The Scandal of Jesus: Reclaiming the Radical Message of Christianity

I often wonder why people are Christian at all if they aren’t going to be radicals. You say you want to follow a wandering Jewish mystic who preached against empire, yet you argue for American exceptionalism? You’ve pledged to pick up your cross, yet you won’t fight ICE deportations? You claim you died and were reborn to new life, yet you fear immigrants and LGBTQ+ people? Your Lord explains that the young rich ruler cannot get into the Kingdom of God without giving up on wealth, yet you fight for tax cuts that are paid with cuts to SNAP benefits? What are we even doing here my sisters and brothers? How are we missing the radical message of Jesus?

Paul understood that following Jesus was nothing if not scandalous. The message of Christ challenged and continues to challenge the norms and expectations of all human society. In our culture, we often take Christianity for granted. So badly that all our cultural assumptions – privilege, wealth, exceptionalism, militarism, consumerism – get rolled up into our core beliefs about what God expects in our lives. I had a conversation a while back with a Christian friend who had never even read Matthew 25 and was shocked that Jesus explicitly demands we welcome strangers. In our culture, Christianity has become cheap gift wrap around a whole box filled with preconceived ideas. We’re missing the scandal that formed real faith.

In the Koine Greek of the New Testament – that’s just a fancy way of saying the common language that the New Testament writers and others used up until about 300 CE and now you, too, can impress your friends at Bible study with theo-nerd terms – used the word “skándalon,” where we have translated the word, “scandal.” I point this out because we use the word a little bit differently today. Elon accused Donald of being on the Epstein list. Scandal! Ye wore a swastika. Scandal!  Bill Belichick is dating a woman 50 years younger than he is. Scandal! You could be excused if you grew up thinking the word, “scandal,” simply described egotistical nincompoops seeking to extend their 15-minute spotlight.

But in the Bible, specifically with Paul, the term, “skándalon,” meant something closer to a trap or stumbling block. It was a metaphor. Today we might use other words since scandal has other connotations, things like: pitfall, bear trap, quagmire, or the Colorado skier’s death cookie. But in Paul’s day it could mean an actual baited trap, a stumbling block, a tripwire or something that causes you to veer off course.

The big scandal for Paul – the big death cookie – was the crucifixion. This was the worst possible form of execution and humiliation the Roman Empire could inflict. It was for the worst criminals. So how could the Messiah die such a shameful death?

1 Corinthians 1:20-25

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

How could God reveal themself through suffering and humiliation? It’s offensive. We’ve lost that sense of indignation around the crucifixion, mostly because a lot of us wear a crucifix as jewelry. (To sharpen your focus on the original shock of the cross as a symbol, read one of my previous posts, Just Do It.) We put crosses, the worst form of execution Rome had to offer, on t-shirts, hats and car bumpers. We’ve lost our ability to become scandalized by the crucifixion because it’s too familiar to us. I can remember my shock the first time I heard Darth Vader tell Luke, “I am your father.” But now it’s a part of pop culture (exempli gratia). The crucifixion is no longer a stumbling block but a given, no longer scandal but familiar.

But you know what is scandalous to a lot of Christians these days? Uplifting the marginalized, upending religious conventions and opposing empire. These remain such stumbling blocks that you won’t hear them preached in your average red-hat megachurch. You don’t want to frighten away the masses with the radical teachings of Jesus. This article from Newsweek is exhibit A. (And yes, I know, Newsweek, a former titan of journalism now reduced to a clickbait circus, where headlines are more about sensationalism than substance, but still.)

But Joel Osteen says that if I follow Jesus, I’ll get rich? Well, Joel Osteen doesn’t strike me as the pinnacle of Christian virtue. Jesus never once told us to get rich. But He did demonstrate an absolutely unwavering commitment to the poor, the outcasts of society and the marginalized. If you want to follow Jesus, you won’t get rich, but you will lunch with sinners. You will fight for healthcare because healing was really important to Jesus. You will offer hope to people outside the circle of straight, white, cisgendered privilege. Sounds kind of scandalous, but in a fun way. Just like today, people in Jesus’ time really valued purity. That’s another way of saying that they were afraid of anyone who wasn’t socially orthogonal. So, when Jesus hung out with the left-behinds like the woman at the well, the nontraditionalists like tax collectors and the avant-garde like his cousin John, he was challenging societal hierarchies. Do you get it? God was challenging the power structure of humans. We, too, should be nothing more than skeptical when powerful conformists demand more power and conformity.

Radical inclusion was not lost on Paul:

Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

But Jesus went beyond just hanging out with the marginalized, He upturned religious conventions as well. Jesus is famous for love and mercy, but we’ve lost the ability to hear how strange that is. What mattered to the Pharisees more than love and mercy was upholding the law. Forgiving sins is radical. Turning the other cheek is radical. Loving your enemy, well, that’s downright scandalous.

And if you’re going to support the marginalized and you’re going to promote love and forgiveness above all else, then you’re going to have some problems with empire. Jesus’ message was naturally subversive in Rome. And guess what, it still is in America. The Kingdom of God is not of this world. God doesn’t care about Rome or America dominating. Jesus stood in direct contrast to power, wealth and domination. Today, Jesus would stand beside us blocking militarized ICE vehicles. Paul understood all too well what it meant to say, “Jesus is Lord.” It meant, “Caesar is not my king.” Sure, it’s a statement of faith and you should probably say it more often. We don’t want to let the evangelicals take over the meaning of that phrase. But when you say it, realize you are making a political statement. You are making a declaration against empire. You are being scandalous.

Are you going to follow Christ or not? This isn’t about getting a golden ticket to Heaven, this is about choosing The Way. We cannot let the radical nature of Jesus’ message become obscured by a culture that is obsessed with wealth and power and hierarchy. We cannot let our own desire for comfort and status quo get in the way of our call of discipleship. We shall stand with the marginalized, challenge the powerful, call out oppression and in general live in a way that makes us scandalous fools in the eyes of the world.