Our faith is a resurrection faith, born one Sunday morning when a poor Galilean peasant who had been tortured and subjected to an excruciating death rose up, broke free from the icy bonds of death, and burst forth back into life. On legs that had been limp with death he boldly walked among humanity as irrefutable proof of his victory over imperial evil and destruction, before finally ascending to sit at the right hand of God. This is the basis of our faith. It is an Easter faith. That is to say that despite Jesus’ three-year ministry of healing and miracles, if he had stayed dead, the faith that arose in his name would have been stillborn. So for us it is the resurrection of Jesus that sits at the center of our faith.

Thus it is understandable for us today to think that it was the fact of the resurrection of Jesus that so powerfully attracted men and women to the movement that became the Church, and that accounts for the astonishing growth of our faith in its first centuries. But apparently this was not fully the case. When we look at the culture of the Mediterranean Afro-Asiatic nexus in which Jesus lived and Christianity was born, we see that even before the birth of Jesus there were widespread and widely held beliefs in visions and resurrections and appearances of the dead. It was a world in which gods and goddesses, spirits and immortals regularly interacted with human beings physically and sexually, spiritually and intellectually. One prime example is the Egyptian Osiris cult’s animating belief that Osiris came back from the dead to everlasting life. This is just one of many such beliefs in that milieu.

We also see clear evidence of the belief in resurrection even in the Judaism of Jesus’ day. The apocryphal Jewish text 1 Maccabees, which was written generations before Jesus’ birth, tells us that those killed fighting for their faith would be resurrected from the dead as reward for their courage and sacrifice. And the gospel according to Matthew specifically tells us that all Pharisees believed in resurrection of the dead.

Moreover, it seems never to occur to even the Apostle Paul that Jesus’ resurrection was unique. In First Corinthians 15 he speaks of Jesus’ appearance to 500 witnesses, but does not offer that as proof of unique divinity. Indeed, he appears to say the opposite: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ was not raised… For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.” Elsewhere, Paul resolves that he only wanted to to know one thing: Christ and him crucified. Not Christ and him resurrected.

Thus belief in resurrection was not unique in antiquity. In fact, not even pagans found claims of Jesus’ resurrection objectionable or unparalleled. And there is little textual evidence in first century sources in which pagans even bother to refute Christian resurrection claims; reappearances of the dead was a commonplace belief for them. Their disagreements with Christianity were on other grounds.

Yet the reality is that the death and resurrection of Jesus did galvanize his early followers. Again and again they cited the crucifixion and the resurrection in their proselytizing efforts and their testimonies of faith even while facing imprisonment and torturous execution. For instance, when in the Book of Acts Peter is confronted at the Jerusalem Temple by interrogating priests, at the very outset he boldly declared that Jesus rose from the dead, as did the deacon Stephen even as he stared in the hideous face of protracted death by stoning.

So we find ourselves in a dilemma: if the resurrection of Jesus was not the galvanizing source of appeal to those who flocked to the Jesus movement, if it was not what drew them to the Jesus movement, then what was? How do we account not only for the birth of Christianity, but for its growth and thriving? If not the fact of resurrection that was so unique and compelling, what was it that moved men and women to profess the name of Jesus?
If it was not the fact alone of the resurrection that inspired the first generation of Christians–and in their cultural milieu it almost certainly would not have been–it must have been something else; it must have been what Jesus’ resurrection represented that was so compelling to the early Christians. What did it symbolize to them?

The Meaning of the Resurrection

First, Jesus’ resurrection represented victory over the efforts of the most powerful empire the world had yet seen to defeat him and silence his message. In a world in which the Romans seemed always to have the upper hand and the last say in all things, Jesus’ rise from death must have been deeply inspiring for the poor and the put upon. More than that, his victory over Rome’s forces of death validated and gave unassailable credence to Jesus’ vision of a new way of life that could and would resist the power of empire and conquer the way of death. In this sense, what Jesus’ resurrection represented was the inauguration of a new world, a new collective way of life that was not dictated, limited, circumscribed or cowed by the ruthless edicts or the brutal legions of Rome. That is why Paul could speak of followers of Jesus becoming a new creation, and those same followers could proudly call their new way of life “The Way” to differentiate it from the values and world view they left behind. What Jesus’ resurrection signified for them was the inauguration of a new world order in which the last could be first.

