Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

War is Hell - Brian Zahnd

War Is Hell
Brian Zahnd

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
—Luke 13:1-5

One of the themes of Jesus’ prophetic ministry that becomes more and more prominent the closer he gets to Jerusalem is his dire warning about the impending fate of Jerusalem. In our Gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus is informed about some Galilean pilgrims who were probably involved in a political uprising against the Roman occupation and were subsequently put to death by Roman soldiers in the Temple complex — thus mingling their blood with the sacrifices. Jesus’ response is to tell them not to imagine that these Galilean victims were worse sinners than any other Galileans. Instead, Jesus says if they don’t rethink their intentions they will all perish in the same way. Jesus then brings up an incident of a recent building collapse in Jerusalem that had resulted in eighteen fatalities and comments on it by saying, “Do you think that they were more blameworthy than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! Unless you repent, you will all be destroyed in the same way.”

What is Jesus saying? Is he talking about Galileans and Judeans going to hell? Yes and no. Jesus isn’t talking about a postmortem spiritual hell, but an impending literal hell. Jesus has been calling Jerusalem into the kingdom of God and the way of peace by the practice of enemy love and radical forgiveness. But for the most part Jerusalem has rejected this message of peace, believing instead that when the time comes God will fight with them in a war of independence and help them attain freedom by killing their enemies. In response to this enormously dangerous holy war assumption, Jesus warns Jerusalem against resorting to violence by telling them that if they don’t rethink war and peace according to the kingdom of God, they’re all going to die by Roman swords and collapsing buildings.

And this is exactly what happened a generation later. After four years of violent revolution led by a cadre of false messiahs claiming that God was about to give Israel victory over Rome, General Titus and the Roman Tenth Legion marched on Jerusalem. On August 4, AD 70, after a brutal five-month siege, the Romans launched their final assault. Hell had come to the holy city. Buildings collapsed from the bombardment of catapult stones (the hundred-pound hailstones of the Apocalypse), the city was set ablaze, and hundreds of thousands of Jerusalem’s citizens were killed by Roman swords. In the end Jerusalem was reduced to a smoldering Gehenna — the garbage dump where the fires are never quenched and the maggots never die. This was when Jerusalem went to hell.

In the 21st century, the devil still tells big lies. In an age of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons capable of eradicating all human life, the way of war is still foolishly romanticized and deemed a legitimate way to shape the world. But Lent is a time to repent, to rethink, to reimagine. Today let us heed the warning of Jesus and remember that there is no way to peace…peace is the way.

Lord Jesus, save us from our diabolical fascination with the ways of war. Help us by the Holy Spirit to imagine creative ways to wage peace. Amen.

BZ

This is an excerpt from my Lenten devotional, The Unvarnished Jesus.

(Artwork is Mad Meg by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1553)

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Ascended, Not Absent by Brian Zahnd

Ascension Day. It’s the most obscure of all the major holy days on the Christian calendar. Coming forty days after Easter, it commemorates the Ascension of Christ. The Christian calendar is designed to tell the gospel story from Advent to Pentecost. But most Protestants think the gospel story can be told with Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter alone. It’s safe to say that Ascension Day (Thursday, May 25) will come and go unnoticed and uncelebrated by most American Christians. (It may have a bit more recognition in Europe where it remains a public holiday.) That Ascension day for most American Christians is just another Thursday in Spring is telling. It tells of a deficient gospel and reveals a central problem in our political theology.

Too often we seem to regard the Ascension of Christ as a kind of awkward explanation for the absence of Christ. Well, after his resurrection, Jesus lifted off for outer space and is now hanging out with God in heaven until he comes back.

No. The Ascension is not about the absence of Christ, but about the ascendancy of Christ. The ascension of Christ to the right hand of God is the ascendency, the rise, the elevation, the promotion of Christ to the position of all authority in heaven and on earth. The right hand of God is not a cosmological location, but a poetic way of saying that God has now given all authority to Christ. The ascension of Christ does not lead to the absence of Christ, but to his cosmic presence everywhere. This is why the risen Christ says, “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” In the Ascension Christ now “fills all things everywhere with himself.” There is now no place where Christ is not, and there is now domain over which Jesus is not Lord.

