Luke 4:14-21
Is Jesus a Christian Nationalist?
This image captures is often used to communicate the White Christian Nationalist movement.
Taken during the January 6th insurrection, we see a solitary white man, his head pressed in prayer against a massive wooden cross, facing the US Capitol building.
This guy is part of an insurgent religious movement that is storming the halls of American power.
What’s unsettling, for some, about this photo four years later is that much of the religious zeal that fed the insurrection is no longer outside the gates of power.
Many of the movement’s followers are now on the inside.
Over the next four years, Christian Nationalists will have unprecedented access to the power of the federal government.
Many people sit watching with bewilderment, scratching their heads and wondering how this could happen and what it all means for the future.
And some of us may be wondering what, exactly is Christian Nationalism?
This theological and political ideology has been around for a long time and has taken many forms.
Nearly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants in the United States described themselves as sympathizers or adherents to Christian nationalism in a February 2023 survey.
So, let’s define Christian Nationalism and see if it does or doesn’t align with the message of Jesus and the Person of Jesus—what Jesus taught, His Mission Statement as its laid out in this morning’s Gospel lesson from Luke 4 and how Jesus calls us to live.
A good place to start is to talk about Nationalism.
Nationalism is an intense allegiance to one’s nation and one’s national identity.
And that by itself is not necessarily bad.
That can look like patriotism or national pride and can be good, but Nationalism takes it a step further and finds itself identifying the nation not by a geography or all the people living in a country, but really by a certain identity within the country.
What do I mean by that?
Nationalism is sometimes defined by a particular race, sometimes by a particular religion and it’s defined by a particular political ideology.
And when it’s defined by any of these things there are a lot of people who are excluded.
And those who are excluded sometimes become Second Class Citizens or worse—sometimes they are oppressed because they don’t fit the correct identity.
Sometimes they’ve even been killed.
The most extreme example of Nationalism in the last hundred years is Nazi Germany.
The Nazi party was a nationalist party and in this party there was one particular identity among the German people that was lifted up.
It was the Aryan race and they were considered to be the master race, and German national identity was really about being a particular race and a particular religion and everyone else was-- at first-- considered second class and then they became thought of as subhuman and then they needed to be exterminated.
We know the story of these people.
They were people of color, they were Slavic, Roma or what used to be called gypsies.
They were gay and lesbian people, disabled people and mainly the Jewish people.
Hitler, in 1928, made it clear, and I’m quoting him “Our movement is Christian.”
But the people closest to him knew he hated the Christian Church except when it was convenient for him.
And he would use the Church as a way of drawing people in or giving a sort of legitimacy to his ideas.
And the end result was that 6 million Jewish people were murdered along with many others.
That is Christian Nationalism taken to it’s extreme.
The danger of Christian Nationalism starts with idolatry.
We find that in the 10 Commandments, the first commandment is not to worship or have any other idols above God, but this is what happens with Christian Nationalism regardless of what your faith is.
The nation becomes, for many people, god and so when you are yoking together religion and nationalism what you are going to find is that nationalism becomes number one and the religion becomes the servant of the primary god which is the nation.
So, in America, right now, Christian Nationalism is an ideology that unites a certain kind of Christianity with nationalism.
The last three political campaigns, have been infused with White Christian National imagery and rhetoric—with the promise to root out “anti-Christian bias” and restore Christian Power in America while giving access to a group our New Leader calls: “my beautiful Christians.”
Our new President won the support of about 8 in 10 White evangelical voters in November’s election.
Scholars have called Christian Nationalism an “imposter Christianity” whose adherents use religious language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-white immigrants in a quest to create a White Christian America.
According to Kristen Du Mez, historian and author of the New York Times bestseller, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” Christian Nationalism is ultimately incompatible with American democracy and certainly with the character, the teachings and the life exemplified by Jesus Christ.
When Jesus arrived, Israel was under Roman occupation and struggling to keep its national identity alive.
It was this nationalistic context that shaped the Israelites’ expectations for God’s promised Messiah.
They expected the Messiah to overthrow Rome and bring back Israel’s national sovereignty.
