An Alternate Community

2nd Sunday in Lent - March 16, 2025

Rev Sarah Colvin

You can find this week's readings here.

Believers form an alternate community. The readings this week remind us that however important politics and presidents may be, then and now, believers must see a bigger picture. Believers actually form an alternate community.

In Luke's Gospel, the Pharisees warn Jesus, "You better get out of here, Herod wants to kill you." It is a puzzle, why did the Pharisees warn Jesus? Well, one thing to remember is that the relationship between the Pharisees and Jesus is not always conflictual. Another point is that the Pharisees clearly do not envision what role Jesus is going to have. That is good background to dive deeper.

I admit that even for me--someone whose basic livelihood depends on interpreting the Bible; it is sometimes hard to keep all the Herod’s straight, but generally speaking, I have found that working with the characters of “Herod” it doesn’t matter. In the Bible, all Herod’s are bad, or at least marginally okay. Herod was an ambitious builder; most historians remember him as a paranoid and ruthless madman. Herod executed one of his ten wives, two of his sons, and numerous detractors. In the gospels, when a Herod heard rumors about the birth of a rival king, he tried to murder the magi, he ordered the infanticide in Bethlehem, and another Herod beheaded John the Baptist on a dinner party dare.

A simple but important point flows from this knowledge — there was a deep antagonism between Jesus and the political powers of his day. And thus, the sharp response by Jesus, "go tell that fox I will do what I do."

Jesus threatened the political powers, not because he wanted to control what they controlled, but because Jesus undercuts the political power’s claims to supremacy. Of course, this becomes even more obvious if we fast forward to the end of Lent and the arrest of Jesus. Remember that Jesus was dragged before Pontius Pilate for three reasons, all of which were political: "We found this fellow subverting the nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King."

In the epistle this week, Paul says that he gave us a "pattern" and "example" to follow, namely, that "our citizenship is in heaven." Once again, today we hear this as a religious phrase, but in Paul's day it was absolutely overtly political. And the implications were actually more political than spiritual.

Historians have observed that pagans accused the earliest believers (followers of the way or Christians) of sedition because of the overt political implications of this confession of a "kingdom of God" and a "citizenship in heaven." By confessing Jesus as Lord, they rejected Caesar as king. Loyalty to Christ the king was absolute and unconditional, whereas fidelity to the Roman state was relative and conditional.

Finally, there is Abraham. Genesis 15 describes how his descendants would live for four hundred years as "strangers in a country not their own." This language of "resident aliens" was echoed by New Testament writers to describe believers. If Jesus said that his kingdom was "not of this world," then his followers were "aliens and strangers" in the world — (as seen in Ephesians 2:9, Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 2:11).

Political theorist and ethicist Michael Walzer of Princeton argues that while the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) contains a lot about politics, it isn't really interested in politics. Rather, it presents us with a radical anti-politics. Since God is sovereign, Caesar is secondary. In place of a radically relativized politics, says Walzer, the Hebrew Bible commends an ethic or way of life. Micah 6:8 comes to mind: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. Speak out for those who have no voice. Protect the weak, feed the poor, free the slaves, and welcome the alien. We trust ourselves to God alone and are responsible for each other.

More than one person has claimed that there's no such thing as a "Christian" politics; what we have to be wary of is that essentially efforts by both Democrats and Republicans (or any other party) to co-opt Jesus for their cause because that action cannot help but distort the gospels. But I would point out that it is poignantly true that politics with the end intention to disenfranchise and subjugate others is decidedly un-Christian and evil. And that is easy enough to say and then stop and maybe even feel a little self-righteous (probably not a good look), but there is more to it, there is always more.

Jesus of the Gospels proposes no political program, but instead something far more strenuous, something "scary, dark and demanding." No state or political party can indulge in the self-sacrifice that Jesus demands when he calls us to lovingly serve the least and the lost. But self-sacrificing love for my neighbor is precisely the message of the Lenten season.

And yes, sin does happen in dark alley ways, and back rooms, and halls of congress and in the White House. It’s easier to think of sin in that way, because we almost never think of ourselves in those terms. It’s more comforting to think of sin as what “those people” do. But sin also happens every time we walk away from God’s desire for us. “How often I had desired, but you were not willing.”

The faithful walk – the Lenten Walk – is to seek out the desires of God, and rest under the shadow of His wings. Accept what God wants from us. Accept where God wants us to be. Accept what God wants us to do, and what God wants us to leave alone. And, of course, accept the forgiveness so freely offers to us when we step off the path. But if they are at crossed purposes, politics and religion, our allegiance must be with God. Yes, we can do what we can to change the political landscape to ameliorate suffering and more align with the Gospel. But much more so, we must listen to Jesus’s call and be gathered into our alternate community, committed to study the word of God, and then minister to the other who suffers. That is what it is to be gathered and listen to God.

---

IMAGE ATTRIBUTION: Schäufelein, Hans, approximately 1480-approximately 1539. Christ and the Pharisees, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56831 [retrieved March 24, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_and_the_Pharisees,_from_Das_Plenarium_MET_DP849932.jpg.