Next Wednesday is the Feast of the Transfiguration. What that means is that next Wednesday is a major holy day for Christians like me who fall into what is commonly referred to as the "liturgical" category of the faith. That rather ponderous label is a sobriquet of sorts for those of us who are Anglicans or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox and like to have history and the ancient traditions of the early church ever-present in, and informing of, our worship in the here and now.

By and large, our penchant for ceremony and antiquity makes for a more colorful form of Christian worship than is observed in non-liturgical services. It also makes for considerably more drama. It's the drama that makes my heart sing ... not only the drama of liturgical services, but also the fact that liturgical congregations are always inclined toward employing drama to enhance worship, deepen commitment, and increase their own experience and perception of the faith, as well as that of others.

For us, the Feast of the Transfiguration is one of the church's 12 Great Feast Days. That is, it's right on up there with the Nativity [Christmas] and the Feast of the Resurrection [Easter,] at least in religious terms, if not popular or cultural ones. It calls us to remember the apex or culminating event of Jesus' public life in which, on a mountaintop and in full view of Peter, James, and John, Jesus was transfigured into a radiance beyond their later description. Moses and Elijah were also present during the Transfiguration itself, one on either side of him; and even as the gathered apostles watched, a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice, speaking from the cloud, said, "This is my son, the Beloved; and with him I am well pleased. Listen to him." From that moment on, the course of history was set and, in many ways, the church was born.

The Greek word used in the New Testament accounts of the events on the Mount of the Transfiguration is metamorphothe. While the ages have translated that word as transfigured, it actually comes closer to conveying something English can't quite convey. It wants to say something like "changed shape and beingness and allness into some other form thereof," or something equally awkward and wordy. What happened, in other words and in the fullest sense, was a "metamorphosis," which again is Greek and again has no really clear or felicitous analog in English.

That very impossibility of language, its very failure to convey some substances, its fractures and chips as a vessel for meaning have, over the years, come to be for me the central wonder of the Feast of the Transfiguration. Being convicted of something one can neither own nor ingest, articulate nor incarnate, is itself a glory beyond our grasping, whether we be ancient apostles or God's newest converts ... which says to me that the great truth of next Wednesday's Feast of the Transfiguration just may be that experiencing God always lies just beyond the reach of articulated theology, and never within it.

Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.

A Sunday or two ago, I made mention of -- more to the truth, wrote a whole "Summer Sundays" entry more or less about -- the canonical Jesus, thereby raising a small bevy of questions and responses and polite "say-what's?" I could not be more delighted. But delighted or not, I also feel some obligation to make my case.

All of us who were reared in modernity and/or in the afterwash of its ways of conceptualizing, have known the impact of modernism. In few areas of life has that impact been more keenly felt by Christians than in discussions of "Jesus Studies" or, as it is sometimes more popularly known, of "the quest for the historical Jesus." That is to say that many of the intellectual tools and much of the sophisticated technology of modernity, in addition to its conceptual principles, a lot of brilliant thinking, and a world's worth of patient research, have been brought to bear over the last century or so on the study of just who Jesus of Nazareth was.

The bulk of the questions have focused upon what he supposedly did and/or did not say and upon whether or not he was or was not accurately portrayed by those who became the church. Those questions have assumed from the start that the Jesus of the canonical gospels might well be a man-made or human-shaped figure different from the actual or historical creature who at one time lived among us. Working from that assumption, it should be no surprise that the Jesus who has emerged from all of this professional scholarship and lay furor is as multiform and various as the scholars and concerned laity who have engaged the quest. The end result, in fact, of our dozen or so decades of scratching through history is such a multiplicity of Jesuses that one has to say, "Whoa! Let's just hold up here a minute and think this thing through a bit more clearly."

Story, perhaps, is better than intellectual argument in this kind of process. Accordingly, I wrote a small story some months ago, one that I want to re-run here today. I do so, of course, with apologies to those who may have heard it before, but also in the hope that even they will find it to be worth a few minutes this summer Sunday morning.

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Let us suppose then. Let us suppose that there is a huge, deadly wreck on busy Main Street, USA, in the midst of midday traffic. There are, technically speaking, several hundred witnesses, albeit from very different perspectives. Some of the witnesses are immediate, so immediate in fact that two or three of them are wounded themselves by the flying glass and careening steel. Others are simply immediate enough to have been splattered by blood and dust and specks of oil. Not so immediate, but still close enough, are those who had to jump out of harm's way and, in doing so, dropped possessions or skinned a knee or simply got an adrenalin rush of significant proportions.

Other of those who saw had a less dramatic experience, of course. Some of them really did see, in that they were standing at the curb waiting for the light to change and saw the whole thing as if in slow motion. Others were walking in the direction from which the wreck came and likewise saw the whole thing, also as if in slow motion, albeit from a safer distance. Some witnesses, of course, only "saw" the deadly accident in the loosest sense of saw. That is, the space between the sound of the crash in progress and their turning their heads to look was no more than a nano-second, or so it seemed. For some even, the screeching of tires laying down rubber was so dramatic that they turned and, in point of fact, really did "see" the wreck itself, although they hardly could be said to have "seen" the whole thing, since they witnessed only its final act of culmination.

And then, of course, there are all the window-gawkers ... the office workers who leaned out from the windows of all the surrounding buildings that line Main Street. Or the store personnel who came running out of the street-level shops and commercial businesses. And there's a couple of cops who were cruising in the opposite direction away from the wreck and therefore did not really "see" it at all, except that their deep experience with wrecks let them respond almost instantaneously, just at it allowed them to reconstruct what logically must have happened and include it in their report of the wreck itself.

Assume, then, that we have some several hundred good citizens -- maybe even some not-so-good ones and a few outright liars, thieves, and ne're-do-wells on Main Street. Each of them, from the purest to the most nefarious, now has a wreck in his or her head. Each of them -- it is one of the surest bets in this gossipy world -- each of them is going to tell some other human being about this phenomenal wreck, at some point at some time over the coming hours, days, weeks, and years. Maybe even, he or she will tell several someones, And what they are all telling is true. A wreck happened at midday on Main Street, USA. Yet for every witness, that wreck is distinct, is different, is so nuanced that there are as many wrecks as there are witnesses. Oh, the tales will, in all probability, share a common thread, but they will also contain some inconsistencies and some contradictions amongst them.

Yet the truth in all of this -- the one "fact" in it all -- is that each witness, bearing home his or her story of disaster on Main Street, is reporting the actual wreck. All of them who seek to speak the truth of what they witnessed are indeed speaking the truth. The inconsistencies and contradictions amongst their various stories, were we to collect those tales into some kind of whole, would not be erroneous or deliberated distortions or violations of fact. They would be honest and true reports of what happened, because what happened did happen within the vitality and experience of each tale's teller.

Now good and honest men and women are on the horns of a dilemma. We have the expertise of the police who have brought their training to bear on what will become the more or less official assessment of what happened. In addition, we have all the technology and brilliance of accident-reconstruction specialists who, by studying the lay-down of debris and tracks and the pressure required for such impact and the points of primary as opposed to secondary and tertiary impact can be reasonably certain about what or who hit what or whom first. They can even reconstruct enough to establish with some confidence which actions had to proceed which other actions in order to culminate in the impact in the first place.

All of this is absorbing. It can occupy the news media for weeks and conversation for a lifetime. It can cause consternation among those accused and angst among those deemed to have been not at fault. Reams and reams of paper, billions and billions of pixels, yards and yards of documentation, not to mention several hundred thousand dollars, will be spent in pursuit of the facts about this wreck on Main Street.

And when it is all over, when all is said and done by expert or ordinary citizen, the only absolutely certain thing ... the only "fact" beyond conceivable question ... is that there was a wreck one day on Main Street, USA, and that there was some take-away. We will never know the sum total of all the facts about the wreck nor will be ever know all of its specific details. What we have -- and all we have -- is the actuality of the wreck and the burgeoning largesse of lives changed in some greater or lesser way by their engagement with the wreck itself or with its story.

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A parable always reveals itself early-on in its telling, as we all know. And as I said in the beginning, I tell you this dangerous tale on a mid-summer Sunday morning for a reason. That is, it was, and still is, the way of modernism to believe that there is some means by which to reconstruct and define, with detail, atemporal constancy, and specificity, the facts and truths about the wreck on Main Street. It is the way of post-modernity to doubt -- almost to disparage, in fact -- the possibility of that absolute position. Rather, what we really have here, despite all our analyses and probing, the post-modernist might well argue, is access to only one truth: There was once a wreck and, from the instant of its occurrence, it existed only in the actuality of hundreds and hundreds of people and in their engagement of it. The wreck, from its moment of impact, is as multiform, and all of its presentations as distinct and different, as are the hundreds and hundreds of individual universes in which the actuality of it now lives. The post-modernist would argue, in other words, that we should be leery of assuming that contradictions and inconsistencies are anything other than the evidence that things really are as they are when observed ... that potentially light is a wave and light is a particle. It just depends on who is watching.

Let us go forth, then, you and I, and enjoy to its fullest this lovely summer morning but may the wreck and its story also bother every one of us this whole day through. Because the operative truth here is that every single one of us, alive in 2008 and claiming Christianity as our belief system, is going to have to decide what he or she thinks about the wreck and all the words said about it. In other words, every single one of us, if we live another decade or so, is going to have to decide what he or she thinks not only about the crash, 2,000 years ago, of Messiah into space/time but also about how we understand and engage the records of that event that have come to us over the centuries. Pray God we do it well.

Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.

