Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council in Washington, begins his recent article for CNN entitled My Take: Jesus was a free marketer, not an Occupier by stating that “One of the last instructions Jesus gave his disciples was ‘Occupy till I come.’”
The quote is from the Parable of the Ten Minas, found in Luke 19:22. There are economic overtones in the parable – a mina was about a month’s wage in first century Palestine. Perkins uses the parable to discuss modern economics. Anachronistically, he claims that Jesus endorsed the free market. The free market, of course, is a modern concept, so Jesus could not have been a “free marketer.” Perkins then uses the parable to denounce the Occupy Wall Street movement, a movement that he claims, “take(s) over and trash(es) public property” and “engage(s) in antisocial behavior while denouncing a political and economic system that grants one the right and luxury to choose to be unproductive.”
Perkins explores the parable and the Occupy Wall Street movement from a spiritual perspective. While I appreciate that perspective, his spiritual interpretation of the parable is false. By their very nature, parables are mysterious. Parables are like riddles that contrasts two worldviews. One worldview could be described as the kingdom of violence; the other is the Kingdom of God. Jesus confronts us with these worldviews and asks us to pick which worldview we will live by.
Jesus told the Parable of the Ten Minas near the end of his life. He knew that the political and religious elite would soon kill him, and, in telling this parable, he tried to prepare his disciples for his death. Jesus prepared his disciple for his death in parable and in straightforward teachings. For example, in the previous chapter of Luke (18:31-33), he told his disciples that “the Son of Man” (a term he frequently used to describe himself) would be “handed over” and that his persecutors would “mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him.” Luke tells us that “The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.”
Two thousand years later, we need to ask ourselves, “Do we know what Jesus was talking about?”
Jesus starts the parable by saying, “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then returns.” Perkins assumes that the king is Jesus, but is he correct? While Jesus does refer to himself as “the Son of Man,” he never explicitly refers to himself as a king. But we do claim that Jesus is king – a different kind of king. Jesus transforms our understanding of “king.” He is the true King who doesn’t lead his army in violence and warfare. Jesus had nothing to do with the kingdom of violence. Rather, according to Luke 6:27, Jesus is the true King who leads his disciples in the Spirit of love, a love that embraces even our enemies.
That changes everything, including our interpretation of parables. Instead of Jesus referring to himself as a man of noble birth going to a distant country to have himself appointed king, could Jesus be talking about the actual king of Judea – Herod? In fact, this is exactly how the Herodian Dynasty received power – from a distant country called the Roman Empire. As Jesus continues the parable, the king behaves exactly as you’d expect. He is good to the two servants who live up to his expectations by earning even more money for the already rich king, and he punishes the third servant who fails to earn the king more money. In fact, Jesus ends his parable with this alarming, and prophetic, statement, “But those enemies of mine, who did not want me to be king over them – bring them here and kill them in front of me.”
Perkins is wrong to assume that Jesus is the king in the parable. Jesus is not the king; rather, he is the third servant. When Jesus teaches to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those mistreat you,” he flips our violent worldview upside down. It is not the kingdom of God that rewards those who are good and punishes those who are bad. That reciprocity describes the kingdoms of violence, the kingdoms of this world. Jesus was not enslaved to that violent reciprocity; rather, he freely loved all people. Jesus did not kill his enemies who did not want him to be king over them. It was Herod, Rome, and the religious elite who killed Jesus. They killed him because after Jesus occupied the Temple (Luke 19:45-46) they thought his movement was antisocial as he denounced their political, economic, and religious systems. Jesus responded to their violence with nonviolence and love: On the cross he prayed that his persecutors would be forgiven (Luke 23:34) and in the resurrection he offered peace to those who betrayed him (Luke 24:36).
What does this mean for the spirituality of the Occupy Wall Street movement? The kingdom of violence infects every aspect of our world. Jesus challenged that kingdom with the Kingdom of God’s Love – a love that embraces the cosmos, as the Gospel of John says. There are certainly aspects of our economic and political systems that are spiritually destructive and exploitative. The movement is right to critique those aspects. The spiritual problem with the movement is that it has divided 99% of us “good people” against 1% of those “bad people,” who have not lived up to our economic and political expectations. That division is the result of the spirit of violence that Jesus came to deliver us from. If the OWS movement wants to be effective, it must seek to include its perceived enemies. Because if we really want to make political and economic change, we need to be in this together. All 100% of us.
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