Following Jesus in America

Following Jesus in America
Stanley Hauerwas

One of the difficulties with being a Christian in a country like America — allegedly a Christian country — is that our familiarity with “Christianity” has made it difficult for us to read or hear Scripture. We have used faith in God to underwrite American pretensions that we are a Christian nation possessing righteousness other nations lack.

When presidents of the United States claim that the “God” of the Pledge of Allegiance is the God Christians worship, we have a problem. The Christian God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is the only God worthy of worship. And the Christian pledge is not the Pledge of Allegiance, but rather is called the Apostles’ Creed.

There is no question that love between the persons of the Trinity is at the very heart of the Christian faith, but nothing is more destructive to the Christian faith than the current identification of Christianity with love. “Love” in this instance is often used as a substitution for being “nice.” But if God wants us to be more loving, why do we need Jesus to tell us that? Why didn’t God just tell us through an appropriate spokesperson that God wants us to love one another? If that is what Jesus is all about — that is, getting us to love one another — then why did everyone reject him? Why would anyone have bothered putting him to death?
The offense of Jesus is not that he wanted his followers to be loving; the offense is Jesus himself. Jesus is the politics of the new age. He is about the establishment of a kingdom that not only cares for the poor, but is willing to be poor — a kingdom that not only refuses to participate in the world’s violence, but is willing to die at the hands of a violent world.

The politics of Jesus

We should not be surprised that Jesus is the embodiment of such a politics. After all, Mary’s song promised that the proud would have their imaginations “scattered,” the powerful would be brought down from their thrones, the rich would be sent away empty, the lowly would be lifted up, and the hungry would be filled with good things.
Is it any wonder that the world was not prepared to welcome this kind of savior? Jesus was put to death because he embodied a politics that threatened all worldly regimes based on the fear-filled impulse to kill or be killed. The character of Jesus’ politics can be seen perhaps most clearly in the discourse between Jesus and Pilate. Indeed there can be no ambiguity about the political challenge Jesus represents before Pilate. Pilate is Roman authority; he is an authority who has the power to determine whether those who appear before Roman governors live or die.

Pilate begins in an inquiring fashion, “They tell me that you are the King of Jews. Is that true?” Pilate’s question is obviously meant to see if Jesus is “political.” Jesus responds by asking if Pilate came up with such a view on his own or did others tell him such was the case. “I am not a Jew, am I?” replies Pilate. To which Jesus responds, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from here.”

Many have read this remark as a confirmation that Jesus was not about politics. But Jesus never denies being a king, nor does he deny having a kingdom. Rather he denies that his kingdom is ruled according to the politics of this world. So is there a politic of the kingdom of God? Yes, and the name of that politics is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel is the proclamation of a new age begun through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That gospel, moreover, has a form — a political form — called church. The church, as John Howard Yoder observes, is a society called into being by Jesus who gave us a new way to live. Yoder writes,
He gave them a new way to deal with offenders — by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence — by suffering. He gave them a new way to deal with money — by sharing it. He gave them a new way to deal with problems of leadership — by drawing on the gift of every member, even the most humble. He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society — by building a new order, not making the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationships between man and woman, between parent and child, between master and slave, in which was made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a human person” (The Original Revolution, page 29).
That is the politics of Jesus — the “good news.”

An alternative to the world

The church does not exist to teach us how to be good Americans, or how to make Christianity “cool.” The church exists to form us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, into the likeness of Christ.

There’s no need to make the gospel “relevant” to the current culture. Jesus doesn’t care about being relevant; rather, Jesus cares about making disciples, about drawing people into the community called church that embodies the life-giving politics made possible through his life, death and resurrection.
Jesus does not promise that we will be made safe. Rather, this Savior offers to free us from our self-inflicted fears and anxieties.

Jesus does so, not by making our lives “more meaningful,” though we may discover our lives have renewed purpose, but by making us members of his body so that we can share in the goods of a community that is an alternative to the world.

As followers of Christ we may be hated and rejected, but we have been given such wonderful work that we may hardly notice.
Why did Jesus have to die? Jesus died to show us life is about God — not us. That is the good news of the gospel!

We are not left to our own devices. We are not in charge of our destinies. Jesus is our destiny. Jesus died so that we might find life, and life abundantly, in him.

Stanley Hauerwas, named “America’s Best Theologian” by Time magazine in 2001, is a professor of theological ethics at Duke University Divinity School. This article is adapted from lectures given at Duke and Princeton Theological Seminaries and originally published in The Cresset.