Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political
implication; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public
ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was not just a
sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-Man whose divine
status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely
mandated prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new
possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships. His
baptism is the inauguration and his cross is the culmination of that new
regime in which his disciples are called to share. Hearers or readers may
choose to consider that kingdom as not real, or not relevant, or not
possible, or not inviting; but ... no such slicing can avoid his call to an
ethic marked by the cross, a cross identified as the punishment of a man who
threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically
new kind of life.
John Howard YoderThe
Politics of Jesus
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