Jesus For President
Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 3, 2024
Dt 6:2-6; Heb 7:23-28; Mk 12:28-34
St. Dominic Church
In case you haven’t noticed there is an election this week. Our present politics of resentment, messianism, and cynicism illustrates what happens when we reduce people and policy to a set of polarizing platitudes. Consequently, politics has attained the status of religious doctrine and devotion, whereas religious doctrine and devotion is regarded more like partisan politics.[1]
There is an alternative. That alternative is the politics of Jesus. Jesus for President. Two-thousand years ago by an event known as the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, God entered the race, the human race. Hearing the cry of the earth, God put up a candidate, “appoints a son” (Heb 7:28), for highest office named Jesus. Jesus hits the campaign trail and begins attracting followers. His signs are not lawn signs but acts of healing, hospitality, and forgiveness.
“One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,” What is your party’s platform? Which is the first of all the commandments in the Constitution of the Kingdom of God?
Jesus replied, “Hear, O Israel!” We the People of God, in order to form a more perfect communion, establish this Commandment for the united citizens of Heaven: “The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk 12:30-31).
In this truly radical politics, rather than platform on fear, resentment, and victimhood, Jesus puts people first. We learn from him that when we take time to first build an authentic relationship whatever one’s background, nationality, race, gender, education, etc., then even where we encounter disagreement with our neighbor there still remains a profound respect for them as a person rooted in their inherent human dignity before God. That strategy might not win an election but it may just save your soul.
Jesus campaigns on love. Ultimately, campaigning on the Greatest Commandment ended with Jesus on the cross. The cross means humanity voted against Jesus. We have no president but Caesar! The cross convicts us of all the ways we daily vote against love, against life, against God and neighbor. The Cross, however, means that despite voting against God, God still cast his vote for you, me, and them. Jesus offered himself, once for all, for your sins and mine. The cross of Jesus Christ is where love of God intersects with love of neighbor, permanently nailed together to keep the world from falling apart. The cross separates Jesus from every other candidate seeking the office of Savior-in-Chief.
We hear in Letter to the Hebrews, “The levitical priests were many because they were prevented by death from remaining in office, but Jesus, because he remains forever, has a priesthood that does not pass away. Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:23-25).
Because of his obedience unto death, the Father elects Jesus to the office of high priest not for four years but forever. Heaven is God’s Oval Office, where Jesus, our holy, innocent, undefiled President of the Kingdom of God, seated at the right hand of the Father, hears our prayers and governs the universe with perfect wisdom, justice, and mercy.
So maybe we can’t exactly vote Jesus for president, congressman, or comptroller (whatever that is). For Christians, though, political participation is a practical response to the question, “How do I love God and neighbor in this place and time?” We keep God’s commandments, the precepts of the natural law, build healthy relationships, get to know your neighbors, cultivate a well-formed conscience, virtuous character, and contribute to the common good of society.
The first Christians of the Early Church knew this well. They knew they belonged to an utterly new kind of King and kingdom which they were willing to die for but not permitted to kill for. I want to conclude by quoting from an ancient homily delivered in the second century (~130 AD) known as the Letter to Diognetus worth contemplating as we head into yet another election.
“Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language, or customs. . . And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as if they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country . . . They live in the flesh but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. . .
The Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. . . It is by the soul enclosed within the body that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians detained in the world as in a prison that the world is held together.”[2]
[1] On ways for building a more Christ-centered political culture in both content and character, I recommend Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023).
[2] Letter to Diognetus (ca. 130). <https://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010522_diogneto_en.html>