THE RADICAL ROOTS OF THE PROPHET JESUS

4/2/2013

by Rev. David Rommereim

Good, solid relationships last. They give you the chance of becoming self-aware. With quality friends, you speak for yourself rather than for others. One of my rabbis, Edwin Friedman, calls that, becoming self differentiated. The prophet Jesus names it, you "love G*d with all your heart, soul, strength, and your neighbor as yourself."

Friends make self-awareness happen, carefully and deliberately. They suspend judgment so that you may be yourself. When conflict arises you, have a community to guide you rather than fight with you. If, perchance distance comes between you, the relationship may change, but rarely snuffed out. Strong relations abide through the bond of love (agape).

With friendship in mind, I remember my 9th grade math teacher. He presently lives across this continent. Remarkably, we keep in touch nearly once a year. One day, after a conversation, he said, "David, you're radical." At first, I was bewildered. I did not know what he meant. Then, after thinking about it, I learned he meant it complimentary.

He called me radical after I shared a story about a time I was busy assisting a congregation and a neighborhood, in a public ministry that needed G*d's prophetic voice. The plea was not about me. Rather, I was eager to hear the soul force of the Prophetic voices of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Moses, and Jesus in a cacophony of brute force.

I shared with my teacher, that violence was on the rise despite more cops hiding in dark tinted cars parked all around street corners. There was the plethora of guns and ammunition. I knew 30% of the community was armed (a normal NYC statistic at the time). There was also illicit chemistry infiltrating our neighborhood and distorting the lives of users. The church was nestled in a little corner of the block. Nevertheless, because of the prophet Jesus, and his prophetic community named The Way, we could not remain silent. We wanted things to change and peace to abide in our neighborhood.

The story was personal, but it was not about me. It was about G*d and the memory that G*d did not want to be mocked by the violence caused by silence, nor the empty voices, nor the violence of death defying ignorance paid by large financed political action campaigns (PAC).

When the math teacher called me, radical, it was not what you think. He did not refer to a radical that you may assume has to do with politics and social reform. He meant a radical that goes deeper. His notion is deeply rooted. It is a radical that is far-reaching, thorough, and fundamentally related to the nature of what it means to be a person of faith and a sojourner of the Prophetic ministry of G*d (Jew and Christian).

I remember that little encounter with my teacher, because this Lent Good Shepherd community returned to the roots of the Jesus story. We returned to the fundamental and thorough good of Jesus' prophetic mission.

We began the season remembering the meek and mild Jesus. We still love his image with a lamb carefully draped over his shoulders. We love the carefully groomed brown locks of that Warner Salzmann's portrait of Jesus that hangs in many basements of the remaining Lutheran churches along the 4th Avenue Local. Nevertheless, this Lent, many of us returned to the Jesus of the Prophetic Voice. Jesus enters our history with his mentors, Moses, Elijah, and others.

So, in the middle of this Great and Holy Week 2013, we return to Gethsemane, the place of prayer. We remember the trial in the praetorian of Roman occupation. We return to the temple and a religious hegemony that was as corrupt as the day is cold. We remember Jesus leading a peasant's revolt because the upper 1% horded all the resources and controlled a barbaric economy. (Sounds familiar?)

Daily bread was for the people of means, rather than for all people. Prophesy is why Jesus taught us to pray "give us this day our daily bread." It is why Jesus taught us to hallow G*d's Name, it is why we pray "Our Abba" rather than "My Abba," or why we ask, forgive the debts as we forgive the debtors. Jesus, the compassionate one, knew that a dysfunctional economy always hurts the ones whose back is against the wall.

The Prophet Jesus brings us back to the beginning, restores our lives, and teaches us without judgment. Ultimately, we ask him to lead us not into temptation, and to deliver us from the evil one.

We began Lent, remembering that James Baldwin challenged us to "do our first works over." He counseled us to "Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again, and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself, but know from whence you came."

It is Passover and Easter, two faith cousins featuring G*d's soul force of justice-love. This week I thank G*d for the living memory of the Prophet Jesus. It is a good time to take a step back, re-member. Then leap forward.

5 Comments

Thomas Hilton

4/3/2013 10:30:54 am

Glad I happened to find this. But time is short at the moment. I will have much to say soon enough about "The Politics of Jesus", which culminated during Holy Week - precisely why I did NOT show up as such was inappropriate to the season. Now let me bookmarked this link for future reference. I will segue all that in to my related conversations with priests at Trinity on Wall Street.

