Becoming Subversive like Jesus

by

Like many, I found myself in recent months increasingly challenged by the raw inhumanity of American society. The more I read my Bible for comfort, the less comfort I found. Instead, I was confronted over and over with how similar our time has become compared with Jesus’ time. As a result, the friends who follow my personal Facebook account may have noticed that I’ve been studying this summer to become a social and political subversive, like Jesus.

Think about it. Judea in Jesus’ time was occupied by an empire that kept “peace” by excessive force, because anyone not a Roman was an inferior being who didn’t deserve justice. Jesus saw religious authorities collaborate with Roman overlords to keep “lesser” people in their place and acquire power and wealth for themselves. Jesus’ people suffered poverty and hunger as resources from Rome’s provinces were gathered up and sent to the central capital to support lavish lifestyles for elites.

Need a clearer image? Think “Hunger Games” without Katniss Everdeen.

These comparisons were on my mind in late June when congregational leaders asked my husband and me to learn more about an organization, Faith in Texas, that invited our church to participate. At the first meeting, we discovered many people of different faiths who were upset, even agonized, about what was happening in the United States. Some of them were people of color who had experienced the injustice of American society all their lives. Their stories were chilling.

Yet the more we talked that day, the more we found values we held in common, and the more we wanted our communities to be fashioned around those values, such as mutual respect, equality, safety, justice and love. So, my husband and I attended two more sessions on our church’s behalf.

As we studied how to organize faith communities for action, I recognized the eternal truths Jesus taught in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Jesus started by identifying the “dominant narrative” or set of common beliefs, as in the Sermon on the Mount. Then he exposed the “big lie” in those beliefs by turning them upside down. Finally, he offered nonviolent but provocative ways to resist Roman oppression, ways that gave people spiritual power over their lives.

These realizations revitalized me after months of fear and anger about what has been happening in America and in The United Methodist Church. Faith-based responses to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., have been encouraging, to be sure, but now I conclude:

  • Rallies, marches and demonstrations are a good start to identify problems and ignite movements, but they are not effective in changing underlying issues. That takes more focused long-term effort.
  • White privilege permeates every American system including United Methodism, and it will take generations to eradicate it.
  • I am a recovering racist, because I still benefit from white privilege. Nobody follows me around when I'm shopping to see if I steal anything. I've never been stopped by police for "driving while white."
  • Change is hard and takes a long time. We won’t build the Beloved Community everywhere in our lifetimes, but we aren’t excused from making the effort.
  • Relationships are key to making changes that benefit everyone. There are no “lower class” people in God’s community.
  • Standing up to evil takes courage and companions.
  • Fear and God do not occupy the same space, as the late comedian Dick Gregory said.
  • Jesus hung out at society’s margins, so that’s where I should be, too. Serving early-morning breakfast at a homeless shelter honors God as much as attending Sunday worship.

I have a more specific idea now of what it is to love our neighbors today, as Jesus taught.

We love them when they mess up and are sent to prison, and we love them when they come out of prison and need a job. We respect the human dignity of people who operate for-profit prisons because they’re made in God’s image, but we don’t love what they do and we work to stop mass incarceration for the sake of profit.

We love people when they’re hungry and we give them food, but we also question why there’s no grocery store nearby for them to get decent nutrition. We give food to hungry people who have no money, but then we must find out why they can’t earn enough to eat.

We love people of color by standing with them when the systems we live by don’t deal fairly with them. Then we white people, who benefit every day from these systems, love again when we work to change society, even if it’s bit by bit.

We love LGBTQ people because they, too, bear God's image. We love them when we support their civil right to marry who they love and to lead in church and society.

We love people when we stand nonviolently between those carrying torches and KKK signs and shouting Nazi slogans and the people they want to intimidate. We put our bodies on the line against evil, even when it means we face potential danger.

After three months of research, I’m going to report to our congregation’s leadership that there are dozens, hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people of faith in our nation who are preparing to do the long, hard work of building God’s Beloved Community. We’re energized after seeing America devolve into the kind of country we don’t want it to be. We’re stepping across racial, ethnic, language, economic and religious lines to find our shared values, which are more than we might think. We’re ready to face the risks of change. We’re committed to using our common values to build communities in which neighbors truly love one another into health, prosperity and justice, because our faith in God compels us to do so.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.