As we pass the half-way point of our Jesus for President tour, we remember Jesus' admonition that we be "as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves." There is a lot of momentum around our little campaign of political misfits - from some of the mainstream media and from the dozen cities where we've had thousands of folks come together to plot goodness. And with the momentum comes temptation.

We've been courted by candidates who want an endorsement... or who at least would like us to be "advisers." At first I thought advising a candidate was a subtle euphemism for endorsing them, but I have come to think that there is an important distinction to make between "endorsing" and "advising." I want to be an adviser to every politico that asks, and an endorser of no one but Jesus. Chris and I just joked that he could become an official advisor for Obama, and I'd take McCain just to make sure folks know that we are not partisan. We do take seriously the opportunity to dialogue with political candidates, or anyone else for that matter, especially as many people seem to be rethinking politics as usual. As for the presidential candidates, we're not sure how our counsel will go over, since it may begin with advising those seeking office to melt down the weapons of our arsenal and transform them into things that bring life to the suffering masses of this planet--"beating swords into plows" as the prophets say. But we'll see if anyone takes us up on the offer.

Chris and I end the 2-hour JFP presentation with these words:

We will not be endorsing any candidates. Rather, we will invite them to endorse the political manifesto of our Commander-in-Chief and to join the peculiar upside-down Kingdom that blesses the poor and the peacemakers...

Our central allegience is to God's Kingdom, and we invite everything else in the world to align itself with the norms of that upside-down Kingdom. That is what we endorse, and we stand behind everything and everyone that moves us closer to that - the coming of God's Kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven." And we get in the way of everything that contradicts and works against God's Kingdom - interrupting injustice with grace.

In post-Religious Right America, we want to learn from the mistakes of the generation before us (so we don't repeat them) - one of which was telling Christians who to vote for. Rather than spoon-feeding people answers, we hope to stir up the right questions - and trust that the Spirit will lead us as we "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." One of the places the religious right went wrong was telling people what to do rather than inviting them to think for themselves, with the help of the Spirit of God (in fact, it even seems a real lack of faith to to coerce or convince people to do exactly what we want them to... as if the Spirit is not at work in them). That's where Jesus shines - he stirs up questions and tells stories that unveil truth, rather than drafting a careful declaration or endorsement that's going to solve everything wrong in the world.

Folks come out of our JFP shows with all kinds of ideas churning. Some have shared that they are inspired to start an adoption agency to try and decrease the number of abortions. U.S. soldiers have said they are becoming conscientious objectors or are seeking discharge. Some folks have said they are going to organize for one of the candidates, and others have said they are going to write in "Jesus" on Nov. 4. To all of it we say, "Yes!" Thank God the Spirit is at work, and is renewing minds and imaginations in the Church, so that we might follow the command of Romans: "Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

Reporters often ask folks leaving our presentations funny questions like: "Young evangelicals are the swing vote in this election... has this evening affected how you are going to vote in November?" I heard one person say beautifully, "That's the wrong question... the real question is how can we become the change we want to see in the world TODAY and not just hope that every four years we can elect politicians to change the world for us." May it be so. May we continue to become the change we want to see in the Church and in the world. Enough donkeys and elephants - Long live the Lamb.

Shane Claiborne is the author of Jesus for President, a Red Letter Christian, and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Here in Manhattan, the city streets hum with hope following the announcement of the first African American to be nominated for president by a major political party. According to news reports, similar scenarios are taking place across the world. As we celebrate this historical moment in electoral politics, Sarah Cunningham, author of Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation, offers this cautionary tale to her fellow Christians:

When we market ourselves as the hope of the world, or when we believe that other humans hold the hope of the world for us, without proper acknowledgement of Christ as our source, we foster disillusionment.

So how do we keep this hope alive should one’s preferred candidate not win the coveted presidential prize? My prayer is that regardless of who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we can keep singing a hopeful tune. As I've reported elsewhere on the blog, I keep seeing glimpses of the kingdom here on earth that are led not by polticos but by ordinary radicals who are transformed by the words of Jesus Christ. My buddy Shane Claiborne reminds us all, "No matter who is elected on Nov. 4, what matters is how we live our lives as faithful Christians on Nov. 3 and 5."

Sara Cunningham concurs with Shane’s assessment:

We Christians were never the hope. Yes, we were and are carriers of the hope. But we ourselves are only reflections—often dim reflections—of the hope we internalize: Jesus Christ.

In his latest book, Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright explores how we as Christians can implement this hope here on earth. He reminds us:

The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world, vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always—as Paul puts it in one of his letters—bearing the body of the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.

So, as we see hopeful signs all around us, let us remember that as Christians our declaration of hope lies ultimately with the Risen Christ.

Becky Garrison will be featured in the CD 2007 Soularize in a Box, along with N.T. Wright, Rita Brock, Richard Rohr, Brenann Manning, Ian Cron, and others. Check out The Ooze (www.theooze.com) for more information.

 

Zack Exley over at Revolution in Jesusland has been offering some careful thought and excellent questions about Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw's new book Jesus for President. His questions are well worth reading in depth, but for the sake of this short response, I'll summarize his concern as this: If new monastics focus on the small and local, how are we ever going to achieve large-scale social and political change? If people with power make the rules, why would Christians of goodwill give up power? Why not organize for shared power so that no one gets left out?

If there is a new monastic movement in North America, then I'm convinced that we can only understand it in the context of America becoming the world's "last remaining superpower" following World War II. For many of us young evangelicals, the Moral Majority and its demise unveiled for us the deceptions of power. We walked away from politics as we knew it because we didn't like who it made us. But we believe there is a better way, and we've tried to learn that Way from Jesus.

As I understand it, new monasticism is trying to learn what it means to live by the power of the Spirit in a world of competing powers. This means, first of all, that we give ourselves to prayer, trusting that there's time to listen in a world of urgent needs. The most radical thing we can do in a world wrecked by injustice is to open our imaginations to prayer. If we want to transform the world, we have to begin with our own conversions. As Gandhi said, "We must be the change we seek."

If there's time to listen to God, then there's also time to listen to our neighbors. I agree wholeheartedly with Exley that Jesus was an organizer, building a movement in first-century Palestine. His organizing philosophy, so far as I can tell, was the same the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) employed in Mississippi during the early 1960s. It consisted of sitting on porches, listening to people, becoming the beloved community with them, and helping all people to know that God loved them. The real power of Jesus' tactic was that it transformed rich and poor alike, setting them free for life together in a new community. It made possible a community that no one could have imagined before.

When we read the gospels closely, Jesus is obviously concerned with timing. Though he does not lay out a grand strategy for social change, he is a master tactician who obviously knows when to wait in Bethany and when to march on Jerusalem. There is a time for the beloved community to take its message to Washington. But you have to get the timing right, Jesus seems to say. The public witness is always dependent on the existence of a new community that points to another way.

New monasticism is not against political organizing or, as Dr. King said in 1968, "taking the nonviolent movement international." In an age of increasing globalization, it is more important than ever that we witness Christ's way to nation-states, corporations, and international organizations. But our witness there will only be credible if we've taken the time to be converted ourselves and to build communities of justice and peace where it is easier to be good. We won't end global poverty until we learn to care for the poor in our communities. Our cries for world peace will fall on deaf ears until we learn to live peaceably as Christians.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church (Baker).

Claiming to follow Jesus is a ridiculous thing to try and do. He's a really hard guy to follow, especially when he talks about loving the poor, loving our neighbors, and loving those who hate and oppose us. Loving people who love us is sometimes hard enough, but loving our enemies is just counterintuitive. It goes against every instinct in my body. When someone does or seeks to do harm to me or my family, it's my knee-jerk reaction, my default, to return violence with violence. I am violent to the core. To confess anything less would be a dangerous land mine to sneak over.

This is why it's so important to know who Jesus is and what he's asking us to do. And luckily, for our benefit, we have his answer recorded in a historical document. When asked point-blank, "What are the most important things we're commanded to do?" it's curious what Jesus says. And what he doesn't say. He doesn't mention all of the overwhelming issues of morality that we seem to obsess over in the Christian ghetto. He doesn't mention any of the countless issues that are dividing our churches left and right. He says, "Love God and love your neighbors," that, in fact, all of the law and prophets hang on these two commands, and that these are literally the context for all other commands we keep.

This is the work of following Jesus -- to love and care especially for those whom it is difficult. It is therefore never a political position to be on the side of the poor. Working for justice in all areas of society is not peripheral to the proclamation of the good news of Jesus; it is central. His message was not that of the individual salvation of men and women, but of the "being made right of all things." While this certainly includes the stories of men and women, that is such a small part of the whole. It's a story about our families, our environment, our governments, our neighbors, about the whole of what God has made. And proclaiming half the truth as the whole truth is no truth at all.

How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God's creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.

It's true: The Bible does say that there is a time to build up and a time to tear down, a time to rejoice and a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war. But we live in anticipation of the day coming when there will be no more time to tear down. There will be no more time for weeping. There will simply be no more time for war. Soon we're going to run out of time for these things. This is the day we work for. This is the day we pray into today.

Derek Webb is a singer and songwriter. His latest album is Ampersand EP, a collaboration with his wife, Sandra McCracken.

One of Jesus' most in-your-face stories, and a personal favorite of mine, is the Parable of the Dishonest Manager in Luke 16. I would loosely paraphrase its central insight as follows: "If you have the sense God gave a dog, you will realize that you can't hold onto money very long anyway, but you can keep the friends you make by giving it to those in need. You do the math." The passage doesn't say anything about burning sulfur, just about priorities and how to take the long view.