Harold T. Barnes

4/10/2013 07:00:38 am

Since you chose to promote the RADICAL and demonizing views of Hendricks for so long, I suggest it is time you had something of an alternative for discussion: "What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission", by DeYoung and Gilbert. 2011.

4/12/2013 04:09:43 am

As stated above, I was going to add more to this. You will get a letter soon also.

The promotion by this church over many weeks of the Obery Hendricks book, “The Politics of Jesus”, was offensive, but not as offensive as his presence during Holy Week. I would have gone to this talk and confronted him aggressively, but I was not going to do it the day before Holy Thursday, which was especially distasteful.

Unlike the Yoder book of the same title from many years past, this one is a highly partisan political screed by a true radical and Democrat functionary who demonizes his opponents while wrapping his own views sanctimoniously in the cloak of Jesus - the most offensive part of his tract.

He drapes the mantle of Christian sanctity around FDR and LBJ, two Democrats who vastly expanded the size and power of government. The fact that FDR’s policies never did end the Depression, and that LBJ lied and cheated us into a major war that killed many poor Americans, and two million in Southeast Asia, and wasted vast amounts of our treasure, Hendricks ignores as he ignores LBJ’s great personal corruption.

Bill Clinton, who is barely referenced, has his corruption and serial sexual abuse of numerous women ignored.

But Hendrick’s demonization of virtually all Republicans and conservatives is particularly vile. From Sarah Palin to Herman Cain to Michele Bachmann, etc, they all get pilloried in hateful contemptuous terms. Romney, no conservative, was supposedly “unfit to be President” as he did not meet Hendrick’s social criteria; Romney’s vast experience and successes and his many and considerable charitable works, does not count in Hendrick’s vision of “social justice” as compelled by an all-powerful government, such as desired by Obama, singularly unqualified by achievement and experience to be President. “Mitt Romney is unfit because he is a devout and bloodless financial technocrat and a dyed-in-the-wool economic elitist”. Such is the hyperbole of Hendricks. And what makes Obama qualified, he with no achievements? His radical policies do, of course! George Bush, also no conservative, is vilified at length by Hendricks with the typical and hackneyed rationales of the far-Left.

Ronald Reagan is also ripped viciously and considered “the worst President since Franklin Pierce”. All the old and well-worn Leftist invectives are used in the attacks, one of America’s most successful and respected Presidents, and they need not be repeated here.

He in more recent commentaries attacks Paul Ryan and his budget citing selectively Pope Francis and the poor. Hendricks of course leaves out Francis’ social views which are quite conservative. Nowhere has Francis called upon an all-powerful government to redistribute wealth, as appears to be Hendrick’s goal. Or perhaps he would prefer continued massive deficit spending, endless “entitlement” handouts, and the eventual bankruptcy of The United States destroyed on the altar of Leftist “social justice”.

Hendricks goes beyond this with some conservative Christian groups calling them “evil” (Falwell)).

Abortion? Speaking of “evil”. One of the prime tenets of the Left is “abortion rights”. This includes government forcing people who do not accept this to fund it through Planned Parenthood, and now the funding of illegal immigrants’ abortions through Obamacare. It includes third trimester abortions, partial birth infanticide, and even leaving living aborted babies to die – as Obama voted for in the Illinois legislature. I am sure Jesus would find this loathsome, but not Hendricks.

According to Hendricks it is a “real Biblical sin” to oppose homosexual marriage. The sanctimony of this man is offensive – he does not just give his opinion, he again cloaks it in Divine righteousness.

He, typically of the Left, race-baits incessantly in his race-obsessed world view. America was supposedly founded on “racism”, according to him – a thoroughly specious and simplistic construct, but one typical of the America-hating Left of which he is a part. Hendricks goes on and on picking out and ripping “racist” parts of Mormonism in this regard in his attacks of Romney. He never will pick out the many outrageous parts of Islam and Sharia, the latter of which he makes excuses for.

He will castigate Romney for acquiescing to these “racist’ parts of Mormonism, long rejected by the LDS, and yet at the same time will defend in glowing terms Jeremiah Wright and his attacks on the United States. I have heard the video. The quote Obama so accepted “White Man’s Greed runs a world in need”, or “my grandmother was a typical white person”, are blatantly racist – as are so many of Obama’s friends and radical appointees - a

4/12/2013 04:13:56 am

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE. . .

