofar as these are perceived. To transcend the self-enclosing demands of the ego and the self-interesting drives of indulgence, in order to respond rationally and lovingly to the reality of the world at large and especially that of people. One becomes fully human and free not by self-mindfulness but by self-forgetfulness in communion. Love is not a nice extra to being human, but its essence.

The art of listening, pondering, watching without which there is no perception of truth except as a projection of personal prejudice and also the art of practical discretion, as to how to respond in fact and not just in wishful thinking. The common good and natural law, the practical art of assessing one’s activities and pursuit in the context of common good, or the social whole. If that obedience is ignored one is trapped by the plausible illusions of one’s own family, or class, or nation or whatever. The latter that of natural law is the call to accept the nature of things, to live non-violently within the rhythms and characteristics of the material and human world. We have almost lost a feeling for this obedience because of our aggressive use of technology, and because of our pride at having come of age, our modern insolence in assuming we can do what we like and how we like. We play God and call it freedom.

There are of course many other aspects of obedience. Anyone in vows, such as baptism or marriage or religious life, freely embraces specific forms of obedience which characterizes that way of life, in baptism to the word of God and community of faith, in marriage to one’s spouse and family, in religious life to a community and a superior. But it is sad that obedience has had a bad press in recent times, when it is so central to the whole New Testament understanding of human person, of community, and of liberation.

Obedience in Jesus

The Obedience of Belonging

The first obedience in the life of Jesus was that which carried him to the age of about thirty. The church and our institutions have dwelt on this sort of obedience long enough, though the gospels hardly do so at all. We have very little evidence about that period of Jesus’ life, except that he emerged at the age of thirty as the son of a carpenter, somebody who as far as we know obeyed all the norms of religious and cultural expectations. One of the difficulties that the people of Nazareth had about Jesus was precisely that he was normal until that age. And you know the feeling when one of our own members, one of our own family or community, suddenly gets up and is different from us, we wonder what on earth right they have to be holier or more truthful or more far seeing than we are. After all we all come from the same slot. That early obedience we call the obedience of belonging, and it has been important in each of our lives in nurturing us in faith.

The Obedience of Truth for Communion

This is the obedience which evolves after Jesus’ baptism and the temptation in the desert, the obedience of truth for communion. What we can also call the obedience of political love. Why? Jesus came forth preaching and proclaiming a kingdom of God among people. Not simply as the prophets had done, something that was in the future, but something that was being realized in his own person and in his presence, something definitive. This kingdom was far more like the scene in Palestine and Israel than it was like in Los Angeles, South and North Sudan.

We probably know more about scripture today than the church has ever known in history. Jesus came into a scene that was highly politically conscious. And he wasn’t saying, as most of us picked up in our childhood, he wasn’t saying: abandon all that murky political side of life, enter into a private spiritual renewal of heart and everything else will look after itself. The people he was amongst were living under the heavy dominance of moneylenders and tax collectors. They were acutely aware of the domination of the Roman authorities were very like many of the worst repressive regimes we know today and they had a particular line about the Jews. And Jesus arrived in this scene preaching a kingdom that was thoroughly incarnational. He was coping with real issues of daily life.

By the time the gospels were written the interest of the early Christians had shifted. They were in a different situation and some of the reporting of what Jesus had said that is: ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us.’ That was to do with money, but by the time comes into the Our Father we inherit it as to do with sins and peccadillos. When St. Paul says ‘Be indebted to no one’ he’s not talking simply about spiritual sins, although it has that reference. He is talking about concrete ways of living life in a liberated way.

The jubilee year, or the year of the Lord’s favor, was held every fifty years. It was intended as a year in which to become aware of creeping injustice, and to restore God’s justice in the affairs of life. Its main demands, however much they have been dodged in practice, were to restore the land by leaving it fallow, to set free those oppressed by indebtedness, to liberate slaves; and to re-distribute capital and land. It was all about ecological and political love. There may have been a jubilee year about the time of Jesus began preaching, in AD 26/27. Certainly it was a dramatic moment in the synagogue at Nazareth when he read Isaiah 61:1-2, concluding with its reference to the year of the Lord’s favor’, closed the book and said, “Today this is realized… ‘There are references, especially in the sermon on the Mount, to the fundamental demands of the jubilee year. (Cf. Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder, ch.3)

The jubilee year was meant to anticipate into the present the great Shalom, the great Sabbath, of God’s final kingdom. This is perhaps what we mean by saying that the life of the church is to be a sacrament of God’s kingdom., the realized unity of all the world in God’s love. We are called to anticipate that kingdom into the concrete affairs of today to allow God to realize it fully through history. God’s will on earth as in heaven.