High Christology

John 19:4–10
⁴ Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” ⁵ When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
⁶ As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
⁷ The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
⁸ When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, ⁹ and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. ¹⁰ “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”

John’s gospel and the community that produced it have what bible scholars call a high Christology. Possibly the highest in the New Testament, more than any other gospel, more than any other church communities that we read about in the New Testament.

Their view was that, for the Christian, there is no higher authority or example than Jesus of Nazareth. And today’s passage in particular is the prime example of that.

It contains the greatest declaration in all of the gospels that christians follow Jesus, not an emperor, not a king, not a billionaire or a guru.

Lets start with Verse 7:

⁷ The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

What does it mean to claim to be the “Son of God”?

The Son of God

In 44BCE, Julius Caesar was assassinated. That same year, during the games held in honor of Caesar, a great comet appears in the sky. This was widely interpreted as a divine event, and the idea began to spread that this comet represented the deification of Julius Caesar, whom they believed was now ascending to the heavens as a god.

Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, had risen to power proceeding his father’s death. And in this moment, he saw a political opportunity. He ordered the mint to put coins into circulation which depicted his face on one side, and Caesar’s comet on the other with the phrase Divi Filius — “The Son of God.”

“Son of God” in the first century was less a theological term than a political one. This was the foundation upon which the imperial cult of emperor worship was built. The term Son of God meant that the emperor had divine origins, and with that, the right to rule.

Where Are You From?

Verse 8-9

⁸ When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, ⁹ and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer.

At first Pilate is toying with Jesus because he sees him as a nobody, he’s a pawn in a power struggle between Pilate and the Jewish authorities. But then he hears that Jesus is claiming to be the Son of God, and suddenly his entire demeanor changes.

To clarify, Pilate is not asking Jesus where he grew up, he is asking about his origins, his family, and his connections to power. He’s starting to think that, perhaps, Jesus is a challenge to the throne —which is exactly how John’s gospel portrays him, do you know why? John’s Gospel has such a high Christology that every earthly throne becomes relative. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not.

The community that the apostle John has established doesn’t believe that following Jesus makes you a better citizen of the empire, because John’s community believes that the empire is a beast that devours its enemies, and then its neighbors, and then it’s citizens, and then itself. This is how all empires go.

To John’s community, a Christian is someone who recognize Jesus alone as their king, and who serve no other authority … ESPECIALLY not Caesar.

Silent Jesus

Jesus says nothing, which is no doubt annoying to Pilate. Jesus’ silence means that he doesn’t view Pilate as having authority over him (cause’ high Christology of John’s Gospel), therefore he has no need to answer him when he is addressed.

To answer Pilate is to affirm subordination to him —and Jesus is subordinate to no one. So Pilate flexes for Jesus:

¹⁰ “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”

“I have power over you,” he says. Jesus replies with

“You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
(Jn 19:11).

“you only have the power that my Father has given you.” Jesus takes the —very Roman— argument that the king rules only because the Divine One has decided to allow them to. The power does not belong to the ruler, the power —and therefore the allegiance— belongs to God.

Over the course of John’s Gospel, the reader starts to realize that Jesus’ power under/with model is a legitimate threat to their power over model.

It also helps the reader see the most important thing that Jesus taught them; that the powers of Rome and the powers of the Temple Leaders were the same model of power.

They affirm this in V12

12 From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” (Jn 19:12)

Notice the spiritual leaders of Israel defending Caesar.
Notice the threat against other political leaders who don’t get in line.
Notice the partnership between Gods people and Babylons leaders.

John’s Gospel is very explicit about what it looks like when religious leaders are corrupted by the beast:

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered. (Jn 19:15)

The chief priests did, in fact, have a king besides Caesar, one whose divine name is YHWH, their God. But here we find them perfectly contented to make God serve Caesar.

Who does the Christian Serve?

If you’ve ever been in a discussion about morality and politics with other Christians, at some point you’ve had someone quote Romans 13 at you. I hear that verse at least once a month.

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…” (Romans 13:1–2)

This verse is often used to keep Christians from speaking or acting out against the governing authorities of the land. It has been used by despots and tyrants since the establishment of the hierarchichal church in the 4th century.

Hitler and Mousilinni both used it to keep the Christians in line. During Jim Crow segregation, similar arguments were used to oppose civil rights activism. Enslavers and Segregationists both used it to argue that existing laws upholding slavery were part of God’s ordained order.

Abolitionists, on the other hand, were believed to be rebelling against “God’s ordained order,” as they saw it.

In Romans 13, Paul was not making a universal command for all churches in all places in all times, only Jesus can do that. Anything Paul says must be filtered through the teachings of Jesus. If you find Paul disagreeing with Jesus, it is you who is misunderstanding Paul. This shouldn’t bother you. Rather, it should encourage you to study and learn.

Paul’s writings are not to be taken with the same weight as the words of Jesus. The context of romans 13 is directly about paying taxes, and he says so in the verses that follow 13:1-2.

The Jewish Christians wanted to start a war over taxes and Paul believed that was a stupid idea. Christian Persecution under Nero hadn’t started yet, and Paul believed that paying the tax was wise advice to keep the community safe from persecution. He was being pragmatic and pastoral. But he was certainly not —as some might argue— ordering them to simply obey fascist rulers.

And as it turns out, it seems that Paul was wrong. Not about his understanding of God, but about avoiding persecution. It can’t be done. The kingdom of God cannot exist without drawing the ire of the beast, it is unavoidable for any community living in the path of Jesus.

Nero was a tyrant, and there’s two things tyrants love, (1) building projects that glorify their name, and (2) persecuting marginalized people. So like all tyrants, he invented a reason to persecute the Christian. In this case, he set fire to Rome in order to make way for a building project and he blamed the fire on the Christians. Two birds, one stone.

This week I read about Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector during WWII. He was an Austrian and a small-town farmer who was called up to serve in Hitler’s army.

His priest encouraged him to go along with it, and his neighbors told him resistance was pointless. His bishop explained to him that obedience to authority was safer for his family. Everyone around him —church and state alike— told him the same thing: Just comply. This is your duty.

But Franz kept coming back to one question: Can I follow Jesus and fight for this regime? He wasn’t a theologian or an activist. He was a farmer who read the Gospels and tried to follow the teachings of Jesus to love. And the more he looked at Jesus, the more he realized that none of it looked like the kingdom of God, so he refused to take up military service.

It didn’t end well. He was arrested and executed in 1943 leaving behind a wife and three daughters. People eventually called him a hero, but at the time almost every Christian around him thought he was foolish.

Low Christology

I often see people describing “good Christian” as synonymous with “good citizen”— someone who doesn’t break laws, has a good work ethic, pays their taxes and is thankful for military service. Who prays for “our” troops and says the pledge of allegiance.

These types of pairings seem, to me, a result of low Christology. It is a Jesus that serves the nation, the government, or more accurately, the empire. It is a Jesus who is useful for producing “upstanding people.”

It creates a Bible that is useful for arguing which person should have and hold power.