But that is not how most Christians have thought about the Ascension over the years. And this has had a detrimental effect upon our theology — especially our political theology. Let me explain.

If we end the gospel story of Jesus by saying… And then Jesus went off to heaven (which is why he’s not here), but someday he will come back and bring the kingdom of God… then we are free to run the world the way we want in what we assume is the absence of Christ. What this does is demote Jesus from being the Eternal Lord “seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,” to being Lord-Elect in exile. If we imagine Jesus as being off somewhere in heaven waiting to come back someday and begin his reign, then we default to the idea that Caesar needs to rule the world in his Caesar-like way in the absence of Christ. No! The Ascension is ascendency, not absence! Jesus is Lord. Now. Not Lord-Elect, not Lord-Gonna-Be, not Lord-Someday, but King of kings and Lord of lords right now!

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Brian Zahnd - Kyrie Eleison

Kyrie Eleison
Brian Zahnd

Six months ago I walked across Spain. Five hundred miles.
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Forty days and forty nights.
A full life with two full moons. Harvest and Hunter’s.
Heat and cold. Dust and rain. Wind and calm.
It was all there.
Beauty and blisters.
Ecstasy and exhaustion.
Pleasures and pains.
Mountains, forests, and plains.
Spaniards and Germans.
Americans and Russians.
Brazilians and Peruvians.
Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese.
They were all there.
I was all there.
Every step of the way.
A million, three hundred thousand — give or take a few.

I saw my life. The Camino was my life. My life compressed to forty days and forty nights.
A five hundred mile walk of life. A precise (or at least an approximate) reflection.

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The Cults of Caesar and Christ - Brian Zahnd

The original name for what would eventually became known as Christianity was “the Way.” You won’t find “Christianity” in the Bible, but you will find “the Way” seven times in the book of Acts. If you had asked a baptized follower of Jesus during the first century, “What is your religion?,” she most likely would have replied, “I belong to the Way.” This is what the Apostle Paul said in his hearing before the Roman governor Felix: “I admit that I follow the Way, which they call a cult.” (Acts 24:14)

The common life of following Jesus together was called the Way, not because it was the way to heaven (the afterlife was never the emphasis), but because they had come to believe that in his death and resurrection Jesus had inaugurated a new way of life. Because the lifestyle of the Way was such a radical departure from the way of the Roman Empire, it is no surprise that people viewed the Way with great suspicion and often maligned it as a dangerous cult.

And there is a sense in which the Way was a cult — not in the abusive or heretical way we often use the word, but in its more technical sense. Literally, a cult is a system of religious devotion directed toward a particular figure. It’s worth noting that “culture” comes from the word “cult.” Culture is derived from how and what people worship. Anthropologically speaking, religion and culture are nearly synonymous.

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The Sermon On the Mount and Caesar’s Sword - Brian Zahnd

The Sermon On the Mount and Caesar’s Sword
Brian Zahnd

As I call Christians to the practices of radical forgiveness and nonviolent peacemaking that Jesus embodied and most clearly sets forth in the Sermon on the Mount, I often encounter Christians using Romans 13:1–7 as a kind of rebuttal. (Though whom they’re rebutting — me or Jesus — isn’t always clear.) Their argument goes something like this:

“God has ordained the government and has given it the sword to execute vengeance; therefore we cannot be opposed to war because Romans 13 sanctions ‘Just War.’”

Usually this argument is given to me in the context of advocating that the United States government should wage total war on ISIS and other enemies of America, and that the church should celebrate this.

But this is an egregious misinterpretation and misapplication of what Paul is talking about. Let me explain.

First of all, are we really comfortable with using Paul to trump Jesus? That is what’s being done! Why is it that we are so prone to interpret Jesus in the light of a particular reading of Paul? (A reading of Paul that I — and many others — would argue is a conditioned misreading of Paul.) Why not take the Sermon on the Mount at face value and insist that any interpretation of Paul must line up with Jesus? Why not center our reading of Scripture with Jesus? I’m quite sure Paul would be entirely happy with this approach!

