All posts by Brian Zahnd

  • January 27, 2020

    Our Lady On Fire

    Our Lady On Fire
    Brian Zahnd

    On the one year anniversary I thought I would repost this piece.

    It was Monday of Holy Week 2019 and I had just finished leading a noontime prayer service when I heard the awful news that Notre Dame was on fire. Our Lady was on fire! I turned on the television and watched in horror for the next three hours. I hadn’t felt like this since 9/11. I wept. Millions of us did. The French news magazine Paris Match said, “Today, they weep for her in every language.” Ken Follett, author of Pillars of the Earth and an expert on Gothic cathedrals, wrote this:

    “The voice on the phone was urgent. ‘I’m in Paris,’ it said. ‘Turn on your television!’ You know what we saw on the screen: the wonderful cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, one of the greatest achievements of European civilization, was on fire. The scene dazed and disturbed us profoundly. I was on the verge of tears. Something priceless was dying in front of our eyes. The feeling was bewildering, as if the earth was shaking.”

    Like millions of others I watched in real time what seemed to be the agonizing death of a priceless treasure. For me, the most dreadful moment came when the 750-ton spire, already engulfed in flames, finally collapsed. It marked the moment when we all feared Notre Dame would be forever lost. Notre Dame had always seemed eternal, and the medieval builders certainly thought it would last until the Day of Judgment; but suddenly we saw that it could be destroyed. Now that everything was on fire how could Our Lady be saved?
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    No Comments / Christianity, Church, Secularism, Water To Wine /

  • December 9, 2019

    The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey

    The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey
    Brian Zahnd

    I have a new book release! The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey. This is a book of daily devotions taking the reader on a journey with Jesus from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. I know we’re still in Advent, but I wanted to give you enough time to have The Unvarnished Jesus for the beginning of Lent on February 26. Let me tell you how this book came about…
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    No Comments / Books, Jesus, The Unvarnished Jesus /

  • November 30, 2019

    The World As It Is (An Advent Poem)


    The World As It Is
    (An Advent Poem)

    I take the world as it is and still believe
    Debauched and beautiful, sordid and seemly
    Where Kerouac is a secular saint
    Heard uncensored telling his story
    On the road with Dean Moriarty
    In the long run Merton took a better turn
    But still the beat goes on…
    Take your stand on whatever smidgen of faith you have
    Smack-dab in a world of hustlers and hookers, users and losers, liars and lovers
    Don’t waste your life on a pastel watercolor faith
    That runs if touched by a tear or a drop of sweat
    Can you take the world as it is
    And still believe in God?
    Can you take people as they are
    And still believe in love?
    Or do you only play at make believe?
    A world of terracotta saints
    Of little houses on soundstage prairies
    So not at home in the world as it is
    That you can’t wait for it to be left behind
    That, my friend, is no real faith
    It’s scripted B-movie phoniness
    Rated G (for gullible audiences)
    A real faith lives in a real world
    The world as it is
    Sordid and seemly
    Debauched and beautiful
    It’s the little town of Bethlehem
    Good enough for the Son of God
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    No Comments / Advent, Poetry /

  • September 9, 2019

    Returning To The Way of St. James

    Returning To the Way of St. James
    Brian Zahnd

    But I would walk five hundred miles
    And I would walk five hundred more
    Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
    To fall down at your door
    –The Proclaimers

    In the fall of 2016 Peri and I walked 500 miles from St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain along the 1,200 year-old Camino Francés pilgrim route. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. It may have blistered my feet, but it healed my soul. The truth is, when I set out from St.-Jean on September 14, 2016 (Holy Cross Day) I didn’t know how much healing my soul needed. But as we walked into Santiago forty days later I was aware that I had walked into a deep peace that is still with me today. Though it may sound like a cliché, I can honestly say the Camino changed my life. Peri tells the story from her perspective in her Camino memoir, Every Scene By Heart.

    Last year for our vacation we walked the Camino Portuguése from Porto, Portugal to Santiago — a pilgrimage of 160 miles that took two weeks. It was a Camino tune up, but not the same as the long 500-mile walk. Unfortunately, Peri developed a stress fracture of her tibia on this Camino and ended up on crutches for eight weeks! The Camino does present physical challenges.

    This fall we are returning to the 500-mile Camino Francés. We begin walking on September 12 and will return to St. Joseph in time to celebrate the 38th anniversary of Word of Life Church on November 3. After pastoring Word of Life for nearly four decades we now have an excellent pastoral staff and the congregation will be just fine while Peri and I go for a long walk. But why do I want to go on another big Camino? I have a fairly definite reason.
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    No Comments / Camino de Santiago, Travel /

  • August 22, 2019

    Trumped


    Trumped
    Brian Zahnd

    Politics trumps everything. That’s an axiom that holds up. Unless you really see the kingdom of God and are willing to rethink everything in the light of Christ, politics trumps everything — including faith and ethics. I learned this the hard way. When I pulled away from lock-step allegiance with the Religious Right because I had seen the kingdom of God and had begun to take Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount seriously, many politically conservative Christians accused me of “going over to the other side.” Committed as they were to a dualistic us vs. them paradigm, they could only interpret my kingdom-conscious approach to politics as traitorous. “If you’re not on our side, you must be on their side!” In their closed dualistic system, even Jesus has to be either a Republican or a Democrat.