I’ve found it revealing over the last decade whenever I see well-known religious thought leaders speaking at college campuses and public events where they spend several hours debating the Bible, Christian values, and the kingship of Jesus, and then passing out red hats and voting sign-up sheets. We ought never make Jesus serve the empire. It is a symptom of a low Christology in white American Evangelicalism.

John’s Gospel argues for a higher Christology than “we have no king but Caesar.” It argues for “he claimed to be the Son of God” (Jn 19:7), and insists: “You have no power over me if not given to you from above…“(Jn 19:11).

Judas is a mystery in Johns Gospel.

In the synoptic gospels we are told that he met with the religious leaders under cover of darkness, and that he made a deal to take them to him for thirty pieces of silver. But in Johns Gospel we aren’t told what happened or the deal he made. In fact, there is no motive given at all; it’s hidden from the reader. Judas is simply depicted as another of those in Johns Gospel who “chose darkness rather than light.”

Johns Gospel repeatedly shows us that some will choose well, and others will choose poorly, and in the end only God gets to know why. It almost seems that the author thinks it’s important for the audience not to know why, and I have a theory as to why.

A big part of our discipleship is coming to terms the mystery of people; of why different choices are made and why some —given the same access to resources (in this case, the spiritual resource of Jesus)— will fail, while others will succeed.

But everyone should be taken care of regardless.

Economic Jubilee and the People of God

The Jewish people had practices to teach them this wisdom. The Year of Jubilee

The “Year Of Jubilee” comes from Leviticus 25:10 and was a festival meant to form the peoples lives away from gathering resources (like land and money), and towards caring for others. In the year of Jubilee, which came every fifty years, all debts would be erased, and all land would be given back to its original families. All people also returned to their tribal lands.

The repercussions of a practice like this are that nobody gets too far ahead, and nobody falls too far behind. Everyone maintains footing within reach of others, no one became too isolated behind their power and wealth.

In days like ours the wisdom behind this kind of practice becomes obvious. It was a practice that taught the Israelites that people are more important than wealth.

Farmers who did well learned not to focus on enlarging their farms, but helping farmers who did not do well (without asking questions about why they failed). The laws also said that successful farmers had to take over the land of failed farmers on a temporary basis, helping them to succeed.

It was more than just providing economically for everyone, it was a spiritual idea meant to remind them that no matter how successful you have been, no matter how much you have failed... remember that the great reset is always coming.

People fail, and people succeed. Some people will start with no money and end up with lots of money. Some people will lose every penny you give them. But none of that should determine how they ought to be treated or cared for.

Theological Jubilee and the Disciple of Jesus

There are various levels of deep moral failure in the lives of his disciples, but Jesus never refuses them generosity, kindness, and mercy. All of the disciples are with Jesus at the meal, but only a few end up with him in the Garden. And the Synoptic Gospels tell us that most of them fled.

Only Peter and “the disciple Jesus loved,” are still present with him in Johns Gospel, but both choose the dark instead of light; one leaves, one deny’s knowing him.

17 “You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” she asked Peter.

He replied, “I am not.”

18 It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself. (Jn 18:17–18).

“It was cold,” this seems like a good description of how Peter must have felt. “Peter was standing with them, warming himself.” A sad sight; seeking warmth around the fires of the Roman garrison, trying to relieve the cold feeling after betraying your Lord.

Believe it or not, Judas was also a beloved disciple. He was part of Jesus’ inner circle for three years—hearing the teachings, witnessing miracles, and even participating in ministry. Judas knew his way because he had been there with Jesus many times (VS2)

Judas shows up with a garrison of soldiers —he also chose the dark instead of the light.

John 18:3 
So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons. 4 Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

5 “Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) 6 When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

… 10 Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) 11 Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

This is remarkably different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s telling of the story. Jesus’ healing of the soldier is removed, and John adds a detail about the ground shaking when Jesus says “I Am He!”

This scene reminds me of the first matrix movie, when Neo flexes and the world around him bends a little. Imagine the shaking hands of the soldier putting Jesus in handcuffs; it must have felt like handling nitro glycerine.

And imagine the surge of adrenaline Peter must have felt drawing his sword to slay the evil ones and violently defend Jesus. But even here, Peter chooses the dark.

Violence is not the power of Christ, so Jesus rebukes him.

Jesus’ power does not look like our power, it is not violent or coercive. It is a power that we cannot attain except through him, the power to love those who have and to answer violence with mercy and grace.

The power of Christ is not about revenge, retaliation, and it has nothing to do with control. Jesus says it like this:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
(Mt 5:38–39).

Christs power is used in service of others, never against them.
It is restorative, never punitive.

The love of Jesus is Jubilee, meaning it is not based upon success or failure to produce spiritual fruit.

The Gift of Disillusionment

The difficulty is that we are prone to hate the Judas’s in our lives, those who fail us. But what Jesus brings us is the gift of disillusionment.

Everyone lives with illusions about the people around us. Things that we tell ourselves about the people around us that help us to more easily navigate the world.

Illusion: Your closest people will always be there, I will never be surprised by a failure.

Reality: Relationships with humans will involve conflict, pain, and unexpected results.

Johns Gospel shows us a Jesus without illusion to who people are. He presents a Christ Jesus who knows peoples thoughts and actions before they did them, yet still loves them.

The point is not miracles, the point is loving people when it’s difficult so that we can know that —even in disillusionment— it is possible to love people well and care for them well.

In Babylon we treat people well because they meet our illusions. Jesus treated people well despite the fact that he knew they would not. Part of the spiritual formation of the Christian is learning to live without illusions.

The promise that you will remain unhurt is an illusion. The longer you know someone, the higher the chances of conflict go. We must do our best to love in our own broken little ways.

You will make mistakes, and so will they, things will go in many different directions —my advice: Remember Jesus’ infinite knowledge, yet infinite love for his disciples. Meditate upon it, take a step towards it.

Two chapters earlier, Jesus said that “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:13). The promise of being completely safe will let you down.”

I’ll end with this poem from Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson’s book,
“In the Low”:

Disillusionment is a gift.
Two things I pray for you:

That people will become human to you.
That you can become Jesus to them.

If you’d like to take a read through John 17:1-20 first, I always always encourage that.

As always, I would love your support, subscribers will get access to every post older than six months including my 46 part series: “The Dissidents Guide to Revelation.”

“In the World, not Of the World.”

We had a saying growing up in the evangelical church: “Be IN the world, but not OF the world.” This phrase is not actually in the Bible, but it seems to be rooted here, in John 17.

In this passage, Jesus is not talking here about secular music, movies, smoking, drinking, premarital sex, short skirts, cleavage, men with long hair, or any of the cultural things that the system slotted assigned to the saying. Verse 15-19 are more like short-hand phrases to describe people in exile. If you aren’t familiar with the idea of exile, it was the situation that conquered people in the ancient world were often placed under. It required removing them from their homeland after being defeated and for the conquering nation it was seen as a better option than slaughtering an entire population who could just as easily provide their new oppressor nation with skilled slave labor.

