I wrote the following for one of my seminary courses
Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish rabbi who lived in first-century Palestine, is our clearest example and most effective leader for joining God’s cosmic project of setting creation aright. Jesus is the herald of God’s in-breaking kingdom, the prophet, priest, and king who not only connects God’s renewal and restoration with Israel’s national and religious history but shows that God is beginning this work of renewal and healing through Jesus’s earthly ministry. Jesus embodies Israel’s God, is anointed by this God’s spirit at baptism, and is empowered to exemplify through his miracles and teaching how God is rebuilding what humans have ravaged in their brokenness and sin.
As God’s son, Jesus shows us that no earthly kingdom can function as this new kingdom does because all earthly kingdoms are violently built and sustained on the blood of their enemies, but the God of Israel’s in-breaking kingdom is built on the innocent and nonviolent blood of its king, its leader, its god as seen and experienced through Jesus’s death on the cross. All earthly kingdoms’ lust for power was exhausted in their attempt through the Roman Empire in the first century to murder God as Jesus and end this new, hope-filled, and life-altering kingdom. Because of the threat that God’s kingdom poses to all powers, no other possible outcome could have happened in Jesus’s life because our sin and corruption has affected our relationships with God, each other, ourselves, and creation. Jesus’s teaching and experience, shown by his conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and his healing of the Roman Centurion’s child, shows that all who humbly acknowledge Jesus as true king and Lord are welcome into this new kingdom. Those in any other earthly kingdom, namely women, children, immigrants, tax collectors, soldiers, and the poor would never be valuable assets. God’s rule and reign through Jesus is filled with the powerless, people disposed of by empire.
Through Jesus’s ministry in Galilee, our view of redemption and salvation through Jesus is expanded beyond the saving of only our souls or ourselves. By calming the sea of Galilee and commanding the fig tree to both live and die, Jesus showed that God’s kingdom is renewing all of creation. God’s cosmic project includes this earth, this entire universe.
Jesus’s death at the hands of empire was not the end. God’s power triumphs even over death and the evil that causes death by resurrecting Jesus in his physical body, showing that God’s cosmic project again includes our physical realities as much as our emotional, social, and spiritual realities. As firstborn from the dead, resurrected as assurance of a future for all who join God’s kingdom work, Jesus takes his place at God’s right hand as king of God’s cosmic project.
Further Reading:
Why Did Jesus Die and What Difference Does It Make? by Michele Hershberger
Jesus Matters: Good News for the 21st Century by David Shenk and James Krabill
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