An attractive feature of this parable is that it sets a really low bar for divine commendation. The manager doesn't have sense enough to stay out of trouble to begin with. What's more, even after he has his "friends are friends forever" epiphany, he starts backsliding almost at once: He quickly gives his master's first debtor a 50% markdown, but for debtor number two the manager gets pointlessly stingy and only takes off 20%. He still gets praise for knowing what side his bread is buttered on.

And, because the kingdom of God is so often about taking things way over the top, the final verses go on to radically redefine what honesty and faithfulness are. Good stewardship is supposed to be about accurate accounting and careful saving, right? Not here. Money is inherently "dishonest," and impromptu unauthorized debt forgiveness is "faithfulness." (In fact, the master fires the manager before even seeing his accounting - the grounds for dismissal appear to have been less fiscal irresponsibility and more that he made enemies willing to accuse him).

The Protestant Work Ethic is not invited to this party, and you can virtually hear the groans of the prodigal son's responsible brother if he happens to look ahead from his seat in chapter 15.

Despite this parable, other parts of the Bible suggest to me that it's reasonable to save something for retirement. But I want to combine this conventional form of stewardship with long-view social accounting, which is why I'm excited about the special Web extra to our May issue about faith and finances. In it, my colleague Julie has accumulated a heaping helping of Web sites that can help you figure out how and where to invest retirement savings for the common good (and also where to free your mind with Bible study, teach your teenage kids about money, and plan - and pray over - your household budget).

Check it out – and e-mail it to a friend to share the abundance!

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

[Continued from part 1]

I pondered what I might offer to spotlight the significance of such a dialogue and the future it foretells. Then I ran across this exegesis of Luke's account of the evening of Jesus' resurrection. It's by Debbie Blue.

With the wryest of humor, Blue contextualizes the two men walking the road to Emmaus, which may be tantamount to saying they were heading nowhere fast, considering scholars haven't been able to confirm the existence of an actual town named Emmaus. (What an amazing metaphor for our despair in the face of suffering, and the difficulty of being reconciled to each other and God afterwards.) The two men meet a stranger along the way who asks them why they are aggrieved. Their response is to almost reprimand the stranger's cluelessness: "Do you not know what happened this weekend. We lost hope." To which the stranger replies with reciprocal exasperation, "Did you not know that the whole story has been driving toward this irredeemable act of shared suffering—the death of God—so that the unprecedented hope of resurrection might come?"

Blue says it this way:

Jesus is like, 'Fools and slow of hear to believe. Can't you see that this all had to happen: that the mechanisms of the social order that lead to violence had to be undone, the self-deceptive and ferocious need to make ourselves out as innocent, the rat race, the ladder climbing, the fear of a violent God who demands blood and vengeance? Can't you see that all that had to be undone? You're free! Quit holding onto the bars and rattling them. The cage doors are open; walk out.' Jesus comes back from a wholly different place than they've ever been, and he walks right up to them and he reveals a whole new story. [Yet they don't recognize it.]

He walks with them, and they stop just shy of nowhere. And Jesus doesn't lecture them, judge them, condemn them, dislike them. He doesn't express a sense of betrayal and disappointment. He doesn't talk about how hopeless and ugly the whole lot of humanity is. He breaks bread. And he feeds them. And he tells them to go out and preach mercy to the world.

He becomes present to these people, people totally caught up, as we all are, in the reigning social, political and economic structures, in order to help them see or live or feel an alternative—to help them die and live again. He becomes present so that little by little they will be enabled to walk out of the cages… So that they might be able to tell new stories instead of the same old predictable stories…

The bread has been broken and the bread's been blessed. It may not seem like it, but we're free to get off the road and eat.

Ehrman and Wright may have very different ideas of what suffering in life means and address it with different hopes of what is to come. But like Brian McLaren, I too am immensely glad both men have entered into dialogue—giving us a beautiful example of how to jump off the road to Emmaus, share a meal with a stranger and write new, life-giving stories together.

Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, purveyor of sustainability and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, works and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jesus came with a job to do, to complete the work to which Israel was called. This work, from the call of Abraham onwards, was to put the human race to rights, and so to put the whole creation to rights. As the gospel writers tell the story, this task was to be accomplished by Jesus bringing about the sovereign healing rule of the creator God. Jesus was addressing the question, "What might it look like if God was running this show?" And answering, "This is what it looks like: just watch." And then, "just listen." In what he did, and in the stories he told, Jesus was announcing and inaugurating what he referred to as "the kingdom of God," the long-awaited hope that the creator God would run the whole show, on earth as in heaven.

But the problem was, and is, that other people are still running the show. Other kingdoms, other power structures, have usurped the rule of the world's wise creator, and the forces of evil are exceedingly powerful and destructive. Jesus' task of inaugurating God's kingdom therefore necessarily led him to meet those forces in direct combat, to draw upon himself their full, dark fury so as to exhaust their power and make a way through to launch the creator's project of new creation despite them. That is one clue at least to the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion, though that event, planting the sign of God's kingdom in the middle of space, time, and matter, remains inexhaustible. But let's be clear. As the gospels tell the story, Jesus' death was the culmination of several different strands: a political process, a religious clash, a spiritual war, all rushing together into one terrible day, one terrible death. And in the light of that, according to Jesus himself and his first followers, everything in the world looks different, is different, must be approached differently. With Jesus' death, the power structures of the world were called to account; with his resurrection, a new life, a new power, was unleashed upon the world. And the question is: How ought this to work out? What should we be doing as a result?

If we are to think Christianly, then we must think according to the pattern of Jesus Christ. And that means that the first place we should look for God in the "War on Terror" would be in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers, and then in the ruins of Baghdad and Basra, the shattered homes and lives of the tens of thousands who have through no fault of their own been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the angry superpower, like a rogue elephant teased by a little dog, has gone on the rampage stamping on everything that moves in the hope of killing the dog by killing everything within reach. The presence of God within the world at a time of war must be calibrated according to what Paul says in Romans 8, that the Spirit groans within God's people as they groan with the pain of the world. The cross of Jesus Christ is the sign and the assurance that the God who made the world still loves the world and, in that love, groans and grieves.

But God wants his rebel world to be ordered, to be under authorities and governments, because otherwise the bullies and the arrogant will always prey on the weak and the helpless; but all authorities and governments face the temptation to become bullies and arrogant themselves. The New Testament writers, like other Jews at the time, saw this writ large in the Roman empire of their day. Those with eyes to see can see it in other subsequent empires, right down to our own day.

It is the task of the followers of Jesus to remind those called to authority that the God who made the world intends to put the world to rights at last, and to call those authorities to acts of justice and mercy which will anticipate, in the present time, the future, coming, final victory of God over all evil, all violence, all arrogant abuse of power. And where the world's rulers genuinely strive for that end, the Christian church declares as the ancient Jews did with the pagan king Cyrus, that God's Spirit is at work—whether the authorities know it or not.

Insofar as the last five years have constituted a wake-up call to sleepy western Christians to think urgently about issues of global justice and governance, we can see God, I believe, in that new stirring, warning us that we have a task and that we haven't been doing it too well. In particular, we must face the deeply ambiguous question of the present power and position of America. I am not anti-American when I criticise some policies of some American leaders, any more than I am anti-British when I criticise some of the policies of my own elected leaders. To suggest otherwise is simply a cheap way of avoiding the real questions. The creator God allows societies to rise and fall, empires to grow and wane. And though things are massively more complicated than this, we could see in the rise of America as the current sole superpower some great possibilities for bringing justice and mercy, genuine freedom and prosperity, to the whole world. Empires always carry that possibility. But empires also face the temptation to use their power for their own prestige and wealth. The challenge now is to provide a critique of American empire without implying that the world should collapse into anarchy, and a fresh sense of direction for that empire without colluding with massive abuses of power.

Where then is God in the war on terror? Grieving and groaning within the pain and horror of his battered but still beautiful world. Stirring in the hearts of human beings the desire for a more credible structure of global justice and mercy. Burning into the imagination of human beings a hope that peace and reconciliation might eventually win out over suspicion and hatred, that the world may be put to rights and that we may anticipate that in the present time. The Christian gospel, revealing the mysterious God we discover in Jesus and the Spirit, offers a framework for discerning where God is at work in the midst of the dangers and opportunities that confront us. All of us in our different callings are summoned to this task; some of you, perhaps, to make it your life's work. Jesus is Lord. The Spirit is powerful. God is doing a new thing. Let's get out there and join in.

Dr. N.T. Wright is a New Testament theologian and the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He is the author of many books, including Surprised by Hope, and Evil and the Justice of God. This post is adapted from his lecture "Where is God in ‘The War on Terror?'" and is used with permission by the author.

I'm on vacation with my family this week, but in reflecting on the significance of Easter, I thought I'd share this passage from one of my books, The Call to Conversion. In a world wracked by war and violence, we are a people whose life and faith are rooted in the resurrection.

What is the good news? When all that sin had done, or could ever do, was laid on Jesus, it did not overcome him. Death could not swallow him. The grave was denied its victory. The witness of history and of his followers is that "he is risen." He is alive. He has triumphed over all. He is the victor over every sin, hate, fear, violence, and death. Nothing is stronger than his victory—nothing past, nothing present, and nothing future.

On Easter morning, and each day of our lives, we celebrate the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which triumphs over every other reality. In the face of the world and its systems, we proclaim the resurrection, saying, "We have seen the Lord." We see him in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the faces of all the victims, and in the faces of our children. We see him in the lives of Christians who have suffered and died because they believed. And we see the Lord in the bread and the wine. He shows us, as he did his disciples, the evidence of his suffering. He invites us to reach out, take, eat, and drink; he wants us to remember him, to see him, and to know his victory.

