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In a recent podcast conversation I listened to Skye Jethani speaking with Brian Zahnd who mentioned his disillusionment with American Christianity at one point in his pastoral career. (Beginning at about 54 minutes into the podcast) Zahnd shared that he came to a place where he thought, “Jesus deserves a better Christianity than what I have experienced.”

What Zahnd may have been talking about is the kind of consumeristic Christianity that grew alongside the Charismatic renewal as the turbulent 1960’s gave rise to the Jesus People Movement and leveled out into a new style of conservatism and the allure of the Prosperity Gospel. that was his world, and it was partly my world as well.

I can relate to Zahnd. Though I grew up Catholic, I became a Christian in college and plugged into that environment – a more or less loosely associated connection of independent, charismatic churches in the 1980’s that had grown out of the Jesus People Movement. That religious culture was variously impacted by PTL with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, the Christian Broadcasting Network with Pat Robertson who ran for President, and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which became a political rallying cry.

And then I went to law school.

Influences during my time of “growing up in the faith” in my twenties included the prosperity gospel and right-wing political groups ostensibly intending to bring our country back to its “Christian roots”. These influences focused on gaining prosperity for ourselves and regaining power and control that we perceived we were losing in our society.

Brian Zanhd described a period of time in his life in which he began trying to “untangle American Christianity from Americanism”. I was forced into that same position by law school and what I learned about our founding fathers.

Today, someone might call what I experienced “deconstruction”. I began to see things from other perspectives. I began to see that separation of church and state was a mechanism that people hoped would protect the church from the state, as much as anyone hoped it might protect the state from the church. I began to see a disconnect between the things Jesus said and the ways we twist them to suit our own ends.

In more recent years, I have come to see that “empire” isn’t the way of Jesus. Empire is the way of the world. Jesus said his kingdom isn’t of this world! Jesus preached an upside down kingdom that many Christians warp into a religious version of an earthly kingdom.

Jesus rejected the temptation of empire in the wilderness. When the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor (Matt. 4:8-9), Jesus responded this way:

“Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Matthew 4:10

The podcast focused on “Americanism”, understandably, because that is the cultural milieu in which we live in the United Stated of America. Americanism, however, is indicative of tendencies that are common to all human beings. These are the tendencies Satan tried to capitalize on when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness with the promise of power, influence and privilege.

These human tendencies are antithetical to everything Jesus taught:

• Consider others better than yourselves;
• Love your neighbor;
• Love your enemy;
• The parable of the Good Samaritan;
• The greatest among you will be servant of all; and
• Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s.

(God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.)

We naturally are attracted to what is familiar. We naturally advance our own interests. We naturally protect ourselves and our own kind. We naturally see ourselves as the good guys. We assume the best about ourselves. We identify with our own people, and we have a hard time protecting others from ourselves because we don’t see the need to protect them from us.

People were no different in the 1st century. Jesus was well aware of this human tendency, and he addressed it head on with his first followers.

The first time we see him doing that is right after the temptation in the wilderness in which the authority and splendor of all the kingdoms of the world were offered to him. The next thing Jesus did after leaving the wilderness was to walk into his hometown synagogue, pick up the Isaiah scroll, and read from it:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

When he finished, he sat down, and he said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. (Luke 4:20)

At first, the townspeople spoke well of him. They were even amazed at his words. Their amazement began to wane when someone remarked, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22) Then, Jesus dropped a bomb on them:

“Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

Luke 4:23

They did not even have time to process what Jesus just said when he added, “Truly I tell you … no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” They still didn’t understand, but they they were about to become really agitated.

With the next words Jesus spoke, Jesus picked a fight when no one was (yet) in a fighting mood, but he knew what was in their hearts. It is the same thing that is in our hearts, if we are not careful to root it out. I think you will see what I am getting at if you read on.

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We find a clue in what Jesus said next. It wasn’t until Jesus said what follows that the people became so incensed with him that they drove him out of town to the edge of a cliff and tried to throw him off. Jesus barely escaped with his life after he said this:

“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

Luke 4:25-27

Why did they respond as they did? What was it about this final statement from Jesus that pushed them over the edge?

