Breaking Through

God, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

That’s what we mean when we say Jesus had to die for us. It’s not that he had to literally pay God some price, which makes God appear rather petty and powerless. Is God that unfree to love and forgive? Does God not organically and naturally love what God created? It can’t be true. John Duns Scotus taught that good theology will always keep God free for humanity and humanity free for God. Love can only happen in the realm of freedom, and ever-expanding freedom at that. We pulled God into our way of loving and forgiving, which is always mercenary and tit-for-tat. It was the best any of us could do until we sat stunned before the cross.

Quite simply, until someone dies, we don’t ask bigger questions. We don’t understand in a new way. We don’t break through. The only price that Jesus was paying was to the human soul, so that we could break through to a new kind of God. Most of religious history believed that humanity had to spill blood (human sacrifice or animal sacrifice) to get to God, but, after Jesus, some were able to comprehend that, actually, God was spilling blood to get to us. That reversed the engines of history forever, but the human mind still resists that reversal. It is too good to be true.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 79

Photo: Columbia River, June 16, 2025

More Loved Than We Found Them

Acceptance, Compassion, Jesus, Love 0

Honestly, I don’t know if organized Christianity, on balance, is helpful anymore. What I do know is that the compassionate heart of Jesus I find in the stories told about him is helpful – and urgently needed. The world can use more tender-hearted humans, doing what they can to live selflessly, gently, and focused on others – and that’s probably the highest spiritual aspiration we can have: leaving people more loved than we found them. I want to stand with the empathetic souls, no matter where they come from and what they call themselves and who they declare God to be, because that is the most pressing need I see in the world. I want to be with the disparate multitude who believe caring for others is the better path, even if that means never stepping foot in a church building again or doing the hard work of renovating the one that I’m connected to. People who are assailed by the storms of this life don’t need any more heartless, loveless, joyless self-identified saints claiming they’re Christian while beating the hell out of them. They need people who simply give a damn in a way that emulates Jesus, people who see how hard it is to be human and feel burdened to make it a little softer.

–John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 12

Photo: Irises, South Riding, Virginia, May 3, 2025

We All Have a Place

Acceptance, Community, God, Jesus, Universalism 0

Over and over again, Jesus shows us the humanity of those we would put into different compartments from ourselves. He reminds us that our fellow brothers, sisters, and siblings are not so easily categorized and separated. To one another, we should not be enemies to be defeated, resources to be exploited, or infidels to be converted. We all belong to one another as one family, and we all belong to God as a heavenly Parent. So it only follows that we would all have a place through God’s gate and at God’s table, no matter how long it takes for us to get there.

–Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 91

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 18, 2025

Greater Glory

Atonement, Forgiveness, God, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

What would have happened if Jesus, in terrible pain on the cross, had commanded an army of angels to come and wipe out his persecutors? What would have happened if Jesus had bought into the violent response of Peter when the Romans came to arrest him? Violence, bloodshed, death, maybe even war, right? But instead, Jesus responded in the opposite way. He commanded Peter to put away his sword and he spoke words of forgiveness from the cross. In so doing, he broke the cycle of violence and reconciled us to God so that we could spend an eternity celebrating and enjoying our restored relationship with a God who loves us. Which brings God more glory – retribution or restoration? I think the answer is obvious.

–Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 99

Photo: Cherry blossoms, South Riding, Virginia, March 28, 2025

The Compassionate Heart of God

Atonement, Compassion, God, Grace, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

What do I see when I look upon Christ in death with a pierced side? I see that a soldier’s spear has opened a window into the heart of God. As I gaze into the heart of God I discover that there is no wrath, no malice, no threat, no vengeance; only compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34). Jesus dies, not with a curse upon his lips, but with a plea for pardon. To see Christ upon the cross is to see into the very depths of the heart of God. Where once in our distant pagan past we imagined there lurked monstrous intent threatening harm, we now discover there is only tender compassion. On the cross we encounter a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. When we look through the riven side of Christ into the heart of God, we gaze upon a vast cosmos filled with galaxies of grace.