    So my honest claim to have no interest in the Left/Right political divide because I only cared about following Jesus fell on deaf ears. They could not see the kingdom alternative I was pointing to — they could only see us vs. them, Republicans vs. Democrats, Elephants vs. Donkeys. They were incredulous about my claim to only be interested in following the Lamb. Yes, I learned the hard way that if the kingdom of Christ is not perceived as a viable alternative society, then competition for conventional political power seems the only option for influencing the world.

    With a low ecclesiology, politics trumps everything. If the local church is viewed as devoid of what we think of as real power, then we inevitably set our sights on Washington D.C. The National Prayer Breakfast is believed to be important, not because of prayer, but because the President and other power brokers are there. And once you’re convinced that God is working through the political machinations of Babylon, and that God is inviolably on the side of your political party…well, you have set yourself up to make enormous compromises. So let me talk about the elephant in the room — Donald J. Trump.
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    No Comments / Donald Trump, Jesus, Politics, Postcards From Bablon /

  • July 10, 2019

    On Love of Nation

    On Love of Nation
    Brian Zahnd

    As followers of Jesus we are not commanded to love our nation. Rather, we are commanded to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as our self. Nation — whether we are referring to the modern nation-state or to its ancient meaning of ethnicity — is not a proper category for a priority of love. To prioritize love of one’s nation-state or one’s ethnicity will almost of necessity put us at odds with the commands we have received from Jesus Christ. We are called to love God supremely and then to love those around us with a co-suffering love — and we are to do this regardless of our neighbor’s citizenship or ethnicity. This is the basis for all Christ-informed ethics, and this is what Jesus sets forth in his parable of the Good Samaritan.

    Jesus gives the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) in response to a question from a Torah scholar trying to wiggle out of loving his neighbor by asking for clarification on who actually constitutes a neighbor. The biblical scholar understood that Jesus had spoken correctly when he had identified love of God and love of neighbor as the heart of Scriptural revelation and the way that leads to life, but the scholar was looking for a loop-hole because there were obviously people he didn’t want to love, and Samaritans would certainly have been on his not-to-be-loved list. Thus his lawyerly question. This is the backdrop for the parable.
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    No Comments / America, Jesus, Politics /

  • July 3, 2019

    We Must Not Celebrate Martial Spectacle

    We Must Not Celebrate Martial Spectacle
    Brian Zahnd

    Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
    But we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
    –Psalm 20:7

    Twenty-some years ago Peri and I attended a military airshow at Rosecrans Airport here in St. Joseph, Missouri. There were military aircraft from yesteryear evoking nostalgia; the Blue Angels put on a flight demonstration that was nothing short of spectacular; and the grand finale was the flyover of a B-2 stealth bomber that was absolutely awe-inspiring. (At a cost of about two billion dollars per bomber it should inspire awe!) The power of the military aircraft and the precision flying of the pilots engendered a patriotism that was exhilarating.

    At the end of the airshow the crowd was allowed to wander among the bombers and fighter jets, take pictures, and meet the pilots. While standing under the wings of one of the immense bombers, an unanticipated thought rose in my mind: “These are flying death machines, and their sole purpose is to rain down death from heaven.” That objective acknowledgment was followed with this troubling question: “As a Christian should I celebrate these machines?” This was years before I concluded that waging war is incompatible with following Jesus, but a seed had been sown, and I would have to wrestle with the question of whether or not a Christian should venerate the tools of total war.
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    No Comments / America, Jesus, Violence, War /

  • June 9, 2019

    The Sycamore’s Prayers


    The Sycamore’s Prayers
    Blind Man at the Gate
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    No Comments / Poetry /

  • June 6, 2019

    In Praise of Ordinary Church

    In Praise of Ordinary Church
    Brian Zahnd

    Sometime in late modernity Christians who had deeply, though mostly unwittingly, imbibed the heady cocktails served by the high priests of the Enlightenment (Voltaire, Hume, Nietzsche, et al.) conjured the drunken idea that Jesus had given a writ of divorce to the church. In an age of suspicion committed to the critique of tradition how could it be otherwise? Surely the compelling figure of Jesus of Nazareth could have nothing to do with the tired institution that is dismissively referred to as “organized religion”? This secular assault upon the church found a surprising resonance among many Christians — especially pietists, revivalists, and rugged American individualists. Thus was born the modern idea of Jesus as personal savior (which really means private savior), leaving the church as little more than an optional common interest club for the more socially inclined. Jesus was essential, but the church was optional, or perhaps irrelevant, or even a hindrance to Christian faith.

    Today this kind of thinking is in full bloom. But what should we make of it? Or perhaps a better question is, what would the first followers of Jesus make of this development? I have no doubt at all that they would scratch their heads at this strange new private religion with its stunning capacity to misunderstand Jesus and his message.
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    No Comments / Books, Church /
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