Exile was often the greatest fear of being conquered in the ancient world, the loss of freedom, land, and identity. Exile was also an effective way of keeping them from rising up as most will not fight to defend land or a city they neither belonged to nor built.

So, to be in the world and not of the world is less about modern cultural wars and more about, say, not being assimilate to the economic and power structures of the land they live in as exiles. Instead, Jesus —and the prophets before Him— encouraged their people to live out a kingdom-of-God economy in the midst of their new nation, one that prioritizes healing and meeting needs more-so than trying to store up wealth and opulence in their new land. To live as a transplant from Gods future, where love is the rule and grace is the law, and doing so amidst a hierarchal capitalist militarized empire.

To be in the world and not of the world is, to keep in theme with this Substack series, to live as a dissident to the empires of this world —to Babylon.

We live IN THE WORLD:

We must live here in this corrupt empire, as they did in Rome where Emperor Tiberius was known for pederasty, Emperor Nero committed atrocities and blamed minority groups (like the Christians), and Roman laws are unjustly written to favor the rich. They long for the Justice of Jesus.

Resources in the Roman Empire flowed in the wrong direction; upwards from the bottom to the top —they longed for the kingdom of God to turn everything right-side-up again and they did not pretend that the reality of Rome was the natural order of things, the way many Christians do today. They recognized the empire as an aberration in Gods history of goodness.

Like them, our kings are corrupt and we long for a king like Jesus.

We are not OF THE WORLD:

Stanley Hauerwass wrote “The first task of the church is not to make the world more just, but to make the world ‘the world.’1” The first thing the Christian must do is to deal honestly with our relationship to the nations in which we live.

The early Christians were not trying to apply Christianity to Rome —like an ingredient to make it better— Christianity is not a flavor booster to nationalism. The imagery used here is the same imagery that is used in the writings of other apostles.

“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles…” (1 Peter 2:11)

“Do not be conformed to this world…” (Romans 12:1)

A system built upon greed, violence, genocide, inequality, and slavery cannot be made just. It will always work to corrupt and assimilate everyone who enters into it and no one remains unaffected.

Toni Morrison, in her novel, Jazz, talks about The City as an allegorical way of describing the delusions of freedom that people live with. We often feel that we are “free” to move about the city however we may please, but that is only true so long as we keep to the roads and sidewalks that the authorities have established for us.

When the church’s heart is rooted on the things of earth, it cannot truly follow Jesus because the way of Jesus does not stick to the path laid by the authorities of this world. Instead, The Christian is invited to imagine that they are from another land, longing to return. This is not their land to fight for and those their kings to support or topple, and we do not tell their story.

Yet somehow the Christian must still make a home, build a life, be immersed in culture, and live and work in connection with the citizens of these empires.

How to Live in Babylon

The early church’s understanding of their relationship with Rome is rooted in the prophet Jeremiah, specifically the call to “Seek the welfare of the city…” (Jeremiah 29:7). He did not bid them to come and change the people at the top, rather, to change the people at the bottom that they might thrive and flourish. To build thriving, connected neighborhoods amongst their own oppressive nations.

This is what it means for Jesus to say:
“As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” (V18)

In Jesus the divine enters into our exile.

Jesus sends his disciples into the situation of our neighbors, to walk through it with them, not as an American, but as a Christian.

It is tempting to cast blame upon leadership, but we should look deeper, into the cultures and systems our leaders were raised in and discipled by. The people at the top came from our neighborhoods; our broken communities created them. If we do not find ways to address what is forming our neighbors in crooked ways, these problems will prevail.

Jeremiah seemed to understand this.

Gods people were once political orphans belonging to no one, spiritual widows, a people without a king living under an evil ruler who hated them.

That “God had rescued them” was their entire identity. They saw themselves as a separate people in this world, existing for the benefit of everyone living under human authority, and they had the audacious belief that somehow the world would be healed through them.

Christian life as Critique

The Christian life is meant to be lived as a critique of the world.

At times it aligns with the decisions of our kings, but other times it diverges. Some times they will meet us shoulder to shoulder as allies, other times they will meet us face to face as opponents, but never as enemies, always as friends.

The Christian life that does not critique the empire becomes a tool of it. The Christians who do not deal with their idolatry ends up taking part in the empires atrocities.

Sadly, complicity with the empire incidentally becomes an argument that Christianity is untrue; that we do not actually believe it.

In the final days of the Roman Empire, the Christian philosopher Boethius (524 CE) described humanity as those who have forgotten what they are and therefore do not know what they ought to do;2 made for communion with God, yet allowing themselves to be ruled by circumstance and fortune rather than the very Spirit of God.

Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, for all disciples, is that this amnesia would not take hold, that we would remember who we are. There are moments when people who desire good and believe that they are working for good suddenly realize that it is evil they have been serving after all, that is a rare gift and an opportunity to remember who they are and what they ought to do.

As a Pastor, I find it vital to be trauma informed. This means I’ve read more than a few books and attended lectures on the topic so I can understand the power dynamics of church structure and how they can cause emotional pain if not carefully ordered and managed.

But what I have not read before is an extended discussion on the Apostle Paul and how he and other church leaders may have been affected by the trauma that often rises from unhealthy parishioners during his time planting churches in cities like Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome —but once you see it, you can’t easily unsee it.

Today is release day for just such a book by Scot McKnight and Adrienne Gibson called, Traumatized Church: What Paul’s Relationship with the Corinthian Church Teaches Us About Helping Those Who Are Hurting.

The title might make it seem like simply a book about Paul by a Biblical Scholar, but it’s so much more than that. Adrienne Gibson is a licensed professional counselor (LPC), and a clinical supervisor for the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners (AZBBHE), Scot McKnight is a New Testament Scholar, historian of early Christianity, theologian, and author who has written widely on the historical Jesus, and early Christianity.

In Traumatized Church, they work in tandem looking at Pauls words, first from a place of scholarship, then from a place of mental health, resulting in a renewed reading of Pauls letters to the church in Corinth and stirring up empathy, both for Paul and the abuse he apparently suffered at the hands of unhealthy parishioners, as well as for all those striving to create grace-filled spaces where people can find healing at the communion table.

I see this book not as one thing, but rather as five interconnected discussions:
(1) a crash course on how to recognize trauma in the lives of others and ourselves, (2) a scholarly exploration of the dysfunction in the 1st century church in Corinth, (3) a detailed account of the purposes of 1 and 2 Corinthians, (4) an attempt to assess the mental state of the Apostle Paul and the abuse that he likely suffered at the hands of those whom he loved and served, and finally, (5) a veritable tool box for those who recognize brokenness in others that manifests in psychological, struggle and who have a desire to help.

We live in the time of the narcissist. They have risen to the tops of nearly every government and religious structure in our land. There are seemingly endless accounts of church abuse at the hands of these leaders. McKnight and Gibson address this head-on, but they also take a great risk as well by opening up a discussion on something many might not be ready to discuss —churchgoers abusing their pastors.

