Category: The Jesus Path

And Now a Word from CQOD

CQOD is the “Christian Quote of the Day,” an email I receive each morning with quotes from Christian writers ancient and contemporary, well know and obscure. (You can also find their Facebook page as well as their web site.) Recently one quote caught my attention and gave me pause for thought. I offer it now in the hopes that the quote for the day can bring forth in you a thought for living.

   “Thank You for home (although we hold the deed),
    Our acre, trees, and flowers (ours by choice),
    Our faithful dog and cat (though it’s agreed
    No one can own the latter), each good book
    (A gift, or purchased), all else we foresaw
    That we should cherish, and have made to look
    Ours by possession (nine points of the law).”
   
    With what presumption have we called them ours,
    And even felt unselfish when we shared them–
    When, if the truth be known, they have been Yours
    From the beginning, Lord! You have prepared them
    For us to borrow, using as our own:
    So thank You, Father, for this generous loan.
    … Elaine V. Emans

The Ecclesiology of Inigo Montoya

Ecclesiology: noun, \ i-ˌklē-zē-ˈä-lə-jē, plural ecclesiologies. The meanings given refer either to the study of the doctrine of the Church, or oftentimes the study of church adornments and furnishing. It’s the former definition I’m about in this post and this is where the waters get muddy to the point of opaqueness. There seems to be a nearly infinite number of ecclesiologies floating about in Christian circles. Some of them refer to forms of church government, some to church membership, some to forms of worship. Lately I’ve been reflecting on a rather different approach to ecclesiology, that of Inigo Montoya. If you don’t know who he is, read the next paragraph; if you do, skip that and read on.

In the fall of 1987, the movie The Princess Bride hit the theatres and soon became a cult hit with a number of memorable lines. Perhaps the most frequently repeated came from Mandy Patinkin in the role of the swordsman Inigo Montoya. The leader of the outlaw group (Wallace Shawn as Vizzini) keeps responding to every unexpected event with the word “inconceivable!” Eventually Inigo Montoya confronts Vizzini: “Inconceivable? You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The useful thing about Inigo’s line about misusing the word “inconceivable” is that so many terms will do just as well, such as: “Church? You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” In reading the New Testament to examine the direct and indirect references to the Church led me to the conclusion that the first definition of Church against which all other uses must be tested is that Church is a community. It is not the leadership, though leaders are obviously part of that community. Nor is it buildings, nor denominations nor any other of the manifold uses of the word church in our common speech.

Perhaps a better way of phrasing it is that many of the uses of the word church may well be accurate but at the same time when addressing the question “What is the church?” those uses are at best misleading and at worst, useless. I am not offering a definitive answer to that question, only suggesting that a) the question is important and b) that the answer may be more complex and challenging than we think.

I know that this questioning puts me at odds with my own tradition, and in fact with centuries of consensus. From An Outline of the Faith in the Book of Common Prayer:
Q. How is Prayer: Church described in the Bible?
A. The Church is described as the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head and of which all baptized persons are members….

Since the Reformation there have been alternative descriptions offered, each of which can make some appeal to the Bible for support. While I lean towards the description from the Book of Common Prayer my concern is that a quick acceptance of that or any of the alternatives pulls us away from the Biblical emphasis on how the Church functions (or fails to function) as a community.

That’s enough for now. Next (maybe) I’ll share my reflections on how that community is supposed to function and what that means for the way the culture of religion helps or hinders us.

The End of Lent

I wrote the article below for our March newsletter in the parish. The title referred to Easter as either merely the end of Lent or the beginning of new creation. After publication it did occur to me that “The End of Lent” had one other level of meaning, i.e., the purpose or destiny of Lent. After all, we need constant reminder that the disciplines of the spiritual life are not for making us feel better about ourselves or to make us more religious persons. Instead they are to connect us so deeply with God that our deeds of mercy become more than human good intentions but rather channels through which God’s healing grace and justice enter our broken and benighted world.