His way is life. The world's way is death. We can now stand before the world's false realities and securities, free to deny them, denounce them, and remove ourselves from them. We stand before the reality of the resurrection and confess with the first disciples that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

We stand before the world as fools. We are foolish enough to believe that Jesus' way is stronger and truer than the way of the world. We rest secure in the knowledge that he has, and will, overcome. We are called to be fools for Christ, a people saved by his cross and converted, finally, by his resurrection.

May God convert us to such foolishness.

Throughout his book, The God Hypothesis, Victor Stenger appears to be obsessed with the need for concrete proof that the son of God was a real man. He feels that if Jesus of Nazareth really walked on the earth, someone would have unearthed his actual bones.

Now, I don't want to get medieval here, but frankly, how many Christians in the 21st century need the bones of Jesus as proof of their faith? After all, according to the resurrection story, Christ transcended matter as Mary Magdalene found an empty tomb, not a body.

During my recent trips to Israel and Jordan, I lost track of the historical discrepancies regarding where a given bit of biblical business occurred. Despite the debates over the exact place where Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, the specific church that marks the spot where Gabriel brought to Mary the good news that would change the world, and other historical critical snafus, I seemed to feel the presence of God's saving grace throughout history every time I stepped on a piece of seemingly sacred soil.

Also, look at the Easter story in its proper sociopolitical context for a sec. Right about now, Jesus and his crowd were persona non grata (mild understatement). The so-called leader of this ragtag group of rabble rousers had just been crucified. Unless Jesus rose from the dead, all their years of following him would have been for naught. Before they encountered him on the road to Emmaus, they had no clue if Jesus was the real deal, or if they had just drunk the wrong Kool-Aid by following a false prophet. They were left leaderless and scared for their lives, knowing full well they might be next on Pontius Pilate's hit list. Suffice to say, tensions were running pretty durn high.

As expected, the Romans did everything in their earthly power to prevent this resurrection myth from developing legs. The tomb was sealed, and guards were posted outside the cave 24/7. No way they would have let the disciples steal the body and run around claiming that Christ had risen. No siree. From a historical standpoint, the resurrection story could not have occurred without some kind of divine intervention. Check out a timeline of the early church and it's pretty clear that saying you believed in the risen Christ was a deadly move. Why would so many people risk banishment, torture, and even death for such an elusive myth?

Becky Garrison is senior contributing writer for The Wittenburg Door. Portions of this posting are excerpted from The New Atheists Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail.  Reprinted with permission from Thomas Nelson, Inc.

When I interviewed Phyllis Tickle for Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, she reflected on the seismic changes she sees occurring in contemporary Christianity. "Evangelicalism has lost much of its credibility and much of its spiritual energy as of late, in much the same way that mainline Protestantism has." Lest anyone find this news so depressing they want to run for cover, Phyllis offers some much needed historical and hopeful perspective. "About every 500 years, the church feels compelled to have a giant rummage sale." During the last such upheaval, the Great Reformation of 500 years ago, Protestantism took over hegemony. But Roman Catholicism did not die. It just had to drop back and reconfigure. Each time a rummage sale has happened, in other words, whatever held pride of place simply gets broken apart into smaller pieces, and then it picks itself up and to use Diana Butler Bass's term, "re-tradition.

As I ride along the religious superhighway, I find I need some new tools to help me navigate this process. For starters, Andrew Jones' blog provides excellent ongoing reflections of the changing Christian landscape from a global perspective, as Proost UK offers worship resources that help refuel me and recharge my batteries. Recently, I caught wind of Tickle's radical yet totally orthodox retelling of the gospel. In The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord with Reflections Tickle categorizes the sayings of Jesus into five categories: Public Teachings, Private Instructions, Healing Dialogues, Intimate Conversations, and the Post-Resurrection Encounters.

"Psychologists have demonstrated many times over that what we say is tailored to and informed by the audience to whom we say it. In a sense, in other words, while each of us may be an integer, we have various configurations or arrangements of our "self" that we modify, exchange, and employ according to our perception of those whom we are at any given moment engaging. Jesus of Nazareth, being fully human, followed that same pattern, though once again I had never perceived or even entertained such a possibility until I began listening to Him shift emphases, adapt rhetoric, and fashion varying modes of analogy to fit those with whom He was speaking."

Thanks to Lacey's latest and, unfortunately, last book, The Liberator (a revolutionary retelling of the New Testament), the Inspired by the Bible Experience: New Testament audio CD (nothing says "Oh my God" like Samuel L. Jackson channeling the voice of the Almighty), and Tickle's commentary, I've been immersed in scripture from some rather unique vantage points. Over the past year, instead of trying to memorize scripture and verse, I'm allowing these sweet holy words to fall on my ears and into my mouth. It's like I'm falling in love all over again with this radical love-making, rule-breaking, life-taking Christ.

Becky Garrison is senior contributing writer for The Wittenburg Door. Portions of this posting are excerpted from The New Atheists Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail.  Reprinted with permission from Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Last Friday I was in Santa Barbara, California, to speak at Westmont College - where even on a Friday evening, the gymnasium was packed with students. Before that event I did an interview with The Santa Barbara Independent, a local weekly newspaper, which they titled The Next Great Awakening? One of the questions the reporter asked was, "Do you think Jesus was a politician?" Here is my answer:

Of course not. But he had a vision of the Kingdom of God which was spiritual, personal, relational, social, economic, and yes, political - because it talked about allegiances and loyalties and authority, and if Jesus was Lord, Caesar was not. His confrontation that he provoked in Jerusalem was with the religious and the political leaders. They saw him as a political threat. If they saw him just as a private pietist, why would they worry? [If he was] helping people get their lives together, helping their marriages, making them better parents and make them go to less Roman orgies and drunken parties, why would that have been a threat to the ruling powers? They regarded him as a threat. I remember I was at Wheaton College once and I asked this class, "Why was Jesus killed?" and they had no idea. They just couldn't comprehend the question. And then one young student said, "Well, to save us from our sins." And I said, "So you think Pontius Pilate was sitting there thinking, 'How am I going to save these American evangelicals from their sins? I'm gonna kill this guy and that will do it.'" Albeit that our theological understanding of the cross and our redemption — I'm orthodox on all those questions, but he was killed because he was seen as a threat to the rulers both religious and political. In the book I talk about how Jesus confronted the major political options of his day. All four of them were there, they're always there: One was collaborationist, one was pietist, one was withdrawn — you know, the kind of counter culture — and one was political insurrection, or revolutionary violence. He confronted them all, he rejected them all. There was a fifth option called the Kingdom of God, and that's our option.

Everyday there seems to be some new outrageous charge leveled at Barack Obama. One of the most pernicious is that he is a Muslim who is dishonestly masquerading as a Christian. This charge is so malicious - and so untrue - that it is time to set the record straight.

Barack Obama has never been a Muslim. He has never attended a Muslim school. From about age eight to age nine Obama lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth, with more Muslim schools than one can count, yet his parents chose to enroll him in a secular, non-religious school comprised of teachers and students of all faiths. Nor can it be said that during his brief sojourn in Indonesia that his worldview was tainted by Islamic extremism; when Obama lived there, the practice of Islam in Indonesia was still among the world's most moderate.

Another false charge is that rather than using a Bible to be sworn into his elected office, Senator Obama instead used the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslim faith. That is also a falsehood. The most cursory check of the facts shows that it was not Barack Obama who was sworn in with a Qur'an. It was Keith Ellison, the proudly Muslim congressman from Minnesota.

But by far the ugliest charge is that Barack Obama is lying about his Christian faith. The truth is that for years now, Barack Obama has been a baptized, fully confessed and practicing Christian, not only with his lips inside a church but, more importantly, with his limbs out in the community - striving to help the neediest and the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters of all creeds and colors.

It is correct that Obama was not born into the Christian faith. Rather, Barack Obama made a conscious decision as a mature adult to become part of the body of Christ. One measure of the seriousness of his faith is that he has been an active and faithful churchgoer since he embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ as his own.

Dr. Jeremiah Wright - his pastor - a wise, sensitive Christian freedom-fighter (in the very best sense of the word), and a man deeply committed to his faith in Christ, whole-heartedly attests to this, as does every fellow parishioner who has encountered Obama in his home church - the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. (By the way, the United Church of Christ is a predominately white mainstream Christian denomination.)

But what is also troubling about all the false information being spread about Obama is its obsession with doctrines and creeds to the apparent detriment of any sense of the spirituality of service. This tragically flawed understanding of Christian faith is apparently more concerned with the fleeting testimony of one's mouth than with the abiding testimony of one's walk in the world. If this was not so, if what was really the concern of those seeking to discredit Obama was that one be a Christian rather than simply bearing the name, then why do they not attack the people "of faith" who tell every listening ear that they are Christians, yet everyday spit on the very tenets that Jesus taught by making greed, self-aggrandizement and treating poor people as children of a lesser God their de facto religion? Why not equally publicly indict the rapacious "prosperity preachers" and fake healers who appear in pulpits and on television weekly to steal from the poor so they themselves can live in imperial luxury like the Roman Caesar, the same Caesar whose empire tortured Jesus to death? According to the teachings of Jesus, transgressions like these are what believers should be exposing and denouncing. Indeed, in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus makes it clear that betrayal of the poor and the vulnerable is among the worst sins possible. Moreover, there Jesus reveals that if nothing else will get one banished to Hell, hurting - even ignoring - those he calls "the least of these" surely will.