As one who has pastored for over two decades in the same local church, I must sheepishly raise my hand and confess alongside Paul that I have experienced abuse multiple instances of abuse over the years from those even under my care. I can see my story is repeatedly reflected in the pages of this book as McKnight and Gibson recount stories submitted by pastors who have suffered panic attacks and clinical depression from wounds of unhealthy people directing their pain at church leaders. What we often playfully dismiss as “sleep bites” often manifest in deep wounds which sink deeply into the shepherds life, affecting our marriages and friendships, often even unsettling and our kids sense of stability.

Traumatized Church not only speaks to my own experiences, but more than that, it offers understanding and insight into why people lash out and emotionally lash out or withdraw, and how we as church leaders can both listen and help while protecting ourselves at the same time.

Among the more surprising features of the book is a deep dive into the apostle Paul’s own psychology as the authors combine their expertise to investigate the possibility that Paul may have some physical features that made him a target of abuse, including some form of handicap, and his short stature and unattractive physical appearance, all of which which may have contributed to his abuse at the hands of a congregation formed by the beauty standards of Rome rather than the grace standards set forth by Christ.

Pastors and church leaders at any level would do well to give Traumatize Church a read. We live in a traumatizing world, and these are discussions desperately in need of having. I commend Scot McKnight and Aimee Gibson on tackling these potentially explosive topics with grace and honesty. I am thankful for this book, and I think you will be too.

Originally Posted 2021

The Slow Fade Into “Worldliness”

In the pre-Constantinian age, the voices of Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Justin, and Hippolytus spoke in unison, condemning the use of violence and military service in the kingdom of God. The idea of taking up the sword to defend the church was never in the minds of the early Christians, for they knew that the most potent weapon they wielded against the empire was their peace, their pacifism. It was not until the time of Constantine that the lines between the empires of earth and the kingdom of God began to blur. It was when Christians inherited the power to command earthly armies that Christians began to meld these two worlds together, and rather quickly, the cross itself, the antithesis of the sword, began to be emblazoned on weapons of war, shields, and helmets. As Christianity merged with Emperor Constantine’s rule and began to receive the benefits of power, it also began to shift its views of the use of violence. Eventually, pure pacifism would give way to a ‘just war’ mindset. The change a slow and gradual one, but once the cross and the sword had been united, Christians would not be able to regain the courage to separate them again until this very day.

Critiquing the Modern Church

It seems that most of the world has always understood that Jesus taught non-violence; most, that is, except for Christians. For many in the modern evangelical church, the answer to violence in the world today is more violence, and the gun has replaced the sword. The now infamous words of the President of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, (a self-proclaimed Christian) are forever seared in our collective minds: “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!”. And the majority of white Evangelical Christians in American seem to agree with this sentiment.

In American Christianity, the firearm seems to have risen to occupy an almost sacred position. The government-sanctioned right to “keep and bear arms,” as the 2ndamendment words it, “shall not be infringed,” and in some Christian circles, these government-given rights are spoken of as “God-given” rights. This divine infused language is not necessarily absent from the very words of the American constitution itself, which argues the “self-evident” truth that all people are “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,” such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These ideas presumably necessitate the use of personal and deadly force against all those who would threaten those ideals. Like Rome, American ideals are upheld by the sword; by violence. And this scenario has once again put the church in a precarious situation.

Many American Evangelicals are so immersed in the American philosophy of life that it never occurs to us to seek the counsel of the church fathers or the writings of the Apostles to ascertain biblical instruction as to what Jesus Christ reveals about Gods will for his children. Much like in Tertullian’s day, some still point to the Old Testament violence as evidence that the people of God are free to use violence to purge the earth of those who would threaten them and our land. “If you don’t agree with what Jesus believes about violence,” they might say, “you can always use the Bible to try and find a loophole;  you could point out the violence of 1 Samuel 15:3 to ‘Go and attack them with the sword and destroy all they have. Do not spare them, but kill men, women, children, and babies;’” And as Tertullian pointed out, that it is what some Christians will do. However, when we use the bible to silence Jesus in this way, we are using an account of the actions of an unfinished people (Israel) to silence the complete revelation of God in the world: Jesus. This is the same Jesus who said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting” (Jn 18:36).

The readiness of the modern church to prepare for war, to use violence, and to join in with the military operations of earthly empires is particularly troubling in light of the faith of the early church. The insinuation is that the martyr has no place in the 21st-century church; that the martyr is simply a fool without a gun whose life has been cut short for lack of firearms training. There seems to be no place in the modern church for the one who utterly refuses to kill, the one who believes that there are things far worse than death (like destroying the imago Dei in another). But if there is no “blood of the martyrs,” as Tertullian would call it, then how will the world see the power of the cross to truly save?

The Christian, according to Tertullian, is the “son of peace.” She/he is the one who has traded the ways of the world for the ways of Christ, trading the sword for the cross.  If the kingdom of God is to be present in the world, the bride of Christ must once again discover the cross’s power, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

Thus, as the Christian and Latin poet, Commodianus, declared, the Christian must “make thyself a peace-maker to all men.”[1]

[1]C. John Cadoux. Early Christian Attitude to War, (Kindle Locations 1460-1469).

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Originally posted 2021

Martyrdom as a Display of the Cross

The sacrificial deaths of many of the early church fathers and church members stand as the ultimate display of pacifism in the ancient world. Martyrdom became the most effective tool in neutering the power of the sword of the empire. Long before persecution was systematized in January 250, Christi…

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Originally posted 2021

Tertullian’s Argument from Gethsemane

The theological argument for the pacifism of the church fathers comes directly from scriptures, and Tertullian made much of the interactions of Christ with weapons of war in his day.

Matthew 26 records an incident in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus and his disciples were directly confronted by men with swords (1st-century form of law enforcement) seeking to arrest Jesus and have him tried on trumped-up charges. One of the disciples, in an attempt to defend Jesus using violence, draws his sword, and according to Luke, striking a soldier with it. Instead of commendation from Jesus for standing his ground in defense, he receives a rebuke and a command to put the sword away.

So why did Jesus tell them to bring a sword if they weren’t allowed to use it? Luke (22:36-38) informs the readers that the reason he carried the sword was to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 53:12 (that the Messiah would be seen as a violent insurrectionist), and so that he could teach them that the kingdom of God would not be established through the sword, but rather through the cross.

Tertullian, referring to this episode in Gethsemane, says: “But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier.”[1]

Skeptics will point out that chapter nineteen of Tertullian’s “On Idolatry” pertains explicitly to military service. However, Tertullian’s argument is not merely that a Christian cannot serve in the military because it is a rival master (although that argument is made there as well), but rather that a Christian cannot serve in the military because the Christian cannot bear the sword. The problem is not merely idolatry, but the use of violence against the image of God in others.

