Jesus was a social activist who stood up to the Roman empire

 

Jesus was a social activist who stood up to the Roman empire

Martin Luther King - Reflections on Jesus

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old.

Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke the laws of the day. And so he was turned over to the people in power, and went through the mockery of trial.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today, he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of humanity on this earth as much as that one solitary life. Even today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, `He's King of Kings'. And again I can hear somebody saying, `He's the Prince of Peace.'

Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, 'In Christ there is no east nor west, in him no south and north, but one community of love throughout the whole wide earth.'

He didn't have anything. He just went around serving.