Abandoned Altars

If Jesus was alive on Planet Earth today doing the same mission as two thousand years ago, what do you think would happen?

I’d bet he’d be in jail, languishing in some godawful hellhole like Guantanamo, or already dead again just like the last time around. Only his fate might come quicker in this even more dangerous age. He would be a marked man, hated and mistrusted on all sides for speaking up for the victims of violence and injustice.

Because from what we can tell, the historical Jesus was a real troublemaker. Think of it from the authorities’ point of view. There’s Jesus, going around casting out evil spirits in his own name, violating the rules of the Sabbath, entering the city like a king, causing a riot in the Temple, and letting people get all worked up thinking he was the Messiah who would kick the Romans out. No wonder the Sanhedrin and Pilate kept a suspicious eye on him.

He freely associated with sinners, prostitutes, and even Samaritans and Gentiles. Not normal behavior for a respected teacher of the Law. Worse, his inner circle contained some rather dubious characters. There was “Rocky”; Peter, the chief bodyguard, and Simon the Zealot — a telling handle, as the Zealots were the fanatics who launched the great revolt against Rome two generations later. And then there was Judas Iscariot — the latter name which might mean he was a “daggerman” or one of the sicarii, terrorists who would slip into the marketplace to knife important Roman collaborators.

Even some of Jesus’ preaching was nothing less than incindiary. In Luke, he says:

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
(Luke 12:49)

He goes on to speak of the divisions even in families that he will cause. Matthew’s version of the same speech is equally if not more violent:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
“For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”
(Matt. 10:34-36)

Indeed, the evening of the Last Supper, he called for his disciples to arm themselves, clearly expecting trouble:

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one… The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.” “That is enough,” he replied.
(Luke 22:36,38)

This might not be enough to launch an attack on the Jerusalem garrison, but – along with Jesus’ predictions of his own death – it certainly indicates he was not only expecting violence on his person, but was prepared to meet it in the same way.

Jesus doesn’t sound like much of a peacenik to me. More like a revolutionary, a failed revolutionary at that.

See how he disavowed all political ends before his Roman judge, once he was caught:

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
(John 18:9)

Yet, he was more than just a Che Guevara of the first century. Somehow, the Jesus movement survived him, endured several centuries of persecution, and in the end took over the empire that had executed him. Ironically, though Jesus claimed no interest in ruling this world, his self-named successors sitting on the papal throne would exert great efforts to do just that.

Perhaps Jesus’ final rejection of earthly politics had something to do with that early survival. After all, of all the Jewish sects and cults running around Palestine in the first century, along with the Christians, only the Pharisees who likewise sought to accomodate the Roman yoke survived, giving birth to rabbinical Judaism in the process.

So that’s what the wanted poster is about. Showing how the authorities might have regarded Jesus in his final days, and as a reminder to us, too, that following one’s conscience even in the most spiritual of quests can lead to misunderstanding, hatred and death. As easily today as way back then. Some things, it seems, never change.