By Chuck Warpehoski, ICPJ Director

Jesus preached a message of radical equality, where all humanity is united in God’s love. He taught his followers to “love your neighbor as yourself,” and he extended that call by showing that your neighbor may include somebody of a different religion or ethnicity (as in the case of the good Samaritan), or even your own enemy. Paul’s letter to the Galatians explains the implications of God’s universal love by writing that in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female.” (Galatians 3:28)

But the world Jesus lived in was not one of equality. Jesus entered a world with extreme inequalities in wealth, between the sexes, and within his religious community, as well as strong divisions between groups based on ethnic and religious lines.

How did Jesus respond to the tension between his message of equality and the inequality of the world? He preached an up-ending of the social order in which “the last shall be first and the first last” (Mat 20:16). This world where hierarchies of wealth and power are toppled to make room for the poor and downtrodden is what I understand Jesus to mean by “the kingdom of heaven.”

In a world that glorified the wealth, Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20). As he lived under a foreign military occupation that praised the centurions and the war-makers, Jesus up-ended the glorification of war by saying, “blessed be the peacemakers.”

And when the rich young man asked Jesus what must he do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus answered, “go, sell you possessions, and give the money to the poor” (Mat 19:21b). You see, Jesus didn’t just talk about putting the last first, he demanded action.

Today we continue to live in a world of profound inequality. Women earn 67 cents for every dollar men earn. There is a 39 percent pay gap between black and white workers. Jesus’ call for redemptive action is just as necessary now as it was 2,000 years ago.

For me, that’s where the religious call for affirmative action comes from. Jesus taught that we don’t eliminate inequalities by ignoring them; we eliminate inequalities by naming them and addressing them. And only by up-ending the worldly tendency to put the first first and the last last can we enter the Kingdom of God.