Show Notes

Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works.

**Amity: ** The Gospel of John relates a story where Jesus is followed by a huge crowd who want to listen to his teaching. Some of them bring sick friends and relatives to be cured. 

Seeing the great size of the crowd, Jesus is inspired to care for them. He asks his disciple Philip a rhetorical question, “Where will we find enough food to buy for these people?” Philip replies that it would take much more money than they could raise. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, finds a boy in the crowd who is willing to share his lunch: five barley buns, and two small fish. 

The rest of the story is well known. What happened directly after Jesus fed the enormous crowd, with twelve baskets of loaves and fish left over, is just as important. 

“After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.”  -John 6: 14-15

Lemuel: Christian Nationalism is an ideology that promotes Christian values, so called, in laws and into the government, to the derogation of other religions and ideas. This means that a particularly narrow, and more often outright false, interpretation of Jesus’ teaching is applied to lawmaking,  government institutions, and public life in a Procrustean way. 

Interpretation is the key: A small group of ignorant men, and do not be mistaken; they are men, acting in the interests of themselves and other men, have ignored the teachings and story of Jesus, in favor of a restrictive interpretation that acts in opposition to the Gospel’s moral demands on us.

The story of the five thousand fed shows Jesus giving to everyone in the crowd. He does not withhold food to those who did not make a public oath of loyalty, he did not withhold a miraculous cure for ailing foreigners in the crowd. Whoever came to listen, young, old, man or woman, jew or gentile, everyone was fed. Every single person ate, with baskets gathered up after. No one was in want. 

Amity: The Gospel of John tells another story. In this Jesus, after his arrest,  is taken to Pontius Pilate by temple authorities to be executed. There is no charge they can make to the Roman Governor to interest him, as he has no particular investment in their laws. To push Pilate to act they tell him that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews, an utter falsehood. Pilate asks Jesus about this, and they have this exchange: 

“Are you King of the Jews?”

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus replied, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it that you have done?”

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is from another place.”

Lemuel: The meaning is clear. The Gospel message is not to be attached to any government. God’s house is much bigger, more inclusive, than anything founded on spurious constitutions that declare freedom and equality, while building on the ruined homes of Indigenous people, with slave labor.  

If Jesus wanted kingship, he would have taken it during his life on earth. He certainly doesn’t need it now.

https://thehill.com/opinion/6075328-huffman-no-prophets-bestseller/