All of the month of March falls in the season of Lent, including all of Holy Week. Our focus for Lent 2018 has been on a congregational challenge to practice spiritual disciplines in a program called 10 Brave Christians. Response has been heartening as we have distributed nearly 100 of the program booklets. The real test for us is how many of us persevere through the program.

In the meantime, the society in which we live and move continues with its disturbing behavior in mass slayings, sexual harassment and exploitation, angry squawking, finger pointing, fake news and outright lies. Given the inundation of bad news it can certainly seem that a church like Trinity running a program like 10 Brave Christians, is living in denial or “so heavenly minded that it is of no earthly good.”

Part of the problem in understanding how our program addresses the crying needs of our world springs from a misunderstanding of what the Resurrection of Jesus means. As we prepare to celebrate the Feast of His Resurrection on April 1st it might be helpful to change the way we think of that Feast from being a glorious conclusion to the end of Lent to seeing it as a glorious beginning to a season of new life and new hope.

First of all, we need to grasp that the Resurrection of Jesus was not the mere resuscitation of a corpse. Had that been the case, while it might have provided some comfort to the disciples, it would have left the human situation exactly as it was before the crucifixion. Resurrection is the beginning of a new creation built of the same material involved in the first creation. Jesus appears suddenly in the midst of a locked room, but invites Thomas to touch his substantial body. He has, according to Paul a soma pneumatikon, a spiritual body, yet he eats substantial food in the presence of his disciples. This Resurrected person is something new in human history, something that the evolutionary history of humankind cannot account for. The Resurrected Jesus does not come up through human history, he breaks into human history to launch a new humanity.

But the real misunderstanding we Christians have about the Resurrection is that the effect of the Resurrection is only vertical. That is to say, because Jesus died for us and rose again we can have our sins forgiven and be with him in heaven when we die. That much may be true, but it is distorted by the omission of the horizontal effect of the Resurrection. Because of our baptism and through the indwelling of God’s Spirit in us, the new creation is at work in and through us in our benighted world, in all our works and words done in Christ. Those last two words, in Christ, are essential to the new creation working through us. Any Christian, no matter how sincere, who operates solely by his or her own good will and effort makes as much or as little impact as the operations of any person of good will, of any faith or of none. When we acknowledge our own powerlessness to effect substantial change and, with empty hands, invite the Spirit of God to work through us, then the power of the new creation is let loose in otherwise ordinary deeds and words.

Thus, the Risen Life of Jesus moves through us to affect all that we do in our world. Our cooperative work with God’s good purposes is honed and enhanced through our intentional connection with the Risen Lord in regular disciplines like 10 Brave Christians and our Trinity Way of Life. The work God enables us to do and the words God gives us to speak do much to thwart evil in our times, even though we may not know what might have otherwise happened. That work and those words also release much good and healing in our world though we may not directly see the results.

This may all seem a bit much to keep in mind as we struggle to keep Lent in an arrhythmic and frantic culture. But it makes all the difference in whether Easter Day is merely the end of Lent or a launching of God’s redemption in the normal spheres of our lives. This year, April 1st may be a day when the foolishness of God again proves wiser than human wisdom. Or it could be just another April Fool’s Day. That’s pretty much up to us.

The Two Kingdoms and the Problem with Kings

After writing about the two kingdoms our church celebrated the feast of Christ the King – the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent. The problem with the concept of the two kingdoms is that we are so far removed from kings and realms that it often seems unreal, almost mythical. But the bigger problem is that the kingdom of which Jesus is king makes no sense to our concepts of sovereignty and power – and it didn’t make sense to Jesus’ contemporaries either.

