No Joke
Tell me, have you heard this one before?
A rabbi, a member of Antifa, and a MAGA hat-wearing IRS agent walk into a bar…
Now that sounds like the makings of a really corny joke, doesn’t it? But it is not.
It really happened.
And what do you think the result of their meeting was? Broken chairs? Blood and beer spilled on the bar? Bottles flying and shattering against the wall?
That is not what happened. Quite the opposite actually.
What happened was that they resolved their differences, they learned to love one another, and they changed the world.
Amazing!
Okay. So, that is not exactly how the story goes. The characters and the context have been changed but the events as I have described them are based on a true story.
Here is the actual story.
There was a rabbi named Jesus who lived in the region of Galilee in Israel a very long time ago. And like all rabbis in his day, Jesus gathered disciples to himself who would follow him everywhere he went. And if disciple is an unfamiliar word, think of a disciple like you might think about an apprentice in a professional trade today.
Think about it this way, if you were interested in becoming a professional electrician you could not just saunter your way onto a construction site and begin wiring the place on your own your first day on the job. You would need to be trained as an apprentice first until you became a journeyman. Only then could you work on your own without the direct supervision of a master electrician. The goal of an apprentice, of course, is not to become a journeyman electrician but to become a master in the trade so that you can one day help pass on your knowledge and experience to apprentices in the future.
The role of a disciple was very much the same. Disciples were expected to do everything that their master did, to say the sorts of things that his master said, and to go to the same sorts of places that his master went. Most importantly, the disciple was expected to learn, obey, and communicate his master’s teaching to others —this was referred to as taking on the master’s yoke. At the end of their time with their masters, disciples would become masters themselves and begin to lead and equip new disciples of their own. That is what Jesus was doing with his disciples. He intended them to become just like him in every way and to teach others to do the same.
Here is what made Jesus a little bit different than his contemporaries. Most rabbis hand-selected their disciples from the cream of the crop in Jewish society, after scouting potential candidates at the top Hebrew schools for the smartest kids who came from the most powerful and connected families. Jesus did not do that. He went after the least desirable lot of people. He went after fishermen, tradesmen, a tax collector, and a political revolutionary.
Let’s talk about those last two characters, the tax collector and the revolutionary for a moment, because they are the two men who walked into that bar —so to speak— with the rabbi.
The tax-collector was named Matthew and the revolutionary was named Simon. Here is what you need to understand about these two men that make their inclusion in Rabbi Jesus’ small cohort of apprentices so extraordinary.
Tax-collectors in Jesus’ day were like our IRS agents today, at least in so far as they were also granted authority by the government to collect taxes from her citizens. But that is where the similarities end. We must remember that the Jewish people were an occupied nation in the first century. They were not self-governing, they were a client state of the Roman Empire. And the Romans, like all oppressive governments with a gaping appetite for expansion, taxed the people living in their territories heavily. As if high taxes were not enough, the tax-collectors in Judah were Jewish men who were hired by the Romans to collect taxes from their fellow Jews.
These men were traitors who sold out their people to make a quick buck and to gain a position in the Roman world. So it should come as no surprise that tax-collectors were not welcome in Jewish society. But do you know who hated tax collectors more than the average tax-paying Jewish person? Zealots. Political revolutionaries, like Simon.
The zealots were political provocateurs who actively resisted the Roman occupation. They were considered domestic terrorists because they would commit acts of violence and sedition against the occupying forces. It was not uncommon for a group of zealots to hide in wait for a lone Roman soldier foolish enough to stumble home drunk after a late night out. They were called “dagger men” for a reason.
Jesus, a dagger man, and a tax-collector walked into a lot of places together and they changed the world. That is a true story. As unlikely a story as it may be.
Jesus went out of his way to show the world that he was creating a different kind of human society. Because the people who he chose to model that new society were the very kind of people who made its success most likely to fail. But Jesus did not fail and that society still exists today.
The Church is that society. It is the place where people from radically different backgrounds and views find common ground in the glorious resurrection of the Son of God. And this society is unique among all other societies formed by men and it stands out like a beacon in the world because it is the one community that accepts you based solely on your disqualifications and not your merit.
If Jesus had waited 2,000 years and come to the United States to begin his ministry, who do you think he would have chosen to follow him? An antifascist anarchist from Portland? A MAGA hat-wearing Proud Boy? A swampy bureaucrat working in the State Department? A libertarian? A socialist? Throw in a gaggle of fisherman and some construction workers and that, ladies and gentlemen, is our dream team.
Jesus is not rebooting his ministry but he is still calling apprentices to follow him today. He is calling them from a diverse pool of political and cultural backgrounds and he is still assimilating them into his new human society.
That is the ideal. That is who the Church is supposed to be. But if we are honest with ourselves, we are not doing a very good job of it. Politics are not just pulling at the seams of our republic they also threaten to rip many churches in two.
