At a meeting of a focus group in our parish’s work on a profile, one of the people asked for less political preaching. But the Risen Lord–the one with the wounds–the same Lord as the one who lived and ministered among us. So the politics of the Risen one are not different from, are the same as, those of that Galilean rabble rouser who got it in the end but wouldn’t stay dead.
So how do we not stay dead? We look at what Jesus said and did in the context of his own world and culture. He would not have been charged and executed if he had not been political Our culture separates the religious and political, his did not. So what we see as religious may have been political as well. I frequently think that, according to the laws of his day, he was justly executed.
But God raised him from the dead, declaring him truly innocent. That constitutes God’s judgement on the laws that condemned him.
And invites us to look at our own laws, convictions, and executions in the light of God’s judgement.
That’s what the Resurrection means.