Imagine looking for Jesus in the Antebellum South of America.
Both the slave master and the slave proclaimed allegiance to Jesus. The slave master, because he believed all his wealth, wisdom and power over people he considered sub-human was a direct result of his fidelity to Jesus — white, blond, blue-eyed and fully agreeing with his twisted theology.
The slave also saw Jesus. While she cried for his saving power, she was satisfied with the fact that she found the company of Jesus in her enslaved brokenness.
Phillip Thomas
These two Jesus’ are still a part of American society and its Christian mythology.
Ask yourself if the Jesus you like would be in favor of the banker who gave risky loans and lined their pockets, or with the people who lost their homes. Would your Jesus be with the company that increases the price of essential medication or with those who die a slow death because they cannot afford to access the health care they desperately need?
While it is tempting for followers of slaveholder Jesus to dismiss what I said as a “capitalism vs. socialism” argument, please understand my question has more to do with which circles Jesus would be found in — the oppressor or the oppressed.
But is the slaves’ Jesus the Jesus I really want to encounter? A broken deity sitting within the brokenness of people, without judgment but with compassion. In 30-odd years of being a part of the American church, I rarely have encountered the slaves’ Jesus. And if I am truthful, I will say that is a Jesus I chose to avoid.
It isn’t because the slaves’ Jesus doesn’t exist. It is because I often am in the company of the slave-holder Jesus. That Jesus gives me a false sense of security, but never heals my brokenness. That Jesus teaches me surety but never doubt and rarely the truth of hope.
My Jesus lives in the halls of the slaveholders. My Jesus never really knows the slaves. I have been following a constructed Jesus of the powerful, ignoring the communion with the Jesus of the broken.
“I’ve been drinking artificially flavored Kool-Aid while the freshness and sweetness of real fruit juice rots on my table.”
My Jesus sits in the center of power and not in the fringes of society. I’ve been drinking artificially flavored Kool-Aid while the freshness and sweetness of real fruit juice rots on my table.
I remember being an “elder” at a “Bible” church in suburban Philadelphia, where the rejoicing over the bombings of Iraq drowned any of the poor cries of Iraqis. It was a slaveholder church, where they proudly displayed an American flag that was flown in honor of that church during a murderous bombing of Iraqi civilians. I am quite sure it would have been a sacred object if it had the blood of Iraqis on it. Thankfully, it didn’t. If Jesus was one of them, I would not even associate with Christianity.
Thankfully, I am discovering he was just as much a stranger in their midst as I was.
I have realized that feeling revolted and disgusted at the stench of what most of American Christianity has turned out to be is a blessing. Just like a fake pair of sneakers that might look similar, but without the comfort, the falsehood of what American Christianity has become also will disappoint. The truth is the Jesus I claimed to follow was only a red herring, a distraction from reality.
The church I knew represented more of a conversazione than a community. A place where abstract ideas with no present value (think complementarianism vs. egalitarianism) are taught, argued and implemented while being compassionate neighbors to a real community is largely ignored.
“The Beatitudes describe ragamuffins.”
I have gone back to the Sermon on the Mount. Its opening words, “Blessed are …” captivate me. These are not descriptions of the whole, smiling well-dressed people I have encountered in my Bible studies, fellowships and churches. The Beatitudes describe ragamuffins — a term coined by a former Franciscan priest, Brennan Manning. Ragamuffins are those people who are bedraggled, beaten up and burned out. They are unsteady, uncertain and weak-kneed people who know they don’t have it all together.
The Caesars of the church warn against being a ragamuffin Christian because it forces them to look at a world, and a Jesus, they have ignored because he doesn’t fit into the antiseptic and cocooned human constructs of their uncritical but established theologies. Theologies that safeguard their prejudices instead of creating a frontal challenge.
But it is time for me to rediscover the slaves’ Jesus. Simple, humble and broken. This Jesus walks with us in our pain, not offering pithy cliches of redemption but encouraging us to discover, within us, our founts of grace.
This is not the free-market Jesus or Republican Jesus. It is the Jesus of the commoner, with all his insecurities, nothingness and lostness. Where healing is a result of companionship, and true community is the path to wholeness. This grace is what led the slaves to continue to forgive, because the wretched, naked Jesus who hung out with them filled them with grace and love. Instead of the slaveholder’s proud, theological certainty that had academic answers for every human problem, the slaves’ Jesus held out a compassionate hand.
You may ask why the larger evangelical church has prostituted itself to the slaveholder’s Jesus.
While I may not have an exhaustive answer, part of the reason is we have tried to create a society that resembles a human kingdom rather than a community where all broken people have a place. Societies have rules that allow for their establishment and protection. Communities have relationships that allow for identity and expansion. While this is not a binary world, we must ask: Which perspective have we largely invested in?
“The slaveholder Jesus cares about protecting the walls of the church, while the slave’s Jesus expands the table.”
Modern Christendom has put its efforts toward a society leading to churches that Bill Maher aptly describes as “hermetically sealed panic rooms.” This is something that has gotten clearer for me since the early 1990s. The slaveholder Jesus cares about protecting the walls of the church, while the slave’s Jesus expands the table.
The more I come to terms with my humanity, I am realizing the extent of loving my brokenness and the brokenness of others. I have not seen a place for that in most of the modern evangelical church. But the freedom that has come from not looking for it in the church anymore is truly a matter of release from the captivity of the false “society” I have observed and been a part of.
It is time for resipiscence. We need to reject the institution Christianity has become and recapture the brokenness of community, where our inadequacies and insecurities huddle with others, seeking the raggedness of the ragamuffin.
“We need to rediscover the Jesus of the manger.”
This is particularly prescient as Christians enter the season of Advent. We need to rediscover the Jesus of the manger, the Jesus whose parents fled for fear of their lives, the Jesus who the shepherds found naturally, as opposed to the kings who didn’t get it right the first time.
Perhaps Christianity is best exemplified by a group of beggars sitting around a warm fire on a cold winter night, sharing scraps of food, rather than a group of triumphalist chest thumpers waiting for a hope that is both artificial and ultimately disappointing.
As James Baldwin said in The Fire Next Time, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace — not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. “
This is the slaves’ Jesus. One where love forces the masks to be taken off, confronting the harsh reality of a Jesus who encounters an incarnation in a broken society where we see the best of each other and where grace rules supreme.
It is in the hands of this Jesus that I may finally find a home. It has been a long journey to arrive here, but one that has been worth the painful meanderings and waits.
Phillip Thomas, originally from India, now makes America his home, along with his wife of 29 years and his three children, in the Philadelphia area. He works for a global bank and continues to wrestle with his faith and Christianity.