Also in that Matthew 25 passage, Jesus teaches that if we are to judge each other at all, it must be by the standard of whether we are trying to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. That is the gospel's paramount measure of faith, not how much one shouts Jesus' name or how often and how loudly one can recite doctrine and creeds. Jesus taught - and modeled - that what is most important for those who follow him is to spend their time and treasure in this world, engaging in loving, self-sacrificial actions with the express purpose of manifesting God's love and justice on earth as in heaven.

For me, that is the standard by which all those who seek to lead or govern us must be judged.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Ph.D. is a professor of biblical interpretation at New York Theological Seminary, the author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Teachings of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted

This year, Nov. 11 will be a particularly joyous day for this veteran. Though I will not be attending any events, I can still reasonably expect a few pats on the back or some kind words in recognition of my six years in service to our country. Thankfully, I am past the awkwardness that used to greet me as supporters approached me with their gratitude in airports or shopping malls - seeking hugs and handshakes to express their appreciation for my sacrifice. I have overcome the demons that accompanied me back from Iraq, who insisted the strangers' thanks were idolatrous and superficial. However, I do continue to pray that well-wishers offer "welcome home" in place of "thank you" - the latter often being misunderstood, as many service members do not consider the acts they have committed to be commendable. Beside merely a celebration of patriotism, Nov. 11 is also a day to remember and rejoice in peace. Armistice Day holds a place in history as the day the Allies and Germany signed a treaty in Compiègne, France, ending hostilities on the Western Front. To this day, many people still reserve a moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. to respect the 8 million who perished in WWI.

Though for Christians, the day does not end there. This Sunday the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, one of the first saints not to be martyred. In fact, St. Martin was one of many to be beatified who, by today's standards, would be identified as a conscientious objector - an individual verifiably opposed to "war in any form." At one time a Roman centurion, Martin came to a "crystallization" of conscience, laying down his sword and declaring, "I am a soldier of Christ, it is not permissible for me to fight." It has been speculated that in 1918, Nov. 11 was chosen as Armistice Day in part due to St. Martin, who is especially the patron of soldiers and chaplains. It is curious to consider that this Christian soldier in fact thought it more Christlike to return to the front lines unarmed than with the sword the empire placed in his hands. David Thoreau, an inspiration to another saintly Martin, believed that a creative, nonviolent minority could serve the state by resisting it with the intention of improving it. Could this in fact be the embodiment of service to the state Paul speaks of in Romans 13? After all, he and St. Martin both were imprisoned for their beliefs…

Finally, I come to the most celebratory story behind Nov. 11 for this war-wearied veteran. Not long after my own road to Damascus conversion experience, I miraculously found a beautiful woman as crazy about Jesus as I was (and still am). An abbreviated courtship ensued, and within seven months, I had proposed. As our relationship developed, we found that our distinct beliefs matured as well. Faced with a similar crossroads regarding her own service to God and country, she too followed the path Martin helped forge so many centuries ago. Not long ago she filed for discharge as a conscientious objector, declaring herself a soldier in Christ's nonviolent army of peace.

Left to decide our date of wedded bliss, my 'better half,' my muse, settled on an otherwise nondescript day in November. This Sunday, we will share in the sacrament of matrimony - the threefold meaning of Nov. 11 is sure to be a fitting celebration of our combined attempts at patriotism, pacifism, and piety. We have high hopes and big dreams of continuing our service to fellow centurions, and with God's grace his gift to us can continue to bless others.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

The name "Red Letter Christians" is catching on! Increasingly within the Christian community (and even in the general public), people are becoming aware of the growing number of us who are basically evangelical in our theology but who shy away from designating ourselves as "evangelicals." They know us to be Christians with a high view of scripture, who affirm the doctrines of the Apostles' Creed, and who believe that salvation comes from surrendering our hearts, minds, and souls to the resurrected Christ — but are reluctant to call ourselves evangelicals. They realize that is because the label "evangelical" has come to be almost synonymous with the "Religious Right." While holding to the same theology as evangelicals, we do not want to be known as being anti-gay, anti-environment, pro-war, anti-feminist, and pro-gun — all of which have been pinned on all evangelicals (perhaps unjustly) by the secular media.

There are critics who do not like our name, nor agree with our progressive social agenda. In the October issue of Christianity Today, there was an editorial in which the columnist explained what he thought was wrong with becoming Red Letter Christians. What was interesting in his critique was that he got us right! He grasped what we were all about – and with great effectiveness. First of all, he described us as people who, when we go to the voting booth, ask whether or not a candidate's tax policies serve the interests of the rich to the detriment of the poor, whether or not there should be policies to stop global warming, and if he or she supports Bush's war policies. See what I mean? He understands us perfectly! They are exactly the kind of questions we believe Red Letter Christians should be asking when they vote.

The second criticism leveled at us in that CT editorial was that by calling ourselves Red Letter Christians, we were giving priority to the words of Jesus, suggesting that what he taught makes earlier teachings in scripture secondary, if not inferior. Again, he has us right!

We believe that the Sermon on the Mount presents a morality that is superior to the justice proposed by Moses. But then, Jesus himself said as much. He is the one who said that while Moses allowed for divorce and remarriage that he had a higher law, and that while the retributive justice of the Hebrew Testament proposed "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth," that his new commandment was to love our enemies and overcome evil with good.

Surely, the CT columnist does not intend to put the purity codes of Moses, with all of their kosher regulations, on par with the morality of the red letters in the Bible.

I think we're on to something, and it may be soon that those evangelicals who do not want to be lumped together with Religious Right ideologies soon will be adopting this new name. There is a growing number of evangelicals who, when they find out what we're all about, will say, "That's what we think, too!"

Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.

In two recent posts, The Global Church and America's War, and Iraq and Christian Identity, I talked about the difference between the perceptions of U.S. Christians and our sisters and brothers around the world. I recently received a powerful e-mail from a Pastor Kuruvilla Chandy of Grace Bible Church, Lucknow, India, who describes himself as "a born again Christian" who supported the Cold War and "as a believer in prophecy, [is] in general agreement about supporting Israel." Hardly the profile of a left-wing Bush-basher. I'd like to share some of what he wrote.

President George Bush is the darling of most born again Christians in the US of A. But in India many regard him as a liability to the Christian cause. His identification as a believer and his advocacy of the war that the rest of the world regards as unjust has embarrassed Christians who are in a minority in India.

He is not just critical of Bush, but has strong words of both challenge and encouragement for believers in the U.S.:

People will never agree on whether or not Bush is an aggressor. That really depends on political views.... Christians living in America, suffering from fear aroused by 9/11 and desiring their own self-preservation and prosperity will approve of Bush's war against Iraq and look for ways to justify it even from a biblical viewpoint. It is heartening though to see that there are born again Christians, even in the U.S., who are opposed to the warmongering and see the war as something they have been unable to support precisely because of their faith in Christ. However the vast majority of Americans, especially those who describe themselves as born again Christians, are solidly in support of Bush, and even question the Christian identity and commitment of those who disapprove of Bush.

He further describes the connection between Bush's faith and Bush's war:

In effect, Bush has given Christ a bad name. As a Christian writer in India, I wrote an article arguing that Bush's war had nothing to do with his being a born again Christian, and all to do with his being the American President (Times of India April 7, Lucknow, April 21, 2003). The only problem is that somehow his aggressive American-ness has been identified with his being a Christian. But we in India cannot see the war as the work of a Christian. In this regard, I represent the view of most Christians in India.

In my article I essentially defended born again Christianity as what is practiced by Christians who are committed to Christ and take His teachings seriously. I am myself a born again Christian. I did not deny that, just because Bush had made being a born again Christian unpopular. Being a born again Christian has nothing to do with Bush. It has all to do with following Christ faithfully with a desire to make Him known. In the Indian context it was necessary to show what born again Christianity really stood for. I had to demonstrate that being a Christian did not mean approving Bush's war.

Perhaps even more sad than the damage Bush has done to the cause of Christ globally is the response of Christians in the U.S.:

I also circulated the article among Christian friends in the U.S., to share my concern as a Christian from a country where Christians are a minuscule minority. I shared it with my friends in America trying to somehow influence Christian opinion in the U.S. Suddenly I lost friends—not just Americans, even Indians settled in the U.S.

As I reflected on my loss of some of my Christian friends living in America, I sadly noted the great divide that has occurred among Evangelical Christians. I know that Evangelicalism is not White Christianity, but somehow I get the impression that the agenda of White Evangelical Christianity is being thrust on Evangelicals around the world. It would seem that if one is to be accepted as a born again Christian, then one is required to approve of the world's only born again Christian statesman. If you don't approve of Bush, you're not okay.

Most American Christians have put their faith in Bush imagining that he will ensure their safety. If anything, he has made the world more unsafe for Americans and even for those who side with Americans.

Will Christians in the U.S. hear the prophetic challenge from their global sisters and brothers? Or, like the friends Pastor Chandy has lost, will they value their political allegiances above their allegiance to Christ, and to his body in the worldwide church?

When I got an invitation to attend the launch of New York Faith & Justice (www.nyfaithjustice.org), their mission statement caught my eye. Simply stated, their goals are: Following Christ, uniting the church, and ending poverty in New York through spiritual formation, education, and direct advocacy. Grounded in the words of Isaiah 61, this movement envisions a city where New Yorkers are released from the oppression of poverty and the poverty of riches.

