I Judge No One

Part 6, A Mustard Seed Kingdom

As I hinted at the end of the last post, my interest in sharing a bit of the argument from David Lloyd Dusenbury's I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus was to wonder about how we might re-think the mission of Jesus in our highly polarized political climate.

Again, I tend to write these posts many months out from when they appear online. So as I write this I am only speculating about how the series struck you, my readers. If I were to guess there would have been some discomfort and pushback with the suggestion that Jesus described his kingdom as a mystical, spiritual, eschatological kingdom of virtue. 

The main source of discomfort is how an over-spiritualized kingdom, in our estimation, would leave the problems of the world unaddressed. Our expectation is that the kingdom of God should and must "change the world." Because isn't that the point, to change the world? 

Of course, changing the world looks different depending upon where you stand. For the progressive Christians, changing the world involves fighting injustice and oppression. For evangelical Christians, changing the world involves taking back and reclaiming a Christian nation. Both visions involve increased entanglement with politics and the exercise of coercive power.  

Jesus, by contrast, as Dusenbury's book helps us see, appeared to approach his mission very differently. For the progressives, Rome was an oppressive regime, but Jesus seemed indifferent to engaging with or confronting the political machinery of the Empire. For the evangelical Christians, Jesus also rejected the political projects of the Zealots and Pharisees, attempts to restore a lost religious commitment to God's law, their Jewish version of the evangelical "Christian nation." 

In short, Jesus seemed to be doing something very different from what progressive and evangelicals are up to today in American politics. Consequently, I think it might be wise for both progressives and evangelicals to reencounter what Dusenbury calls the political "strangeness" of Jesus. As we look upon the political conversations taking place among Christians, of all political persuasions, have we not missed something fundamental about how Jesus consistently refused to engage in politics? 

Now, does that mean that Jesus' apolitical kingdom leaves the world unchanged? No, but I think that assumption is revealing. Specifically, our imagination for how the world changes has become increasingly politicized. Perhaps even wholly politicized. Simply put, in our minds the assumptions are:

apolitical = ineffectual/passive = refusing to change the world

political = effective/active = changing the world

For us, politics is the only tool in the toolbox if you want to change the world. Refusing to be political is choosing to be passive and ineffectual. You're letting the world burn. Consequently, a mystical, spiritual, apolitical kingdom is turning your back on the world, longing for some future heavenly reward and abode instead of rolling up your sleeves to do the hard political work of improving people's lives right here and right now. And it is this assumption that I'd like to question. Is it true that Jesus' mystical, spiritual, apolitical kingdom is ineffectual? Does Jesus' spiritual, apolitical kingdom do nothing to change the world? 

I wonder about those questions, and it makes me think of a parable told by Jesus describing his kingdom:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”