In Tertullian’s day, as well as our own, some choose to look past Christ to the Old Testament in order to justify the use of violence for modern Christians. We can see from his writings that some were arguing that, since Moses carried a rod, and since Aaron carried a buckle (to secure a weapon to his side), and since Joshua led a warring army, then it follows that the Christian might find it acceptable as one of Gods people to also engage in military service.[2]

However, Tertullian will not allow Jesus to be silenced by the Old Testament.He points to Jesus, who heals the soldier that Peter struck with his sword and proclaims: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” [3]

For Tertullian and the early church fathers, Jesus is the full expression of God, and he has revealed God to be completely and utterly non-violent; choosing to go to the cross rather than to wield the sword.

A Unique People in the World

It is a fundamental understanding of the ancient church in the first two centuries that the Christian community is to be sanctified, set apart from the ways of the world. Paul, speaking directly to the church in Rome, did not diminish the importance of the uniqueness of the Christian life. In Romans 12, Paul explicitly instructs both Jewish and Gentile Christians gathering there to “not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is.”[4]

Paul is expectant that the follower of Jesus will live a life that is remarkably different from the Roman culture that they are immersed in every day. For Paul, this uniqueness of life comes from the revelation of Christ, whose response to sin and violence leveled against himself on the cross was a willingness to forgive and restore.

Like Paul, Justin Martyr reflected on the words and the revelation of Christ. He describes the church as:

“we who hated and slew one another, and because of customs would not share a common hearth with those who were not of our tribe, now, after the appearance of Christ, have become sociable, and pray for our enemies, and try to persuade those who hate unjustly, in order that they, living according to the good suggestions of Christ, may share our hope of obtaining the same from the God who is Master of all.”[5]

Justin considers the rejection of violence and the ability to forgive and pray for enemies as one of the marks of God’s people; it is a part of our unique identity in the world.

Elsewhere Justin references the prophecy of Isaiah and says that Christians have “changed the instruments of war, the swords into plows and the spears into farming implements, and we cultivate piety, righteousness, love for men, faith, (and) the hope which is from the Father Himself through the Crucified One.”[6]The implication here is that the church is a kingdom without weapons of war, for the church does not see war as a tool of any use to the world that they are working towards.

The fundamental answers that the church has to offer the world in response to evil is not the same answer that the kingdoms of earth are offering. If the church’s answer to evil is war, bloodshed, and violence, then our king is not unique, and our kingdom is just as “of this world” as any other. The church fathers understood that the power of the church to bring restoration to the world was rooted in its other-worldly answers. The strange dichotomy of the gospel is that victory comes through defeat, that life comes through death, and that peace comes through the cross, and not the sword.

[1] Tertullian, On Idolatry,XIX.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The New International Version. (2011). (Mt 26:52). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[4] The New International Version. (2011). (Ro 12:2). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[5] Justin, Apologia I, XIV. 3.

[6] Cadoux, Cecil John. 2015. The Early Christian Attitude to War: A Contribution to the History of Christian Ethics. Kindle Location 1954.

“If what you are is ‘biblical,’ then you can never consider how you might be wrong.” ~ Jared Stacy, PhD.

Growing up in the white evangelical church, I understood early on that our shared identity could be summed up as “people who know the truth.” We were immovable in our beliefs, both in theology and politics, both of which worked together to reinforce the other. To become more Christian was to become more conservative, republican, and evangelical. The point was to strip away the nuance, to become more the same. But in order to do that, there were all kinds of cultural stories to be navigated. And the greatest tool to do so was story.

Many of us who have learned to unwind our cultural stories from our faith have been shocked to find just how much of our faith was wrapped up in convenience untruths, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and outright lies told in order to assuage our doubts and keep our evangelical whiteness intact. This is exactly why I was so please to receive an advanced copy of Jared Stacy’s new book, Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became An American Evangelical Crisis.

Jared and I have similar stories; both raised immersed in the white evangelical church, both of us went to Liberty University (he, about ten years after me), and we both served as lead pastor in white evangelical spaces before deconstructing and setting out to find new ways of holding our faith.

Our paths diverge at that point; I remained in the pastorate, lead our church into a more generous post-evangelical way of gathering, while Dr. Stacy set off with his family to Aberdeen, Scotland, to work on his PhD thesis which would eventually become the book I am reviewing today.

Totality

It has become common place in American Evangelical churches to hear conspiratorial talk used to explain confusing events happening all around us. These stories attempt to achieve what Dr. Stacy calls Totality, which he describes as “the experience of reality as a bounded whole,” a single story to sum up all of reality, complete with villains and heroes which usually fall along American political party lines.

These totalities function as mechanisms to sooth the soul of those who cling to them. They grant a sense of comfort and control; an explanation to the mystery, a way to calm the worry and chaos constantly manufacture by a relentless media atmosphere. All the while, these totalities produce a church which is easily manipulated by politicians, billionaires, and tech algorithms seeking to exploit the church for power and influence.

This is not a new story and I have written much about powerful men throughout church history who have used misinformation and frightening narratives to draw the church away from the unifying work of the church and towards the division necessary for empire building. This is simply the latest cycle of it, and Reality In Ruin is thorough in dissecting and explaining both how we got here and how to find our way out again.

Jared Stacy not only dives into how and why people latch on to conspiracy theories as a meaning making ritual, but also traces the influence of conspiracy theories in the American evangelical church going back to the Cold War and beyond. One of the things readers will learn along the way is how often the church has been more than willing to go along with misinformation that they know is not likely to be true as long as it serves their cause:

“It’s not that conspiracy theory was universally upheld by evangelicals, it’s more that it was never exorcised for reasons of political and economic expediency. Holy paranoia evolved and persisted.”

Along the way, he also opens up a well-articulated conversation about what he calls Fascist Freedom, the freedom that Empires (like the United States) champion, and how it is often confused with Christian Freedom.

Evangelicalism often misunderstands freedom when it “equates winning the culture war with witness.” Freedom for the church often means tyranny for our neighbors, which is one of the strongest evidences that it is not the freedom that Jesus has come to establish in the world, and Reality In Ruins helps us see this more clearly than any book I’ve read on the topic of white-evangelical culture.

Good Suspicion

Among the prescriptions that Dr. Stacy offers is what he calls Good Suspicion, a “willingness to doubt ourselves, to recognize our deliverance from totality as liberation; good suspicion welcomes the divine sabotage of our securities, a divine siege of our totalities.”

It is freedom from the church’s addiction to having the right answers, settling into the mystery of faith, and allowing ourselves to be continuously converted towards Christ as our minds are renewed day by day.

The freedom that this book has brought me is the reminder and comfort of simple honesty. The ability to say I don’t know, and thats okay.

I highly recommend this book for both pastors and lay people alike, especially if you, like me, have lost friends, family, or parishioners to the raging sea’s of misinformation that swirl around us.

I think you will receive this book as a swimmer breaking of the surface and taking a big full breathe of fresh ocean air.

Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an Evangelical Crisis hits store shelves March 17th, 2026 (next week) and is published by Harper Collins.

Please follow this affiliate link to pre-order and while also supporting my work here.

The Same Way, or a New Way?

