Easter and Ego

As I walked the half mile from my hotel room towards the Arc-De-Triumph this morning, I pondered the word, Ego. A Latin word for self, adapted by Freud, in his attempt to quantify the various inner drivers that motivate mankind to speak, feel, and act. The word is much older than Freud. Discussions about self, self-awareness, and self-aggrandizement go back to the building of culture.  

The Bible describes Joseph as proud and arrogant, flaunting his dreams in front of his brothers until they are so angry they throw him in a pit and sell him into slavery. King Nebuchadnezzar is so full of himself that God causes him to go mad for 7 years and live like a wild animal.

As I stand before the Arc and ponder this, I am both impressed and saddened by how preoccupied we humans are with our own achievements. The monument was originally imagined to celebrate Napoleon, a man famously small with an oversized sense of self.  One of the more self-absorbed people in the Western world. Nepoleon’s vision was grand and would be finished years after his death, so he built a wooden version to pass under with his teenage bride. The monument has grown in meaning over time and now stands as a powerful memory of sacrifices and strength for the people of France, but in its conception, it was a monument to a man’s successful ability to dominate others and control his world.

King Solomon was the most powerful of Israel’s kings and wrote these words at the end of his life:

“But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind.”  Ecclesiastes 2:11 (NLT)

As I shift my focus to the Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot help but wonder at the contrast. Christ is remembered for willingly giving up his human rights at The Cross. For laying down his eternal life so I could have the privilege of living eternally with him. He is famous for serving the poor, sharing food with the disenfranchised, touching the outcasted lepers, and elevating the status of marginalized women. The monument we remember him by is an instrument of pain. The exact opposite of power. As I ponder this I am reminded of this truth adapted from my book “God Washes Feet:”

Jesus was radically antagonistic to human power and human achievement as a means to advance his Kingdom. I have not found a single incident in the four gospels when Jesus leverages his popularity to gain earthly power. Quite the opposite appears to be true. Jesus is often given opportunities to gain earthly power. However, he intentionally says or does things each time to disrupt the political momentum and sidestep the opportunity.

It is hard to imagine a humbler beginning for the All-Powerful God of the Universe than the birth story of Jesus.

Mary and Joseph are so poor they cannot afford housing, and Jesus is born in a stable. They are so poor they cannot afford a lamb for their firstborn child, so they offer two pigeons for the 8th-day sacrifice (Luke 2:24/Leviticus 14:22). Jesus is born in the shame of a questionable conception timeline. The people who come to honor him at his birth are shepherds. In Jesus’ day, a shepherd’s testimony was not considered trustworthy and would not be accepted in a court of law. Shepherds were basically homeless, confined to the outskirts of town, living in caves and temporary shelters.

Israel is an occupied nation. Jesus grows up in, and is known by most to be from Nazareth,  a town without consequence or prophetic history (see John 1:46 for Nathaniel’s comments on the significance of Nazareth). As Israeli towns go, Nazareth is small and far enough north to be of questionable Jewish heritage. This story is so inconsequential that it is only foreigners from the East that give the local political leaders any awareness (and thus documented notoriety) of its existence at all. It is not clear how many children are killed when Herod tries to wipe out the babies in Bethlehem, but even that event makes Mary and Joseph outcasts and causes them shame. To pile on insults, they are forced to flee for their lives to Egypt in the middle of the night, where they live as refugees without family.

The first opportunity for Jesus to gain earthly power occurs when he is 12 and is in Jerusalem participating in his Bar mitzvah. He spends three days wowing the religious leaders of his day with his amazing understanding of scripture. In Jewish culture, the Bar mitzvah marks the beginning of adulthood and provides young men with the freedom to act independently from their parents. Jesus has the opportunity to leave his parents and become a student of one of the religious leaders of his day. Luke gives us this story in Chapter 2. The story itself is short, and lacks dimension, without some understanding of the culture. The practice of Rabbis’ recruiting talented young disciples from the larger Jewish community when they turn 12 shines a new light on this story. If a young man is accepted as a disciple, he is released from family obligations to study and become a Rabbi. Becoming a disciple of a powerful Rabbi would provide Jesus a path to money and power he could not obtain as a carpenter.

Earthly power is a central theme in all of Satan’s temptations in the desert, as found in Matthew Chapter 4. 

Later in Jesus ministry, he grows quite popular, and after feeding the five thousand, the people want to make him King. Jesus slips away from the crowd and goes into the wilderness to pray. He returns from that night of prayer and preaches a sermon that turns the crowds against him, and many fall away. This incident is recorded in John Chapter 6 but requires context clues from the other gospels to grasp fully.

Once Jesus chases away the crowd around the Sea of Galilee, he retreats with his disciples to Mt. Hermon in the very northern tip of Israel for a season of seclusion. Jesus uses this one-on-one time with his closest followers to announce his plans to be crucified. Jesus then turns his focus to the Judean area in the south. He begins in Jerusalem at the Feast of Tents announcing himself as Messiah. This invites the formal rejection by the Sanhedrin along with multiple attempts on his life.

Jesus then leaves Jerusalem and travels around the Judean countryside, teaching and healing. His popularity grows until he has thousands of people stepping on each other to hear him speak. In Luke 12 we see Jesus teaching in an unnamed town in the countryside of Judea. He opens his speech with an attack on the political establishment and then immediately launches into a sermon on how our deepest secrets will become public knowledge. Again, he squanders this opportunity to leverage popularity and gain political power.

One of Jesus’ most well-known political moments occurs at the triumphal entry, where Jesus has a huge crowd worshiping him. In a moment of triumph, he declares that Jerusalem will be destroyed and that their babies will be smashed against the rocks. Not surprisingly, the crowd does not respond well to this speech.

Jesus invites his enemies to his table, eats with them, includes them in his business management, and washes their feet. Jesus’ approach to Judas at the Last Supper provides us with some of the best guidance on power found anywhere in scripture.

Finally, when being tried, Pilot extends a rope to him. An opportunity to avoid the death sentence and Jesus rejects it.

In each of these scenes, we see Jesus intentionally saying and doing things that work against his political advantage. Jesus deliberately and aggressively rejected political power every chance he could. When we combine these observations with his teaching on humility, we start to appreciate that his teachings were fundamentally antagonistic to human political power. Jesus opened his most famous sermon (known as the Sermon On The Hill or the Sermon on the Mount). with these words:

“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. . .

God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in Heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way. ‘

Matthew 5:3, 11-12 NLT

Here are a few more statements given in this same teaching event:  

“I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  Matthew 5:27-28 NLT

“But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.” – Matthew 5:39 NLT

“I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” – Matthew 5:44 NLT

“Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in Heaven.” – Matthew 6:1 NLT

“But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Matthew 6:3 NLT

“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in Heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” 

Matthew 6:19-21 NLT

I have heard many modern intellectuals claim that Christianity was an invented religion to gain influence over people and to control others. I can only conclude that these individuals have not actually studied Jesus’ story. His teachings do not align with any form of political power, and they go directly against any human understanding of how to gain power and influence over others. They are literally the opposite in every way imaginable. In every Church around the world, power seekers keep trying to marginalize Jesus’s actual teaching to advance their own political ambition. Jesus was, is, and always will be antagonistic toward earthly political power. He will return in power. But it will be with heavenly power. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess when that happens.

In the meantime, we, his followers, should embrace his actual teachings and work towards becoming his humble, loving ambassadors on earth. Our egos should guide us towards being aware of our need for him, on our knees worshiping him, and then stepping out and serving our neighbors with his example as our guiding light. In this way, we can more effectively advance His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.