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"Cyrus Candidate" or Charismatic Catastrophe? - Brian Zahnd

Note: The rise of Donald Trump to the presidency has been accompanied by a flurry of prophetic pronouncements, describing him as God's 'Cyrus Candidate," who has the "Breaker Anointing" -- God's "Trumpet" to lead America to triumph. These alleged prophecies condemn opponents of Trump as dupes of the "Principalities" ruled by a "Jezebel spirit" and the "Crocodile media." The linked video is illustrative of this trend in American Charismatic Christendom. This article below is Pastor Brian Zahnd's response:  

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Most of these people cannot be saved. You know what I mean. They've gone inch by inch into the tar pit of empire worship until they're in up to their necks. There's just no way out. A Damascus Road moment maybe; but few will have such an experience. 

 

It's a great tragedy that has fallen upon the American evangelical/charismatic church. The handwriting is on the wall. It's the "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" moment in American conservative Christianity. 

 

There are really only two sins: idolatry (the rejection of the great command) and injustice (the rejection of the second command). Injustice springs from idolatry. When we worship an idol, we are formed in the ways of injustice. And injustice always carries the seeds of eventual self-destruction...even in an empire. Or especially in an empire! The Bible calls this the judgment of God. John the Beloved said, "Children, beware of idols," because idolatry always has dire consequences. 

 

For all their talk about Jesus, God, the Bible, most American evangelicals are so infected with the idolatry of empire that they're incapable of discernment or repentance. Younger people, yes. People of color, yes. But many older white conservative Christians have tied their faith to their flag in a Gordian Knot. The sword of the spirit could cut the knot, but their teachers (Falwell, Graham, Dobson, Hagee, Copeland, White, et. al.) (mis)used the Scriptures to tie the knot! It's nearly a hopeless situation.

 

Still we preach. Those with ears will hear. And if they can hear, they can liberate their faith from the Babylonian captivity of nationalism, discovering, perhaps for the first time, the city that John saw. Once we really perceive the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, the peaceable kingdom of Christ, it's not that hard to sell our patriotic idols to obtain the pearl of great price.

Mercy in a Mean Time - Brian Zahnd

My father was a political man; a lawyer and a judge. He was an ideological conservative. He was also known for his kindness and mercy. My dad died in 2009. At his funeral a man approached me and said, “Your father sent me to prison for armed robbery. I came to his funeral today to honor him. He always treated me with respect and dignity, and he dealt with me as mercifully as the law would allow.” I don’t know how often a felon attends the funeral of a judge who sent him to prison in order to pay his respects, but I would guess it’s not too often. My point is that my father was a political conservative who never felt his conservatism was in conflict with his Christian commitment to kindness and mercy.

Which is why I am so baffled and grieved by what seems to be a turn toward meanness in the name of conservatism. I’m also quite sure that my father, were he alive today, would be just as baffled and grieved.

But as a pastor my real concern is for Christians who embrace meanness simply because they see it modeled by culture war celebrities like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. This is a tragedy. Philosophically I have no intrinsic objection to ideological conservatism. (Personally, I don’t bother to place myself anywhere on the Left/Right political grid.) But for followers of Jesus the manner in which we hold our politics must be compatible with the spirit of Jesus. And, yes, I know very well that ideological liberalism can be just as mean and intolerant. But my concern is for the community of evangelicals with whom I have been deeply associated for more than forty years. Many American evangelicals now seem to be infected with a meanness contracted from their uncritical commitment to contemporary conservatism — a meanness that is incompatible with Christianity.