There are many today who understand that eagerly awaited new life,  that eagerly awaited new world, in apocalyptic terms. That is, they themselves hold, and impute their belief back into the first century, that the promise of Jesus is that this present world is to be destroyed and replaced by a completely new world. This perspective puts the complete onus of changing the world on God and Jesus by extension; it holds that all the followers of Jesus must do is be patient and keep our noses clean. But when we read the ethical teachings of Jesus in the gospels, it is clear that those teachings are about life in this world; they are political, economic, social, ethical teachings on how to live healthy and whole lives in this world. The new world reality that is envisioned by Jesus is contained in his proclamation of the kingdom of God. This was the heart of his visionary pronouncements that so inspired his followers. What is it that made Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God so compelling?

Jesus and The Kingdom of God

Jesus’ proclamation of the coming kingdom of God was the reiteration of a longstanding belief in the Judaism of his day. He proclaimed in Aramaic, his primary tongue, the malkuth delaha, which is a cognate for the Hebrew concept of malkuth shamayim, “sole sovereignty of the heavens,” that is, in turn, a circumlocution for  “the sole sovereignty of God,” which is finally rendered in the Greek New Testament as the basilea tou theou, “kingdom of God.” This concept encapsulated Jesus’ ethical and eschatological vision for the world. It was ethical in that it gave a framework and a perspective on healthy interaction with humanity and with God. It was eschatological because it was a vision of what this world would become when the ethics of the kingdom were established, when all struggling against God had ceased.

This concept of malkuth shamayim or the kingdom of God that was so central for Jesus, holds that only God has the right to rule and to dominate. Thus its basic message is its insistence on freedom and liberation from the domination of all worldly rulers. It insists on political, social and economic justice. This pronouncement of the kingdom or sole sovereignty of God is seen in the enthronement psalms (Pss. 47, 93, 96-99) which praise God as the one king of all humanity and all creation. It is seen also in the Book of Judges, that collection of stories about the free tribes of Israel resisting foreign oppression that they might be ruled by the edicts of the God of Israel and none other. There we see Othniel leading a peasant militia against the oppressive Canaanite king Cushan-Rishataim (Judges 3:7-11). There Ehud the Benjaminite leads a successful revolt against the king of Moab (Judges 3:15-26). A deeply compelling evocation fo the rejection of human kingship is seen in the story of Deborah’s defeat of General Sisera in Judges 4 and 5. And when Gideon is asked to rule over Israel after his successful leadership of the overthrow of the Midianites, he responds, “I will not rule over you… the Lord will rule over you” (Judges chaps. 6-8).

In its account of the Maccabean revolt, which occurred a century and a half before Jesus’ birth, the apocryphal text First Maccabees tells us that when the insurrectionist Matthias was ordered to declare fealty to the megalomaniacal Greek king, Antiochus, or face death, he publicly rejected the king’s sovereignty over him “for the sake of the covenant of our ancestors” with God. “We will not obey the king’s words” Mattitias said. The implication is unmistakable: Mattitias is willing to fight and to die, rather than accept any sovereignty other than that of the liberating God of Israel. Even many generations later, in the Jewish War in 70 CE and the Bar Kochba revolt that occurred a full century after Jesus’ death, the rallying cry of the Jewish rebels still was malkuth shamayim, “only God is sovereign.”

Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God was heir to this radical proclamation. In Jesus’ conception it is a multivalent, multidimensional proclamation with a pronounced spiritual component to be sure, but its ongoing focus is transformation of this world, both by transforming individual hearts and by transforming the social and political and economic structures that govern us. That Jesus views this pronouncement as a radical one is seen most succinctly in the Lord’s Prayer.

The Radicality of the Lord’s Prayer

“Hallowed be your name,” he says. In the overarching context of the Roman civil religion in which the emperor is considered god, Jesus boldly calls for God’s name to be venerated rather than Caesar’s.

“Your will be done.” Although they live beneath the heavy heel of imperial hegemony and power, Jesus calls for God’s will to be done, thus exhorting his followers to reject the legitimacy of Caesar’s unjust and ungodly will. One would be hard pressed to find in that time and space a more radical proclamation than this.

In an economic system in which the people, particularly the peasants, who comprised most of the populace, writhed under crushing debt and were constantly faced with either the looming specter or the biting reality of hunger, Jesus asked for a more just and more fair distribution of wealth. “Aphes, he said, from the Greek word, aphiemi, “release.” “Aphes, forgive or release us from our debts, and give us bread every day.” This is nothing less than a clarion call for the unjust economic system to be replaced by a just system in which no one is held in bondage to debt of any kind and everyone has the basic necessities of material life in fair and equitable measure.

Further reflective of the fact that for Jesus the kingdom of God offers a new world order are teachings such as, “How hard it is for those with riches to enter the Kingdom of God… It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mk. 10:23-25). This represented a total reordering of the class society in which Jesus ministered and preached, for in his conception the rich are not exalted, not given undue deference, but are judged for not sharing enough of their wealth with those in need.

So we see that this Jesus who admonished “do not judge and you will not be judged,” did give us a criterion for judgment. The lone criterion determining one’s fitness for entry into the kingdom of God, found in Mt. 25:31ff, is simply this: whether one feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, cares for the sick and refuses to abandon the unjustly imprisoned. In other words, Jesus’ only criterion for judgment is whether we practice the just social, political and economic ethics of the kingdom of God. If this we do, we shall enter the kingdom. If not, our way shall be barred by our own injustice. From this judgment no one is exempt.

With teachings such as this Jesus rejected the economic class structure of Jewish Palestine that made some rich but left most poor. Thus–and this is a crucial point for us to understand–by extension, Jesus rejected all such societies in which wealth and power reside in the hands of a few while others go wanting, whether based on birth or heredity or any other factor.

Moreover, Jesus’ conception of the kingdom was not some passive wishing in which one simply waits on the Lord and does nothing else. It is an activist faith that uncompromisingly promotes justice and refuses to participate in injustice and exploitation in any form, whether in the name of despotic rulers or pervasive, unbridled capitalism. To profess, “For we have also forgiven our debtors,” means first, that one has rejected the ethics of exploitation. Second, it means that whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer we reaffirm our refusal to voluntarily and unjustly participate in any system of injustice.

Faith in the Kingdom as an Activist Faith

What should now be clear is that belief in the kingdom of God is an activist belief. The mode of its activism is active resistance, but not violent or paramilitary resistance, as even a cursory reading of the gospels reveals. Rather, it is active non-violent resistance to oppression and exploitation. Its goal is nothing less than changing the world into a world of justice on earth as in heaven. Jesus’ resurrected life embodies and magnifies the meaning of this resistance in life, in that his martyrdom was the result of embodied resistance to oppressive might. This is what martyrdom is. Though outwardly defeated, the martyr ultimately is victorious because s/he has not given in to the powers of domination that assail them. Martyrdom can never be separated from resistance. This must not be forgotten.

