The Resisting Lord

The Lordship of Jesus stood in complete contradiction to the Lordship of the Roman emperor (as opposed to the supposition that while greater in terms of power and extent, it remained similar in terms of execution). The church had to go through a major transformation over an extended period of time before it was able to appeal to the power of Christ and to the power of the empire simultaneously without experiencing significant tension. A major factor which helped to push the church in this direction was the depoliticization of Paul. As we have already seen, a depoliticized adaptation of the apostle is actually much more dangerous than the explicitly political reality, for a depoliticized Paul unavoidably ends up supporting the empire by default, and that usually without our having been made aware of it. In this section, Rieger is determined to persuade us of the political nature of Paul’s letters, placing the crucifixion of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead front and center in this illuminating argument. What did these two foundational aspects of Paul’s theology communicate to those in positions of power?

Crucifixion was a form of punishment employed by the Romans upon the lower classes; particularly the politically rebellious. It was a political weapon, utilized for the purposes of social control and also as a potent means of breaking the will of the people. It unveiled the seemingly insurmountable power of the empire, as well as the incredible weakness of those who might choose to rise up against it. In placing the crucifixion of Jesus at the core of his theology, Paul was essentially flipping the common imperial sensibilities over on their head. The cross, for Paul, was the purest expression of God’s power. The self-emptying death of Jesus was the unadulterated revelation of God’s justice. The cross unveiled God’s solidarity with the lowly, the despised, and the oppressed. The top-down logic of the Roman empire had been relativized and replaced in light of Jesus’ Lordship. He was pronounced Lord (kyrios), son of God (hyos theo), and even savior. It was He who possessed the true healing powers and who was delivering the gospel (euanggelion). Jesus would institute justice (dikaiosyne) and peace (eirene), beginning in and amongst a small gathering of imperial citizens (ekklesia); who together would mark the commencement of the establishment of colonial outposts (in the midst of Rome!) for the coming empire. Paul was applying the standard imperial rhetoric to the crucified Jesus which could hardly have been viewed as anything other than political resistance!

The resurrection of Jesus also carried with it significant political connotations for Paul. It was first of all the verification of both the reality of Jesus’ Lordship and the cruciform character of His Lordly rule. It held forth the promise of life beyond the period of Roman imperial existence, which obviously meant that it had furthermore implied an eventual end to the Roman empire. It also validated Paul’s egalitarian resistance of hierarchical structures as well as his developing preference for those who dwelt at the margins of society. At this point we must be careful that we do not simply understand Paul to have been establishing a brand new system of hierarchy. His reversal is actually something which continuously subverts itself; at all times and in all places calling the world’s power brokers to account. In addition, we would not want to conclude that this expression of solidarity with society’s humiliated insinuates that God is not (by any means) in solidarity with the rich and the powerful. It would be more precise to say that God’s way of being in solidarity with the strong is through His solidarity with the weak. In conclusion, Paul’s reason for opposing the hierarchical structures of empire had (primarily) to do with the fact that empires were (and are) naturally built upon the backs of the frail. No matter how moral or beneficial things might appear if observing the situation from the top, the reality is that the weight of imperial force will ultimately crush those who live at the bottom.

Lord of the Empire

What did it mean when the early church referred to Jesus as Lord? The Roman emperors laid claim to the title Lord as well. Joerg Rieger believes that this is a significant point and that we should see some sort of correlation between the declaration of Jesus as Lord and the declaration of the Roman emperor as Lord. What is the connection? The title Lord is a political designation and thus the proclamation of Jesus as Lord should be perceived as a subversive claim to the throne of the emperor. To put it in simple terms, it was a way of saying that Jesus was Lord and that the emperor was not. The terminology cannot be confined to the realm of the religious, for as we have already seen, people in the ancient world did not possess a modernist worldview which sought to make unnatural distinctions between the political and the religious. It is also improper to limit the scope of title Lord so as to see it merely as a religious reference to an individual’s personal relationship with Jesus. Lord was a term that carried with it extraordinarily broad implications for the whole of Roman imperial society.

Yet still, what exactly did it mean when the early church referred to Jesus as the Lord? Our author correctly notices the fact that the church throughout history has committed minimal time and effort to the vital cause of defining and describing the qualitative differences between the Lordship of Christ and the Lordship of the emperor. The church has thus failed to recognize the way in which Paul had determined to reveal the true meaning of the designation Lord; by contrasting Jesus with the Roman emperor. As a result, world empires and their emperors have been allowed the occasion to identify with and to appropriate the Lordship of Christ for themselves and for their own causes, and the church has been afforded with an opportunity to affirm and support imperial agendum in the name of Christ. Those who have attempted to relegate the Lordship of Jesus to the sphere of the religious have perhaps committed an even greater act of insidiousness, for this approach incarcerates Jesus in such a way that it actually prevents His Lordship from having any reconstructing impact upon our own understanding of the meaning of the designation, which is typically determined and defined by our experience of the Lordship of the emperor. When viewed correctly as a political act of resistance, Paul’s critique of the Roman emperor (in light of the Lordship of Christ) will serve to redefine the way in which we are to understand the concepts of rule and authority.

Rieger invites us to take a brief look at Philippians 2:5-11; an ancient hymn which actually predates Paul and is likely one of the oldest pieces of the early Christian tradition available to us today. The imperial power of Jesus as Lord is certainly present. Jesus’ power has definite implications for all other powers, in that they apparently surrender their own power to Him, voluntarily agreeing to their own disempowerment. What Rieger hopes that we will focus in on though is the different variety of power that Jesus exercised; a power diametrically opposed to that of the Roman emperor. Jesus employed power by relinquishing it. He denied His own self-interest, divested Himself of all status and privilege, identified Himself with the humiliated and the oppressed, and literally placed himself beneath the dregs of society in order to become their servant. When understood properly as a means of political resistance and subversion, it is evident that the Lordship of Jesus causes the top-to-bottom hierarchical structures upon which empires were and are constructed to collapse. Rieger closes with a reminder that even when imperial hierarchical power structures are employed in order to enforce supposed morality, they stand in blatant contradiction to the manner in which Jesus implemented His Lordship. They are hopelessly geared towards the preservation of top-down powers and economic interests, and not towards the needs and desires of the people.