The response to evil in the world is something that the church claims to possess above all other claims. The church claims that the cross of Christ is the answer to those prone to violence, those quick to use the threat of physical violence to coerce, and to those who would attempt to bring peace at the tip end of a sword (or the barrel of a gun). Throughout human history, that answer has been to fight fire with fire; to use violence to try and end violence. Moreover, though the use of 'redemptive violence’ (a term first coined by American biblical scholar, theologian, and activist, Walter Wink) has grown to epic proportions over the last century as an answer to evil, violence in the 20thcentury has not been diminished. In fact, the 20th century was the most violent in human history. Despite the best efforts of good people, war and violence have never ceased for even a single day.

This series of posts will seek aim to clarify the position of the early church to present its answer to violence and war in the world, along with its response to those who would wield it. In this first post, I will look at the attitude of Christians towards the military, the next post will be an exploration of the church Father's theology of Pacifism. In subsequent posts, I will outline the unique mindset of the Christians in the world that led them to reject the ways of the world, and in my final post, I will speak to the modern church about regaining this uniqueness and aligning herself once again with the power of the cross, and not the sword.

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Military Service and the Church

Perhaps the most significant difference between the modern church and the church of the first and second-century has to do with their collective attitude towards military service, something that most American Christians naturally assume is an acceptable and even encouraged vocation for a follower of Jesus. Readers of first and second-century Christian writings are often surprised to find that there was no conversation about the merits of armed forces. In fact, it was assumed that being a follower of Jesus and being a soldier is incompatible.

From the end of the New Testament period to the about A.D. 170-80, there is no evidence whatsoever of Christians serving in the military.[1]In the writings of the early church fathers, military abstention seems to be taken for granted. What is clear is that, outside of the biblical account of Cornelius (Acts 10:1-8) and the jailor baptized by Paul (Acts 16:33), there is not a single reference to or record of a Christian serving in the military before 170 CE.[2]

Hippolytus, one of the most important theologians of the second and third centuries, wrote a manual to help guide the church body in his day. In that document entitled The Apostolic Tradition, he states that “a military man in authority must not execute men. If he is ordered, he must not carry it out. Nor must he take military oath. If he refuses, he shall be rejected. If someone is a military governor… he shall cease, or he shall be rejected. The catechumen or faithful who wants to become a soldier is to be rejected, for he has despised God.”[3]With that last sentence, Hippolytus is direct and clear in his statement that there is no place in the life of a member of the church for military service.

There are presumably several reasons for this, including the pagan insignia that soldiers were required to wear, and perhaps most of all, the early church would point to the fact that military service required an oath of allegiance made to both the emperor and the gods or the emperor as a god. However, the baptized Christian has been reborn into the service of Christ and Christ alone; they have a single allegiance, and therefore any allegiances given to others are incompatible with the Christian faith as the early Christians understood it. Indeed, they would have rejected any 'Pledge of Allegiance' to any earthly state or nation. Those pledges would fall under the category of idolatry.

Another reason for the rejection of military service amongst the early church would be the matter of the shedding of blood. The Roman military was brutally violent, often making a public display of torturing and killing dissenters. One incident during the reign of Diocletian describes a Roman Proconsul traveling through the city of Tebessia in Numidia (Algeria) on a mission to recruit soldiers.  He came upon a twenty-one-year-old Christian man named Maximilian and demanded that he serve in the third Augustan legion. The young man refused, citing the fact that his Christian faith forbids him to wear the seal around his neck because the seal of Christ had marked him. He was summarily executed as a warning to all passersby.[4]

Besides Hippolytus and Justin Martyr, we also have the words of a protagonist writing against the practice of the Christians to refuse military service. Celsus, a pagan and a critic of Christianity, lashes out against the Christian community for their refusal to serve the empire. His words make it evident that he is well aware of the Christian position, and he argues that "if all men were to do the same as you, there would be nothing to prevent the king from being left behind in utter solitude and desertion, and the forces of the empire would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians.”[5]He argues that Christianity is a threat to the empire because Roman peace is upheld by the sword, which means that if Christianity spreads, there will be no more swords to uphold the empire at all!

This was not the first time that the Christian ethic of refraining from military service caused problems in the empire. Justin Martyr, in his The First Apology, writing to try and ease the fear of emperor Antoninus Pius, argued that Christians are no threat to the empire because our king is not an earthly and human one. Rather, it is a kingdom that cannot be seen, and which has been already inaugurated, only to be revealed when Christ returns. He quotes the Prophet Isaiah’s words about how his followers “will beat their swords into plowshares” and how they “will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore,”[6]all intended to stave any fears of a violent Christian uprising. He says: “We who once murdered each other indeed no longer wage war against our enemies; moreover, so as not to bear false witness before our interrogators, we cheerfully die confessing Christ.”[7]

Here, in chapter 39 chapter of Justin's letter, he has set the tone for how the early Christians would exist in the world amongst other kings and kingdoms. The mere attempt to live a normal life in the Roman empire was often disrupted with challenges loyalty to Caesar over Christ. Christians might find themselves unable to buy, sell, or trade in the agora marketplace, a right which was often accessible only after offering incense to Caesar as a god. They would find it impossible to serve in seats of parliament, which required incantations and offerings to other kings and deities.

The propensity of the Romans towards the use of violence was not just limited to military culture, but the broader roman culture also. It was entirely normal to witness extreme acts of violence almost daily in the roman world; gladiators engaging in "blood sport;" men and women alike, fighting in the arena by torchlight in the evenings,[8]and public executions were regular evening events, but these things offended the sensibilities of the Christians, keeping them away. Furthermore, Christianity, not being an officially recognized religion in the empire, was generally looked upon as a bizarre fringe group and a strange thing to be a part of. They were called anti-social for not taking part in attendance of the violent gladiator games; they were called atheists for not worshiping the local deities,[9]and they were called cannibals because of the way they spoke about taking part in the eucharist. All of these things made them a threat to the empire, both culturally and politically.

It is clear then that, while the church was divided amongst many theological issues, there was unity amongst Christians about abstaining from military service. The first recorded instance of a member of the church serving the empire in this way comes to us around 173, listed amongst the ranks of the Thundering Legionunder Marcus Aurelius. From that day forward, the number of Christians amongst their ranks and other areas of government began to grow.[10]

Tertullian confirms, in 197, in his Apology, the presence of Christians in the senate, the forum, and the military;[11]and though he does not explicitly condemn the acts in this particular writing (which was intended to argue that Christians are good citizens and pose no threat to Rome), he also does not offer his support to these supposed members of the church serving earthly kings in this way. In fact, a rebuke of voluntary enlistment written by Tertullian just 15 years later[12]will confirm his disapproval of the practice.

The growth of Christian presence in the military in the third century is also confirmed by the presence of two soldiers in Cyprian, apparently martyred during the persecution of Decius in 250, and a record of Galerius’s attempts to weed out the Christians from amongst his ranks.[13]When the persecution broke wide, the Christians in the military were the first to suffer as a number of them are recorded as being executed.