Consider the context: when Jesus spoke about proclaiming good news for the poor, freedom for prisoners, and setting the oppressed free, they were likely thinking of themselves. These were Isaiah’s words. They were spoken to God’s people, and they were God’s people! They believed Jesus was offering to be their champion. They were thinking Jesus was on “their side”.

Then, Jesus starts talking about them turning against him. They don’t even have a reason to turn against him (yet). Why would they turn against him if Jesus was their champion?

Maybe because Jesus didn’t come to be their champion. He came into the world so that all would be saved. He came first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but he had no intention of stopping with them. His sights set were on Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.

They got the message when Jesus pointed out that Elijah could have gone to many widows in Israel during a famine, but he went to a widow in Sidon (the dreaded home of the Canaanites that Israel hated), and many people in Israel had leprosy, but Elisha cleansed only Naaman, the Syrian general (the leader of the nation that oppressed them).

The message was loud and clear that Jesus wasn’t just going to be their champion. Jesus came for people they hated – the Canaanites and the Samaritans, and their response was to drive him to a cliff to throw him off.

Could it be that the reaction of the people to Jesus in his hometown is similar to the motivation that animates Americans to want to “make America great again?

We naturally desire to protect our own interests. We naturally rally around influence and power that protects us. We naturally focus on the cares and concerns we have in this world.

Is this not the same kind of temptation Jesus experienced in the wilderness? The desire for power, influence, and control – for the good of the world (or so we tell ourselves).

Make no mistake. When Satan showed Jesus the kingdoms of the world and offered their authority and splendor to him, it all looked good! When Satan, who knows what makes people tick, showed these things to Jesus, Satan tempted him with a picture of power and influence to achieve the very purposes Jesus came to fulfill!

Jesus knew that he was to have all the authority over God’s creation. Satan tempted him with the very thing Jesus was promised:

“I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Luke 4:6-7

When temptation comes to us, we are attracted precisely because it looks good to us, and it promises to fulfill our greatest desires. If we don’t immediately reject the temptation, we begin to consider it, and the next thing we do is to justify it and embrace it.

Temptation often comes in the form of fulfilling our good desires in the wrong ways or for the wrong reasons. It often comes in the form of desiring to achieve good results without acknowledging God, or seeking His direction, or to achieve our own ends, rather than God’s purposes.

As Christians, we can be deceived to justify our temptation with religious reasoning for religious purposes. We should not forget that some Christians justified slavery with doctrine and quotations from Scripture.

In the story about Jesus reading from the Isaiah scroll in his hometown synagogue, we might say (using a more modern idea) that Jesus confronted the “nationalism” of the people in the synagogue. It wasn’t until Jesus confronted their Israelism that they became so incensed they tried to kill him. We might call this nationalism, or partisanship, or even racism. It’s all the same thing.

We don’t have to hate people, either, to fall into this temptation. We just have to love ourselves more.

I also come back to this question: Why is no prophet accepted in his hometown? Again, I used to think the reason was because of the familiarity of the people with the prophet. When people know a prophet personally, they knew his faults, his foibles, and his humanity, and that leads them to discount the prophet’s message.

That may (or may not) be true of other prophets. In the case of Jesus, however, it isn’t true because he was sinless. They could find no fault in him. Yet, they still rejected his message. Why?

I think the answer lies in the purpose of prophets (and the prophetic voice). Go back through the prophets in the Old Testament and consider how they were received by the people: they were not popular because they preached messages their own people didn’t want to hear.

Prophets preached primarily to their own people – the Israelites. (Jonah is an exception.) If prophets in the Old Testament spoke primarily to Israel, God’s people, then should we not expect  prophets today to speak primarily to God’s people, the Church.

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Brian Zahnd tells his story briefly in the podcast. When he began to get disillusioned, he went back and read the early church fathers to see what he was missing. He says it took him ten years to disentangle Americanism from his faith. As he began to address these things from the pulpit, he lost a thousand church members.

American Christianity is entangled with an Americanized Gospel. Many people are waking up to this reality, but many are doubling down on it.

The kingdom of Jesus is not of this world, which is why the path to the kingdom of God is narrow. If we hitch our faith to the kingdoms of this world, we are not on the narrow path to the kingdom of God. If  we do that, we may be giving into the same temptation Satan used against Jesus.