National Catholic Register
John Howard Yoder's Political Jesus (a cutting)
By John Dear SJ
Few theologians write so explicitly about the political threat of Jesus and what that means for his followers. Here are other excerpts:
"Jesus gave (his followers) a new way of life to live. 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 upon 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 smashing the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationships between man and woman, parent and child, master and slave, in which was made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a human person. He gave them a new attitude toward the state and toward the 'enemy nation.'"
"At the heart of the Christian faith properly understood is not dogma or ritual, but Jesus. At the heart of the meaning of Jesus is his teaching of the kingdom of God. At the heart of that teaching is the Sermon on the Mount. At the heart of the Sermon is the contrast between what had been said by them of old and what 'I now say to you.' At the core of these antitheses is the love of the enemy and nonresistance to evil. The result is what Tolstoy calls simply the 'key' to the scripture message: the cure for evil is suffering. Not only is this one dramatic and scandalous teaching of Jesus internally accredited as the key to the scriptures, it is also the key to what is wrong with the world."
"What is wrong with the world is most fundamentally that people respond to evil with evil and thereby aggravate the spiral of violence. The key to the good news is that we are freed from prolonging the chain of evil causes engendering evil effects by action and reaction in kind. By refusing to extend the chain of vengeance, we break into the world with good news. This one key opened the door to a restructuring of the entire universe of Christian life and thought."
"Jesus is saying (in Matt. 5:44-48) that we should not love only our friends because God did not love only his friends. We are asked to 'resemble God' just at this one point: not in his omnipotence or his eternity or his impeccability, but simply in the undiscriminating or unconditional character of God's love. This is not a fruit of long growth and maturation; it is not inconceivable or impossible. We can do it tomorrow if we believe. We can stop loving only the lovable, lending only to the reliable, giving only to the grateful, as soon as we grasp and are grasped by the unconditionality of the benevolence of God."
"This is one of the keys to the problem of war and legitimate defense. Every argument that would permit the taking of life is in one way or another based on calculations of rights and merits. I prefer the life of those nearest me to that of the foreigner, or the life of the innocent to that of the trouble-maker, because my love is conditional, qualified, natural, just like that of everyone else. Jesus does not condemn this normal, self-seeking quality -- for Gentiles, but he says there is nothing new, nothing special, nothing redemptive or healing about it. 'What reward can you expect?' Not only is 'perfect love' not limited to those who merit it; it goes beyond the unjust demands of those who coerce compliance with their will. 'Do not (violently) resist one who does evil.' The alternative is creative concern for the person who is bent on evil, coupled with the refusal of his goals."
Because Yoder put together the practice of nonviolence with the life of Jesus, it is no wonder that much of his writing is focused on the meaning of the cross, and these reflections are unmatched. Forty years later, he still has much to teach of about the way of the cross. For example:
"The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering. It is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost … The cross of Christ was not an inexplicable or chance event that happened to strike him, like illness or accident. To accept the cross as his destiny, to move toward it and even to provoke it, when he could well have done otherwise, was Jesus' constantly reiterated free choice. The cross of Calvary was not a difficult family situation, not a frustration of visions of personal fulfillment, a crushing debt, or a nagging in-law; it was the political, legally-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society."
"Christ is agape; self-giving, nonresistant love. At the cross, this nonresistance, including the refusal to use political means of self defense, found its ultimate revelation in the uncomplaining and forgiving death of the innocent at the hands of the guilty. This death reveals how God deals with evil; here is the only valid starting point for Christian pacifism or nonresistance. The cross is the extreme demonstration that agape seeks neither effectiveness nor justice and is willing to suffer any loss or seeming defeat for the sake of obedience. But the cross is not defeat. Christ's obedience unto death was crowned by the miracle of the resurrection and the exaltation at the right hand of God."
John Howard Yoder deserves to be widely read, and this book is a good place to start. I hope all Catholic and Christian peace and justice activists will join me in studying Yoder's work to gain new insights into the nonviolence of Jesus and our own Gospel nonviolence.
