I have come to understand Paul as one of our greatest Biblical resources for radical world-building. In my early twenties, a combination of healing my knee-jerk reaction to dismiss him, plus a few years of political organizing under my belt allowed me to hear his message in a new way. I saw a transformed person under the thumb of a deadly empire, trying to bring people together across lines of deep difference for the sake of Jesus’s mission of justice for all and lavish grace. In the place of a one-dimensional, homophobic misogynist, I saw a sharp organizer and profoundly radical disciple. 

Dr. Theodore Jennings, a Methodist pastor and leftist theologian, contributed toward my understanding. In his book Outlaw Justice, he describes Paul’s mission as concerned not just with passing on religious teachings, but with introducing a new framework of how to construct society – a political philosophy, dealing with issues of common life. 

Paul is writing to a church in a place where the structures of society and common life – “the law” that Paul references often in Romans – are ordered by a bloodthirsty empire. Referencing Jose Porfirio’s Marx and the Bible, Jennings writes, “Paul is read as offering a fundamental critique of Western civilization – a civilization that entails a political economy that impoverishes the masses while securing the privileges of the few” (7). Paul’s letters are a contrast to the mindset of this empire, written to the church to teach how society should be structured based on a Christ-centered politic, what Jennings calls “messianic political thinking.” This society is oriented around justice and God’s unconditional generosity, as opposed to values orienting Roman society, like subjugation and destruction. 

The messianic political structure described across Paul’s letters stands in stark contrast to the political order of the day. He called for the crossing of boundaries – gender, economic, cultural – and the upending of hierarchical societal structures. They shared resources within the house churches and across the Mediterranean region, a radical redistribution of solidarity. 

To live into this vision required praxis: real and tangible action undergirded by robust belief. And so throughout the epistles we see Paul giving practical steps as well as heartfelt encouragement. It’s problem-solving and vision-casting. To live in a radically different way, you must believe it is possible. We see some of this in today’s reading from Romans. 

Of the opening line from Romans, Jennings writes, “Paul is writing to a tiny, embattled, and almost overwhelmed group, yet he asks, If God be for us, who is against us?” (137). I imagine it was easy to lose faith, to let the values of the world seep in. Paul reminds the church that a power greater than Rome is ordering their steps.

Paul asserts God’s willingness to act on behalf of God’s own – “He who did not spare his own son – how will he not also give us everything?” Jennings explains that this is not a statement about atonement, but generosity. God has given so much already – why would God stop now? 

He continues and explains that those living under the messianic political worldview no longer need to find meaning in the political order of empire. If God acquits us, who will condemn? If we are set free by the messianic worldview, we cannot be condemned by the law. We are called to live in an entirely different paradigm. 

This short excerpt is a snapshot into the instructions and encouragement of the book of Romans, building up the small, committed group to keep their heads up and carry on their mission in the face of a dominant culture that, at best, ran counter to their values and, at worst, sought to snuff them out. 

For those of us working for justice today, we need this good word. On a daily basis, I need to reorient my heart to the reality that God is unquestionably for the work of justice. God is for us. How we get there is what we work out together in community, across lines of difference informed by those who went before and leaders in our own times, continuing the work of God’s messianic vision for the world.

The Black Panthers were another community of practice whose praxis sought to reshape society. They brought people into the movement around things people needed, and were their rights – food for children, education, basic living supplies – and then organized them. Like the early church and base communities, their work was rooted in an urgency and a desire for scale – that things needed to urgently change, and for a massive number of people.

Chairman Fred Hampton was the leader of the Black Panther Party in Chicago. He was murdered by the FBI once he started organizing across lines of race, bringing poor white people and Puerto Ricans and Black people together over their common struggles. This is the thing those in power fear the most and why they try so ardently to reify our belief in lives of division. There are more of us than there are of them. When we come together, we outnumber them. This was happening in the early church, in base communities, and in a multiracial coalition of poor people in Chicago.

Fred Hampton’s writing sounds a lot like Jesus. He writes that love for the people is at the core of everything he does. 

Writer and facilitator adrienne maree brown wrote the poem “loving people like fred hampton” as an ode to his commitment to love. In it, we hear what it takes to be changed for the sake of changing the world around you, and the requirement of committing to communal struggle for the sake of overcoming empire. https://adriennemareebrown.net/2017/12/05/loving-the-people/

“i’m going to live for the people
because i love the people”
– Fred Hampton

lately everything has been changing fast
and we are reminded, in case we forgot,
that our blood is sacred
that it might be required
for the spell, the strategy, the next move
we are called extremists for our love
of ourselves
of our people
of our humanity

it is not enough to articulate
a radical politic
we have to declare a warrior nature
we have to embody yes-to-the-mystery
for, knowing nothing about our deaths,
we must promise to give our lives
to the future
to the children
to strangers with our skin

and maybe it isn’t your last breath
that is most needed right now
but, for the people, would you change?
for the people, would you apologize? forgive?
for the people, would you be honest?
for the people, would you learn, and learn?
– not for me
not for you
but for all of us?

because if you refuse to change
to look within and seek yourself out
your freest self, and your systemic self
your self which is imperfect and must grow
your harmed self who causes harm
your heartbroken self, and your resilient self
how can i trust your blood
how can i trust your work
how can i trust your love?

we do not survive when we live for ourselves
when we die our truths are forgotten
held in no heart, at most a legend
part of no wholeness, tender in no memory
when we live for the people
we never die, seeded so deeply in each other
love yourself, and the people
give your life for the people
give yourself to the people