But it is the Christian east which seems to have stood firm for a great deal longer. We have evidence that the Christians were far more inclined to reject taking up the sword in defense of the empire. One piece of that evidence is Origen’s rebuke of Celsus in 248, where he states plainly that where he comes from, "we do not fight under the emperor… although he require it.”[14]

Next Time:

We will look at what Tertullian has to say about the episode with the sword in the garden of Gethsemane, and explore what it means for the church that Jesus commanded Peter to put away his sword.

[1]Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace:a Historical Survey and Critical Reevaluation, 67.

[2] Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, 53.

[3]Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition, ch16.

[4]Jonathan Hill, The First Thousand Years, 77.

[5]Origen, Contra Celsum, VIII, 68-69.

[6]The New International Version. (2011). (Is 2:4). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[7]Justin Martyr, Apologia I, 39.

[8]Burge, Gary M. A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion, 72.

[9]Jonathan Hill, The History of Christian Thought,16.

[10]Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Towards War and Peace,68.

[11]Adolf Harnack, Militia Christi.117-121.

[12]Tertullian, De Corona Militis, XI.

[13]Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Towards War and Peace, 68.

[14]Origen,Contra Celsum, VIII, 73.

The truth about Sadness

Today I am reviewing a fascinating book called In The Low: Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons, by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson

This book was given to me by a family member who could not have known several things:

First, I have a history with both of its co-authors. I don’t know them personally, but each has been a part of my journey from fundamentalism to something bigger and more meaningful. In my early college years I connected with Justin McRoberts’ music and some of his melodies still surface in my mind from time to time —reminding me of where I came from and making me thankful for where I am.

Scott Erickson’s work came to me through friends, musicians and artists who decorated our sanctuary with his Advent art one year. It’s a meaningful memory.

Justin and Scott are two of the satellites that pass through my field of vision as my journey presses forward —each time with a different backdrop, a new horizon in life.

So when I unwrapped this book and saw the names on the cover, I smiled.

Here they were again, together this time, meeting me in front of a new backdrop, what my therapist called “clinical depression,” which I’d probably just mistaken for burnout. I’d been pastoring for twenty-four years at the same small church, and —like a guitar enduring the hot and cold weather of ministry, I had gone out of tune.

I read the title: “In the Low: Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons. Appropriate.” I put it on top my morning reading stack.

This book quickly became a part of my healing story as, day by day, with poetry and imagery, they unveiled the truth about sorrow; that you cannot put it down. It attaches itself to you. It walks with you. It becomes your teacher.

The insight contained here is not theoretical. It can only come through suffering, darkness, walking through the dark night of the soul. Each morning I read three or four poems and spend some time meditating upon the accompanying image. Often times I’ll study the image first (each illustrated by Scott), pulling as much meaning as I can out of it before adding Justins insights.

The authors seem intimately familiar with pain, betrayal, and the difficulty of having to continue to put one step in front of the other when the pain feels like a shard of glass in your shoe.

More than that, they have given me the ability to see what it is like to love someone who is walking in sadness; the difficulty and commitment that family and loved ones must embrace to love someone who, at times, is incapable of receiving it.

Through poetry and art, they’ve somehow found a way to desalinate an ocean their tears, leaving the rest of us with fresh water to drink and cool the soul.

I love this book.

Sorrow is like a Satellite

At a time when I was doing anything I could to avoid suffering (as we all do), In The Low has taught me to reconnect with it, embrace it, and walk with it.

I have come to see my sorrow as another satellite.

It comes around once in a while, it blocks my view of the stars, and demands my attention as it tries to form me into something I do not want to become. But I have learned to welcome it as a reprieve from the light, like entering a cave, or the belly of a ship where my eyes must adjust to seeing in the dark, but when I re-emerge the light is blindingly beautiful.

The subtitle of the book is “honest prayers for dark seasons,” and that is what darkness has become for me, a season. I’m thankful for the insight that In The Low has given me into my own soul.

This book was a gift in every sense of the word. Highly recommended.

Purchase HERE

John 15:1-2

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

I recently learned about an art installation from the time of Jesus, and I’ve been trying to imagine what it would have been like to see it.

It is said to have been a sculpture of a grapevine made of precious metals —gold and silver, grapes made of gold— which hung above the massive doorway that led into the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple. An enormous installation stretching from the ground to the roof, with its leaves and clusters of grapes reflecting the sunlight. But it wasn’t static, it grew as tear after year wealthy benefactors added to it as a sign of pious devotion to God and service to his people.

The vine represented Israel. Vines were minted on their coins, the stories they told regularly featured grape farmers, vineyards, they often used winepresses in their spiritual illustrations, and every year a national festival marked the grape harvest.

God was often spoken of as a cosmic gardener, and Israel as the vine that God was tending, pruning, and growing. Their history was the story of God cultivating a people meant to create goodness as they went.

Pruning

Prophets like Isaiah described God cutting and pruning Israel before harvest, removing branches so that life might continue, the same way that a farmer walks the field looking for branches that do not bear fruit, draining nutrients from the other plants without producing anything of value to the farmer.

Some vines grow sideways and must be tied back.
Others dry out before ever producing a grape, they are cut away so that nourishment can flow to what is healthy.

Without the work of pruning, there is no fruit and the vineyard fails. For the prophets, God’s pruning was not abandonment. It was necessary care.

When the people found themselves in hard seasons—exile, loss, collapse—the prophets pointed to the pruning knife to show that God was still at work.

Because not all loss is bad.
Not all suffering is meaningless.
Some things are taken away in order to make us whole again.

Pruning strengthens the vine by removing what prevented it from flourishing.

Transplanting

The psalmist uses a different gardening metaphor:

Psalm 80:8-16
“You transplanted a vine from Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.”

In this metaphor, Israel is pictured as a vine uprooted from one place and replanted where God desired it to thrive. A gardener knows exactly where each plant belongs, the gardener knows where it will thrive, even though it has taken roots in one place, that doesn’t mean it will grow best in that soil.

Even when the vine is reduced to a remnant of what it once was —something small and fragile— the gardener preserves it. Life can continue and a full field that produces fruit for an entire village can grow from a single sprig salvaged from a dying plant.

This is the world behind John 15.

“I Am the Vine”

When Jesus says, “I am the vine,” he is drawing directly from Israel’s deepest self-understanding. It is likely that Jesus and his disciples, on their way to Gethsemane, passed within sight of the Temple and its golden vine. Whether they saw it or not, the image certainly would have been present in them.

Jesus’ claim raises a question in the minds of his readers: if Israel is the vine, why does Jesus claim that language for himself?

The Story of Jesus / The Story of Israel

Many years ago a New Testament scholar I was reading (I do not remember who) gave me a simple idea that changed how I read the stories of Jesus. He say that the New Testament presents Jesus’ life as a retelling of Israel’s story. Many of the things that happened in the Hebrew Scriptures to Israel happen again in the Gospels, not to Israel, but to Jesus.

A Few examples:

~ Pharaoh orders the death of Hebrew boys (Exod 1:15–22); Herod orders the death of children in Bethlehem (Matt 2:16–18).