 

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Deconstruction or Reconstruction - Brian Zahnd

In describing my journey of rethinking Christianity over the past twelve years I’ve used a couple of metaphors. One I call “End of the Line.” I first used this metaphor when speaking to the staff of Charisma Publishing six years ago. Later I wrote an op-ed piece on this metaphor which was published in Charisma magazine in May of 2010. In that piece I introduced the metaphor like this:

“I’m reminded of the times I’ve been in Paris and traveling across the city on the metro system. If I want to travel from Notre Dame to Montmartre I can’t do it on one train. At some point I have to disembark, find the correct platform and catch another train. If you’ve never done it before it can be confusing. This may be a prophetic analogy for the confusion evangelicals feel in the first part of the 21st century. We’ve reached a terminus. We need to find another platform. We need to catch a new train. And we’re not quite sure what it is. But of this we can be quite certain: the train we have been on will not carry Christianity into the 21st century in a compelling and engaging way — no matter how enthusiastically we sing ‘give me that old time religion’ while we sit on a motionless train. What is this train stuck at the station? I think it can be summed up as ‘Christianity characterized by protest.’ We need to face the reality that the protest train has come to the end of the line.”

The other metaphor is “Water To Wine” — a metaphor I set forth in a memoir published earlier this year.

Finding the right platform to catch the right train to carry Christianity into the 21st century. 

Watered-down consumer Christianity being transformed into the rich wine of a robust Christianity.

I like these metaphors.

Which brings me to a way of talking about rethinking Christianity that I don’t like and my suggestion of a third metaphor.

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The Jesus Revolution - Brian Zahnd

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know, we all want to change the world
—The Beatles

During the heady days of the Jesus Movement there was a pervasive conviction among the young people involved that we were part of something revolutionary. Our lives had been radically transformed by Jesus and we wanted to relive the Book of Acts. Church as usual was not an option for us. We weren’t interested in being conservative or playing it safe. We carried a strong counterculture ethos. We saw Jesus as a revolutionary and we wanted to be revolutionaries too. We shared much of the theology of conservative evangelicals, but our vibe was decidedly counterculture, with our long hair, patched blue jeans, and tie-dyed t-shirts. We preached on the streets, in the bars, and at rock concerts. 

More significantly we had inherited a distrust of government and a disdain for war from the Vietnam era. We saw a Christian critique of war as being faithful to the revolutionary Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. We had no interest in serving the political causes of either Republicans or Democrats. We saw Christianity as a revolutionary movement that was incompatible with power-hungry political parties. We wanted to change the world in the name of Jesus; we weren’t interested in who was the current resident of the White House or the composition of Congress in the name of politics.

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The Charm of Beauty in an Ugly Age - Brian Zahnd

Artwork by Justyna Kopania

“It is the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts.”
–Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

It’s an ugly time right now. Especially in the public discourse in the land in which I live. Politicized and polarized, public discourse has devolved into the polemical napalm of give-no-inch, take-no-prisoners, burn-it-all-down flaming rhetoric. Ugly “Us versus Them” ideology goosesteps across the American stage. Hysterical screams of fear-infused hatred are heard in this nation of immigrants.

Deport ’em all!
Build a wall!
No refugees!
Don’t tread on me!

I was in New York last week and saw the Statue of Liberty. I think she had a tear in her eye…or maybe it was just in my eye. The tired and poor, the wretched refuse, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free…are basically given the finger these days. For the sake of honesty maybe it’s time to commission a new statue.

Are we entering a dark age where the only thing we can build is a wall and where nothing is sacred but a gun? I wonder.

Yet it’s not for America that my heart is most heavy these days, but for the church. Are we just a religious version of our ugly age or can we actually be the alternative counterculture of Christ? Can we develop enough spiritual maturity to be a Christlike community of radical love and mercy? We must! If not, we will become as superfluous as a Blockbuster video rental store…and suffer the same fate.

If the church in America is to recover any relevance, it won’t be through a public emphasis on the true (though there is a place for Christian apologetics), and it won’t be through a public emphasis on the good (though there is a place for Christian ethics), but through a public emphasis on the long-neglected third prime virtue — the beautiful. What we desperately need is a renaissance of Christian aesthetics. In a post-Christian culture adverse to truth claims and suspicious of assertions to a superior morality, it is still the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts. If we can be so formed in Christ that we begin to live beautiful lives, we will gain a new hearing; if not, we deserve to be ignored.

