All posts tagged Jesus

  • July 8, 2015

    Sinners In the Hands of a Loving God

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    Sinners In the Hands of a Loving God
    Brian Zahnd

    Oh! Ephraim is my dear, dear son,
    My child in whom I take pleasure!
    Every time I mention his name,
    My heart bursts with longing for him!
    Everything in me cries out for him.
    Softly and tenderly I wait for him.
    –Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:20)

    The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours.
    –Jonathan Edwards, Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God

    Two pieces of literature. The prophetic poetry of Jeremiah and the revivalist preaching of Jonathan Edwards. I know them both well. First let’s look at Jeremiah.

    In this beautiful passage Jeremiah channels God’s love for Ephraim. Who is Ephraim? Ephraim is Israel in the 7th century BC. More importantly, Ephraim is Israel in its worst spiritual and moral condition. Ephraim is idolatrous, adulterous, backslidden, covenant-breaking, sinful Israel. But Ephraim is still the child of God and Jeremiah reveals God’s unconditional love for sinful Ephraim.

    Centuries ahead of the full revelation of God that will come with Jesus, Jeremiah reveals the heart of God toward sinners. Toward me. Toward you. At your worst, at your most sinful, at your furthest remove from God and his will, God’s attitude toward you remains one of unwavering love. Why? God is love.

    But many Christians struggle with a deeply embedded concept (theology) of an angry, vindictive, retributive god. Somewhere along the way they picked up a Sinner’s In the Hands of an Angry God paradigm. And it has left them deeply damaged.
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    14 Comments / Christianity, Jesus, Theology /

  • March 5, 2015

    What If Jesus Addressed Congress?

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    What If Jesus Addressed Congress?
    Brian Zahnd

    The cross is shock therapy for a world addicted to solving its problems through violence. The cross shocks us into the devastating realization that our system of violence murdered God! The things hidden from the foundation of the world have now been revealed. The cross shames our ancient foundation of violence. The cross strips naked the principalities and powers. The cross tears down the façade of glory that we use to hide the bodies of slain victims.

    In the light of the cross, we are to realize that if what we have built on Cain’s foundation is capable of murdering the Son of God, then whole edifice needs to come down. In the light of the cross, our war anthems lose their luster. But this throws us into a crisis. What other alternatives are there? How else are we to arrange the world? The alternative is what Jesus is offering us when he told us that the kingdom of God is at hand. God’s way of arranging the world around love and forgiveness is within reach. If we only dare to reach out for it, we can have it. But we are so afraid. We’re not sure we can risk it. It’s so hard for us to let go of the sword and take the hand of the Crucified One. It’s so hard for us to really believe in Jesus.

    The crowd never believes in Jesus. Only the little flock that accepts its vulnerability can believe in Jesus. If you tell those rushing to war that their hatred of enemies and their plan for the organized killing of enemies is evil, the crowd will hate you. War is sacred. It lies beyond critique. To critique it is blasphemy. The crowd hates blasphemy. The crowd wants to kill blasphemers. The crowd knows that the criticism of their violence is blasphemy because they know their cause is just. They believe it. And from their perspective their cause is just. They can prove it. Both sides can prove it. Always.

    Achilles knew his cause was just and that it was perfectly legitimate to drag Hector’s body from his chariot in front of the gates of Troy in a show of grotesque triumphalism. It’s the same grotesque impulse that causes modern soldiers to pose for gruesome photos with the bodies of dead enemies. It’s literally the way of the world. But it’s not the way of the new world founded by Jesus. Jesus is not the warrior king the world is accustomed to. Jesus is not the Jewish Achilles. Jesus refused to be the violent Messiah Israel longed for. Jesus did not kill Pilate and drag the governor’s body behind his chariot. Jesus did not pose triumphantly over the dead bodies of slain Roman soldiers. Instead it was Jesus who hung naked on a tree after being put to death through a state-sponsored execution. Jesus founded his kingdom in solidarity with brutalized victims. This is the gospel, but it’s hard for us to believe in a Jesus who would rather die than kill his enemies. It’s harder yet to believe in a Jesus who calls us to take up our own cross, follow him, and be willing to die rather than kill our enemies.
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    72 Comments / A Farewell To Mars, America, Brian Zahnd, Christianity, Cross, Jesus, Kingdom, Peace, Violence, War /

  • March 2, 2015

    How Does the Church Differ From America?

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    How Does the Church Differ From America
    Brian Zahnd

    What is the church?

    Is the church a religious building with stained-glass and a steeple?
    Is the church a religious gathering that meets on Sunday mornings?
    Is the church a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit religious organization?

    I don’t want to give a quick and jaded “of course not.” There are reasons why stained-glass and steeples, Sunday gatherings and not-for-profit status have become associated with the church.

    But…

    In the end this is not what the church is.