The spirit of resistance that was exemplified by the martyrdom of Jesus is one of the primary reasons for the birth of Christianity: because it represented spirituality that was holistic, horizontal as well as vertical. It was vertical in that it recognized the central responsibility to worship God in word and ritual and thereby build a home for ourselves in heaven. Yet it was horizontal as well in that it also acknowledged the prophetic imperative to worship God by social and political deed as well, by actively struggling to establish God’s kingdom of justice on earth. Surely the downtrodden and oppressed resonated with this as their fondest hope. And when Jesus achieved the ultimate victory over imperial might–when he defeated the empire’s power to kill him and silence his proclamation of God’s kingdom of justice and peace–ultimately this was so inspiring and so enervating that folks of every class and station rushed forth to try to establish it in every corner of the world.

This is the content of Jesus’ ethical eschatology. And this is what accounts for the birth of Christianity: the vision of a new world, the embodied new way of life it offered, the opportunity for an intimate and continued relationship with Jesus through the effectuation of his ethics of the kingdom.

An Eschatology of Justice

So Jesus’ death did signal the inauguration of a new world, but that new world was to be an active eschatological transformation of this world, not a passive waiting for an apocalyptic destruction and replacement of it. It was a transformation of this world into a just world. This is an eschatology of justice, for it holds that in the end God’s justice will triumph in this world. For early believers, Jesus’ resurrection and triumph over death was signal proof that his embodied vision of the kingdom of God had been inaugurated.

These factors are what inspired the birth of Christianity. This is an important distinction. The fact of Jesus’ death and resurrection alone did not account for the dedication of his followers. It was not simply because he resurrected, but because when he rose again his proclamation of the kingdom of God also resurrected with him.

After Jesus passed from the screen of this life, the power of his personal presence was no longer available to galvanize his followers. The challenge was to keep his message alive and meaningful for his existing followers and those yet to come. But they did not need to ponder long how to do this. They had only to recall the final instructions Jesus gave before his crucifixion: to eat and drink together in remembrance of him. Not just to remember him personally, for Jesus was never concerned with personal honors, but to remember what he taught, what he did, the vision of the new way of living that he imparted to them, for which he was willing to eat his last meal in fear and trepidation, for which he willingly sacrificed his life. Because bread and wine were the staples of virtually every meal in Israel, no matter the occasion, by telling his followers to remember him when they ate bread and drank wine, was also to say that daily they should pause to remember what brought him to that last meal. In other words, daily they should dine with the memory of what he struggled and died for. Their dining together should be the recurring occasion for recommitting themselves to Jesus’ vision of the kingdom. Jesus’ death and resurrection were the result of his ethical eschatology, that is, his proclamation of the kingdom of ultimate liberation and justice. Commemoration of  his death by the breaking of bread is a constant, active acknowledgment of that. fact. But communal breaking of bread is also an enactment of what the kingdom will be like: a world of equals in which everyone at all times has equal access to what is on the table, in which everyone has equal access to the necessities of life.

The Common Meal

The memory of Jesus’ resistance was kept alive in the early church by the constant re-inscription and collective remembrance of the resurrection, that signal event, by means of a regular practice called the common meal. Today this tradition has become a ritual called communion that is practiced once a month by most Christians as a representation or a token of the common meal. But this was not the case with the disciples and the earliest followers. They shared a full meal in which the community of believers participated regularly. This seems to be expected and presupposed by Jesus in his gentle directive for us to remember him whenever we dine. This enacted memory is a re-enactment of the last supper, yes, but re-enactment of it as the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples while in hiding from the dread Roman authorities. It was a meal eaten with solemnity and roiling anxiety in full knowledge that as a result of Jesus’ uncompromising dedication to the ethics of God’s kingdom, it was probably the last bread he would break in his earthly life.

Further, the re-enactment of the Last Supper as a shared common meal is re-enactment of a meal that was tied to martyrdom, a meal and a gathering that were inextricably tied to resistance. In this sense, a formative meaning of the lofty ritual that today we call Communion, is the commemoration of  Jesus’ courageous and principled resistance to imperial oppression.

The common meal was a shared meal, a real meal, not a token or symbolic meal. Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians against their gluttony and selfishness in First Cornithians 1:17-34 presumes a full, shared meal. He says, “When you meet together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another drunk.” This is a description of a full meal.

