Jesus

Joe Kay 12-20-2016

This sight of poor refugee parents and a humbly born baby surrounded by dirty shepherds and visitors from other religions and races and cultures should jolt us. It’s meant to. The manger shows us a world far different than our own, one that we’re being summoned to create with unconditional love and inclusion.

the Web Editors 12-19-2016

Screenshot via YouTube/Saturday Night Live

Chance the Rapper gifted the SNL stage Saturday with a carol to Jesus. Sprinkled over a choir singing the “ooooohs” on his song “Finish Line/Drown,” he sang, “Jesus it’s your birthday, happy birthday Jesus, Jesus it’s your birthday.”

When the choir called, “This water is deep, Jesus rescue me,” he said, “I like when you say his name on network TV like that.” 

Image via RNS/Reuters/Umit Bektas

As Pope Francis officially opened this year’s Christmas Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square, he said Jesus was a “migrant” who reminds us of the plight of today’s refugees.

Francis told donors who contributed both the Nativity set and an 82-foot tree that the story of Jesus’ birth echoes the “tragic reality of migrants, on boats, making their way toward Italy,” from the Middle East and Africa today.

Shane Claiborne 12-06-2016

Image via NYCStock/Shutterstock.com

Dec. 4 was a beautiful reminder, in the long struggle for justice, that, no matter how long we wait, God hears our cry. And love and justice will win.

A few weeks ago, Chief Arvol Looking Horse issued an invitation to clergy and faith leaders to stand in solidarity with the people of Standing Rock. He said he was hoping maybe 100 would respond. But I joined thousands, in a procession of faith leaders, to gather around the sacred fire at the Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock.

I knew something special was happening here.

Image via RNS/Doctors of the World

Don’t expect a peaceful scene of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus when you open a Christmas card from Doctors of the World.

The British branch of the humanitarian group has opted to set the characters of the creche in the midst of Mideast crises. On one card, Mary and Joseph are leaning over the baby Jesus, as a missile traverses a starry night.

“Christmas is a time people contemplate the world,” the group said in its online introduction to the cards. “Doctors of the World’s cards seek to remind the public that this year war has forced millions from their homes, and they really need our help.”

Image via RNS/Jennifer Zdon/The Times-Picayune in New Orleans

Canadian researchers are revisiting a hotly debated sociological question: Why do some churches decline while others succeed?

Since the 1960s, overall membership in mainline Protestant Christian churches has been dropping in both the U.S. and Canada.

But some congregations have continued to grow, and a team of researchers believes it now knows why. It’s the conservative theological beliefs of their members and clergy, according to researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University and Redeemer University College in Ontario.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Brendan McDermid

The day after the election, Lisa Sharon Harper nearly gave up the name “evangelical.”

That’s because 81 percent of white evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump for president, a candidate she described as “representing all of the things Jesus stood against — lust for money, sex, and power.” And their vote propelled the Republican nominee to victory.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Mike Segar

Americans voted largely along the lines of race, education, and party identification. Nonwhites strongly preferred Clinton, while whites decisively chose Trump. Compared with past Republicans, the businessman received a stunning surge of votes from non-college-educated white voters.

None of this is surprising.

And yet the result upends so much conventional wisdom. 

Image via RNS/Emily McFarlan Miller

“I think there’s a moment of great creativity for women leaders in the religious sphere,” said the Rev. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, president of Auburn Theological Seminary, and author of God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith Are Changing the World.

“I think that we are seeing, in lots of areas of American life, that some of the traditional structures that served well for a long period of time are no longer doing so. … A time of change means there’s a possibility of new types of leadership and new people doing it.”

Image via RNS/Reuters/Jerry Lai/USA Today Sports

For decades, people have milked metaphors of baseball and religion beyond what they are worth. It’s not illegal, though there should probably be a special place in hell for those who claim to see the Trinity in baseball’s rule that three outs end an inning, or that the ballpark is a “cathedral.”

The truth is, we can go deeper.

Jim Simpson 8-12-2016

Donald Trump speaks during a press conference on July 16 in New York. JStone / Shutterstock.com

So why did I mention Donald Trump in the title? Because I want to suggest that he has set up his story very differently than Jesus. Across this country Donald Trump has cast Samaritans as “criminals” and “rapists.” He wants to build a wall and separate us. Donald Trump, like Jesus (stay with me, here), is intentionally drawing on the implicit biases of the people listening to him — but in the complete opposite way. Rather than using his position to help people question their biases and reconceive their notion of “neighbor,” his rhetoric is pushing them to deepen their hatred of Samaritans.

