Christ for President

What kind of platform would the son of a carpenter run on?

Let’s have Christ our President
Let us have him for our king
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
That you call the Nazarene || Woody Guthrie

I am a recovering political junkie.

I got my first hit when I was 8 years old — I blame my mother.

It was inauguration day in Washington, DC and my mom let me stay home from school in our little town in Ohio and watch on our old television set — it was literally one of those ancient tv tubes that took the screen a few minutes to warm up. I’ll forever remember when President Reagan got in the helicopter on the White House lawn and took off for the skies — was he going to heaven? No, he was going to California.

Got it. That’s when it sunk in — President’s weren’t forever and immortal, even if they looked the part to my young eyes.

I attended my first political rallies in college — at Ohio State all the candidates came through. I particularly remember the frenzy that greeted Senator John McCain when he filled our basketball arena back in 1999 and later when Vice President Al Gore came and spoke at our student union.

I remember staying up late the night of that election, falling asleep on the couch to talking heads describing a practical tie, Florida and hanging chads on the tips of everyone’s tongues in the days that followed.

Probably as a result, in part, of that memory I would channel my political interests beyond partisan divisions and into advocacy for specific issues — particularly those that affected the poor and left out.

I went to work for the ONE Campaign in Washington, DC and advocated to support programs that could beat back AIDS and malaria; initiatives that could address child and maternal health, corruption and transparency, and the flourishing of communities in far off places — especially in Africa.

Part of my work during those years was to rally faith communities to write letters to their Senators, or to have campus ministry groups flood the White House with tweets and postcards when the timing was right for a particular piece of legislation.

But every-once-in-a-while, I got to hit the campaign trail: and I loved it.

There is something romantic and electric about a good town hall meeting or campaign rally.

One time I got to take a couple African pastors to Colorado to speak to Michelle Obama — the sun was out and there were probably 10,000 of us hanging on her every word. And the African pastors were so excited to speak briefly with her on the rope line and remind her that the world was watching and praying for the election.

There was the time I waited at an anti-abortion rally to speak with Newt Gingrich about the importance of being pro-whole life, or as Cardinal Bernadin of Chicago once described as the commitment to a seamless garment of life.

There was the thing with Sarah Palin, there was the event with John Edwards. There was the rally with the Clintons, there was the smelly VA hall with Rick Santorum, the church basement with Mike Huckabee.

I got to share a few moments in 2008 with then-Senator Barack Obama in a suburban high school library outside of Las Vegas moments before he delivered an important speech on the war in Iraq — a memory I’ll never forget.

The other moment I’ll never forget was the crush of New Hampshire humanity outside a Mitt Romney event. He had just given the same speech he had delivered two dozen times that week in an old gymnasium. We went outside to try and meet him and reinforce the importance of the President’s role in fighting AIDS (something Clinton, Bush and Obama had all worked hard on). There I was, in the January New Hampshire cold trying to get 90 seconds with Mitt — along with everyone else. I positioned myself right by the door to his bus — I would certainly get a moment with him there before he took off for his next event.

Oh, I most certainly got a moment with him. There he is, coming down the sidewalk, we even lock eyes for a moment, when all of a sudden a rush of supporters and reporters crowd. Mitt turns around, shakes a couple hands and backs right up into me. In the scrum I literally ended up with my hands on his hips, doing an odd sort of middle school dance with the presumptive nominee of the Grand Old Party. I ended up spooning with Governor Romney instead of talking to him about Africa and important policy decisions.

Palm Sunday: Hosanna to the King!

Every week before Easter, we remember the moment when Jesus rides in to Jerusalem, not on a campaign bus or private 747, but on the back of a colt.

Which, the back of a colt was a form of political theatre in its day as well. Triumphant and returning kings would always ride into ancient cities in those days — they’d never walk on foot.

Jesus is sort of embodying the promises of the prophet Zechariah, who wrote many generations before that moment:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;

triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey. — Zechariah 9:9

The masses are there — some versions of the story have the people laying down palms (which is why we call today Palm Sunday). Luke’s version of the story has them throwing down their over garments, their cloaks down on the path as a sort of unrolling of the red carpet for the man come to establish his rule.

Would he be returning to make their nation great again?

If Jesus came back today, I wonder what we would think if he rode over the bridges and through the city on the back of an ass.

What would be his vision for health care? For prison reform?

Would he be a green candidate or would he drill baby drill?

Would he say Black Lives Matter on the campaign trail?

Would he run on comprehensive immigration reform?

Would he be for amnesty? Or would he build a wall?

Where would he be at on the death penalty? On abortion?

Would he run for stronger gun control? Or would he call to further protect the Second Amendment?

How would he fare on address college education and student loan debt in our country?

I like to think Jesus would be speaking a lot about our growing income inequality, doing town hall meetings with the least of these — but many of our neighbors fervently believe he preferred to sit with millionaires and billionaires.

