A lot of people have called Jesus a revolutionary, and they usually say it in support of their own political and social agendas. Socialism as a form of government and the forcible redistribution of wealth and property by legal and police power is viewed by some as the natural outgrowth of revolutionary ideas of Jesus. In fact, violent and abusive language and forcible, oppressive political action are even now in the USA being attributed to a commitment to Jesus’ revolutionary teachings. That conclusion does not make sense to me.

Jesus lived and worked in a country oppressed by the Roman Empire. Roman government was, for Romans, representative, but for conquered territories, the experience of government was the experience of very real oppression. Roman government may have been enlightened in comparison with Assyrian government, but it doesn’t look very appealing to the eyes of a citizen of the USA. The government was corrupt at every level, and nobody at any level had much interest in addressing that problem. As long as the emperor got what he wanted, he did not care what happened at the lower levels, and the same could be said of most of the officeholders at any level.

In Galilee and Judea, tax collectors and soldiers were the most visible symbols of Roman power. Tax collectors had an obligation to produce a certain amount of revenue for Rome from the people in their assigned regions, but Rome paid the tax collectors very poorly, expecting that they had the means and opportunity to take care of themselves. The reputation of tax collectors was that they collected far above the requirements and became rich by stealing from the people. Soldiers had the right to demand service from private citizens. Since soldiers were physically strong, well armed and backed by other soldiers, people could not very well refuse the orders of a soldier, even if he demanded some unauthorized service, or even if the soldier quite literally robbed them.

If Jesus had been the kind of revolutionary who wanted to cut the rich down to size by force and take their wealth and give it to the poor, he would have behaved very differently than the record shows. He certainly taught that people who had wealth and property should share it with those who had need, but he did not appoint any human being to tell people with wealth how much of their wealth they could not keep or to whom they should give it. In fact, Jesus missed a great opportunity to have named a council of wealth redistribution when he called his disciples. Jesus could have started a tax rebellion when the priests asked if he thought they should pay taxes. He missed any number of opportunities to rebuke Rome and stir the people into rebellion. If Jesus had been a political and social revolutionary, or if he had considered himself a community organizer, he would have behaved very differently. It is likely that such behavior would have led to crucifixion, but the conversation with Pilate would have proceeded along different lines.

Jesus was a revolutionary, but his revolution was in the claim that everyone was responsible to God for his or her moral choices. He taught people to live by a standard higher than mere legal compliance, growing out of obedience to God’s law, not enforcement by humans. “Judge not, …” because he knew better than anyone what was inside us. He knew that if he appointed his followers to be judges of the rest of the people, arrogance and scorn would quickly supplant love and service as the priorities of his followers. Arrogance and scorn do not grow out of love, and seizing one person’s wealth to give it to another is not an act of service. Jesus wanted people to love and serve each other, but he focused his attention on individual transformation and individual responsibility. He expected that when individuals changed their attitudes, government and society would also change.

Furthermore, Jesus taught people not to use possessions as a measure of self-worth. If we think we only have value in terms of our possessions, we quickly lose our self-respect. We easily believe that God doesn’t love us due to the fact that he did not give us much possessions. The teaching that our worth is not based on our possessions would seem to fly in the face of a call to take possessions by force from those who have them and hand them out according to a legal guideline to those who have none. Jesus never suggested either that the people should rise up and overthrow the Roman government or that the Roman government ought to hand out benefits to the people.

Contrary to the mantra we hear from those who want to appropriate Jesus for socialist purposes, Jesus would be the last person to suggest that people give more of their money to government as a way of redistributing wealth. He could see what government employees did with that kind of power. They redistributed wealth, all right, from those who had it into their own coffers. They did it in Rome. They did it in the USSR. They do it today in the USA. Government revenues only enrich government. Jesus would not have been surprised by the complete failure of government programs such as the War on Poverty. That program has spent millions, even billions, ostensibly to eradicate poverty in the USA. If poverty could be eradicated by collecting more taxes, there would be no poverty in the USA today. Yet anyone with half a brain can see that there is still a lot of poverty in this country, and the most impoverished of all are those who have received the lion’s share of the money doled out by the government. Jesus knew and taught that human beings love money more than God and more than other people, which explains why the government keeps so much of those massive revenues to pay for buildings, for agencies to administer the money, and most of all for benefits for government employees and elected officials. And it behaves this way while humiliating and oppressing the poor who need help, giving them as little as possible in the name of giving only to those who “deserve” help. Jesus would never have expected anything else.

