Jesius and Insurrection

 Thursday after the Epiphany

I am grateful to God for answering our prayers and bringing peace to the Capitol today. Pray for continuing peace over these next two weeks.

I felt bad about not writing about the festival of the Festival of the Epiphany yesterday. I was comforted by the words of Speaker Pelosi at the reconvening of the House of Representatives last night. She began and ended her speech with thoughts about Epiphany. She quoted from St. Francis of Assisi's prayer and invoked God's help for our country several times. 

I thought the one thing I could talk about that might be helpful is the title subject of this blog. I want to make clear that the political situation of Jesus and his time was quite different from our own. Jesus and the Jews of Palestine lived under the oppressive rule of the Roman army and its administrators. Herod Antipas, whom the Jews did not consider to be Jewish, ruled Galilee, Jesus' home region. Pontius Pilate, a ruthless and bloody Roman administrator, ruled Judea, to the south, where Jerusalem is located. Tensions were high, moreso in Jerusalem than anywhere. The Romans had put down a Jewish revolt under the leadership of Judas Sicarii in 6 A.D. Pilate's troops had massacred about 300 Jews in 26 A.D. Revolutionary sentiment was strong. The general term for the various revolutionary groups was Zealots. Virulent hatred of the Romans was common, though not universal among the Palestinian Jews.

 

Jesus was a man of peace and non-violence. He harbored no animosity toward the occupying forces. The story of his healing the Roman centurion's servant (Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10) demonstrates this. Jesus never says anything negative about Romans. 

Jesus made one important statement on the relation of the government to the religion. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's" (Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25). Thomas Jefferson interpreted this, I think correctly, as implying separation of church and state. 

Jesus chose his twelve disciples to include two opposite end political extremists. Matthew (a.k.a. Levi) was a tax collector for the Roman government. Almost all Jews saw tax collectors as collaborators with the enemy and traitors to their people. He also chose Simon the Zealot (a.k.a. Simon the Canaanean), an insurrectionist. It appears to me that Jesus was willing to listen to extreme opposite points of view.

 

Jesus was executed on bogus charges of fomenting revolution and making himself king. At least one of the two men crucified with him, Barabbas, was an insurrectionist. 

 

These are the facts as related in the gospels. I'll let you do your own interpretation. The one thing that seems crystal clear to me is that Jesus would in no way have approved of the insurrection that occurred at the Capitol on Wednesday, the day of Christian celebration of the Epiphany. 

Faithfully,

Christian