This inspiring picture of Jesus reminds me of Che Guevara, our pop culture icon of the revolutionary, but what many ignore is that this man besides being an adventurous rebel and extremist thinker was over all a guerrillero who murderered hundreds of people and setup concentrations camps in Cuba.
All the conflicts, violence and crimes associated to revolution may make us hesitate to call Jesus a revolutionary, but what is a revolution after all?
Revolution: "constituting or bringing about a major or fundamental change."
Jesus wasn't just a good man or an enlightened prophet, he brought a major change in His time by contesting the established order, social rules and proclaimed a redistribution of wealth. Yet he achieved this without a single drop of blood besides His and trough a message of universal love that stands until today. That sounds like a different kind of revolution.
"Someone once said that 'a rebel attempts to change the past; a revolutionary attempts to change the future.' Jesus Christ brought drastic change to the world. Change to humanity's view of God. Change to God's view of humankind. Change to men's view of women. Our Lord came to bring radical change to the old order of things, replacing it with a new order."
Franck Viola
So yes, Jesus was a true revolutionary, a love revolutionary! And He sent His disciples to the end of the earth to proclaim the good news of His Kingdom, a message of salvacion and of everlasting love for all. These disciples were, in their turn, revolutionaries wherever they went and we are their heirs in our own cities and countries.
May we be known like Paul and Silas as "these men who turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:16)
