That is not to say that Jesus was an immature fool who did not recognize political and social realities. My reading of the best of the scripture scholars affirms that Christ’s central conviction was that the Messianic Age was about to begin. It was not necessarily the “End of the World” in Hollywood-style, with the heavens opening and angels descending; but it did represent an inversion of values. In the Messianic Age, the powers of the world and the influence of wealth and injustice would be corrected by God’s powerful Hand. Those on the bottom would rise and those in power would be toppled. (His mother more or less predicted it in her Magnificat.)

All of the above make Jesus into a leader of a movement rather than a political candidate. His movement came before rationalists invented a dichotomy between belief and action or between church and state. The values of the Jesus Movement concerned justice, altruism, and the capacity to turn suffering into witness, i.e. martyrdom. If we had to look for U.S. political figures who led movements we would have a list with names as varied as Tom Paine, Patrick Henry, John Brown, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and César Chavez. What the life experiences of each of the above demonstrate is the non-transferability of moral conviction into a political commodity. In fact, failure, frustration and assassination are the common results. The difference with Jesus is his rising from the dead: it assaults every rational premise that tells us “nice guys finish last.”