Why I Got Arrested on Good Friday
by Shane Claiborne 04-21-2009
Friday was real good this year. We remembered Jesus, and we remembered Jesus disguised in the "least of these" — those who continue to be tortured, spit on, slapped, insulted, misunderstood...those who ache, bleed, cry, love, forgive, and ask God "have you forsaken me?"
The morning started with a slow meditative reading of the passion narrative from the gospel. We sat still, praying that we would have the courage to follow the way of the cross in a world of the sword.
Then, as many Christians do throughout the world, we spent Good Friday remembering the "stations of the cross," the various stages of Christ's execution.
But we didn’t keep things inside the walls of cathedrals — we took to the streets. At one gathering, hundreds of us gathered outside Colosimo's Gun Shop, one of the most notorious gun stores in the country for selling weapons later traced to violent crimes. On the makeshift stage outside the gun shop, alongside a Pentecostal dance team and a host of collared clergy from all sorts of denominations, there was a giant gun about the size of a small car, and a cross, and a coffin....
To read the rest of the article, go to:
http://blog.sojo.net/2009/04/21/why-i-got-arrested-on-good-friday/
April 27, 2009
April 10, 2009
Following the Way of the Suffering Servant
Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows. Yet we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our sins. Upon him was the chastisement that brings us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.
- Isaiah 53.4-5
It’s a gracious thing in God’s sight, if you endure while you suffer for the sake of the good. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you follow in his footsteps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was insulted, he returned no insult. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to the One who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
- 1 Peter 2.20-24
One of the most peculiar aspects of Jesus' kingdom proclamation was his claim that God was fulfilling his ancient promises through Jesus’ own person and work. God was rescuing Israel, judging evil, and establishing his reign of justice and peace through Jesus.
More specifically, the New Testament portrays Jesus' obedience unto death on the cross as the ultimate revelation of the reign of God.
In the words of John Howard Yoder, "The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come" (The Politics of Jesus, 51).
The cross of Jesus is the crux – the central, focal, decisive – point of history.
Thus, history is "from first to last, and at every point in between, cruciform, the form of the cross. Not any cross, but this cross; yet this cross is every cross. At a particular point in time, on a certain Friday afternoon on a dung heap outside the gates of Jerusalem, it is said of all time, 'It is finished.' Yet it is not over. Now time, reformed because cross-formed, begins anew. The past and the future and this little in-between point we call the present are all in order. What happened at the cross point is what the first Adam was supposed to have done in the beginning. This is the Omega point, the end and the destiny of the love that was to give birth to love. It took the one who is both Alpha and Omega to restore life to love aborted" (John Richard Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, 190-91).
Jesus didn't simply come to set a good example for humanity, or to save us from our individual sins so that we can go to heaven when we die. Jesus came as Israel’s Messianic King and as the world's Great Savior, in order to set into motion a new creation. Through Jesus' person and work, God has created a new humanity – a community of renewed, forgiven children of God, commissioned with the task of new creation. As Jesus' followers, we are called to lead a radically new kind of life.
Only in this sense can we understand Jesus' death as exemplary. It functions as our consistent, universal example of the truly human way. This is why Jesus implores us to "Pick up our crosses and follow him!"
But what is this "cross" that we are called to carry?
Again, the words of Yoder are instructive: "The believer’s cross must be, like his Lord’s, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not…an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to Come" (The Politics of Jesus, 96).
The implications of this for Christ's church are astounding!
As we bear our crosses we are found to be "in Christ" and are called to the task of Christ-image-formation. Reckoning ourselves as being "dead to sin and alive in Jesus Christ," we participate with God's community of faith in God's work to bring about transformation in the world.
In this work of transformation we refuse the way of violence as an instrument of God's will; we offer welcome to strangers; we offer God's love and forgiveness to those who do evil; we announce the good news to the poor; we proclaim release to those who are captive; we set at liberty those who are oppressed; and we embody the Lord's Jubilee.
To bear the cross of Jesus is to become part of an alternative, God-ordained social and political reality in the world – one that threatens the existing order of things, as we point to the victory of God in Jesus Christ.