–Brian Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 33

Photo: Cherry blossoms in a heart shape, South Riding, Virginia, March 28, 2025

Go High

Core Value, God, Jesus 0

If our postmodern world seems highly subject to cynicism, skepticism, and what it does not believe in, if we now live in a post-truth America, then we “believers” must take at least partial responsibility for aiming our culture in this sad direction. The best criticism of the bad is still the practice of the better. Oppositional energy only creates more of the same. All problem solving must first be guided by a positive and overarching vision.

We must reclaim the Christian project, building from the true starting point of Original Goodness. We must reclaim Jesus as an inclusive Savior instead of an exclusionary Judge, as a Christ who holds history together as the cosmic Alpha and Omega. Then, both history and the individual can live inside of a collective safety and an assured success. Some would call this the very shape of salvation.

–Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 67-68

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 12, 2025

God’s Unrelenting Love

Atonement, God, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

What Paul is claiming by saying that God put forth Jesus as a hilasterion is that this is proof of God’s righteousness and forbearance (Rom 3:25-26). The cross is not the pre-condition for God’s forgiveness. Rather, it is what proves how unrelenting God’s love is, even for God’s enemies (5:10-11; 8:31-39). And, humanity is being saved, not from God, but from Sin and Death (e.g., 5:12-7:25; cf. 1 Cor 15:55-56). Paul thinks the cross is what God endures in Jesus as God forgives (Rom 4:7), overlooks (3:25-26), and does not account people’s sins (4:8; cf. 2 Cor 5:18-19). The death of Jesus is what God undergoes as he loves his enemies so as to be reconciled to them (5:6-11), which requires God to enter “enemy territory” so to speak.

Paul is essentially saying:

Look at Jesus! God is not your enemy! You are the ones at enmity with God. God is justifying you even though you are ungodly. God has put forth Jesus as a conciliatory votive gift of peace and reconciliation to demonstrate this. Be reconciled to God! God loves you! If God did not spare God’s own Son, then nothing can separate you from the love of God revealed and manifested in Jesus Christ. Jesus eternally stands in the presence of God (like votive gifts stand in temples) interceding for us all.

–Andrew Remington Rillera, Lamb of the Free, p. 268-269

Photo: Snow and frozen lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 6, 2025

A Shelter from the Storm

Beauty, Community, Inspiration, Jesus 0

A shelter from the storm is a beautiful metaphor of the church. It’s not an angry church on a crusade for political causes or a detached church disseminating dogma to a disinterested culture. Instead, try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm – this is the church as a shelter from the storm. It’s immensely appealing. And it’s the very metaphor Jesus leaves lingering in our imagination as he concludes his Sermon on the Mount. In his summation Jesus tells us that if we will live his teaching, we will build a house on the rock-solid foundation that will stand when the rains fall, the winds blow, and the floods rise. To say it plainly, a church that lives the Sermon on the Mount will be a shelter from the storm.

–Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World, p. 182-183

Photo: Cloudy sky over lake, South Riding, Virginia, December 30, 2023

Love and Acceptance of Christ

Acceptance, Jesus, Love 0

This is part of what we learn from Jesus in this story: Most people don’t become Christ-followers because of our superior theological arguments. They come to church, and then faith, because someone befriended them and demonstrated the love and acceptance of Christ.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on today in Christian circles because church membership and worship attendance is dropping in the US. But there is no shortage of people who need to feel they are cared about as human beings, who need to be accepted, befriended, and loved.

— Adam Hamilton, Luke: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws, p. 92

Photo: Great blue heron, February 14, 2025

Restorative Justice

Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

Jesus’s ministry is not to gather the so-called good into a private country club and punish the outsiders, but to reach out to those on the edge and on the bottom, those who are last, to tell them they might just be first! That is almost the very job description of the Holy Spirit and, therefore, of Jesus. Some call it God’s unique kind of justice or “restorative justice.” God justifies things by restoring them to their true and full identity in himself, as opposed to retributive justice, which seeks only reward and punishment. To receive unearned love is their only punishment.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 220

Photo: Frozen lake, South Riding, Virginia, February 1, 2025