Like Father, Like Son!
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- Category: Empire of Yahweh
During his ministry in the Rome-occupied nation of Israel, Jesus announces the Empire of Yahweh a.k.a. the Kingdom of God that is to arrive on the Earth. While he demonstrates the principles of this upcoming Kingdom through his teachings, miracles and parables, he declares to the people that he does not speak or do any of these on his own. He claims all of it has been under Yahweh’s direct guiding hand. Jesus does and preaches what Yahweh - the God of the Manna Principle, Lord of the Sabbath Equality and Proclaimer of the Jubilee Liberty - told him to do and preach:
The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
John 14:10
Jesus assures the people:
“These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”
John 14:24
He calls Yahweh his own Father. Now that obviously makes him the Son of God - the “heir apparent”. In the first century Roman territory of Israel, if you wake up a resident in the middle of the night and pose the question, “Who is the Son of God?” their immediate answer would be, “Augustus Caesar, of course”. According to Rome’s imperial propaganda machine, Julius Caesar was God and Augustus was his heir and hence the Son of God. This title was printed on the currency of those times – the imperial coins. In direct opposition to the Empire of this Father-Son Caesar duo, Jesus preaches the Kingdom of Yahweh, his own Father. He declares himself to be the rightful Son of God, and by that means announces to the people that Yahweh, not Caesar, is the true God of the People.
There’s a common belief prevalent today that Yahweh, the so-called “God of the Old Testament” was an angry, vengeful god who somehow became benevolent in the New Testament with the arrival of his son. Jesus was the one who made God merciful and palatable to the masses – so goes the popular understanding. But when we read the Scriptures across both the Testaments, we find that to be a misconception. As a matter of fact, in the ancient pantheon of gods, Yahweh distinguishes himself as the God of the People. And this is the very Father that sends his son Jesus to the Roman Empire to proclaim his message of hope, justice and peace.
Since the beginning, Yahweh shows himself categorically against the practices of manmade empires that result in gross inequality in society. After he liberates the Israelite people from the clutches of the Egyptian Empire and showers food upon them in the wilderness from the sky, he lays down the Manna Principle where they are expected to share their food with their neighbor and refrain from any kind of selfish hoarding (Exodus 16:16-19), which was the kind of behavior that used to happen back in Egypt when a famine was exploited by the rulers to drain the people of their wealth and freedom (Genesis 47:13-26). Centuries later, in the Roman Empire, Jesus shows Yahweh’s Manna Principle dialed up in action when a multitude of people go hungry in the wilderness. He doesn’t turn stones into bread to feed them but rather demands his followers share the little food they have (five loaves and two fish) with the gathered people. When they put Yahweh’s Manna principle into action as commanded by Jesus, the little food they have turns out to be more than enough for five thousand people. Jesus is indeed the faithful son who puts his father’s policies in action and expects his followers to do the same so they too could be adopted as sons of that father.
Back in the early days of Israel after their emancipation from the Egyptian Empire, Yahweh issues the revolutionary Sabbath commandments that declare rest for everyone in society – something unheard of in ancient times. He demands the men give rest to the women, the masters give a day off to their workers and treat migrant workers the same as the natives, and humans give a breather to their livestock (Exodus 20:8-10). A thousand years later, Jesus reinforces the spirit of those Sabbath commandments in the Roman Empire when he inaugurates the good news of Yahweh’s Empire in a Sabbath Sermon (Luke 4:16-21). Elsewhere he chides the religio-political leaders for forgetting the original intent of Yahweh in issuing the Sabbath decree (Mark 2:23-28). When he heals helpless people on the Sabbath to demonstrate Yahweh’s motive for that day, the imperial political elite take their first step to conspire toward getting rid of him (Mark 3:1-6). The ruling class installed by the Father-Son Caesar duo clearly understand the threat the Father-Son duo of Yahweh and Jesus pose to their fiefdoms.
During Joseph’s times in the Egyptian Empire, a famine was weaponized by the ruling elite to seize the people of their money, livestock, land and their own freedom. By the end of that famine, the wealth of Egypt was transferred from the hands of the people to those of a very few at the top in the Pharaoh’s family. When Yahweh frees his people from this oppressive Egyptian Empire and sets them up as an alternate society, he obviously is not favor of such concentration of wealth. He decrees debt cancelations during the Sabbath years (Deut 15:1-7) and property restorations every 50 years at the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:25-28). Irrespective of whether the debt is paid back or not, the property goes back to its original owner in this recurring cycle. A reset and a redistribution every 50 years. Yahweh’s goal is obvious - the Earth and her riches are to be shared by all humans. Wealth should not get concentrated in the hands of a few in society. Later, under the oppressive Roman Empire, where wealth is hoarded up by Caesar, his client kings and the ruling elite, Jesus rails against it and makes definitive statements against the rich (Luke 6:20; 9:25) and even highlights the difficulty of anyone wealthy entering the Empire of Yahweh (Matthew 19:24). Very much like his father, this son favors the downtrodden and the poor, not the rich and the powerful.
Yahweh in modern times is portrayed as a god obsessed with sacrifices and rituals. But the Scriptures show us a different Yahweh.
"With what shall I come before Yahweh and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does Yahweh require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
Micah 6:6-8
"Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow."
Isaiah 1:12-17
Most gods in ancient times are known to take the side of the ruling elite and to be all about the welfare of those in power. Yahweh, on the other hand, time and again shows himself aligned with the oppressed and the most vulnerable in the society - the widow, the orphan and the foreigner.
For Yahweh, your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:17-18
Throughout history, all around Israel, Empires of Men, as decreed by their gods, enrich themselves by exploiting the weak, oppressing the masses, and dividing people, setting up an “us vs the other” mentality. But Yahweh sets the rules of his society in Israel as the polar opposite of those imperial systems. His commandments in the Mosaic Law are uniquely designed that way. He demands the strong protect the weak, the people love their neighbor as their own selves, seek justice, show mercy, and defend the cause of the widow, the fatherless, and the migrant – the ‘others’ of the society. Yahweh is always on the side of the “others”. He is the God of the other.
And Jesus, in his actions and words, manifests this distinguishing quality of Yahweh. Throughout his ministry, Jesus embraces the vulnerable in the society, whether it be women or outcasts, lepers or the mentally ill, the poor or the non-natives. When the elite accuse him of associating with these “others”, Jesus quotes Yahweh’s prophet Hosea “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:13).
The religious aristocracy take note of this and label Jesus “a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of sinners” (Luke 7:34), “a Samaritan (foreigner) and demon-possessed” (John 8:48). As Jesus follows Yahweh’s anti-imperial motif in associating with those othered by the Empire, the imperial aristocrats sense the danger and attempt to other Jesus himself. In the Empire of Yahweh that Jesus preaches, those othered by the Empires of Men will finally get justice, joy and peace. That is the crux of his famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-10) – a sermon delivered by a loyal son following the footsteps of his trailblazing father.
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