Monday of the Third Week of Lent

Whose side is Jesus on?

Before you sign up Jesus for your side of a debate, discussion or election, consider the following:

Jesus was not in any sense a reformer championing new orders against the old ones, contesting the latter in order to replace them by the former. He did not range himself and his disciples with any of the existing parties. One of these, and not the worst, was that of the Pharisees. But Jesus did not identify himself with them. Nor did he set up against them an opposing party. He did not represent or defend or champion any program --whether political, economic, moral or religious, whether conservative or progressive. He was equally suspected and disliked by the representatives of all such programs, although he did not particularly attack any of them. Why his existence was so unsettling on every side was that he set all programs and principles in question. And he did this because be enjoyed and displayed, in relation to all the orders positively or negatively contested around him, a remarkable freedom which we can only describe as royal...

Jesus simply revealed the limit and frontier of all things -- the freedom of the kingdom of God. Jesus simply existed in this freedom and summoned to it. He simply made use of this freedom to cut right across all these systems both in his own case and that of his disciples, interpreting and accepting them in his own way and in his own sense, in the light shed upon them all from that frontier.

-Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics, A Selection