1. The one mile restriction was a Roman law meant to limit the abuse of citizens by soldiers. Soldiers would be put to death if they forced a citizen to carry a pack more than one mile. For a jew to try and carry the pack two miles meant the soldier would be forced into the odd (almost comical) position of trying to take the pack back from the citizen. It was “lampoon” of the law. A clear political protest. The fact of the law is proof there needed to be a law which meant there must have been abuse. In the same way, the idea of giving him your undergarment when asked for your cloak is a way of standing naked in the street to protest the abuse. For these people nakedness is shameful for the viewer not the naked person. It is a 1st century “mooning” of a soldier who has harrassed you by showing your bare bottom.

2. “ultimately satanic oppression - rather than an anti-imperialist polemic”. Why satanic oppression? What would satanic oppression look like if not through miliary defeat and economic/political rule by a pagan force? You can suggest it is “satanic oppression” but that is the metaphoric explanation of the real oppression. It is the same type of oppression we saw discussed by the OT prophets. Satanic oppression or “removing of God’s protection” is always how Israel saw its military defeats.

4. We don’t have Jesus’ eschatology. We do have his story told through the lens of late first - early 2nd generation eschatology. I agree it wasn’t about the “fall of Rome”. It was about ending the oppression created by the occupation of Rome. I agree Jesus is not looking “beyond AD 70”. However, we are being told about Jesus by authors who are writing during and after the war (66-70). The war and its aftermath is the major backdrop to the way the stories are written. The synoptics are in the heat of the war and have a corresponding edge, however John’s Gospel seems to be written by a community that has given up hope in ending oppression “here and now” and now look for victory in the “hereafter”. When we try to read them together as one story we make a paradox where there need not be any paradox. It is much more clear to see the differences as different eras (pre and post AD70). The paradox fades in this light as we see different agendas underlying the different stories. They tell us more about the authors than Jesus himself.

5. “Jesus opposed the Jerusalem hierarchy not because they had bought in to imperialism but because they were not looking after the interests of the owner of the vineyard.” But you ignore the REASONS why the temple system was not looking after the intrerests of Jews. The occupation of Rome, the collaboration between Temple and Rome, and the unpure (corrupt appointed roman influences) was a key factor in creating the injustice. The book “Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus?” by Helen Bond offers some further information.

“But I am not persuaded that we understand this correctly by framing it simply as an anti-imperialist agenda. That doesn’t get at the heart of the issue with the kingdom of God.”

It’s only because later christians have domesticated the story and made it about a supernatural end of the world that my view seems “simply as an anti-imperialist agenda”. If you no longer look through the lens of the domesticated Empire that absorbed the gospel, then it wouldn’t seem like a step backwards for you. For me, it is a step forward to raise this story up to a HIGHER level of importance about political justice. The story has be relegated to mere folk lore about end-times and afterlife for too long. It is time to liberate the story from its domestication. I thank Brian McLaren for presenting this to his more Evangelical audience even if Tom Wright would prefer to drag it back down to a level of unimportance and make it merely another superstitious prediction of a mythical future.