Cross and Power

Brian Zahnd writes that we need to understand how the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount ends up condemned by the Sanhedrin and executed by the Roman Empire.

Jesus was not preaching his sermons and working his miracles as “random acts of kindness” but as announcements and enactments of the arrival of the kingdom of God. By the kingdom of God we mean the government of God, the politics of God, the alternative arrangement of the world that comes from God. In his practice of radical hospitality Jesus was announcing the arrival of a new way of arranging human society. Jesus was proclaiming to the principalities and powers (the very rich, the very powerful, the very religious, the institutions they represent, and the malevolent spirits that energize it all) that their time was up because the alternative from heaven was now within reach.

Jesus called upon all who heard him to rethink everything (repent) and believe that a radical rearrangement of the world was good news. But...
The empire always strikes back.

The principalities and powers had a vested interest in keeping the world as it had always been arranged — an arrangement that benefits the elite. So Caiaphas (the very religious), Herod (the very rich), and Pilate (the very powerful) colluded together to execute this Galilean disrupter who threatened their preferred social order. A mere five days after arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, tried, condemned, spit upon, beaten, scourged, and crucified.