USVI: Christ, the bureaucrat

Donna Christian Christensen, the V.I. delegate to Congress, writes

The real reason I love [Palm Sunday] so, is one of the messages I take from the story of Christ's coming into Jerusalem.

Yes, above all, it is the story of the Triumphant Christ coming into the fullness of His ministry and it is the beginning of the fulfillment of our salvation. But on the earthly, human side, it is also the story of Christ the community activist, the politician. It is a story that speaks to what all community, state or local, national or world leaders should be and do.

Christ came first and foremost to save, but He also came to right the wrongs of that day, to bring fairness, equity and justice to free those in bondage, and to show us how to live together in peace and harmony.

In Lk 4:18-19, Christ Jesus says:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Also, in Joh 18:36-37, He tells Pilate:

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Would that politicians would stick to politics and leave theology to preachers and theologians, a redundancy in many cases.

Though Christ healed the sick, fed the multitude, raised the dead, and preached the Gospel, He is not and never was a "community activist" or "politician" as Christensen would have it. Instead, He is the God-man. Truly God and truly man. He is God come down to man, enfleshed, so that God could raise man up to Himself. Politics? Community activism? To reduce the mission of Christ Jesus to such epithets is a gross misunderstanding, even a denial, of the significance of the Incarnation. It is about redemption and reconciliation via the blood and the Cross. To all who believe, it is new new life, new creation. No community activist or politician can confer such life and soul altering changes on anyone. Only one man could. The God-man.

Though He fed the multitude, He Himself is the true bread and the true wine which has sustained His Church for two thousand plus years and will sustain it until the eschaton. The food that He is is sustenance only for the believer, for He is a particularist, a discriminating particularist who called all men to Him, but who saves only the believers. Contrary to what Christensen claims, Christ did not come to bring "justice," for in His first coming He is the smiling Savior who came not to condemn but to redeem men from the clutches of sin and the law. In the eschaton, when He comes again, then He will come with intent to judge. Unlike politicians of today, Christ Jesus will discriminate between believers and unbelievers. The first will remain with Him; the second, will suffer eternal death. In today's parlance, Christ Jesus will practise the "politics" of exclusion, of division, or, as some Democrats would have it, the politics of hate.

If Christensen wants to say that the feeding of the people, ensuring of justice, promiting of the general welfare of the people is the proper business of politicians, then she should so state without attempting any false and hubristic parallels. Some of us don't want community activist politicians. Instead, what we want is politicians who will not bog us down in regulation, will not spend our tax dollars on their favorite little pork barrel project, will cut our taxes so that we enjoy what we've earned, will not tamper with the Rights of citizens as are enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and will get the hell out of the way so that we can live our lives unfettered by their long-winded, bloviating presence.