Peter Leithart's "Truncating the Politics of Jesus" puts me in mind, curiously enough, of a student-directed production of Godspell back in my university days. My directing professor nailed its failure eloquently: "This show was more about singing and dancing than it was about the Gospels." (This was a public university, by the way.) At this remove of years, I don't think the young, evangelically-minded director was to blame; instead, Godspell itself envisions Jesus as a likable fellow who enjoyed good times with his twelve best friends and others. The problem with this conception is that it makes the Crucifixion utterly inexplicable: what religious or civil authority would want to kill off someone whose most provocative action was to do little more than ask what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
Sadly, this quietist version of the Gospel has come to dominate American evangelicalism, which continues its historical trend of affirming the interests of the broader culture in general and the agenda of those currently in power in particular. As Leithart helpfully observes, Jesus himself was neither meek nor mild: "What preceded Jesus’ silence in Pilate’s Praetorium were several years of inflammatory non-silence. ...If we don’t follow Jesus at the beginning, we’re unlikely to have an opportunity to follow him to the end." You have to take up your cross in order to submit to your crucifixion.
Contrary to expectation, age has not mellowed my preaching: more and more frequently, I find myself stridently declaiming against current public policy and mores, and against the silliness of too many of my co-religionists. To borrow a line from the evangelicals, it's what Jesus would do.
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