To bear the cross of Jesus is to become the flesh and blood embodiment of God's peaceable kingdom, even as we groan inwardly for the fullness of God's kingdom come and for our future share in the glory of Christ's resurrection.
- Isaiah 53.4-5
It’s a gracious thing in God’s sight, if you endure while you suffer for the sake of the good. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you follow in his footsteps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was insulted, he returned no insult. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to the One who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
- 1 Peter 2.20-24
One of the most peculiar aspects of Jesus' kingdom proclamation was his claim that God was fulfilling his ancient promises through Jesus’ own person and work. God was rescuing Israel, judging evil, and establishing his reign of justice and peace through Jesus.
More specifically, the New Testament portrays Jesus' obedience unto death on the cross as the ultimate revelation of the reign of God.
In the words of John Howard Yoder, "The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come" (The Politics of Jesus, 51).
The cross of Jesus is the crux – the central, focal, decisive – point of history.
Thus, history is "from first to last, and at every point in between, cruciform, the form of the cross. Not any cross, but this cross; yet this cross is every cross. At a particular point in time, on a certain Friday afternoon on a dung heap outside the gates of Jerusalem, it is said of all time, 'It is finished.' Yet it is not over. Now time, reformed because cross-formed, begins anew. The past and the future and this little in-between point we call the present are all in order. What happened at the cross point is what the first Adam was supposed to have done in the beginning. This is the Omega point, the end and the destiny of the love that was to give birth to love. It took the one who is both Alpha and Omega to restore life to love aborted" (John Richard Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, 190-91).
Jesus didn't simply come to set a good example for humanity, or to save us from our individual sins so that we can go to heaven when we die. Jesus came as Israel’s Messianic King and as the world's Great Savior, in order to set into motion a new creation. Through Jesus' person and work, God has created a new humanity – a community of renewed, forgiven children of God, commissioned with the task of new creation. As Jesus' followers, we are called to lead a radically new kind of life.
Only in this sense can we understand Jesus' death as exemplary. It functions as our consistent, universal example of the truly human way. This is why Jesus implores us to "Pick up our crosses and follow him!"
But what is this "cross" that we are called to carry?
Again, the words of Yoder are instructive: "The believer’s cross must be, like his Lord’s, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not…an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to Come" (The Politics of Jesus, 96).
The implications of this for Christ's church are astounding!
As we bear our crosses we are found to be "in Christ" and are called to the task of Christ-image-formation. Reckoning ourselves as being "dead to sin and alive in Jesus Christ," we participate with God's community of faith in God's work to bring about transformation in the world.
In this work of transformation we refuse the way of violence as an instrument of God's will; we offer welcome to strangers; we offer God's love and forgiveness to those who do evil; we announce the good news to the poor; we proclaim release to those who are captive; we set at liberty those who are oppressed; and we embody the Lord's Jubilee.
To bear the cross of Jesus is to become part of an alternative, God-ordained social and political reality in the world – one that threatens the existing order of things, as we point to the victory of God in Jesus Christ.
To bear the cross of Jesus is to become the flesh and blood embodiment of God's peaceable kingdom, even as we groan inwardly for the fullness of God's kingdom come and for our future share in the glory of Christ's resurrection.
March 26, 2009
A Lenten Refection: Discipleship
Discipleship is one of the most important themes in the New Testament.
The New Testament is comprised of books about disciples, written by disciples, for other disciples of Jesus.
The word "disciple" occurs 269 times in the New Testament, while the word "Christian" is used only 3 times. In fact, the word "Christian" was first introduced to describe Jesus' disciples. "And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11.26).
Why the language of "Christian" has come to dominate our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I cannot answer (perhaps it has to do with the institutionalization of the Christian religion?). Whatever the reason, I am most concerned with the reality to which our language points. In the words of Dallas Willard, the truth is:
"For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American [and Canadian] churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership - either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or local church...So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional" (The Great Omission, 4).
The view that discipleship is optional is foreign to the New Testament. The model of life that Jesus demanded of his followers is the way of discipleship - the way of sacrifice, the way of suffering love, the way of the cross and resurrection.
