Palm Sunday: The King We Need
8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the...
Read More
Category: Jesus Christ
Issues Include:
- “Do not judge” Jesus Pushes Us to Judge OUR OWN Lives, Not Others’
- Jesus and active resistance Turn the Other Cheek MEANS Resist Them Non-Violently
- real meaning of “believe in Jesus” Is Trump a Christian? What Does It MEAN to Believe in Christ?
- Jesus’ moral teachings The Moral Priorities of Jesus: What DID He Teach?
- importance of attention to Jesus Why I Pay Priority Attention to Jesus Christ
- problem people What Jesus Says About People We Turn Away From
- Jesus and minorities – racial, religious, etc. Jesus and Racism: Samaritan Lives Matter
Category: Jesus Christ
Are You One of Those Whom Jesus Favors? Who IS He Willing to Teach and Help? (Matthew 11)
Jesus is Different. The Christ is NOT an arbitrary, or unaccountable, or irrational chooser...
Read More
6 Lessons from New Testament Church Life: Diversity! & Jesus – Justice, Mercy, etc. – ACTS
This short list is a result of a number of hours I spent in the New Testament’s “Acts of the...
Read More
Advent: Christ Has Come. So, What Do We Have TO DO?
CHRIST HAS COME. SO WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO? 1. STAND ALONE “Peter … asked, ‘Lord, what about...
Read More
Jesus Pushes Us to Judge Our OWN Lives – Not Other People’s
Jesus was a highly respected teacher of morality and of the spiritual life. So, logically...
Read More
Spiritual Tune-up: Don’t Ignore JESUS
There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that...
Read More
The Moral Priorities of Jesus – What Did Jesus Teach?
He said, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ but do not do what I say?” Maybe...
Read More
New American Bad Bible – Not What Jesus Wants (Pt-2)
These sayings may have a Biblical sound to them. But they are not Biblical. They set aside the...
Read More
New American Bad Bible – Not What Jesus Wants (Pt-1)
These sayings may have a Biblical sound to them. But they are not Biblical. Setting aside the...
Read More
Kingdom Manifesto – Sermon on the Mount Summarized
It might be a good project for each of us – to try to summarize the Sermon on the Mount...
Read More
Is Trump a Christian? What Does It MEAN to Believe in Christ?
There was some excitement among certain Republican Christians when Dobson said Trump had become a...
Read More
Jesus and Racism – Samaritan Lives Matter – Black Lives Matter
Samaritans in Jesus’ day were both religiously and racially despised. The phrase...
Read More
Turn the Other Cheek MEANS Resist Them Non-Violently
I. THE PROBLEM: Jesus says to turn the other cheek. [See a summary of this post.] Is it ever...
Read More
Why I Pay Priority Attention to Jesus Christ
WHY? Why should we focus any more on Jesus Christ than on Abraham or Moses or Isaiah? Or on the...
Read More“The Path of Christ …” to the Power of God
The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power. The path of Christ, the political commitment to – truth, – servanthood, – proclamation, and – suffering love, is despite appearances, the channel of the...
Read MoreJesus and Evil People – Strong Resistance while being Non-Violent
Jesus did NOT tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. That would have been absurd. His entire ministry is utterly at odds with such a preposterous idea. – Walter Wink I. THE PROBLEM: Jesus said to “turn the...
Read MoreWhat JESUS Says About the People We Tend to Turn Away From
Words of Jesus, who is called “Christ.” It is from his title that we derive the word “Christian” (from Matthew 25:34-46) “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are...
Read MoreWhat Jesus Emphasized Is Not What Churches Like to Emphasize
John Howard Yoder vigorously believes that Jesus’ teaching was very practical and very this-worldly. The spiritual, metaphysical, theological, religious meaning of his life and teaching – in Jesus’ mind and in...
Read MoreJesus as V.P? Is this funny, sad, wise … ?
Jordan Zakarin wrote a good spoof news article entitled Jesus Demures on Obama VP Talk. Obama is pretty attractive to a lot of Americans as a possible national leader, so… “[Jesus is] concerned with a number of...
Read MoreAndre Trocme Sees A Non-Sectarian Jesus
Andre Trocme was a pastor in Nazi-occupied France. He and his small town risked their lives – and some lost their lives – to save many hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. He wrote this in a book about Jesus published a...
Read MoreA Christmas Kind of Issue?
Does this count as a Christmas thought? I’m going to quote John Ruskin again, from his 4 essays titled as a group “Unto This Last.” He is talking about the great value of justice. The mistake of the best men...
Read MoreSix Secrets of Success
Some of us spent some time discussing John 15 Sunday morning. In the blockquote are some excerpts from the chapter, to refresh our memories. Then there are six “simple” principles that stand out to me from the...
Read MoreA Prayer About Intimacy, Beauty, and Spiritual Reality
Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is unusual – for it’s length and for its “flavor.” It is relatively long. Actually, it’s short by the standards of some preachers, but it’s long by New Testament...
Read MoreJesus – A Savior AND A Man Worth Learning
Last night I was doing a little review-browsing in a book I used a few years ago – a text for a “Life and Teachings of Jesus” class at the community college. The book is Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the...
Read More“Jesus Rejected Hatred” for Good Reason – Howard Thurman
And while we are talking about the GIGO effects of listening to hate-talk (prior post), here’s Howard Thurman (Jesus and the Disinherited, p 88) Hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral values....
Read MoreWho Would Jesus Torture?