Other than baptism, this full common meal was the only ongoing ritual of the early church. It brought everyone together. It was not heavily laden with pomp and ritual, but was a meal in which believers shared their goods, served one another, and remembered who Jesus was, what he did, taught, and died for.

There is one church in particular that I have personally experienced I have seen that demonstrates the spirit of the early communal meal in this simple, unadorned way. It doesn’t use the full common meal, but the congregation celebrates communion at almost every gathering. And there is no long liturgy to confuse the issue and divert attention from the radical message of Jesus. All that is said is, “To Jesus,” as the bread and the wine are consumed. Then there is silence. It is Jesus and his praxis that get the attention, not pomp and ritual.

Effects and Consequences of the Common Meal

A common meal gathering that celebrates Jesus’ spirit of resistance in this way has a number of implications. First, the common meal is egalitarian; there is no head of the table, so to speak. It is simply comprised of believers who have come together as equals to break bread, regardless of profession, parentage or wealth. The egalitarian nature of the meal abolishes hierarchies. It acknowledges that all believers have the same status before God, that there is no first and no last among believers. Turning all notions of hierarchy on their heads, it is the one in their gathering who serves that is most worthy of honor; who that best personifies the words of Jesus: “I am in the world as one who serves.” This inverted hierarchy also helps to guard against rogue shepherds claiming a special, privileged status among the sheep of their flocks, which is a subject that demands its own discussion.

Another important implication of the common meal is that “in common” means that the gathering highlights sharing. In this sense, it models the pronouncements of Jesus regarding reciprocal giving and sharing. It is epitomizes his call to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

The common meal also goes far in fulfillment of the imperative of Lev. 15 that “there must be no poor among you” by recognizing everyone’s right to a decent subsistence according to the standards of their setting in life.

This mode of communal dining also forces folks to really share an intimate social space with others. Nowadays, one can go to church seven days a week and not really interact in a substantive way with anyone other than those whom one cares to interact with, who are usually folk like us, our same race, our same social station, our same social class. Sharing food and company with others at a common table bridges these gaps and strengthens community and witness. In other words, the common meal helps a church community to really be a community.

There are other implications as well:

• Anti-elitism. There should be no big, no small, no top nor bottom in community life. The haughty must come down and the downtrodden are to be lifted up.
• Anti-domination. The common meal as properly discharged allows no one to lord it over another. If anything, it is those who humbly serve who are exalted.

Coercion-less hierarchy. Rather than an imposed hierarchy of arrogated status, it is a voluntary, function-based hierarchy, that is, a loose hierarchy of roles that exists only for particular tasks, not a hierarchy of status. The hierarchy ends when the task in no longer being attended to, or is completed.

Gender Equality. Also, the common meal recognizes women as equals, for in the early church they partook of the common meal just as men did. Nor were they forced or relegated to be the servers; it was the diakonoi or deacons who served at table. It seems that usually these were men, but there is no hierarchical conclusion to be drawn from that fact, for women held other leadership roles in the early church that were just as important, such as heads of house churches and as other types of “co-laborers in the Lord,” as Paul called his female counterparts..

The Question of Mega-Churches

But there is one unintended consequence of our consideration of the common meal: it raises questions about the efficacy of mega-churches. Today, growing and pastoring a meg-church seems to be the coveted goal of many ministers. But can there be a real common meal, real intimacy, in a a mega-church setting? The very size of such churches, sometimes numbering five, ten, twenty thousand and more, might seem to militate against it.

Yet a mega-church might respond, “What are supposed to do, turn people away?” This is a legitimate question. An honest answer to their question is probably, “Maybe.” It depends. The major consideration is that worship communities should be kept and organized in a manageable size that allows members to care for and get to know one another. The question is whether this can be done in a mega-setting.

