One Last Week—Is Jesus a Renegade?

Listen: “Renegades” by X Ambassadors

The first two days of Holy Week—Psalm Sunday and Monday—begins with Jesus acting out movie-style scripts in which he is critiquing the corrupt religious practices of his day. In essence, Jesus writes, directs, and acts in his own movie script in an effort to demonstrate the need for radical religious reform, if not the need to tear it down and rebuild it. Jesus was, in fact, a renegade. I’m quite sure if Jesus showed up again today, he would be quite shocked and dismayed at how “Christianity” (something that developed many years after the life and death of Jesus) turned into a corrupt religious system throughout much of its history. On the first two days of Holy Week, Jesus critiques leadership, power, money, sacrifice, and bigotry.

Over two billion people in the world will reflect on the last week of Jesus’ life in the next few weeks (April 2022)—Holy Week. From Psalm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday, the four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) give us some details on what Jesus did on virtually every day of this famous last week.

Holy Week kicked off with Jesus entering Jerusalem for the last time. Most of Jesus’ ministry took place to the north of Jerusalem near the Sea of Galilee, but Jesus regularly went to Jerusalem to celebrate the holy holidays on the Hebrew calendar. His last trip into Jerusalem was no different; Jesus was going to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover Week.

During Jesus’ three years of public ministry, many Jewish people were beginning to believe that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah for which the Hebrew prophets foretold and the Jewish people anticipated. The Messiah was viewed as a political/religious leader who would free Israel from Roman oppression by military power and established a somewhat utopic vision of God’s kingdom on earth—a vision in which injustice and oppression was ended and peace and prosperity was established for Israel.

Two memorable, renegade acts occurred on Psalm Sunday and the following Monday. Each of these events, which were staged by Jesus, were intended as a critique of toxic religion. The first was Jesus’ donkey ride, and the second was Jesus turning over the money tables in the temple. 

The Donkey ride—Jesus’ critique on leadership and power. Messianic expectations swirled around Jesus his whole ministry. If Jesus were a Messiah in the traditional, ancient Hebrew sense of the idea, he would have been the new King of Israel with an army who led a victorious military campaign against the foreign oppressor, Rome. In the ancient Near East, a new king was coronated. Coronations involved a type of parade in which the new king rode into the capital city on a horse with his army as a part of the pageantry. Jesus was performing a mock-coronation parade by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey without an army. The pageantry began as a spontaneous parade crowd forms and people began to praise Jesus as the new Messiah and wave Palm branches.

Jesus’ donkey ride was an act of humility. Jesus was critiquing the powerful, male, machismo, dominate, oppressive, and corrupt leadership styles of his day (and every age, think Putin). Jesus always advocated for a style of leadership that was visionary, humble, and exercised for the common good (healing, caring, forgiving, compassionate, just, wholistic). We might call it “Servant Leadership.” Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man [Jesus’ self-title] came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28; NLT).

Turning over the money tables—Jesus’ critique of money, sacrifice, and bigotry. On Monday after Psalm Sunday, Jesus entered into the temple in Jerusalem and began to attack the money business in the temple. This is a scene in which Jesus seems out of character, even angry and disruptive. In fact, Jesus is acting as a renegade as he critiques some religious practices in the temple.

First of all, it was Passover week and people were traveling to Jerusalem to celebrate. Once in Jerusalem, people would make various kinds of sacrifices in the temple as outlined by sacrificial laws. Most people traveling great distances would not travel with their own animals to sacrifice in the temple. Instead, they would purchase the animals at the temple to use for their sacrifices. The animals were sold at inflated prices (like buying a hotdog at a Royals game) in the temple. This enriched the pockets of the temple but hurt the poor people. Jesus was upset that the temple was, in effect, oppressing the poor.

Secondly, the area in the temple where the money tables were set up was called the “Court of the Gentiles.” It was the one place where “non-Jewish outsiders” could worship and connect with God in the Jewish temple. Instead, the temple authorities had, in effect, eliminated Gentiles from worshipping in the temple by setting up the money tables in their place of worship—bigotry in motion. As Jesus turned over the money tables, he quotes a Hebrew scripture: “‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations [Gentiles],’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves” (Mark 11:17; NLT).

Thirdly, it’s possible that Jesus was also critiquing the entire ancient, sacrificial system. Instead of an endless religious treadmill of various kinds of grain and animal sacrifices offered to worship God and experience forgiveness, Jesus seems to signal the importance of the self-sacrificial, self-giving nature of love, forgiveness, worship, and redemption. Jesus spoke of a God who loved the world so much that he gave of himself (John 3:16), and Jesus said of himself that he did not come to be served but to serve others and to give his life for others (Matthew 20:28). True worship is about love and devotion—loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God. God is also love—love poured out for all creation. In essence, Jesus was staging a call to sacrificial, non-violent, non-oppressive, self-giving love that can change the world. Let’s be renegades of this kind. As X Ambassador’s sing:

Long live the pioneers

Rebels and mutineers

Go forth and have no fear

Come close and lend an ear

Shalom

©realfredherron, 2022