But when Jesus arrived, He would have none of it.
He declined the devil’s offer of control over all the kingdoms of the world, refusing to use His powers for political gain, running from a crowd that wanted to enthrone Him, waiting to announce His messiahship until He could redefine it to exclude nationalism, choosing to ride on a donkey instead of a war horse during His inauguration parade, and eventually declaring Himself king of all people and all nations, not just Israel.
Likewise, Jesus shunned political power and taught His followers to do the same, instructing them not to “lord it over” others, sending them into the world as sheep among wolves, scattering them across the globe as foreigners, exiles, and sojourners whose primary citizenship is in heaven, and ordering them to put away their swords instead of defending Him, while also proclaiming to the Romans that His followers do not fight.
Jesus makes it clear by His words and actions that He is concerned with compassion, mercy, freedom, new life and justice for the poor, the oppressed and marginalized.
He declares that everything He is about—everything God is about—everything we are to be about boils down to this:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and…love your neighbor as yourself.”
--Mark 12:30-31
And so, how do we so often miss what Jesus is about…
…what Christianity is about…
…what it means to be Christ’s followers—lovers of God and lovers of ALL people?
Because, you know what?
Study after study will tell us that the number one thing that makes human beings happy is when we are helping others, not fighting with others.
And it makes sense.
Helping and loving one another is what God has created us to do.
This is what God is like.
And we are created in God’s image.
It is only when we intentionally strive to live into God’s image that we become whole.
So, we are told in our Gospel Lesson for this morning that “Jesus returned” from His temptations in the wilderness “to Galilee in the power of the Spirit…”
And He went to Nazareth where He had been raised.
And on the Sabbath He went into the synagogue—probably the same synagogue He and His mom, dad, brothers and sisters had attended as children—and He offered to read the Scripture.
And He turned to the Prophet Isaiah, and He found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Spirit has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
The Spirit has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he sat back down and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
The implication of this is that if we are going to study, interpret and follow Jesus we should keep coming back to these words to measure our lives, our progress to make sure we are on track.
If we read further on in Luke, we will find that, right here, in His own hometown, that at the very beginning of His ministry the people to whom Jesus speaks these words “got up and drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of a hill…in order to throw him off the cliff.”
We shouldn’t be surprised if some folks—especially religious folks—don’t want to hear about Jesus loving the poor, freeing the prisoners, and setting the oppressed free.
The religious nationals of Jesus’ time weren’t too keen on it either.
Christian nationalism thrives on an us-versus-them mentality.
This militancy is linked to always needing an enemy.
And in Christian nationalism today, the enemies are internal—they are the Democrats and the woke.
They are the LGBTQ+ community and those working for inclusion, equity and diversity.
They are the immigrants and the refugees.
Christian Nationalism resonates deeply with the language of an enemy within.
This fuels the sense that we need warriors to fight to save our families and Christianity.
And to save America, we are going to have to fight other Americans who are threatening those values.
Jesus, on the other hand, said: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.
Not so with you.
Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Human One did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
It’s not power and position Jesus calls us to but to be salt and light and to demonstrate compassion and concern for the least of these…and to be servants of all.
So is Jesus a Christian Nationalist?
Is He calling us to be Christian Nationalists?
Is Christian Nationalism even Christian?
I hope the answer is clear to us.
To be Christian we can be republican or democrat—conservative or liberal.
All of us are conservative when compared to someone else and all of us are liberal when compared to someone else and none of us have all the answers.
That’s one reason we need each other—democrats, republicans, white persons, black persons, immigrants, gay people, straight people—we all need one another because that is how we learn compassion.
That is how we learn to love and serve.
That is how we experience the great diversity of God Whose Children are ALL created in God’s image.
Will you pray with me?
Jesus, please forgive us when what we long for is power, privilege and control.
Please forgive us for the ways we have bought into lies or misinformation or caricatures about other people.
Please help us to be humble and kindhearted, compassionate and to have servant’s hearts.
Help us to love You and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
In Jesus Holy name we pray.
Amen.