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The Faceless White Giant - Brian Zahnd

 

The seeds of an Angry God theology were sown early in my life and they came in the form of cartoons — the infamous gospel tracts by J.T. Chick. With titles like This Was Your Life, Somebody Goofed, The Awful Truth, and Are Roman Catholics Christians?, Chick tracts usually end with everyone but fundamentalist Christians being hurled into what looks like the fires of Mount Doom by a merciless God depicted as a faceless white giant.

A well-meaning but unhelpful Sunday School teacher gave me a Chick tract when I was twelve and those garish images with their ludicrous theology burned their way into my adolescent imagination. I had met the Angry God! And I was afraid of this God. Who wouldn’t be? Think about it. In the Gospel According to J.T. Chick, if you don’t believe just right, an omnipotent giant will consign you to eternal torture!

Fortunately, I could believe in Jesus and be saved from his Father — the Angry God. But then I heard a revival preacher ask a disturbing question: “Do you believe in Jesus in your heart or just in your head?” He went on to say that if we believed in Jesus in our head but not our heart we would miss heaven by eighteen inches and wind up in hell forever! More anxiety-inducing theology! Now I had to decide if I had faith in my heart or if I was on my way to hell because I only believed in Jesus with my head. That’s a lot of pressure for a twelve-year-old…or anyone.

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The War of the Lamb - Brian Zahnd

Those who want to hold onto a primitive vision of a violent and retributive God often cite the white horse rider passage from Revelation. They will say something like this: “Jesus came the first time as a lamb, but he’s coming back the second time as a lion.” (Despite the fact that no lion is ever seen in Revelation — the lion is the Lamb!) By this they mean the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels is going to mutate into what they fantasize is the hyper-violent Jesus of Revelation.

Sadly, the proponents of this flawed interpretation seem to prefer their imagined violent Jesus of the future over the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels. At a basic level they essentially see the Bible like this: After a long trajectory away from the divine violence of the Old Testament culminating in Jesus renouncing violence and calling his followers to love their enemies, the Bible in its final pages abandons a vision of peace and nonviolence as ultimately unworkable and closes with the most vicious portrayal of divine violence in all of Scripture.

In this reading of Revelation, the way of peace and love which Jesus preached during his life and endorsed in his death, is rejected for the worn-out way of war and violence. When we literalize the militant images of Revelation we arrive at this conclusion: In the end even Jesus gives up on love and resorts to violence. Tragically, those who refuse to embrace the way of peace taught by Jesus use the symbolic war of Revelation 19 to silence the Sermon on the Mount.

This kind of hermeneutic has disastrous implications; it mutes Jesus’ message of peace and forgiveness. When we literalize the ironic and symbolic images employed by John of Patmos, we illegitimately use Revelation to give license for our own hellish violence. We reason, if Jesus is going to kill two hundred million people upon his return, what does it matter if we kill one hundred thousand people at Hiroshima?

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Armageddon - Brian Zahnd

Tel-Megiddo

The second Sunday after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I preached a sermon entitled “The Road To Armageddon.” During those days of grief and rage when I should have preached the gospel of peace and forgiveness, I instead resorted to the hackneyed trope of dispensationalism that claims a mega-war in the Middle East must occur before Jesus can return.

I’ve repented and made amends for that pastoral failure, but the fact remains that my mistake was made possible by the terrible eschatology I had inherited. The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series are only the best known of countless books that have popularized the worst possible reading of Revelation.

The phenomenon of modern dispensationalism with its endorsement of supposed divine and unavoidable hyper-violence is such an ugly and perverse eschatology that it’s unfit to be called Christian. A Christian eschatology of peace and hope has been supplanted by a dreadful eschatology of violence and doom. An eschatology that insists there must be more wars, more famines, more earthquakes, and more epidemics before Jesus can return is not a Christian eschatology. The Apostle Paul calls the glorious appearing of Christ the “blessed hope,” but there’s nothing blessed about another war or global catastrophe.