I can hear the naysayers now: "Here we go again. Another PC peace and justice group that's all talk and no action. They might spout a bit of scripture but in the end, they're really just a front for the Democratic Party. Been there. Done that. Next."

I understand this kind of cynicism. I've covered too many "religious" justice-oriented gatherings that were full of sound and fury but in the end signified nothing. The power of prayer and preaching about the Risen Christ seemed to take a back seat because God forbid we talk about Jesus and offend our secular counterparts. Also, after satirizing the antics of the Religious Right for more than 12 years, the last thing I want to see is the creation of a Progressive Left counterpart.

So when I read that this group was "ecumenical," I was skeptical at first. While religious leaders whose backgrounds ranged from PCA to ECUSA were invited to participate, would they actually show up? In a post-9/11 New York City, one seldom sees Orthodox, evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Pentecostals willing to set aside their differences and come together in the name of Jesus.

However, this movement showed all the spiritual signs of being Bible-based and truly nonpartisan from the get-go. You know something is up when 15 students from Intervarsity Fellowship and Union Theological Seminary carry a wooden cross -- literally -- for 5.3 miles, trekking from Trinity Baptist Church, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, over to the Bronx.

This broad-based ecumenical spirit carried on throughout the evening with prayers offered by ministers representing a broad swath of the Christian faith. Liturgies, worship songs, spoken-word poetry, and visual art were intertwined with speeches by Lolita Jackson from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office; Rachel Anderson, director of Boston Faith and Justice Network; Dale Irvin, president of New York Theological Seminary; Lisa Sharon Harper, executive director of NY Faith & Justice; and Jim Wallis. If you read the backgrounds of these spiritual seekers, you'll see that these are not cookie-cutter Christians all molded from the same batch of devotional dough.

Unlike some gatherings that talk around poverty issues without offering any concrete solutions, Harper noted how their programs are structured around the three mission points: Following Christ, Uniting the Church, and Ending Poverty. Right now, the program is far too early in its infancy to assess if these points can be sharpened into actual tools for social change. But based on what I saw this evening, I left the launch wondering if perhaps Shane Claiborne is indeed right -- that "Another world is possible." Will this ecumenical momentum continue? One can pray and hope.

Becky Garrison's upcoming book Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church (Seabury Books, October 2007) explores what it means to be the church in the 21st century.

Before it began, many evangelicals were strong supporters of a war with Iraq. As the death and destruction have continued, some are rethinking that view and coming to oppose the war. David Gushee, professor at Mercer University, has an important piece – Our Teachable Moment - on Christianity Today online. Gushee writes:

Such deep public distress about the war makes this a teachable moment for all of us, as Christians and as Americans. It's not enough to find a way out of this war honorably and soon. We have an opportunity to learn some deeper lessons so that we won't repeat our mistakes.

For evangelicals, one of the groups that strongly supported the war initially, one lesson is clear: We must become more discerning when our nation's leaders advocate a military solution. We have biblical resources for doing so, if we will draw upon them.

He concludes:

For me, the next time I am asked to support a war, my default setting will be no rather than yes. As a follower of Christ, I will have to be persuaded that the particular confluence of circumstances is so grave as to require a military solution. Before Christians sign off on another war, we must do our best to figure out whether the government has done everything possible to make peace.

This story in today's Washington Post made my day. As a pacifist Mennonite, I can't count the number of times someone has posed "The Question": If someone had a gun to your loved one's head, and you could use lethal violence to save them, what would you do? This scenario that unfolded in a D.C. backyard doesn't fit that exact hypothetical scene in every detail, but it does help point out the absurdity of it—what are the chances that reacting violently in such a situation is guaranteed to save your loved one and only hurt or kill the "bad guy"?

At the very least, true stories like this one remind us that violence is never our only option:

A grand feast of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp was winding down, and a group of friends was sitting on the back patio of a Capitol Hill home, sipping red wine. Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-year-old guest.

"Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he demanded, according to D.C. police and witness accounts.

The five other guests, including the girls' parents, froze—and then one spoke.

"We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, blurted out. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"

The intruder took a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupéry and said, "Damn, that's good wine."

The girl's father, Michael Rabdau, 51, who described the harrowing evening in an interview, told the intruder, described as being in his 20s, to take the whole glass. Rowan offered him the bottle. The would-be robber, his hood now down, took another sip and had a bite of Camembert cheese that was on the table.

Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his nylon sweatpants. ...

"I'm sorry," he told the group. "Can I get a hug?"

Of course, this story (and please, read the whole thing) is ripe with indirect biblical allusions—though the article makes no mention of any spiritual or philosophical motivations for anyone's actions. And of course, there's every possibility that in spite of a nonviolent response, it or similar situations might not have ended as happily—but Jesus never promised as much when he taught us to love our enemies and bless them. In fact, he promised the opposite. Still, it's beautiful when turning the other cheek, giving your shirt, and going the extra mile have the intended effect: confronting our enemies with our humanity—and their own.

Though theological arguments aside, I suppose another moral of the story could be, quite simply: In case of armed robbers, always have a bottle of good wine handy.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

We don’t need another election. We need an exorcism. It is this that leads me from vigil to vigil and I burned with it on the evening of March 16, when I participated in nonviolent civil resistance and was arrested with more than 200 others as part of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. I shook from it in court some three months later when I pleaded “no contest” to failing to obey a lawful order.

There were 13 disciples in court that day, each with a unique mission. Many spoke beautifully to issues of amendments, traditions, permits, and codes. I ask you, sisters and brothers, what is our message? I wonder: Should we defend ourselves in finite opportunities to testify, or ought we defend the lowliest victims of war?

I stood at the podium that day, my throat dry and my hands cold, testifying to the message of the nonviolent Jesus. I stood and prayed there—as I had in front of the White House on that bitter cold night so many of us remember—strictly to relieve the ringing in my ears: speak for the dead or join them. I could not discuss the First Amendment or the parameters of the permit. Rather, I felt commissioned by God to speak to one truth alone: The frontline in Iraq is everywhere and the children have no place to hide. When I sat down I felt, but for a moment, clean.

Eda R. Uca is a member of Jonah House, an intentional faith-based resistance community in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of Ana's Girls: The Essential Guide to the Underground Eating Disorder Community Online.

The critics of the suburbs say that you and I live narrow lives. I agree. My life is narrow. From one perspective or another, all our lives are narrow. Only when lives are placed side by side do they seem larger. —D.J. Waldie, in Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

Prompted by the ubiquitous bracelets and bumper stickers, many Christians are asking (or being annoyed by) the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” Thanks to the creative folks at the Evangelical Environmental Network, we’ve also been encouraged to ask, “What Would Jesus Drive?”

So here’s another pithy iteration to ponder: “Where Would Jesus Live?”

If you’re like most Christians concerned about justice and peace, “the suburbs” would probably not appear in your answer. You might say the city, where Jesus could minister to the poor and the oppressed and walk downtown to preach to corrupt politicians. Or perhaps you think of the country, where he and his disciples could raise organic tomatoes and share their free-range chickens with the hungry. But Jesus in a split-level, mowing his lawn on Saturdays and waving to the neighbor kids on their trampoline? Hmmmmmm....

So what about those of us who do live in the suburbs? Are we doomed to live narrow lives of conspicuous consumption, super-commutes, and obsessive lawn care? Or is it possible to be a faithful, broad-minded Christian in a land of housing developments, minivans, and strip malls?

The recent or upcoming publication of several books on Christianity and the suburbs shows that many Christians are ready to begin examining the particular privileges and challenges of the suburbs. While the authors vary in their perspectives, all of them conclude that Christians can live authentic lives of discipleship in the ‘burbs. “The things I am called to practice here in suburbia are the same Christian distinctives of love, witness, mercy and justice that all Christians should embody wherever they may live,” said Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian, in a recent interview.

Christians in the suburbs may have more chances now than ever before to practice those works of mercy and justice right where they live: a recent study from the Brookings Institution found that more Americans in poverty now live in suburbs than in cities. And many of them are finding that the suburban communities they now call home aren’t as equipped with services such as public transportation, accessible health care, and job training programs as the cities from which they moved.

This changing economic face of the suburbs may mean that the fabled narrow suburban life might not be quite so narrow anymore. It may remind us to look for Jesus in the suburbs after all....

Valerie Weaver-Zercher is a writer and editor in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Read more about suburban spirituality in the July issue of Sojourners magazine.

Christ is the true philosopher because he embodies in his ministry the welcoming and caring reception of others so that they might more fully be the beings they are meant to be. Indeed, in the Christlike effort to understand, serve, heal, feed, and reconcile the earth and its communities we show forth the highest wisdom.

- Norman Wirzba
excerpt from the essay "Placing the Soul: An Agrarian Philosophical Principle" in The Essential Agraian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land, edited by Wirzba. (c) 2003.

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Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

- Matthew 19:21-22

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Jesus chose to be around small children a number of times in his ministry, often over the objections of his disciples. Sometimes he seems to have done this in order to hold children up as examples of the childlike qualitites that enable God's Realm. But maybe, sometimes, he just wanted to hold them.

- Susan Ross
from Alive Now, July/August 1994

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A certain ruler asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.' " He replied, "I have kept all these since my youth." When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

- Luke 18:18-22

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At our press conference on Monday announcing the formation of Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, I remarked, "If given the choice on this issue between Jesus and Lou Dobbs, I choose my lord and savior, Jesus Christ."