    Maybe the church is something like this: The other way of being human (together). The way given to us by and built around Jesus Christ.

    The church is a distinct way of being human.
    Read more

    98 Comments / America, Christianity, Church, Jesus, Kingdom, Violence, War /

  • January 30, 2015

    Achilles or Immanuel?

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    Achilles or Immanuel?
    Brian Zahnd

    I just returned from seeing An Iliad at The Kansas City Repertory Theatre — a one act telling of Homer’s Iliad — and I can’t rest until I share a few thoughts…

    The eighth century BC gave the world two great poets — the Greek Homer and the Hebrew Isaiah. These two poets offer competing visions of the heroic. Homer’s epic poem The Iliad opens with these lines.

    Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles
    murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
    hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
    great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
    feasts for the dogs and birds.
    (Iliad 1–5)

    But the poet Isaiah sings a different song.

    The boots of the warrior
    And the uniforms bloodstained by war
    Will all be burned
    For unto us a Child is born
    Unto a Son is given
    And he shall be called…
    The Prince of peace
    His government and its peace
    Will never end
    (Isaiah 9:6–7)

    Read more

    11 Comments / Art, Christianity, Cross, Jesus, Nonviolence, Uncategorized, Violence, War /

  • August 13, 2014

    O To Be Open

    The-Open-Door

    O To Be Open
    Blindman at the Gate

    O to be open
    It’s what the wise ones seek
    It’s what the great souls attain

    What’s a saint?
    An Open One
    Saint Francis and Mother Teresa were
    Open
    Open to God, open to Creation, open to the Other

    We’re all born open — wide-eyed and wide open
    What’s an infant?
    An Open One
    Wonder, learning, and love come easy to a
    Child

    But then we suffer the blows
    And begin to
    Close

    By the time we’re a teen
    We’re mostly tight shut
    Happy or sad
    A clam inside a shell

    Now the task begins
    The task of a lifetime
    The task of becoming
    Open

    O to be open
    An old one open again
    Open to wonder, learning, and love
    To grow open is to grow young

    Much is against openness
    Vested interests stake much on keeping us
    Tight shut
    The talking heads of the tight shut tell us of
    Right and Wrong, Black and White, Us and Them
    Who is In and who is Out
    Their words are a slamming door
    BAM!
    Tight shut!

    To live in the world of the tight shut is called
    Certainty and security, clarity and conformity
    It’s also death
    To live there is to shrivel your soul
    To die there is—
    Well, I don’t know

    I do know that to save my soul
    I must become open
    Open to God’s all-encompassing love
    I cannot afford to slam the door
    To shut the door on “them”
    Is to lock myself in hell’s closet

    O to be open

    Where does the first crack of openness come from?
    It could come from anywhere
    A poem, a heartbreak, a sunset really seen
    A song, a sermon, a mercy freely received
    A birth, a death, a person fully loved
    Let openness get its foot in the door
    And it’ll begin to shovel in the grace

    Open to the openness
    The openness of God
    The openness of light
    The openness of love

    Life is open
    (Ever unfolding)
    Death is closed
    (A sealed tomb)

    Heaven is open
    (Its gates will never be shut)
    Hell is closed
    (Abandon all hope ye who enter)

    Jesus is the Usher of Openness
    He holds the keys of Hell and Death
    To set its prisoners free
    May he loose us and lead us into
    The Great Openness of God

    O to be open
    Read more

    10 Comments / Poetry /

  • August 6, 2014

    Christianity In the Age of Nuclear Weapons

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    Christianity In the Age of Nuclear Weapons
    Brian Zahnd

    Today is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Saturday we will mourn Nagasaki. As we remember Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the quarter of a million casualties suffered, I would like to share a few words from A Farewell To Mars.

    It’s easy to imagine that the world doesn’t really change — that it simply marches around the maypole of violence, trampling the victims into the mud same as it ever has. But as true as that may be, something has changed. We are post-something. If nothing else, we are post-1945 when the enlightenment dream of attainable utopia went up in smoke — literal smoke! — from the chimneys of Auschwitz and a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.

    After 1945 we lost our blind faith in the inevitability of human progress. A threshold was crossed, and something important changed when humanity gained possession of what previously only God possessed: the capacity for complete annihilation. In yielding to the temptation to harness the fundamental physics of the universe for the purpose of building city-destroying bombs, have we again heard the serpent whisper, “You will be like God”?