The images of Christ as King don’t really work for a group of 21st century American disciples.  There are two primary reasons for this and the first is that kingship, at least as the ancient world understood it, is something we rejected 240 years ago and is now relegated to quaint European customs or fairy tales. We may know something of the absolute monarchs of history but very few of our modern dictators come close to the atmosphere and authority of kingship as it was known long ago. To proclaim Christ as king therefore, seems a bit unreal, divorced from the substance of our daily life. We might call today the feast of Christ the benevolent dictator but aside from its awkwardness we only move from unreal to unpleasant. But even if we could grasp the ancient view of kingship and present Christ as king in a way that might appeal to our desire for order and for justice, we run into a second and more difficult problem.

The way that Jesus is presented as king in the Gospels made as little sense to the people of the first century as it does to the people of the 21st. For instance, let’s look at the three presentations of Jesus as king that is used in the three year cycles of the Revised Common Lectionary. On November 26 of this year we completed the first cycle, Year A, so I’ll push that one off until the end. If we jump ahead to the third year, Year C, we have a story of Jesus suffering a public and humiliating execution. Crucifixion was known for its cruelty, a slow tortuous death.

The Roman’s didn’t mess about. They had nailed a piece of wood to the cross that read, contemptuously, “This is the King of the Jews.” In doing this they mocked not only the one they were executing but the whole Jewish people. “Here is your king,” the Roman’s proclaimed, “and see what we can do to him.” Since it was more efficient to do multiple executions the Romans also crucified two criminals. In their agony one criminal calls out “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And that’s it for Year C. Jesus is nailed to a cross with a sign proclaiming “This is the king of the Jews.” The Roman soldiers mock him saying “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” A criminal pleads for Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom.” None of this makes the slightest bit of sense to any person of that time with any idea of what being king means, particularly for any Jew hoping that God will send them a king to deliver them from Roman occupation.

Year B, the second cycle that began on December 3, doesn’t improve the situation. Here in John’s Gospel we come in on Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, interrogating Jesus. Without going into detail, Pilate despises the Jews and particularly the Jewish leadership. He suspects he is being used by these leaders to get rid of someone who is threatening their authority. However, the charge is that Jesus is claiming to be the king of the Jews and that, from a Roman point of view, is treason. His conversation with Jesus is a study in failure to communicate.

When asked point blank whether he is King, Jesus answers that “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world’s order of things. If it did, my men would have fought to keep me from being arrested by the Judeans. But my kingship does not come from here.”[1]

In this response there are echoes of a rebuke that Jesus gave to his disciples when they were debating about what important positions they would hold when Jesus became king and restored nationhood to Israel: Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”[2]

This brings us back to the reading from Year A of the cycle where we have something at last that sounds like kingship as we and the people of the first century might imagine it. Though all is not as it appears.

Take that opening phrase: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.” To us this theme is familiar only because we’ve heard the story before. But those who heard it for the first time also found it familiar. For any Jew who had hopes for liberation and vindication of Israel, this was a favorite scene from the Book of Daniel when the God of Israel overthrows the Gentile kingdoms. But the vision continues: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”[3]

So when Jesus begins his story his audience immediately connects with an image of final triumph. But his story takes a turn. There is indeed judgment and vindication. But the vindication is of the hungry and thirsty, the foreigner and the destitute, the sick and the prisoner. And the judgment is on those who failed to see that in serving those they would have been serving their king. It seems at last, that even the king-like story that Jesus tells is inextricably tied to his rebuke to his ambitious disciples.

We are faced then with a hard challenge. Our culture – our economic culture, our political culture, our entertainment culture, our social culture – the ocean of human values in which we all swim is a culture that has everything to do with Caesar’s approach to power and almost nothing to do with the kingdom that Jesus inaugurates. For 20 centuries Christians have tried to control it or use it only to find ourselves subverted by it and becoming what we were meant to heal. The only way to heal our culture is not to go to war with it but to subvert it by refusing dominance and instead offering service, to return blessing wherever we encounter cursing, care for those whom Jesus identifies in his story.