As you might imagine, Lou didn’t like that very much. In his column on CNN.com, "A call to the faithful," rather than addressing the need for reforming a broken immigration system, he accuses us of being "hell-bent on ignoring the separation of church and state" as we "conflate religion and politics" by our "political adventurism." Then he suggests:

... before the faithful acquiesce in the false choice offered by the good Reverend, perhaps he and his followers should consult Romans 13 where it is written: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."

I don’t think Lou read our statement, where we clearly said:

We believe in the rule of law, but we also believe that we are to oppose unjust laws and systems that harm and oppress people made in God's image, especially the vulnerable (Isaiah 10:1-4, Jeremiah 7:1-7, Acts 5:29, Romans 13:1-7).

The current U.S. immigration system is broken and now is the time for a fair and compassionate solution. We think it is entirely possible to protect our borders while establishing a viable, humane, and realistic immigration system ...

Dobbs doesn’t understand that compassion is not amnesty, and that reforming an unworkable system is not simply flinging open our borders. But then, he long ago stopped being a journalist, and is now one of the leading advocates against comprehensive immigration reform.

He also doesn’t seem to understand that most people now believe that bringing our faith into public life is not undermining the separation of church and state. As I’ve said many times, where would America be if Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had kept his faith to himself? And on this issue, given a choice between Jesus and Lou Dobbs, I’ll still choose Jesus.

One terrifying tragedy about the situation in Zimbabwe is the complicit silence of South Africa. In contrast to this, the Palm-Sunday-weeping-and-shouting-and-cleansing Jesus challenges us to speak out for the sake of our neighbor, Zimbabwe.

On Palm Sunday we remember Jesus’ journey into Jerusalem … and how he wept. He wept over the city of Jerusalem that was now blind to the things that make for peace. On Palm Sunday we remember Jesus’ cleansing protest in the temple … and how he shouted. He shouted at those who had turned the all-welcoming presence of God into a place of exclusion and exploitation. On Palm Sunday we witness Jesus challenge the two “sacred cows” of his day: the holy city and the holy temple.

On Palm Sunday we learn that once-hopeful places can turn into desperate places of despair. We learn that institutions meant for generous welcome can turn into greedy places of corruption. We learn that holy places can turn horrible! On Palm Sunday we learn that when the powers FALL they need to be wept over, shouted at, and cleansed.

Zimbabwe, once a sign of God’s liberating grace, needs to be wept over, shouted at, and cleansed!

Yet what is of great concern is that those who should be leading us in our grief and protest remain almost silent – namely those who govern South Africa. Strange, for they were the courageous ones who called the world to weep and shout and cleanse us of our apartheid past. Have their eyes forgotten how to cry? Does freedom really make one forget so soon?

Yet what is even further worrying is that we, the people of this land, find it so difficult to weep and wail over our silent leaders. Even the church struggles to find its prophetic voice. Is it because many of our leaders carry such impeccable “struggle” credentials – through whom God’s liberating grace once touched us all – that we are either intimidated or overly (idolatrously) respectful of them? Have they become for us like the Holy City and Holy Temple – to be forever revered?

Oh Jesus, give us all strength to challenge the sacred cows of our day. Come and heal the once holy, now horrible.

Alan Storey is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and senior minister of Calvary Methodist Church, Midrand, situated halfway between Pretoria and Johannesburg.

Tony Campolo offers some thoughts on "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's."

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A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth...

- Isaiah 11:1-4

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[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on."

- Luke 21:1-4

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I am on spring break with my family this week. As we approach Good Friday and Easter, I wanted to share with you the concluding chapter to my book, The Call to Conversion. It's a reflection on the cross and resurrection, "The Victory." It will be posted in three parts: Below is the final installment. I wish all of you a happy and Holy Easter.

What about you and me today? Do we still doubt that this kind of love makes much sense in our complex technological world? Does the way of suffering servanthood seem out of place in our world of huge and powerful institutions? That doubt was the experience of the disciples between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. They, too, felt overwhelmed by the powers and forces that ruled the day. But they were converted. The disciples became the people of the resurrection. They began to live lives filled with the fruits of conversion. They began living in the power of the resurrection. We, too, can know the power of Christ's resurrection.

But such power will not come simply by attesting to the theological fact of the resurrection. We, like the first disciples, must come out of hiding and see the risen Lord. Seeing is believing, and believing is knowing that we must turn and follow Jesus. The wisdom of God in Jesus Christ will then be made known to the principalities and the powers through the church. The place in which the dominion of the powers is broken is the fellowship of the resurrection, the church community that nurtures growing confidence in the power of God's love. The resurrection restores broken fellowship. Because the Lord is risen, love reigns where fear once controlled.

To doubt or be suspicious of the power of that love is to doubt the resurrection. The doubting, suspecting parts of our lives are yet unhealed because we have not been converted; we have still to receive the love that would heal us and change the world.

We are invited to celebrate the victory of Christ and to live in the world showing we believe it to be true. We are invited to experiment with its truth by risking our security, comfort, resources, time, energy, and our very lives for the sake of his victory. We are called to be those who have left all and risked everything in testifying to his victory. We are called to demonstrate to the world, with our lives, that we have been converted by the resurrection.

The basis of our faith is that Jesus Christ is stronger than any of the powers that confront us: political tyranny, economic oppression, the logic of war. We confront the world's powers not merely with our own strength, resources, ideas, commitment, work, or resistance. Rather, we confront the world with the very life of the resurrected Christ among us.

Like Jesus' other disciples, who were controlled by their fear, we can be converted by seeing the resurrected Christ. Whenever we act in obedience to Christ, we are demonstrating his victory. Every time we act upon Jesus' lordship in our lives, are reconciled to a brother or sister, refuse to be controlled by the economic system, deny the absolute authority of the state, claim Christ's freedom over our fear, tear down the walls of race, class, and sex, love our enemies, stand with the poor, or resist the violence of the nations by acting for peace - we are demonstrating the victory of Christ in the world. His victory is present wherever it is claimed and acted upon. We are those who evaluate themselves and the whole world in the light of Christ's victory.

Preaching the cross and the resurrection of Jesus is foolishness to those who perish. Yet, fools for Christ formed the early church. As that tiny band of believers grew, the world could see the power in such foolishness.

That same foolishness is the only hope we have of breaking free from the present realities that so gravely threaten us. Only in the recognition of something that is more real can we see their authority as unreal. The greatest threat to any system is the existence of fools who do not believe in the ultimate reality of that system. Indeed, the first step in making new realities possible is to break free from the grip and the authority of the old realities. To repent and to believe in a new reality - that is the essence of conversion. We join the body of Christ whose purpose is to make visible this new reality in the world.

Without the resurrection, the defeated followers of Jesus would have simply faded away. He would have been just another prophet who was killed. But the resurrection vindicated the cross and validated the way of Jesus, establishing the authority of his Lordship. At the same time, the resurrection invalidated the authority of the system. It showed the world's way to be a lie. The world's definition of reality crucified Jesus. His resurrection proved that definition of reality to be false. Our system, too, has its definitions of reality - national security, economic expansion, political realism. The way of Jesus is thought to be as foolish today as it was in his day. His kingdom is totally alien to the present world order.

If we believe the resurrection, the world will consider us unreasonable, unrealistic, irresponsible, and irrelevant. A world full of incredible foolishness, of myths called "truths" and of lies called "logic," will insist that we are the fools. Yet the resurrection convinces us of God's wisdom. We finally know God's power to heal us and to transform our relationship to the world.

On Easter morning, and each day of our lives, we celebrate the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which triumphs over every other reality. In the face of the world and its systems, we proclaim the resurrection, saying, "We have seen the Lord." We see him in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the faces of all the victims, and in the faces of our children. We see him in the lives of Christians who have suffered and died because they believed. And we see the Lord in the bread and the wine. He shows us, as he did his disciples, the evidence of his suffering. He invites us to reach out, take, eat, and drink; he wants us to remember him, to see him, and to know his victory.

His way is life. The world's way is death. We can now stand before the world's false realities and securities, free to deny them, denounce them, and remove ourselves from them. We stand before the reality of the resurrection and confess with the first disciples that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

We stand before the world as fools. We are foolish enough to believe that Jesus' way is stronger and more true than the way of the world. We rest secure in the knowledge that he has, and will, overcome. We are called to be fools for Christ, a people saved by his cross and converted, finally, by his resurrection.

May God convert us to such foolishness.

At the center of the Christian understanding of revelation and redemption stands the person of Jesus. Of him we say that he not only brings us the revelation of God, but that in his person he is the revelation of God.

-Monika K. Hellwig
from Jesus: The Compassion of God (The Liturgical Press, 1983)

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I am on spring break with my family this week. As we approach Good Friday and Easter, I wanted to share with you the concluding chapter to my book, The Call to Conversion. It's a reflection on the cross and resurrection, "The Victory." It will be posted in three parts: Below is the first of the three.

But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him" (Matthew 28:57).

Jesus is alive. That was the rumor that spread through Jerusalem that first Easter morning. Women came to the tomb early in the morning, the first witnesses to the resurrection. Their testimony as women was not even admissible in court under Jewish law; the word of a woman had no public credibility in that patriarchal culture. But God chose to reveal the miracle of Jesus' resurrection first to women. They were told to report the astonishing news of the empty tomb to the men. At first, the men did not believe it.

Jesus' first appearance was also to a woman, Mary Magdalene. She was in the garden near the tomb, stricken with grief. The one who had accepted and forgiven her, the one whom she loved so deeply, was gone. She saw a figure she thought was the gardener and said to him, "They have taken my Lord. Do you know where they have laid him?" Then a familiar voice called her name, "Mary." She looked up and recognized him. "Master!" she cried. Her Lord had come back, and the heart of the woman who had been cleansed by his love leapt for joy. Mary went straight to the disciples with a simple testimony, "I have seen the Lord." Their excitement must have been enormous.

