Towards the end of the First World War, an Anglican vicar named Conrad Noel stopped displaying the British flag in his parish church in Thaxted. In its place, he displayed the English flag (i.e., the Cross of St. George), the Irish flag, and a solid red banner bearing the words, “[He] hath made of one blood all nations.”1 He did this symbolically: The flag of an empire had no place in the house of God.
He published a call for other Anglican clergyman to organize for social justice that read:
If you believe in the Blessed Trinity and a Divine Commonwealth steeped in the worship of the Social God, the Blessed Trinity, One-in-Many, Many-in One, Variety-in-Unity, not as senseless dogmas for Sundays only, but as the basis and meaning of life; if you believe in re-creating the world in the similitude of the Social God, in whom we live and move our being, [h]elp [us …] to break up the present world order and make a new in the power of the Outlaw of Galilee.2
Understandably, Noel was and is a divisive figure: a flamboyant Anglo-Catholic, a loud and angry socialist, and yet a devoted pastor who won the admiration of his rural parishioners, many of whom disagreed with his politics and theology. The first time I read his titling Christ, “The Outlaw of Galilee,” I think I laughed. It seemed overly dramatic at best—perhaps blasphemous.
My mind has since changed. At present, “outlaw” is typically used of someone who breaks the law, but it has another older meaning which is entirely appropriate. It originally referred to someone who was denied the protection of the law—someone who is completely outside and beyond the political order.
Jesus certainly held this status—operating beyond the traditions of the Pharisees and denied any protection from the laws of Rome. In this way, he followed the nonconformist example which the prophets had set, stretching all the way back to David, Samuel, and Moses. Jesus is called the “son of David” throughout the New Testament. Straightforwardly, this is because, as Joseph’s adopted son, he was David’s heir, the Messiah—but poetically, it also reminds us of the resemblance between Christ and David.
God made David king because he was “a man after his own heart.”3 And despite his many and great sins, it isn’t difficult to see what God saw in him, particularly in his early life. We’re told, “[E]very one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them.”4 David was a refuge for those who were alienated from society, those whom the laws of the land could not or would not protect. His kingdom—the Kingdom of Israel which God promised to establish forever5—started as a band of outlaws. As heir to David’s kingdom and, “the captain of [our] salvation,”6 Christ kept the same company; he gathered together fishermen, prostitutes, collaborators, extremists, foreigners. He came for the distressed, the indebted, and the discontent. He called them (and through them calls us) to salvation, to forgiveness, to purpose, but never to respectability.
The reputation David made for himself and the kings that followed him was used as an insult. “Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants,” David’s general Joab tells him as he mourns the death of his rebellious son Absalom, “In that thou lovest thine enemies […] for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well.”7 This statement describes a remarkable pattern in David’s life: when his cruelest and most implacable enemies die, he mourns. Years after David’s death, the servants of the king of Syria tell him, “Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings.”8 David and the kings that followed him were—with little exception—violent and grudge-bearing, but they also somehow maintained a reputation for mercy. Mercy was what their enemies expected from them. But neither David nor any of his successors lived up to Joab’s insult—none of them would have intentionally sacrificed themselves and their followers for the good of their enemies and been happy about it—that is, not until Jesus. Jesus both fulfilled and surpassed all expectations of who a King of Israel should be.
But even though he surpassed David, Christ related his own interpretation and application of the Mosaic Law to his example:
And it came to pass, that he [Jesus] went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.9
The heart of Christ and David’s applications of the Law is that it was made to bless human beings. It was meant to “save life,” as the Lord puts it in another place, not to “kill.”10 When the Law is used to hurt, when it is taught as a mindless obligation to traditions and rules rather than a means for protection, healing, and justice, it is taught and practiced in error—or truthfully not at all. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets,” Christ concluded.11
Christ’s resemblances to David are what led to his rejection as David’s heir. His ministry to social outcasts, his mercy, his radical purging of the Law from traditions, corruptions, and imperfections are what made Christ seem like an outlaw to the Pharisees. He was outside their expectations and beyond their control, and so they betrayed him to Rome. Then, a Roman governor commanded his execution even while acknowledging his innocence. Christ was twice made an outlaw (that is, denied the fair protection of the law): once by his own people and once by the Gentiles. Perhaps we can even say he was made an outlaw thrice—for in taking our sins upon himself and willingly forfeiting his immortality and his Father’s protection he made himself an outlaw to God for our own sakes. He became an outlaw so that none of us would have to be. None are denied the forgiveness of the Son of David or the protection of his law “[f]or every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”12
Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash
- Acts of the Apostles: Ch. 17, v. 26 ↩︎
- “Ritual and Revolution: Conrad Noel and the Catholic Crusade” ↩︎
- First Book of Samuel: Ch. 13, v. 14 ↩︎
- First Book of Samuel: Ch. 22, v. 2 ↩︎
- Psalm 89, v. 37 ↩︎
- Epistle to the Hebrews: Ch. 2, v. 10 ↩︎
- Second Book of Samuel: Ch. 19, v. 5-6 ↩︎
- First Book of the Kings: Ch. 20, v. 31 ↩︎
- Gospel according to Mark: Ch. 2, v. 23-28 ↩︎
- Gospel according to Mark: Ch. 3, v. 4 ↩︎
- Gospel according to Matthew: Ch. 7, v. 12 ↩︎
- Gospel according to Matthew: Ch. 7, v. 8 ↩︎
Comparing Notes 