Christ for President: personal and public politics

The only way we can ever beat
These crooked politician men
Is to run the money changers out of the temple
Put the Carpenter in — Woody Guthrie

Of course, all of this speculation is nonsense.

Jesus never ran for President — and let’s be honest, he would be utterly unelectable.

My friend Shane Claiborne writes this in his important book, Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals:

“Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.”

The ways of the world trick us into ideas of being popular and credible. The way to rule, they say, is through triumphant power.

But these are not the ways of the kingdom.

“You are the God who performs miracles;

you display your power among the peoples.” — Psalm 77:14 (NIV)

On the Sunday before the first-ever free, fair and inclusive elections in South Africa’s history, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu reflected on the words of the psalmist — that there is One who performs miracles and power amongst the peoples.

But it is the sort of miracles that leave dirt under one’s fingernails; it is the sort of power that is not soft, but resilient and long-serving in its love.

We must not be deceived by the fanciful tales of an otherworldly Jesus who would stand only with the millionaires and billionaires of this world — the ones who perceive to hold all of the world’s understanding of power — because of the cross. The cross, that Roman imperial execution and torture device that was used only for those who committed sin and sedition against the state.

The Romans crucified more than Jesus and those two criminals that hung next to him on Golgotha — a scene we will lean into this Holy week. The Romans crucified thousands upon thousands of slaves, pirates, and bandits — or terrorists as we would call them today. The cross was first reserved only for slaves, or supplicium servile as Seneca described. It was then extended to the lowest classes, or humiliores — the humble folk as they were known then.

Ordinary citizens in Rome? They were hardly ever sentenced to death, let alone on a cross.

Death on a cross was public, shameful and took between a couple hours and a couple days. The condemned would die from heart failure, asphyxiation, dehydration or even sepsis, as the infection from the nails and elements would settle in.

And so many of those who died on two pieces of wood with three nails or rope, were completely innocent, just like Jesus.

When Jesus was a young boy, word spread throughout the villages and towns in Galilee that the Empire had crucified 2,000 so-called zealots who had taken over the city of Sepphoris just a few miles up the road.

Young boys growing up in such times could never not know the fear and torture of the Roman cross.

Crucifixion was the most shameful way to die. The instrument of the most powerful to remind the powerless.

And Jesus would always remind his friends, his followers, and anyone with ears to hear that this was the way it all might end: death.

This is why he would tell folks to pick up their cross and follow him.

Personal choices with public ramifications.

Or as Marcus Borg wrote: “The way of the cross was both personal and political.”

So on that Sunday before South Africa’s 1994 elections, Desmond Tutu told the packed sanctuary of St. George Cathedral and everyone listening in on the radio that “the Cross is God’s mark that God has chosen to be our God, that God has chosen to be our God, that God has chosen to be on our side against evil, against sin, against death, against the devil. The Cross is God’s mark of the depth of his love for us, for you, for me… and that is a love that will never change.”

Tutu went on to describe the work ahead for everyone there in that church and everyone tuning in on their radios — white, black, rich and poor. The work of election day was just one thing. There was a whole host of things to do in the days and years that followed.

And I think what Tutu was trying to say on that Sunday before that historic election was that people didn’t just have things to do, but a peculiar way to Be.

And that way to be is love.

Church Is: ordinary loving choices for other

Quite simply, I want to remind each one of us that church is ordinary people making ordinary, loving choices for the common good.

The One who came in on the back of a colt with the crowd shouting out Hosanna’s did not come to preside over a kingdom with borders and armies, all tied together nicely by talking points and somewhat achievable promises. He came to reignite in each one of us with an all-encompassing, all-inclusive vision for health and wholeness.

I am not sure what we would do, seriously, if a Palestinian carpenter rode through the city on the back of a colt. I’m not sure how we would react if some trouble maker from the countryside — someone whom they said came to overthrow the established order — rode through town today.

I shudder to think.

I think we all too often want comfort, convenience.

We don’t want any talking of picking up crosses and following.

We want someone else to solve our problems and fix what needs fixing.

Fixing in our hearts, in our communities.

But here’s the thing: Jesus leaves it to us. We are the people left behind to sort out these things. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for to set the world to rights.

Of course we don’t do it on our own — we do it through the Divine that is flowing through each and everyone of us, moving us forward to the little part each one of us is entrusted with.

This week, as we reflect on the Easter that lies before us, I will be reflecting on my own part in this unfolding story. And I am going to lean into my fears — my anger, my inadequacies, my selfishness. And I am going to remind myself that I am loved. And that I have something terrifically beautiful to do.

And I’ll be praying for you — and I hope to find you along the way. Not shouting hosannas, but carrying our crosses alongside one another.

Because we know that in order to truly live the life worth living, we have to die first.

Adam Phillips is pastor of Christ Church: Portland (Ore.), an open, active & inclusive community founded in 2015.