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“Hosanna! Save Us!”: How We Need to Think About Jesus During Easter
Throughout Holy Week this year, I have constantly been thinking about how we think about Jesus. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and whenever Palm Sunday and Easter would come around, the sermon would always focus on Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem, Judas’ betrayal, the crucifixion, and culminating with Jesus resurrection on the third day. Ultimately, the central drive would be on salvation from eternal damnation through Jesus’ sacrifice. Yes, this is a key part of Christian faith, and I am not here to deny that. However, what these services failed to point out what that Jesus’ life and work were, in essence, a protest against the wealthy and the powerful.
In Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman points out that “Jesus was not a Roman citizen,” and as such he did not have the protections of citizenship. Jesus did not have legal recourse with Rome if someone did him wrong. His social position was that of a subject of Rome, not a citizen. Thurman notes that Jesus, pulling from the prophets of Israel, “becomes the word and the work of redemption for all the cast down people in every generation and every age.” Christianity, of course, arose in the aftermath of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and Thurman argues that we need to remember “that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker…