My reflections that follow are a small effort to challenge today's church to return to both the New Testament's language and way of discipleship.
The making of disciples, with a view to enroll people as Christ's students, was at the core of the early churches missionary vision. The goal that Jesus set for his earliest disciples was that they use his power and authority (manifest through the living presence of the Holy Spirit) to make disciples from all nations. This would include baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28.19-20).
So, a follower of Jesus is a special type of person. A disciple is someone who has encountered the Spirit of God and, thus, has been transformed at the core of their being. A disciple has looked, in faith, to the Faithful One - Jesus of Nazareth, who is both the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. And a disciple is someone who is committed to a life of faithfulness and fidelity to Jesus, which includes an ongoing humble devotion to live out Jesus' teachings about discipleship.
What does this look like you ask? Nothing less than a pattern of dying and raising again.
"If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a person, to gain the whole world, and to lose or forfeit his life" (Luke 9.23-25).
And in Romans 6, the apostle Paul says, "For if we have become united with Christ in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin...Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive unto God in the Messiah Jesus...present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."
This is the New Testament's picture of a disciple of Jesus (ie. a Christian). A disciple is someone who follows the way of the cross and experiences the power of Jesus' resurrection, all the while looking to the future resurrection of the body. Sacrifice, obedience, suffering, and hope apply to Jesus' disciples no less than to himself.
"For Christ's sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3.8-11).
Consider now, these words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion. Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross" (The Cost of Discipleship, 87).
What I have described here (in the words of Scripture and the testimony of the later church), is not the deluxe, first rate model of the Christian. This IS the Christian. Surely much more, but no less!
The New Testament is comprised of books about disciples, written by disciples, for other disciples of Jesus.
The word "disciple" occurs 269 times in the New Testament, while the word "Christian" is used only 3 times. In fact, the word "Christian" was first introduced to describe Jesus' disciples. "And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11.26).
Why the language of "Christian" has come to dominate our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I cannot answer (perhaps it has to do with the institutionalization of the Christian religion?). Whatever the reason, I am most concerned with the reality to which our language points. In the words of Dallas Willard, the truth is:
"For at least several decades the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian. One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary American [and Canadian] churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership - either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or local church...So far as the visible Christian institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship clearly is optional" (The Great Omission, 4).
The view that discipleship is optional is foreign to the New Testament. The model of life that Jesus demanded of his followers is the way of discipleship - the way of sacrifice, the way of suffering love, the way of the cross and resurrection.
My reflections that follow are a small effort to challenge today's church to return to both the New Testament's language and way of discipleship.
The making of disciples, with a view to enroll people as Christ's students, was at the core of the early churches missionary vision. The goal that Jesus set for his earliest disciples was that they use his power and authority (manifest through the living presence of the Holy Spirit) to make disciples from all nations. This would include baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28.19-20).
So, a follower of Jesus is a special type of person. A disciple is someone who has encountered the Spirit of God and, thus, has been transformed at the core of their being. A disciple has looked, in faith, to the Faithful One - Jesus of Nazareth, who is both the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. And a disciple is someone who is committed to a life of faithfulness and fidelity to Jesus, which includes an ongoing humble devotion to live out Jesus' teachings about discipleship.
What does this look like you ask? Nothing less than a pattern of dying and raising again.
"If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a person, to gain the whole world, and to lose or forfeit his life" (Luke 9.23-25).
And in Romans 6, the apostle Paul says, "For if we have become united with Christ in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin...Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive unto God in the Messiah Jesus...present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."
This is the New Testament's picture of a disciple of Jesus (ie. a Christian). A disciple is someone who follows the way of the cross and experiences the power of Jesus' resurrection, all the while looking to the future resurrection of the body. Sacrifice, obedience, suffering, and hope apply to Jesus' disciples no less than to himself.
"For Christ's sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3.8-11).
Consider now, these words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion. Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross" (The Cost of Discipleship, 87).
What I have described here (in the words of Scripture and the testimony of the later church), is not the deluxe, first rate model of the Christian. This IS the Christian. Surely much more, but no less!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)