It is true that Jesus will indeed return and establish finally what he has begun in his apprentices. But it is also true that Jesus is already king and is even now subverting Caesar’s dominance by agents like us who heal, feed, protect and bless. Our goal is not to overthrow those in power but by our words and deeds, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to show them a more excellent way.

[1] The quote of John 18:36 is taken from the paraphrase, The Complete Jewish Bible. Though a paraphrase it is an accurate reflection of the meaning of the text.
[2] Mark 10:42-45
[3] Daniel 7:13-14

A Tale of Two Kingdoms

Pretty much all I write about in this forum has a fundamental assumption that can tie a number of disparate musings into a connected thread. One might call it my way of looking at the world. In fact, it is the troublesome word “world” that strikes near the heart of the matter.

In the New Testament the use of the word world most often translates a Greek term: kosmos. Although kosmos has come into our language as cosmos, its original meaning referred to an orderly arrangement, even a decoration. By implication it could refer to the whole created order, but that included the inhabitants of the world and the way those inhabitants organized life, including moral organization which could encompass politics, business or the whole value system of human societies. Because of the breadth of possible meaning, the New Testament is ambiguous in its application of the term. In the letter of James, we read that “friendship with the world is enmity with God.” But, famously, the Gospel of John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” There is one other use of the term world that further illustrates the ambiguity.

In John’s Gospel there is a recounting of a conversation between Jesus and the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate. When Pilate challenges Jesus about the accusations the Jewish authorities have lodged against him, the most common translation of Jesus’ reply goes like this: Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.” (John 18:36) But taking the term kosmos as orderly arrangement, a paraphrase called the Complete Jewish Bible gives this rendition: Yeshua answered, “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world’s order of things. If it did, my men would have fought to keep me from being arrested by the Judeans. But my kingship does not come from here.”

Thus, the reply of Jesus draws an immediate contrast between the order of things that Pilate knows and a different arrangement from which Jesus draws his authority. The example Jesus uses is the example of armed resistance. That is the behavior Pilate (and Caesar) recognizes. That is why Pilate cannot seem to grasp what Jesus is saying. In Caesar’s kingdom, Jesus simply doesn’t make sense.

And there we have the two kingdoms face to face. On the one hand, there is Caesar’s kingdom. We know that kingdom well. It is the arrangement of things that governs human life across the globe. It is the system of government, business, education, politics and social groups of all sizes in all cultures. If you have ever had the pleasure of engaging in church politics whether in a congregation or a convention, it is painfully obvious that churches more often than not, order themselves according to the rules of Caesar’s kingdom.

Some time ago a wise priest discouraged me from invoking Robert’s Rules of Order to govern church meetings. He pointed out that the origin of that protocol was to handle conflict. It assumes conflict. And when there is none, invoking those rules can occasionally create conflict. Robert’s Rules of Order are tailor made for Caesar’s kingdom.

The alternative to Caesar’s kingdom is, of course, the kingdom of God, even though God’s church all too often can’t seem to tell the difference. This second kingdom is the one that Jesus announces as he begins his ministry. Jesus announces that this kingdom is near, is at hand, is in our midst. This last comment (Luke 17:21) is often translated as the kingdom being within or among, but in your midst is a reading more consistent with Jesus’ other teachings on the kingdom. One commentator notes that: “The whole language of the kingdom of heaven being within men, rather than men being within the kingdom, is modern”

Perhaps there is no other clearer passage about the orderly arrangement (kosmos) of God’s kingdom than Jesus’ rebuke to his disciples as they were arguing who would be the highest officials in the kingdom Jesus was proclaiming. It is best to take the whole passage which gives the setting:

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to [Jesus], “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:35-45)

I have neither the qualifications nor the capacity to do a thorough exegesis of the contrast of the two kingdoms. Instead I want to underline that there are two kingdoms, that one of them, God’s kingdom, is at work in the midst of Caesar’s both undercutting its legitimacy and healing the wounds it causes. All else I write about blessing, priesthood or any other aspect of spiritual formation flows from my understanding of that reality.