. . . grandmother was a typical white person”, are blatantly racist – as are so many of Obama’s friends and radical appointees - and none of that bothers Hendricks in his hypocrisy.

Hendricks flat out calls William Buckley “a racist” – Buckley being dead makes legal action impossible against Hendricks. Yes, the race-baiting goes on and on. The whole Republican Party is racist to him, its whole history – that the Party created in part to end slavery, that did end slavery, and that fought the anti-black Democrat Party that used the KKK as its terror arm after the Civil War to repress freed blacks.

Republicans supposedly hate the poor, according to Hendricks. That from a democrat functionary of a party that has seen its policies fail over and over and which keeps the poor dependent on endless handouts in exchange for their votes while never giving them real opportunity.

Trinity Church in Manhattan is no bastion of conservative Christianity. I have spoken to senior priests there and they have not heard of Hendricks, but I asked them what they meant by terms such as “social injustice” they commonly use and what to do about it. They have, as we know, been sympathetic to OWS which has long inveighed about corruption in politics owing to the influence of money. The priests spoke of that and the need for people to recognize they are all part of the social whole, and more charity is needed, and a more equitable society in some manner. They explicitly rejected any government redistribution of wealth; beyond that, they rejected government efficacy in running society. They expressed no confidence in government.

And I agree totally with the above from Trinity. Conservatives support smaller government owing to its proven corruption and incompetence, the Constitution, individual responsibility, a great deal of voluntary charity, and a strong national defense. We also know that endless handouts from government creates an indolent and dependent population, and that only Free Enterprise encourages a successful economy and personal initiative, and that all other forms of socialist states have failed miserably to end poverty while impinging on our freedoms. All that as government by force takes our money, the money we worked for and created by our industry, by the risks we took.

Hendricks wants “the creation of a radically more equitable and just ethos of social and economic responsibility”. What that means we can imagine. We do know that conservatives are proven by all polls and studies to by much more charitable than so-called liberals, or radicals, but the latter group wants to be charitable through government with other peoples’ money. And that has nothing to do with freedom.

So what does Hendricks want? His third and fourth chapters basically attack supposed Christian principles when applied to what he sees as unjust economic policies. So Christ was a Big Government wealth distributing socialist or Marxist? Apparently so. Free Enterprise, capitalism, is obviously despised by Hendricks. It seems he prefers the assumed all-knowing hand of the State to distribute money “fairly”. Obama gave us examples of that with his massive deficits, failed Stimulus, and handouts to his cronies in business and Labor, from the United Auto workers, to teachers Unions, to Solyndra and other phony Green energy companies.

Perhaps Jesus would have favored gun control and gun confiscation, another main tenet of the Left today in the face of the Second Amendment. Or in Jesus’ day sword control. I defy Hendricks to warp the Gospels to that extreme to justify it. I defy Hendricks to find where Jesus supported a giant State forcibly taking money from people to give it to other people in pursuit of some social justice utopia of the imagination..

So what exactly does he want? THIS: “When it comes to the size of government, what is mandated is not its size, but its ethical responsibility to care for its constituents' welfare by instituting and enforcing policies that remove all barriers to adequate healthcare, social equality, personal security and freedom, full justice and a decent quality of life for all -- not just for the most privileged few. Thus right-sized government is government that can adequately fulfill these duties. There is no biblical basis for conservative politicians' obsession with ever smaller government.” (10/13/2011 in HuifPo).

So it does not matter how big it is. Hendricks wants an all-powerful Federal Leviathan State determining what is fair and, at gunpoint, as that is how government enforces it laws, redistributing wealth to create that social Utopia he considers fair. As such his views are overtly anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, and historically absurd as no such government has ever existed, nor can any economy prosper with this oppressive government control. Power corrupts

4/12/2013 04:16:27 am

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE. . .

. . . with this oppressive government control. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even an at first well-meaning government (if that is conceivable) will fall into corruption.

The Obama government long ago fell into corruption with those pays off to cronies, and all manner of deceit from incessant lies about Obamacare to an ongoing coverup regarding Behnghazi. But his government was never well-meaning. Meanwhile Obama and his family live it up at tax-payer expense like Polit Bureau potentates as his economy remains weak with endless massive joblessness.

Views such as Hendricks’ need to be actively opposed for the hateful self-righteous frauds they are cloaking themselves in Divine righteousness, and thus demonizing all who oppose them, as I do.

THE RADICAL ROOTS OF THE PROPHET JESUS

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