Greg Carey 8-10-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

Like most interpreters, I believe that apocalyptic thought shaped Jesus’ vision. When he announced the kingdom of God, he meant it (Luke 4:43; 8:1). Jesus understood his ministry as God’s dramatic intervention into human history, a decisive moment that forced people to accept or reject what God was about. Yes, his ministry was meant to bring peace. But in an apocalyptic perspective, peace ultimately follows a period of intense conflict.

Caryn Rivadeneira 6-07-2016
Konstantin Yolshin / Shutterstock

Konstantin Yolshin / Shutterstock

How could I not? How could I benefit from the messed-up grace of God that allows me to be seen by God on high not as a horrible sinner full and capable of every last deadly sin but as a beloved child and not see others differently myself? It’s messed up, but it’s true.

It’s impossible to laugh, pray, and sing old gospel songs with men who’ve raped and murdered, who’ve sold drugs to children, carjacked strangers, shot girlfriends, buried bodies in woods and not see grace.

I could not look at lines of incarcerated men, ready for a day’s work under the gun (literally), and not shudder at past (and sometimes present) atrocities and injustices. And yet, I could only hope for redemption for this land that no longer grows cotton and for these men who no longer have freedom.

And there’s no way I could rub puppies’ tummies while talking to an inmate-cowboy about dogs, to hear him tell me lots of guys here are like pit bulls because they think they’re tough, but that those guys don’t know—“They’re just silly snuggle bugs,” he says—and me not feel the peace of Christ descend.

I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I just know it’s true: When we visit prisoners, we visit Christ. All during my time in Angola, I saw Jesus everywhere.

NATALIA61 / Shutterstock

NATALIA61 / Shutterstock

Jesus was a feminist, that is, a person who promotes the equality of women with men, who treats women primarily as human persons and willingly contravenes social customs in so acting. The gospels give no evidence of Jesus ever treating women as inferior to men. When the restricted state of women in the Palestinian Judaism of that time is recalled, even this mere absence of a male superiority attitude is extraordinary. ...

Ewan McGregor in Last Days in the Desert. Image via Sundance Institute / RNS

“Daunting” is one word Ewan McGregor used about stepping into the role of Jesus in the new film Last Days in the Desert.

“Freaked out” is another way he described his feelings about the task, McGregor said.

Raj Nadella 4-25-2016

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

recent study published by the Pew Research Center offers some interesting data about economic inequality in the United States. In 1982, the top one percent of families took in 10.8 percent of all the pretax income. The bottom 90 percent got 64.7 percent. By 2012, it was 22.5 percent for the top one percent and 49.6 percent for the bottom 90 percent. In a more disturbing trend the top one percent owned 35 of all the personal wealth in 2010. The bottom fifty percent owned just five percent.

the Web Editors 4-14-2016

And it's an Old Testament law. 

Bob Lonsberry of WHAM 1180 AM radio asked the Republican front-runner, "Is there a favorite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life?"

Karyn Wiseman 4-04-2016

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

Recently, a friend emailed me that their twenty-three-year-old son had attempted suicide. The young man had been found fairly quickly, but due to the nature of his attempt and his severe depression, he is now in a hospital's psychiatric ward. My friend asked, “How did it get so bad and I didn't know?” She is trying to process guilt and anxiety about what might have happened. Her son is getting the help he needs, but it’s a long journey back to health and wholeness for the entire family.

Kathy Khang 3-31-2016

Christ Healing a Bleeding Woman. Public domain image

Sometimes there are no advocates, no allies, no other choices but to be the one to take a risk with no guarantee or promise of success, of justice, of healing.

Christian Piatt 3-24-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

Poor people just don’t know what’s good for them. Freedom, after all, is only possible after order is established. If they can’t do for themselves what needs to be done, we’ll do what needs to be done anyway. Protect them from themselves.

As for the radical, his calls for “change” and a better way of life will fade after people are sufficiently fed, safe, and entertained. After all, who has the appetite for revolution when their bellies are already full?

They’ll thank us later.