Jesus for President

Politics for Ordinary Radicals

Shane Claiborne,Chris Haw

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780310359395
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Jesus for President is a radical manifesto to awaken the Christian political imagination, reminding us that our ultimate hope lies not in partisan political options but in Jesus and the incarnation of the peculiar politic of the church as a people "set apart" from this world. In what can be termed lyrical theology, Jesus for President poetically weaves together words and images to sing (rather than dictate) its message. It is a collaboration of Shane Claiborne's writing and stories, Chris Haw's reflections and research, and Chico Fajardo-Heflin's art and design. Drawing upon the work of biblical theologians, the lessons of church history, and the examples of modern-day saints and ordinary radicals, Jesus for President stirs the imagination of what the Church could look like if it placed its faith in Jesus instead of Caesar. A fresh look at Christianity and empire, Jesus for President transcends questions of "Should I vote or not?" and "Which candidate?" by thinking creatively about the fundamental issues of faith and allegiance. It's written for those who seek to follow Jesus, rediscover the spirit of the early church, and incarnate the kingdom of God.

SECTION ONE

Before There Were Kings and Presidents

In the Beginning

Once upon a time there were no kings or presidents. Only God was king. The Bible is the story of a God who is continually rescuing humanity from the messes we make of the world. God is bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. God is leading humans on an exodus adventure out of the land of emperors and kings and into the Promised Land. Out of Egypt, God first saves a group of slaves from the tyranny of Pharaoh. God is their deliverer, the one who saves them from their tears and sweat and points them toward something better than the empire that they have known. Out of the nations, God is forming a new kind of people—a “holy nation” that will light up the world. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

This story begins in a garden.

In the garden, there were no wars, no poverty, no pollution or pandemics. There were no fast-food joints or sweatshops. Neither Republicans nor Democrats were to be found, not even the Green Party. Things were perfect. But amid all the organic, nongenetically modified or artificially pesticided trees full of fruit, there was one tree that the first humans were not supposed to touch—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God warned Adam and Eve² that if they ate of its fruit, they would discover something called “death.” God warned them that they could not be both immortal and know both good and evil. But they decided they couldn’t live without it—death, that is. Apparently death was a small price to pay for the possibility of Godlike knowledge.

Along came a slick little serpent who convinced them that if they ate the forbidden fruit, they would be like God—quite an alluring proposition. They’d be the judges of good and evil, of what is beautiful and what is ugly. They would rule themselves and control their own destinies. We all want to be like God, right? And so they ate.

It wasn’t long before all sorts of ugliness emerged. The inaugural act of civilization, of life outside the garden, was murder. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, and Eden’s children tasted its bitter aftertaste, this thing called death. In Genesis 4, we read the story: Abel was a keeper of the sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. This first fratricide was the murder of a shepherd by a farmer on his own farm (a struggle for the land that migrant workers and peasants have always known to this day).

And God said something incredible: “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” The next act of Cain’s self-created chaos was to build a city that he named Enoch, after his son, and on goes the story of civilization. If the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had acted as a levee of protection for humanity, then eating its fruit broke that levee and released a flood of violence into the world. Before long, people were slaughtering one another in the pursuit of power and riches.

The Flood

So by the sixth chapter of the Bible, things had already gotten really ugly. We read, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence” (Gen. 6:11). Violence infected the earth like a disease. What was God to do?

At first glance, the flood might seem to us like the most violent thing that has ever happened, especially in the wake of contemporary storms and tsunamis. But the biblical narrative treats it as an act of protection from the corruption and violence that plagued the creation. It’s like a divine chemotherapy, or the pruning of a diseased plant to save its life. God loves humanity so much that watching us kill ourselves is absolutely intolerable. So God saved humanity through the flood.

“And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’ So God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth’” (Gen. 9:12–17).

The Tower

From civilization’s inception, humankind has had an insatiable hunger to reach the heavens, to pave the way to God. We build towers that stretch into the skies, whether in New York or Babel. You may remember the old story of Babel’s tower from Sunday school, or maybe you can hear the distant tunes of Bob Marley preaching about Babylon.