The Common Path

My last posting described in a small part the Jesus path, the counter-intuitive path Jesus choses to fulfill a vision in which one “like a son of man” is given authority, glory and sovereign power. The Jesus path didn’t make sense to his contemporaries and it doesn’t make sense to us; even to those of us who claim the identity of Christian. We, and the rest of our species, regardless of history, culture or geography have chosen a path by which we hope to bring our world to order and to some sense of justice and fairness. That this path has never fulfilled its promise has never deterred us. Maybe one of the reasons we don’t seem to “get it” is that we’ve rarely been aware of just what the path we’ve chosen entails. Fortunately, one episode in the Jesus story from John can help us find some clarity.

Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.” Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18:33-38)

In this exchange there are three words in English, “of this world” translating four words in the Greek language in which John recorded the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate

My kingdom, says Jesus, is not of this world. Those are the three words: of this world. All too often Christians have read this as if what God is offering is an escape from this benighted planet into some ethereal realm of non-material bliss. With that interpretation Christians have either disengaged from dealing with the evil in this world, or tried to reform this world often using the same political and military means that others have used to destroy or exploit it. I think we can make a good argument that Christians have read Jesus wrong on this and that brings me to the four words that are behind the three words “of this world.”

ek tou kosmou toutou
Let’s break this down using the definitions from Strong’s dictionary:
Ek: according to Strong’s dictionary it is a primary preposition denoting origin, and can be translated “of” or “from”
Kosmou – orderly arrangement, that is, decoration; by implication the world (in a wide or narrow sense, including its inhabitants, literally or figuratively [morally]): – adorning, world.
tou… toutou – of (from or concerning) this (person or thing), the repetition tou…toutou is an emphasis: this world – meaning there are other arrangements, other systems and values

This is actually made clearer in the paraphrased Complete Jewish Bible: “Yeshua answered, “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world’s order of things. If it did, my men would have fought to keep me from being arrested by the Judeans. But my kingship does not come from here.” (John 18:36)

The exchange between Jesus and Pilate is a study in non-communication and the reason for that lies in the meaning of Jesus words: my kingdom does not draw its authority from the values of your world. Jesus knows Pilate’s world all too well. He has seen it since his childhood in the Roman occupation of his homeland, in the crucified bodies of his fellow Jews.

The impossibility of reasoning with those who seek to force the end of the world, who regard life as nothing and their own deaths as martyrdom warns us that creating heaven on earth is not within the reach of human effort. It is not, however, outside of the reach of Jesus. Throughout the Gospels you will find no command to take over Pilate’s world with Pilate’s tools. If we try that, we are on our own – Jesus will not help us establish such a kingdom even when we try it in Jesus’ name. Instead, in the Kingdom of God we are to be salt, leaven and light within the area of our reach. And though tyranny and insanity and cynical exploitation seem to overwhelm our consciousness, the greatest danger these things pose to us is to inhibit us from doing those things within our reach.

So here’s what we do in the face of insane fanaticism and the reaction of anger and fear: do not despise the little things within our reach. We are assured that every small act of feeding the hungry or offering kindness and blessing to the alien and the refugee, providing shelter for the homeless or giving hope and opportunity to the hopeless – every act and word of blessing will be taken up into the world God is building even as this world is tearing itself apart.

So to cobble together a few lines of Scripture:
Be not afraid little flock
In the [Pilate’s] world we will indeed have tribulation
But Jesus has overcome that world
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
And all things done in Christ are never done in vain.

Which Path?

(Reflections on the readings from All Saints Day Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary)

“I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. (Dan 7:15). I know how Daniel felt. I’m aware of our election results a well.

I do not mean to trivialize the significance of the choices our nation made. But in spite of the heated rhetoric on both sides, the biggest thing happening is not about American government. In order to get a glimpse of what God is up to we need to look closer at the Scriptures for All Saints – first at Daniel and then at Luke.