Yet hoping for “wars and rumors of wars” is the predicament the adherents of dispensational eschatology find themselves in. According to their system (based in an utterly mistaken reading of the Olivet Discourse and the book of Revelation), Jesus cannot return until a series of global catastrophes culminating in World War III occurs first. This leads to the deplorable phenomenon of Christians secretly (or not so secretly) hoping for another war and finding a reason to rejoice over the latest catastrophe. An earthquake kills 100,000 people in China and somewhere in America a Christian smiles and says, “Praise the Lord. It’s a sign of the end times. Jesus is coming soon!” An eschatology that rejoices over earthquakes and causes people to want another war in the Middle East is not a Christian eschatology! Christian hope is for the peace of New Jerusalem, not the horrors of Armageddon.

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The Perils of Caged and Free Range Christians - Brad Jersak

 

Top news in American Christianity

 

The top news item in American Christianity over the past few years continues to be the ‘nones’ (non-affiliated) phenomenon. Is the exodus of churchgoers a blessed deliverance from bondage or a cursed wandering in the wilderness? How we see it depends on one’s perspective, experience and observations … and it’s going to warrant ongoing examination. But there’s no skirting the stubborn fact that tens of millions no longer and likely will never return to the institutional church as they knew it.

 

For my part, I note that both churchgoers and nones can get pretty defensive and contemptuous of the other. That’s an instinctive response when we feel judged, however unproductive. Perhaps a better starting point would be an examination and admission that both paths have their challenges, and most especially when judging another’s journey obscures one’s own blind spots. So let’s take Paul’s words to heart:

“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4 ESV).

Indeed, I propose that passing judgment on others rather than being mindful of my own steps creates conditions as perilous to faith as the life of a chicken, whether caged or free range!

The Gardener - Brian Zahnd

Christ Appears to Mary Magdalene as a Gardener, unknown artist, c. 1500

 

“Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there,
but she did not know it was Jesus…supposing him to be the gardener.”
–John 20:14, 15

The first person to see the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. It happened in a garden. At first, Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. A logical mistake. Or a prophetic mistake. Or perhaps not a mistake at all.

On Good Friday, Jesus was buried in a garden. A garden is a place to cultivate and grow living things. An appropriate place for Jesus to be buried. A few days before his crucifixion Jesus had said, “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) On Holy Saturday, the Son of God was a holy seed sown in a peaceful garden. On Easter Sunday, the garden brought forth the first fruits of resurrection — “Jesus Christ declared to be the Son of God by resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:4)

The first seed raised by God in the garden of resurrection became the gardener. When Mary Magdalene “supposed him to be the gardener,” she was exactly right! Jesus is now the gardener of resurrection, cultivating new life in all who believe. The first Adam was a gardener who failed in his task and the world became a wasteland of war and sin. But the second Adam will succeed in his task — Christ will restore the ruined garden. With Christ as the gardener of new creation we have a hopeful eschatology.

Instead of the thorn bush shall come up the juniper;
Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle.
–Isaiah 55:13

“On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be there anymore.” –Revelation 22:2, 3

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The Cross as Shock Therapy - Brian Zahnd

"The cross is shock therapy for a world addicted to solving its problems through violence." 

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 the 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.

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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? Godis 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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Review of Brian Zahnd's 'Water to Wine' - by Brad Jersak

Vintage Zahnd!

For those who are late to the game and wondering who Brian Zahnd is and where he's coming from, Water to Wine is a good place to start. You'll be able to experience his long faith journey in these memoirs of a master storyteller and wordsmith. The book marries spiritual autobiography with the fine wine of sage wisdom. I don't doubt that Brian is the best preacher in America, but in this book, you'll also witness the thoughts, dreams and prayers that ensure his oratory is far more than rhetoric. Readers will get also taste of this theological artisan's hand at parables and poetry ... he even provides a playlist of songs that have moved him. But don't mistake this accessibility for watered-down pop Christianity: Brian is as fine a biblical theologian as you'll find and this comes clear throughout these pages. As the subtitle suggests, this is "some of [his] story," but a fine introduction into his other books and podcasts ... and a way to join him on the trail to this point. A keeper!