Jesus taught that people ought not to be selfish. He did not teach this idea as a moral standard, however. He taught it as the outgrowth of a real change of heart. Everything Jesus said that might be classified as an ethical teaching is rooted in his answer to the question about the most important law:

A lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  Matthew 22:25-39

Jesus said that our highest obligation as human beings is to love God. After that we are to love our neighbor. Jesus was completely devoted to the mission of removing Self from the throne of human hearts. He was never engaged in political action. He was not engaged in social action. He was not even engaged in religious action. Jesus came for the purpose of transforming human hearts. That is why he lived, and that is why he died, and that is why he rose again.

Jesus certainly wanted honest government and a society that cared for the sick and the poor. He, however, knew people well enough to know that the power of government attracts people and perverts their values. They may enter government service fully committed to act as God’s servants for the people, but it doesn’t take long for them to be bought off. Jesus faced that kind of temptation after he was baptized:

The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ”   Matthew 4:8-10

This temptation was about accomplishing the goal of changing society from the top down. Satan promised to stand back and let Jesus enact his social and political agenda if Jesus would worship Satan. In fact, it was a face to face between God and Satan. Jesus was God. So Satan was saying, “You just worship me, and I will leave the people on earth alone.” Satan was tempting Jesus to build a public façade that looked like his kingdom while being rotten at the core. This temptation is laid before every human being, but especially those who are part of government.

The evidence is all around us. Politics is unabashedly called the art of compromise. Earmarks and special favors for states or other entities are the outgrowth of the compromises our politicians make in order to achieve what they claim as great social progress. Jesus did not need anyone to tell him what was in people’s hearts, because he already knew, and Jesus did not try to enact a government as the outworking of his teachings, because he knew that a government would be an endless compromise – bowing down to Satan in order to pretend to be doing God’s work.

Jesus did not embark on a campaign of social reform by government mandate, a reform from the top down. He started with the foundation, a reform from the bottom up. Instead of leaving a government to administer the kingdom, Jesus started a church. Instead of creating a power structure, Jesus put his work in the hands of powerless people. Weak, helpless, frightened people were told that it was their job to take his message to the whole world. They have been doing that job for more than two thousand years now. Their power to do that work does not come from government; it comes from the Holy Spirit. Their work is successful, not because they have taken from the rich and given the wealth of the rich to people who did not earn it, but rather, because they have shared the message of God’s love and Jesus’ sacrificial and redeeming death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit has transformed many individuals, and the result is nothing less than spectacular. The consequence of this kind of transformation is that many people who have wealth have shared it generously with those who have nothing. Likewise, people with much less have shared also. In fact, people transformed by the Holy Spirit share constantly. They haven’t yet ended poverty on earth, but where they are working against poverty, the people live with dignity and self-confidence, rather than with the bowed head and broken hearts of those who have been devalued by government “welfare.”

This is the revolution Jesus wanted. He was completely about engaging in the battle we all lose when we fight it alone. None of us can dethrone Self when Satan keeps propping Self up. Only the indwelling Holy Spirit can dethrone Self and sit on the throne of the human heart against all the pressure Satan can bring to bear. Jesus came for the purpose of transforming human hearts one by one. He knew that trying to build a kingdom on the weak material of human will to do the right thing would be a complete failure. The only material strong enough to push back evil in the world is a human heart transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit, living in the power of the Holy Spirit.