That must not be!
If the Church is the society that Jesus began to build and turned over to his first apprentices, then the degree to which we divide over politics and sever relationships is equal to the degree of our deviation from Jesus’ master plan for the world.
And what is that plan?
His plan is to fill the earth —from Waxahachie to Bangkok— with humans who do the sort of things that Jesus did, who say the sort of things that Jesus said, and who go to the sorts of places that Jesus went. His desire is to multiply people who are in every way just like him.
That means of all the people in all of the world we must be the people for whom it said, not even politics divides them.
Unity is no joke.
Jesus told his first apprentices that they would be identified as his disciples by the demonstration of their love for one another. Think about what that statement meant for Matthew and Simon. These two men had nothing in common but their mutual hatred and absolutely no reason to love one another. And yet, in spite of everything that divided them, Jesus chose them and set them on a path to become just like him. That’s right, to do what Jesus did, to say what Jesus said, to go where Jesus went, and to love as Jesus loved.
Jesus loved his enemies and if you are an apprentice of Jesus you have been instructed to love your enemies too. That is non-negotiable. If you said yes to Jesus you also said yes to love.
Jesus laid down his life at the hands of his enemies so that he could make his enemies his family. And if Jesus did that and you are apprenticing with him, then you have no choice but to do the same.
How did Matthew and Simon change?
They spent time with Jesus. A lot of time. And the result of all that time spent with Jesus, it did not just cause them to grow in their affection for one another. At least, not at first. The result of all that time spent with Jesus made Matthew and Simon both more like him! They were becoming like Jesus in every way. And as they both progressed in their journey to become like him, not only did the love in their hearts grow for their enemies, they also became more lovable themselves.
Matthew and Simon became less like a tax-collector and a revolutionary and more like Jesus over time. And if we are following Jesus, the result of our time spent with him ought to make us less like Republicans and Democrats and more like Jesus.
Think of what it would be like to be part of a team where the primary organizing principle was out doing one another in love. That is Jesus’ team. And if you are a Christian, you are a member.
Now, pay very close attention to this.
If you are a disciple of Jesus then it is your primary task in life to become like him in every way. And if you are progressively becoming like him over time it will have an effect on your political views. Just like Simon became less like a zealot and more like Jesus with time, we will become less like Republicans and Democrats and more like Jesus the longer we walk with him. Our political views will be shaped by him and have a distinct aroma of Jesus.
That will mean that we will never find a perfect fit in any political party because there is not a party that perfectly models Jesus’ ethics or vision for the world. And while it may be true that one of those parties is less perfect than the other, the alternate party is not the answer. Jesus and his kingdom of heaven come is the answer.
Jesus is our king and the banner that we wave bears the image of a slaughtered lamb, not an elephant or a donkey.
Political disagreements are neither simple nor unimportant. If that were not the case, there would be no reason for anyone to disagree. They are important and there will be times in our lives where we will make political stands and sometimes those stands will offend our brothers and sisters. However, those political stands, whatever they might be, must not lead to broken relationships.
That being said, there are some very clear lines and political policies that we must consider very carefully as we form a biblical political framework. And they are not insignificant at all. In a future article, I will address these issues more directly.
A rabbi, and you, and you, and you, and you are going to go into a lot of places together. And as you go, you are not always going to agree on everything. And you do not need to. Your job is not to convince people that they voted wrongly or to win them to your political party, your primary responsibility is to become more like Jesus in every way and to lead others to do the same. And the result of that is that we will find that we have no home in either party. Not fully we won’t. Because this world is not our home. We are citizens of a heavenly city and subjects in a greater kingdom.
So what should we do? We behold Jesus. We look at him. We abide in him. We follow him. We do the sorts of things he did, we say the sorts of things he said, and we love our neighbor even as we have been loved.
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
If we are going to become like Jesus and grow together as family we are going to have to spend a lot more time with Jesus and less time listening to political pundits spinning out propaganda that cause us to fear and resent one another.
And as we spend more time with him, we will find that not only will our disagreements become less divisive, we will find that our love has grown for those who think differently than us, too.
You can pick your friends but you cannot pick your family.
You are stuck with them. And the church is not a gathering of friends, we are a family that has been formed by Jesus. He is our elder brother and his Father is our Father.
Jesus is building a new and better human society. And it is made up of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. And that is a lot of people with a whole lot of different opinions. And we must learn what it means to live as one, in spite of our disagreements.
We do not uniformity where differences of opinion and approach are not welcome, we want unity.
John 17:13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they [my apprentices] may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
Jesus and Soma are going to go into a lot of places together. May be one even as Simon and Matthew were one with Jesus.
May we be one with another and with Jesus.
For further reading, see — Tell me, who is your lord?