Walking the World as the Pardon of God - Brian Zahnd

My father died in 2009. He was one of the wisest and kindest men I’ve ever known. L. Glen Zahnd was a judge and at his funeral a man he had once sent to prison for armed robbery came up to me and said, “I’m here today to honor your father. In his capacity as judge he sent me to prison, but he always treated me with respect and kindness. He was as merciful as he could be and he strove to preserve my dignity.” My father was like that — he was a man full of grace. He spent his last few months in a Franciscan nursing home called La Verna. It’s named after the place where St. Francis of Assisi received the wounds of Christ. In his final years my father suffered from dementia and could barely communicate. But whenever he was asked if he would like to receive Communion, he always managed to say yes. Even as his mind and body were failing him, this man known throughout the community for his kindness wanted to maintain his connection to grace.

G.K. Chesterton suggested that Saint Francis walked the world like the pardon of God. It’s an apt summary of the saint’s life. Francis embodied the grace of God as he walked the hills of Umbria barefoot in his patched brown habit and simple rope belt, preaching to birds and bishops. His life was a kind of performance art protest against the pervasive sins of thirteenth-century Italy — pride, avarice, corruption, and violence. Yet sinners themselves were drawn to Francis. How else do we explain why, in his lifetime, forty thousand people joined his rigorous order of radical Christianity emphasizing poverty, simplicity and humility? Like Jesus, Francis could uncompromisingly denounce systemic sin, while extending genuine compassion to the people caught in its pernicious web. To be a prophetic witness against systems of sin and a preacher of God’s pardon for sinners at the same time is the peculiar grace at which Francis excelled and to which the church is called.

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Grape and Grain - Brian Zahnd

In the mystery of the Eucharist God in Christ chooses to make himself present to humanity by ordinary elements. Through grain and grape we find Christ present in the world. But it’s not unprocessed grain and grape that we find on the Communion table, it’s bread and wine. Grain and grape come from God’s good earth, but bread and wine are the result of human industry. Bread and wine come about through a cooperation of the human and the divine. And herein lies a beautiful mystery. If grain and grape made bread and wine can communicate the body and blood of Christ, this has enormous implications for all legitimate human labor and industry.

The mystery of the Eucharist does nothing less than make all human labor sacred. For there to be the holy sacrament of Communion there must be grain and grape, wheat fields and vineyards, bakers and winemakers. Human labor becomes a sacrament. A farmer planting wheat. A vintner tending vines. A miller grinding wheat. A winemaker crushing grapes. A woman baking bread. A man making wine. A trucker hauling bread. A grocer selling wine. Who knows what bread or what wine might end up on the Communion table as the body and blood of Christ.

This is where we discover the holy mystery that all labor necessary for human flourishing is sacred. A farmer plowing his field, a worker in a bakery, a trucker hauling goods, a grocer selling wares, all are engaged in work that is just as sacred as the priest or pastor serving Communion on Sunday. The Eucharist pulls back the curtain to reveal a sacramental world.

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Silence, please - Brian Zahnd

Ours is an angry and vociferous age. We’re constantly subjected to the noise of charged political rhetoric — the wearying din of the culture wars. Too often Sunday morning can be little more than a religious echo of this same noise. But shouldn’t Sunday be a Christian Sabbath, a time to quiet our souls and receive the gift of silence? What if, instead of being another contributor to this clatter, our churches became a shelter from the storm offering respite to shell-shocked souls?

Silence belongs to an earlier age. Ours is an age of noise. With our technological progress has come the din of modernity. With the advent of digital social media has come the white noise of everyone “expressing themselves.” Silence is now a precious commodity, a scarce resource hard to come by. Sure, we can pray anywhere, anytime, but to pray well, to pray in a way that restores the soul, we need to find some quiet places. This is what we find appealing in the holy hush of the cathedral, the sacred stillness of the monastery, the reverent quiet of the woods.

When birdsong and gentle footfall replace the shrill rancor of 24-7 news and the inane blare from five-hundred channels, the soul has a chance to heal. Without some intentional silence the weary soul is a prisoner being slowly worked to death in a merciless gulag of endless noise. The always-posted sign at the entrance of the tourist-attracting cathedrals is perhaps a desperate plea from the soul of modern man — Silence Please.

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