The disciples were in hiding behind locked doors from fear of the authorities, says the Bible. They had seen what had happened to their leader and were afraid they would be next. So they huddled in secret.

The ones at the tomb who appeared as "young men in shining garments" told the women to go tell the disciples and Peter. Peter had always been the leader among the disciples, but he had betrayed his Lord three times with oaths and curses. Peter denied his Master from fear. The strong fisherman wept bitterly and became utterly dejected after the death of the Lord. Jesus especially wanted Peter to know of his resurrection. He wanted to make sure Peter was told, not as a rebuke, but so Peter would know that he was alive and that he still loved him. When the women told them the news, Peter and John ran to the tomb. John, younger and faster than Peter, arrived first and waited at the entrance, peering into the darkness. Peter, always the impulsive disciple, didn't stop at the entrance; he went right inside. He had to see. He had to know. They saw the empty tomb, and they believed.

Then there were the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They didn't recognize Jesus until he broke the bread. They also rushed to tell the disciples. Imagine the situation. The air was electric with rumors and reports of witnesses who said they had seen him. Most of the disciples had not yet seen him and were full of wonder. Could it be? It was too good to be true. A world that had ended for them three days earlier now seemed to be opening again.

Then Jesus came and stood among them. "Peace be with you," he said, as he looked into their eyes. Think what they must have felt at that moment. He showed them his hands and his feet. "It is I, myself touch me and see." They could hardly believe what they were seeing. He even took a fish and ate it, just to show them he was real. He recalled to them the Scriptures and his own foretelling of his death and resurrection. It was really he, and he was really alive.

Thomas wasn't there. When the others told him, he didn't believe it. Perhaps wounded with pain and disillusionment, perhaps filled with bitterness and cynicism, Thomas would not let his hopes be rekindled. He said, "Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands, unless I put my fingers in the place the marks were, and my hand into his side, I will not believe."

Later, Jesus came to his disciples again. This time, Thomas was present. "Thomas," he said, "put your finger here and see my hands. Put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas must have witnessed the marks of Jesus' suffering with tears in his eyes. "My Lord and my God," he humbly exclaimed. For Thomas, and for them all, unbelief was turned to belief when they saw their Lord and the marks of his suffering. They were converted by the resurrection.

The disciples had left everything to follow Jesus. He had touched their lives as no one else ever had. He was the one who loved them, and the one whom they had grown to love. Jesus was alive again and among his disciples as before, but now in a new way. The first words spoken to Jesus' followers at his empty tomb were, "Do not be afraid. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay." And the Scriptures say, "When they saw the Lord they were filled with great joy."

Jesus of Nazareth was delivered up by the chief priests and killed by the Romans under Pontius Pilate. He was dead and, three days later, was alive again. A man who died had been raised from the dead. History has been able to offer no other believable answer to the fact of his empty tomb.

The guards who had been posted at the tomb ran to tell the chief priests what had occurred. Their very lives were at stake for failing to prevent the tomb from being opened. To break the Roman seal that had been placed at the entrance to the tomb was against the emperor's law and punishable by death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was, then, an act of civil disobedience. The chief priests agreed to protect the guards if they would go along with a story they made up, saying that the disciples had stolen the body.

But the story failed. Something had happened and the disciples had lost their fear. A dejected and defeated band was filled with faith and confidence. They had seen the Lord, and they had been converted.

When the disciples saw Jesus, they came out of hiding. Until then, they had been cowering behind closed doors, controlled by fear. They had feared the Jewish authorities and the Romans who stood behind them. They had feared the power of the soldiers, the courts, the temples. And they had been afraid of their own faithlessness and inadequacy.

Until they saw Jesus, the disciples viewed the world the way others did. The central reality of their lives had been the power of the system and their own powerlessness. But when they saw him, they unlocked the doors, came out, and began turning the world upside down. The disciples were converted; they knew another reality then, one that was truer, greater, stronger, and a more compelling authority than the realities that had paralyzed them with fear. Jesus had risen, and Jesus was Lord.

To be a follower of Jesus means in the first place to enter by compassion into his experience, with all that it expresses of the divine and of the human. And it means in the second place to enter with him into the suffering and the hope of all human persons, making common cause with them as he does, and seeking out as he does the places of his predilection among the poor and despised and oppressed.

- Monika K. Hellwig
from Jesus: The Compassion of God (The Liturgical Press, 1983)

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As expected, I get a lot of Christian press releases around Christmas and Easter. Most of the material gets circular filed under “been there, done that;” “would love to attend, but I have too many other Christian commitments;” or “Christ died and rose for THIS?" But this year, I got a press release titled “Church, Artists and Sex Workers plan an Experiential Easter Service,” that piqued my curiosity.

Transmission, an underground Manhattan church, is working with sex workers and artists to celebrate Mary Magdalene's role in the gospel resurrection story, her personal relationship with Jesus, her witness on behalf of the risen Christ, and contemporary sex worker issues. They chose Mary Magdalene because Christ appeared to her before anyone else and entrusted her with the news of his resurrection although the other apostles didn't believe her (Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-11, Luke 24:1-10; and John 20:1-18).

While some Christians call Mary Magdalene a prostitute, or say she was the woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8:3-11), a careful reading will reveal these are later interpretations of the text as the institutionalized church marginalized her and concocted stories of her being a prostitute. Rather than give this story a gnostic update, Transmission appears to be going back to the Bible basics to explore, on Easter Sunday, the significant role this allegedly fallen woman played in helping to spread the gospel.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus surrounded himself with those society had rejected as outcasts and undesirables. “In my experience,” says Transmission co-founder Bowie Snodgrass, “listening to sex workers tell their stories can blow the lids off morally-loaded religious debates about sex and economics, revealing deep human truths, lives, complexities, and questions.” What does it mean to have a service that welcomes all but makes an effort to target those whom society has shunned as unclean and undesirable?

Jesus welcomed all into his kingdom, teaching us that we are all equal in God’s eyes, and as such we are equally worthy of being loved. According to Transmission’s Web site, “All are welcome regardless of age, gender, profession, or the number of times they've been born.”

The venue for this service is Club Avalon, formerly known as the notorious New York nightclub Limelight. Originally, this gothic revival structure was built as Holy Communion Episcopal Church by William Augustus Muhlenberg, who later instituted a radical ministry to help brothel workers and abandoned mistresses start new lives. He earned a place on the Episcopal calendar of feasts and fasts, the Anglican equivalent of being made a saint. Coincidentally, Easter Sunday happens to fall on his Feast Day. Coincidence? You decide.

Instead of having a clergyperson lead and direct the entire thing, every member of Transmission will play a part in guiding the worship experience. The service will include performance poetry, modern dance, graffiti art, a live band playing Madonna covers, and much, much more. "Rather than directing ritual activity," says Isaac Everett, "we're creating an interactive environment which will allow people to connect with the Easter story on their own terms and at their own pace. It's important to us that everyone who comes has an access point, regardless of who they are." Collaborators on this venture include members of PONY (Prostitutes Organization of New York), artists from Storahtelling (a Jewish ritual theater company), and local seminarians.

I’ve worshipped with Isaac Everett on and off for several years now and I can attest to the power of his music. This is no free-for-all, anything-goes kind of service, but a service that will be grounded by Isaac’s love of liturgy and the Word, as well as his skill as a music worship leader. I just found out that his work will be distributed by Jonny Baker’s Proost label. I’ve worked with Jonny enough to know that it’s well worth checking out his new resources that fuel faith.

Even though my Easter Sunday tends to be booked solid, something tells me I should carve out a bit of space and check out this service. For those who are in the New York City area, come join me on Sunday, April 8, starting at 6 p.m. in Club Avalon, 47 West 20th Street (at Sixth Avenue). No cover charge, just come as you are. I have no idea what to expect - but then again, neither did Mary Magdalene when she first went to the tomb.


Becky Garrison is Senior Contributing Editor for The Wittenburg Door. Her works include Swamp Water: A Memoir - an Amazon short excerpt of a spiritual memoir in progress.

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

- Matthew 11:1-6

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What God requires of those who call on God's name is responsive servanthood. God wishes to act in and through us, so Christian hope does not relieve men and women of responsibility. We are not primarily responsible for shrewd analysis of problems, for strategic selection of means, for maximizing the chances of success. We are primarily responsible for turning to God, for attempting to know and do God's will. That well may lead us into actions which are not shrewd, strategic, or successful, as the life of Jesus suggests. But as Jesus' life demonstrates, human action which is faithful to God's will can have transforming effect.

- Parker Palmer
from "The Company of Strangers"

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It is not we who do Christ the favor of worshiping him; it is Christ who empowers us by strengthening us, and enabling us to fight for the things that are worth fighting for, the things that endure; and that is a promise worth fighting for, worth dying for, and worth living for.

- Peter Gomes, excerpt from "Strength for the Journey"

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In essence, what Jesus imparted to his disciples was that they must strive for true justice on earth as in heaven, as their righteous service to God; that they must honor God by doing indiscriminate justice, by lifting up "the least of these" on the altar of God's justice and mercy; that they must set into motion a revolution of love and holistic spirituality that demonstrates love for God by treating the needs of even the least of God's children as holy.

-Obery M Hendericks, Jr.
excerpt from The Politics of Jesus.

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