I’m just wondering. Who would JESUS torture? I mean the real Jesus of the Gospels, not the Jesus of “Left Behind” or any other fiction, nor the Jesus of Pat Robertson or any other compromised...
Read MoreWas Jesus A Political Figure?
Here’s a condensation of Martin’s recent comment about Christians being engaged in political activity. I’ve made a few changes for the sake of flow. Obviously I think it is worth our while. Here are a couple of...
Read MoreThe Lamb and the Dove – Powerful Symbols
[The pictures are missing. Temporarily I hope.] The pictures in the upper corners of this site of the Lamb and the Dove are significant to me because they refer my mind and heart to what are to me very fundamental theological...
Read MoreWallis on Bonhoeffer: “a real Christ critical of the majority culture”
Here’s Jim Wallis discussing his first encounters with the writings of Bonhoeffer, “through reading his books as a young seminarian.” “I had just come back to Jesus after rejecting my childhood faith and...
Read MoreJesus Came Down His “Own Secret Stair”
Here’s our hands-down all-time favorite Christmas poem, with our paraphrase following. Little Baby Thing They all were looking for a king to slay their foes and lift them high. Thou cam’st a little baby thing that...
Read MoreIs It Good – Is It Safe – for Christians to Run For Public Office?
These remarks appeared in a comment on this site recently. I can agree with so much of what you say. But I wonder why you would put yourself in the position to be either slaughtered, or possibly corrupted by the big American...
Read MoreWhatever You Did, or Did Not. Matthew 25.
Words of Jesus, who is called “Christ.” It is from his title that we derive the word “Christian” (from Matthew 25:34-46) These are precisely the “kinds of people” we instinctively turn away...
Read MoreJesus on “Some Who Were Confident of Their Own Righteousness.” Not pretty.
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. “The Pharisee...
Read MoreWas Jesus Violent? The Temple Money-Changers Incident
One incident often comes up in discussions of Jesus and the generally non-violent flavor of his teaching – the time (or two) when he overthrew money-changer’s tables in the temple compound in Jerusalem. [Matthew...
Read MoreJesus, the People, and the Powers
This is my “wrap-up” commentary for this week’s Bible meditation passage (at our BibleWeek site). In this excerpt (Luke 19:37-48) Jesus enters Jerusalem experiencing public praise and official contempt and...
Read MoreMachiavelli, Ledeen, Bush, and Jesus
A recent comment questioned a post I made about the morality of Machiavelli‘s principles, as against what Jesus taught and practised. These are very basic issues of political morality, and seem very relevant to patterns...
Read Moreon Bankruptcy is our Congress “Grossly Wicked”? Jesus Calls Its Values “Detestable”.
Here’s part of a recent email from moveon.org. It uses the word “heinous” about this bankruptcy bill – that means “grossly wicked or abominable.” Would our dear leaders ever do anything...
Read MoreEaster, & The Cross, The Deliberate Holy Strategy of God
Today is Easter. Here in honor of that memorial are some difficult but worthy lines from one of my favorite thinkers (from The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, Peter Taylor Forsyth, 1909, London). What is truly human is not...
Read MoreJesus Wept Over Present and Coming Destructions
A comment added to the “Many Christians Do Not Vote Republican” post below mentioned how some Bible-thumpers seem to welcome the idea of catastrophe, apocalypse, or Armageddon, and even feel they should help bring it...
Read MoreThe ‘Sermon on the Mount’ – Righteousness without Rage, Goodness without Arrogance
These last two weeks I read through the Sermon on the Mount a few times (Matthew chapters 5 thru 7 (see it at BibleGateway.com ). It is beautiful, difficult, profound, confusing, enlightening – all at once. But this time...
Read MoreHark! the Herald Angels Sang! — At the Wrong Place
Here’s an op-ed type piece I wrote last Christmas about God’s strange approach to public relations issues that first Christmas. Christmas: God’s public relations problem by Larry Harvey, published in Southwest...
Read MoreA New Litmus Test: Do What He Taught
Barb writes: As a general rule, I do not advocate a tit-for-tat response to the Christian right and their dogma. I oppose the very idea of drawing a line in the sand on abortion or any other issue. I have already said this in...
Read MoreLying Leaders and Jesus
September 22, 2004 Certain key leaders bribe, lie, manipulate and destroy while others just go on doing good. Sounds like today, but we also find that pattern at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew(Mt 28:12-20)....
Read MoreAm I An Enemy of the Churches?
I’m not the one driving youth from the churches; many churches have proven very capable of doing that without my assistance. I’m trying to show them that the churches, in spite of appearances, are carriers of the most precious...
Read MoreConfessing Christ Against America’s ‘Theology of War’
Nov 6, 2004 In Germany in the 20’s and 30’s many “German Christians” sold their hearts to unquestioning support of the German state and it’s aggressive foreign policy. Some more attentive Christians...
Read More
Is Jesus a Republican? Is Jesus a Liberal?
As far as we know, Jesus never directly mentioned either homosexual behavior or abortion /...
Read MoreJesus’ Homecoming Sermon
He emphasizes the lower classes (“the poor”), incarceration – detention (“freedom for the prisoners”), health care (“sight for the blind”), and economic and political evils...
Read MoreLearning Jesus
May 11, 2004 I just finished teaching a community college course on “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.” I was impressed to see that people actually changed during the semester. We just discussed what we read in the...
Read MoreMaking Jesus Real or Making Machinery Hum
“There is no greater need in our time than that those who teach religion should concern themselves, not with tightening up the machinery, developing organization, or arranging more meetings; but rather to make Jesus real...
Read More