Here is the reading from Daniel:
In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream. Daniel said: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea. […] “I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. I approached one of those standing there and asked him the meaning of all this. “So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: ‘The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth. But the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever–yes, for ever and ever.’

This Daniel reading has a missing middle and the missing middle is not a new problem in Christianity. The baptismal covenant which is renewed from time to time in our services has its own missing middle; in the Apostles’ creed.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

The thirty-three years of Jesus’ life and most of the content of all four Gospels disappear in to a punctuation mark. That’s the missing middle. Our regular Nicene creed has the same problem. They both jump from birth to crucifixion without mentioning the substance of what Jesus does and says in the Gospels. That’s really not the fault of the creeds or their authors. The creeds are like a drawing that marks the footprint of a house. It’s not the house, nor even the foundation, it is simply the outline and you can’t live in an outline.

The missing middle of Daniel’s vision tells an important story. It is important to understanding Daniel’s vision, but also important to understanding Jesus and therefore important for our self-understanding as a Christian community. The first five omitted verses describe the beasts which are images of various kingdoms and empires and emperors. In the next four verses the God of Israel arrives in a court scene as the books of judgment are opened and the beasts are slain or rendered powerless.

Then there are two verses more and they are the key to what Jesus was about, how he saw himself and what that means for us. It’s best to read the verses:

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.  (Dan 7:13-14)

This is why Daniel is so important, this is where Jesus picks us his self-identifying phrase “the Son of Man.” The scene in which the son of man is given authority, glory and sovereign power is Jesus’ own vision of his destiny. It was a vision and a hope shared by many Jews of the time, the hope that God’s anointed one would appear in power and set a chaotic and unjust world to rights. You might think that Jesus and his contemporaries having the same vision in mind would lead to a meeting of minds. But there was a problem, a very big problem.

For Jesus’ compatriots the vision was to be fulfilled by an abrupt invasion of the glory and power of God. For Jesus the attainment of the vision required following a long path that would seem anti-intuitive to normal human expectation. The Jesus path to the vision led through seeking out the hapless – widows and orphans – and the hopeless – prostitutes and traitors: “the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” The Jesus path to the vision went through service, like washing the feet of those who thought they were supposed to serve him, but “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” Ultimately the Jesus path leads through the crucifixion, “the Son of Man will be handed over to sinners and be crucified.” The Jesus path made no sense to his contemporaries and it makes little sense to us, even to us Christians. If we want to change our world for the better our obvious path is the path to power.

But of course, the Jesus path really only makes sense if we take in the rest of the story. The Resurrection as an historical event is God’s vindication of the Jesus path. The Resurrection is not only about our lives after we die, it is about our lives as we live them in a world that neither understands or respects the Jesus path.

Something big is going on and our world is missing out on it. Something big is going on and it can only be seen by those who take the Jesus path.

So take Jesus at his word: the poor inherit the kingdom that is already loose in the world, the hungry will find their nourishment, those who mourn will rediscover laughter and if the world mocks you for that, rejoice because you know you’re on the Jesus path. Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. That’s the Jesus path. Bless those who curse you and pray for those who treat you badly. That’s the Jesus path. Do to others as you would have them do to you. On the Jesus path is a whole company of saints who will inherit the kingdom that comes only on the Jesus path. And this Jesus who God vindicated in Resurrection, who is now enthroned over all the heavens and the earth will take our small counter intuitive deeds and build them into an unstoppable force of healing and blessing.

That may sound like a wonderful charge for wonderful change, but all of the truth about the Jesus path has to be followed in the world that produced our bitter campaign and tumultuous election. It is clear from all the campaign rhetoric that the Jesus path isn’t on the radar screen of our national culture. In fact, we Americans, along with all of the other nations of the world follow a different path and that will be addressed in my next posting.