    When Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, witnessed the first atomic detonation at Los Alamos on July 16, 1945, he recalled the words of Vishnu from the Bhagavad Gita…

    “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

    When the monstrous mushroom cloud rose over the New Mexico desert, did the human race indeed become Death, the destroyer of worlds? It’s more than a legitimate question. We’ve now lived for over a generation with the most haunting post-Holocaust/Hiroshima uncertainty: Can humanity possess the capacity for self-destruction and not resort to it? The jury is still out. But this much is certain: If we think the ideas of Jesus about peace are irrelevant in the age of genocide and nuclear weapons, we have invented an utterly irrelevant Christianity!
    Read more

    3 Comments / A Farewell To Mars, Christianity, Violence, War /

  • July 17, 2014

    The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Eucharist

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    The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Eucharist
    Brian Zahnd

    Like the other Gospel writers John recounts the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed five thousand. But John adds this unique postscript:

    “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” (John 6:15)

    The crowd’s response to this “table in the wilderness” was an impulse to make Jesus king…but Jesus declined. Why? Jesus is king, he came to be king, king is what Messiah means. So why does Jesus slip away from the crowd when they want to make him king? The issue is force.

    The crowd wanted to “take him by force and make him king.” At the center of the crowd’s concept of kingship was violent force. They wanted to force Jesus to be their forceful king so he could lead their forces in an uprising of violent force against the Romans. This was antithetical to the kind of king Jesus came to be. Caesar is a crucifying king who reigns by force. Christ is the crucified king who reigns without force. Christ’s kingdom is built upon co-suffering love, not violent force.

    The crowd that wanted to force Jesus to be king was operating from the dominant paradigm of scarcity. This is the paradigm that possessed Cain to kill Abel, and it lies at the dark heart of human civilization. We are scripted to believe that reality is zero-based and that we live in a closed system.

    This paradigm of scarcity and insufficiency is the philosophy that undergirds our structures of systemic sin. We fear there won’t be enough land, water, food, oil, money, labor to go around, so we build evil structures of sinful force to guarantee “us” “ours.” We call it security. We call it defense. We call it freedom. What we don’t call it is what it is…fear. Driven by our fear of scarcity we create an organized, large-scale, slow-motion version of anarchy. A mob on a looting rampage is called anarchy. One nation looting another is called glorious conquest — but it’s just looting on a grand scale. Kings are tasked with looting our enemies on our behalf.
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    18 Comments / Eucharist, Jesus, Violence, War /

  • February 17, 2014

    My Problem With the Bible

    My Problem With the Bible
    Brian Zahnd

    I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…

    I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.

    That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.

    I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem.

    One of the most remarkable things about the Bible is that in it we find the narrative told from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the conquered, the occupied, the defeated. This is what makes it prophetic. We know that history is written by the winners. This is true — except in the case of the Bible it’s the opposite! This is the subversive genius of the Hebrew prophets. They wrote from a bottom-up perspective.
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    206 Comments / Bible, Kingdom /

  • December 11, 2013

    Merry Christmas! War is Abolished!

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    Merry Christmas! War is Abolished!
    by Brian Zahnd

    Isaiah had a dream, a God-inspired dream.
    Isaiah was a poet, a God-intoxicated poet.
    He had a Messianic dream that he turned into a prophetic poem.
    It goes like this—

    In days to come
    the mountain of the LORD’s house
    shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and shall be raised above the hills;
    all the nations shall stream to it.
    Many peoples shall come and say,
    “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
    to the house of the God of Jacob;
    that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
    For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
    and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
    He shall judge between the nations,
    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
    they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
    nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore.
    -Isaiah 2:2–4

    Swords turned into plowshares.
    Spears into pruning hooks.
    Tanks turned into tractors.
    Missile silos into grain silos.
    The study of war abandoned for learning the ways of the Lord.
    Instead of academies where we learn to make war,
    there will be universities where we learn to wage peace.
    The cynic will laugh (for lack of imagination), but this is Isaiah’s vision.

    And every Christmas we borrow another of Isaiah’s poems to celebrate the birth of the child who makes these dreams come true—

    The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
    those who live in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined…
    For all the boots of the tramping solidiers
    and all the uniforms stained in blood
    shall be burned as fuel for fire.
    For unto us a child is born,
    unto us a son given;
    the government shall be upon his shoulders;
    and he is named
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
    His government shall grow continually,
    and there shall be endless peace
    for the throne of David and his kingdom.
    He will establish and uphold it
    with justice and with righteousness
    from this time onward and forevermore.
    -Isaiah 9:2, 5–7

    Isaiah in his prophetic poems frames the Messianic hope like this:

    A Prince of Peace will establish a new kind of government, a government characterized by ever-increasing peace. Weapons of war will be transformed into instruments of agriculture. At last the nations will find their way out of the darkness of endless war into the light of God’s enduring peace.

    This is Isaiah’s hope. Christians take Isaiah’s hope and make a daring claim: Jesus is that Prince of Peace! Jesus is the one who makes Isaiah’s dreams come true. From the day of Pentecost to the present this is what Christians have claimed.
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    4 Comments / Jesus, Kingdom, Peace, Theology, Violence /
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