God’s people decided to build a sky-scraping tower (Genesis 11). Scripture says “the whole world had one language,” and the people seemed quite impressed by their limitless power. So they began erecting an idol of human ingenuity to “make a name” for themselves. They hoped to attain the beauty of the heavens, only to find themselves growing farther and farther from the God who dwelt with them in the garden of Eden. During the project, God noted that “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them” (Gen. 11:6). You can almost hear the echoes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki here. It seems that God has an aversion for limitless power. It’s not that they were a threat to God but that they were a threat to themselves. This type of grand collaboration wouldn’t be God’s solution to a world “full of violence.” Instead of letting them build a bridge to the heavens, God came “down” from the lofty heights and scattered the people across the land, confusing their languages and bringing them back down to earth. They became babblers. God confused the language of the whole human family, and any hope for harmony, communication, and reconciliation now lay only in God’s hands.

This tale is less a tragedy of divine punishment and more an act of divine liberation of humankind from an imperial project that would lead to death. The land around the tower became known as Babylon, which will rise as the quintessential symbol of empire. The Bible ends with the depiction of counterfeit beauty personified by “the Great Prostitute” named Babylon, with whom the kings of the earth, the merchants, and the nations commit a naughty romance. They are dazzled by her splendor, transfixed by all she has to offer. The whole world stands in awe of her beauty . . . before she falls. It is no coincidence that what is written immediately after the scattering at Babel is the calling of Abram and Sarai (Genesis 12). Homeless, small, and powerless, they were the antithesis of the Babel project. God called them out of the babbling confusion to become a peculiar new people whom God entrusted to bless the world. God set them apart with a new law, a new culture, a new destiny that was nothing short of the redemption of the human race.

It’s not only their story; it’s our story. It’s the story of our ancestors, the dysfunctional family of our father Abraham and mother Sarah. God created this family for the sake of redeeming the world. God told Abram, just before he was given the name Abraham, meaning “father of many nations” (Gen. 17:5), “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:1–3).

God gave these refugees new names, names filled with meaning: Deborah, Elijah, Miriam, Isaac, Rahab, Hannah, Aaron. They are heroic men and women who no longer belong to the empire. They are the characters of a new story. And in this story, Pharaoh, whose name everyone in the land had bowed down to worship, is nameless. For Pharaoh wasn’t just a person; he was an icon of the world they came from. This new family, however, was set apart not just for the sake of being special but as part of a divine conspiracy to bless and heal the violent, sin-sick world. What is meant by “blessing,” and what kind of people will they be? We will see. Nevertheless, it was this peculiar community that was set apart to redeem the nations, which continued to flounder in the messes of empire.

Exodus

The Hebrews were a people who found themselves suffering deeply from the ugliness of the empire they lived in. They were making bricks for Pharaoh’s banks while they had no money for themselves. They were building storehouses of food for Pharaoh’s family while their own families went hungry. They were midwiving the babies of the rich while their own suffered in poverty. They were catering banquets they could never afford to eat at, cleaning palaces they would never be able to sleep in, dying in wars to protect luxuries they would never afford. They were slaves.

God seems to have a knack for hearing the cry of oppressed people. Over and over the Hebrew Scriptures say that the people “cried out to God” and that “God heard their cry.” And so God led them on an exodus, on a journey out of the land of empires and slaves and into the Promised Land of abundance, a land flowing with milk and honey.

God didn’t choose just anybody to lead them. In the midst of imperially sanctioned genocide, a shrewd and courageous woman placed her little baby boy in a basket and floated him down the river. Another bold daughter, this one of the royal court, found his basket and took him in. That little baby was named Moses, an orphaned refugee who would lead God’s people to the Promised Land—a land beyond empires and genocides. Moses, from the moment he was born, quivered under the shadow of an oppressive regime. It was from the water that God rescued Moses, and he would be rescued again when the waters swallowed up the armies of Pharaoh.

Moses led the people out of the land of Pharaoh, but he was no king. He was more of a prophet, one who is the “mouthpiece of God.” As Moses led, kings fell—king after king was toppled from his throne. God fought for the people, protecting them, swallowing up armies and chariots. God instructed them that vengeance belongs only to God, which is a good way of saying, “Vengeance is not for you.” It’s the forbidden fruit. God scolded the people over and over for taking things into their own hands. The Israelites established an independent life in the hill country of Palestine, led by “liberators” (shophetim) and “prophets” (nebi’im) such as Deborah and Samuel, far from the land of kings and pharaohs. It is clear that God was reclaiming kingship over this peculiar nation of people, that they were not to trust in kings anymore. God was their only King.

It wasn’t long, though, before the Hebrew people were tempted to be like those other nations and wanted a human king, one they could see and touch and worship. With growing fear of neighboring empires like Assyria and Babylon, they succumbed to the empty dream of domination. The very people who suffered so deeply from the things kings do demanded another king. Something whispered inside th...