One way of reclaiming a real sense of intimacy if a congregation grows too large to have a meaningful common meal, is perhaps to support members to start a new church. There are pastors that have done this. North Stelton AME Church in North Stelton, New Jersey, was started in this way when Rev. Henry Hildebrand, then pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church in New Brunswick, sent some of his ministers and members to start a new worship community. There are a number of pastors who have done similarly.

Still, there is the serious consideration that believers join a particular church because they enjoy the fellowship there, which often means they are drawn by the presence–or perhaps the charisma–of the pastor. But we must help our people move beyond preacher personality cults. Now, telling a parishioner to stop focusing on the pastor may be one of the last things that many preachers want to think about. Yet the preacher personality cults are becoming a disturbing phenomenon that seems to give rise to more and more abuses of trust. It is a simple reality that idolizing the preacher is not a true Christian practice. As we know, it is the message that must be cleaved to, not the messenger. Love and appreciation for a loving shepherd are appropriate, even desirable. But treating pastors as first among equals and as the focus of the imagination of the church–that is a sad and unintended blasphemy.

However, it is a reality that few large churches will voluntarily downsize their congregations. And there can be compelling reasons not to. If nothing else, there are the outstanding financial obligations of mortgages, loans and ongoing outreach programs that would remain even as the congregation that incurred these obligations is reduced and its primary revenue base of tithe and offerings is diminished. These are realities that cannot be overlooked or minimized. Therefore, none of this is suggest that mega-churches necessarily need to reorganize. Large churches with significant resources can be a wonderful source of positive change and inspiration in our communities if that is their goal. And if s/he is intentional about it, a thoughtful and creative senior pastor could use his ministerial staff to great advantage in this regard. Although it is little employed today, the “class system” of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which divides the church into small pastoral groups, usually twelve in number, offers an important model for making large and mega-churches more intimate. But it must be said that churches that revel in their growth for the sake of growth without using their strength of numbers to be real agents of Godly change–perhaps these should re-evaluate their mandate and their praxis.

Conclusion: A New Paradigm

The shared common meal memorializes and institutionalizes Jesus’ ethical eschatology, for its primary purpose is to evoke at once the remembrance of Jesus’ stand against injustice and exploitation and classism and elitism. Because of this the common meal is also an acknowledgment that God is ultimately a God of justice. Moreover, as an occasion for recommitment to Jesus’ ethical eschatology, the common meal keeps intact the connection between martyrdom  and resistance. It reminds us that the Lord’s supper is a reaffirmation of God’s justice and the cost for attempting heavenly justice on earth. For this reason, at its best the common meal should empower and inspire believers to do the work of justice.

So the new paradigm for an activist church is really a reclamation of the old paradigm, the first paradigm, the one that took a handful of terrified believers from their hiding place in a tiny, bare upper room choked with fear and anxiety, to boldly venture to the far corners of the world proclaiming what Jesus proclaimed.

The new paradigm for an activist church is reclamation of the old; reclamation of the resurrection of Jesus as victory over all the repressive power that could be mustered by the greatest empire that had yet been seen. This victory galvanized the first believers to stand against unjust principalities and powers, and should galvanize us as well. It is reclamation of the old, a reclamation of the revolutionary proclamation of the kingdom of God, the concept of the sole sovereignty of God that neither recognizes nor bows to the legitimacy of dominating and exploiting social orders. And as reclamation of the old, it is the reclamation of the common meal of the Christian community as a real meal that commemorates Jesus’ martyrdom for the kingdom. It serves as a constant occasion for us to recommit ourselves to resistance against the principalities and powers and structures and institutions of oppression that stand in our own day.
The new paradigm for an activist church focuses on the radical ethics and praxis of Jesus in our teaching, preaching, counseling, pastoral care, and is guided by it. The new paradigm sees Jesus’ social ethics as central to our proclamation and our practice. Not just to get along, not just for Sunday morning celebration, but most importantly, for Monday morning liberation.