God created people to be free. He did not create government in the beginning. He resisted the imposition of government when people wanted it, because he knew that government would be oppressive, not liberating, and that government would impoverish, not enrich, the people. He entered into government via people like Zaccheus, who were transformed by the Holy Spirit and whose honorable behavior transformed the way government was administered. This is still the way Jesus works.

The Bible makes it clear that the role of government is to keep violence at bay, not to force social change by legal theft. It is the role of people as individuals and people as private groups to assure that the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed and the sick are healed. These wonderful accomplishments are achieved as acts of loving service, not via government mandate, not as the outgrowth of class warfare against the rich. Jesus was a revolutionary, all right. He fomented a revolution in the hearts of human beings.

Does God need to orchestrate tragedy in order to bring good to pass? A lot of people think he does exactly that. I have heard any number of people accuse God of preparing tragedy in their lives as “tests” or as lesson plans for their instruction. It might even be possible to interpret the book of Revelation that way.

 The book of Revelation records a vision of an effort by humans to “fix” the world without any help from God, and it records some unspeakably horrific tragedies. The narrative of Revelation pulls back the curtain behind the events we see and touch to show us things we do not normally see and touch. It pierces the barrier between time and eternity, between the finite and the infinite, between the temporary reality we can weigh and measure and the eternal reality not subject to us. In Revelation we see our present reality played out against a backdrop of warfare between God and Satan, between pure good and pure evil. In this captivating story, God continually tries to get the attention of people who have been deluded by Satan, calling them to a relationship with Him which will save them from the clutches of Satan’s demonic plans for them. People don’t want anything to do with God, because they want to do it all themselves. They try personal empowerment, they try big government, and they try all sorts of twists on religion. They try anything but a relationship with God. No matter what is going on, the people who love and serve God appear to be in a minority, always under threat as enemies of the earthly powers, treated like traitors to the human hegemony.

 In the midst of the murder and mayhem of this vision, there is a pause. The pause is about prayer. The prayers and the testimony of believers rise up to the throne of God like incense and everything stops. It is a powerful image of the significance of the testimony and prayer of the faithful. It is an image that reinforces our understanding of the value of humans to God. Everything stops while God receives and rejoices in the prayer and testimony of his redeemed children.

Revelation makes it clear that God need not orchestrate terror in order for there to be terror. Christians need not wait for God to plan tragedy in their lives, because it is coming. The power of Satan working behind the scenes, acting through people who have rejected God, is guaranteed to produce plenty of tragedy on the earth for everyone to share. Christians will always have opportunity to grow in faith under duress without God applying the duress. Yet the additional message of Revelation is that no matter how horrifying the duress, people will continue to turn away from God.

The more important lesson for Christians under duress, however, is this: God wins. When we cling to God in terror at all that is around us, we are clinging to the Alpha and Omega who transcends all the terror. God wins. When we pray and testify and listen to the voice of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we are doing the only thing that will ever have any impact on the situation. Throughout the book of Revelation, the action stops only as the prayers of the saints rise up to the throne of God.

When I gather with my congregation on a Wednesday evening for communion by candlelight, I see a living image of the way our faithful testimony and prayer work to push back the darkness around us. Light a candle in a dark room, and the darkness cannot squelch it. In this image, I see our prayer and testimony to God pushing back evil. In the gathering of fellow believers our faith is nourished and replenished. We come into the light, we share the body and blood of the Lamb, and we testify to what he has done for us.

The world I live in today is certainly full of frightening and depressing news. It isn’t the worst of all times, but it certainly isn’t the best, either. I worry about the freedom and prosperity of my children and my grandchildren. I often feel helpless as I contend with my own drive to fix everything myself. I can’t do it. There is only one thing I can do that will have any value in the larger scheme of things. I can pray to the Eternal and Infinite God, and I can testify to the power of the Lamb in my own life. I can’t slay the Great Dragon, but I can push him back just a little every time I pray and testify. That is how I will handle the disasters in my life until time ends and God wins.