~ Israel passes through water and into the wilderness for forty years (Exod 14:21–22; Num 14:33–34); Jesus is baptized and enters the wilderness for forty days (Matt 3:13–17; 4:1–2).

~ Israel receives the law on Sinai (Exod 19:1–20:17); Jesus teaches from the mountain (Matt 5:1–7:29).

~ Moses comes down the mountain with a people following him (Exod 34:29–35; 35:1); Jesus comes down the mountain with crowds in tow (Matt 8:1).

Once you get a glimpse of it, you will start to see it everywhere, the story of Jesus is the story of Israel —retold.

Jesus is not simply an Israelite, He’s a representative of their story, except for a big difference: where Gods people were unfaithful, Jesus is faithful. He is presented as one who lives the story without betrayal.

Even the crucifixion mirrors Israel’s exile: Jesus’ cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is Israel’s prayer from Psalm 22, the voice of a people in captivity, longing for deliverance.

When Jesus says, “I am the vine” (John 15:1) he is saying that he has lived Israel’s story faithfully, he has taken their story into himself so that a new identity and a new way forward can emerge.

Paul later describes this as all things being summed up in Christ (Eph 1:10) —everything in heaven and on earth is brought together in him.

Israel’s troubled story is not discarded. It is fulfilled.
Your story is not discarded.
No one’s story is discarded.

Branches

Then Jesus speaks of branches.

Branches receive everything through the vine. There is no way to feed them directly. Every nutrient that shapes the fruit, its color, it’s flavor, it’s aroma, comes through the vine alone. If God’s people are to bear fruit, every part of life must be received through Christ: our view of others must be received through him, our response to evil must be received through him, our relationship with power, and our posture toward wealth and poverty as well.

Grapevine branches all look the same.
Healthy and unhealthy branches get tangled together and they remain indistinguishable —until fruit appears.
Fruit reveals what kind of life is flowing through the branch.

So what is fruit?

Fruit

Fruit is the outcome of the story we are living.

Does what we are doing create good in the world—or harm?
In John’s Gospel, fruit looks like a marginalized community expanding its boundaries. In Paul’s letters to his churches, fruit looks like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness— things no militarized empire can produce.

Everyone is being cultivated by something.

I have a cousin who is a sommelier, which is something that has always fascinated me since I’ve learned how deeply soil and environment shape the flavor of wine. A Master Sommelier can, with just a sip, identify not just conditions in which the grapes were grown—the slope, the moisture, even what grew nearby— but often the exact farm which produced it.

Human lives are shaped the same way. Money, power, sex, ambition, status —these things form us as we live and grow among them.

To abide in Christ means receiving them through him, from the same heart and posture. If Christ is the vine, then what flows through us should cultivate goodness in those around us—spouses, families, friends, communities.

We should wield power in a way that bears good fruit.

If we have wealth, it should cultivate goodness.

If we love, we do so in a way that grows patience, peace, and joy in us and others.

Jesus is the vine of Israel. Everything it meant to be the people of God found its fulfillment in him. When we seek guidance, the Father points us to Jesus alone.

In that same sense,
Jesus is the vine of the church,
Jesus is true Christianity.

Not its rules, its systems, or its leaders.
The scriptures point to Jesus.
The church gathers around Jesus.
The sacraments tell the story of Jesus.
The traditions exists to remember his life, not to enhance our own.

Across history, Christians have tried countless strategies to fix the world, often intelligent and well-intentioned. And still war, suffering, and inequality persist.

All that is left to try is Jesus himself, living in his story and acting it out in your own life.
I’ve found this to be the most effective way to read the Gospels for all they are worth.

John 14:15–17
“If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

Which Came First, The New Testament or the Apostles Creed?

Jesus changed the way people spoke about God, in ways that disrupted the old ways. The things that he did and taught cause his disciples to talk about Jesus in ways that were both deeply human and also somehow divine.

The problem is that they never explained to the rest of us how this could be so, or why they spoke of Father, Son, and Spirit. They seemed to just leave it up to the people to ponder the mechanics of it all.

Today we call this way of speaking about God “Trinitarian theology,” though the word Trinity itself never appears in Scripture. The concept developed as the church to summarize the teachings of the apostles. One of the earliest attempts at such a summary was the Apostles’ Creed, which appears in early forms between roughly 150 and 180 AD —a generation removed from the latest New Testament writings. It names Father, Son, and Spirit, and recounts the basic story of Jesus in language meant to guide believers in understanding what they had received from the apostles.

If you aren’t familiar, it goes like this:

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.

Amen.

While many assume that the Apostles’ Creed arose out of —and therefore AFTER— the New Testament, it is more accurate to say that the creed and Scripture emerged in tandem, and that the creed served as a rule of faith in the early church. It was sort of like a lens through which the authenticity of various writings was assessed during the process of canonization (a fancy was of saying “putting the NT together”).

The Apostles Creed was vital in helping communities determine whether a particular teaching or writing aligned with the faith handed down from the apostles. Thus, it played a big role in helping to discern which books should be considered truly apostolic and therefore included.

Accidental Heresy

As copies of New Testament writings spread and communities reflected on them, the “how’s” started multiplying:

• How exactly was Jesus both divine and human?

• How should believers speak of Father, Son, and Spirit without dividing God into three beings or collapsing them into one?

• How does such an idea effect the order of our lives?

Over the first few centuries, church leaders tried to answer these questions, and many of their attempts produced what later came to be known as “Christological and Trinitarian heresies” that arose out of varying attempts to nail down exactly how to understand God.

Some groups, like the Docetists, claimed Jesus only appeared to be human but was actually fully divine; like imagining a Jesus who never truly suffered or struggled, a figure more like a superhero than a man who lived a real human life.

Others, such as the Ebionites, insisted Jesus was fully human and not divine at all, perhaps empowered by God at certain moments but fundamentally just a person, an inspiring figure rather than God entering human history.

Arius, a deacon in Alexandria, argued that Jesus was divine but not eternal—that there was a time before the Son existed (many modern Christians still hold assumptions that resemble this idea without realizing it).

Apollinarius, the bishop of Laodicea, taught that Jesus possessed a human body but not a fully human mind or will, so he was was incapable of any immorality —meaning Jesus did not genuinely struggle to do right as humans do.

Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, described Christ’s divine and human aspects as so distinct that they functioned almost like two persons, creating a gap between Jesus’ humanity and his divinity —like the Incredible Hulk or Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (if both sides were good).

Eventually, disagreements in the church grew serious enough that church leaders gathered in 325 (which we call “the Council of Nicaea”) to address them.

Rather than going through the rest of how things went down and the following six more (!) that took place over a thousand years, here is my take on the whole thing:

What I learned from studying the history of the church councils and the debates over the content and formation of the creeds is simple:

When you do, you are either committing a previous heresy, or creating a new one. Every fight in the church’s history, every declaration of heresy, and every church schism was caused by someone attempting to define God for all people, in all times, everywhere.

And what is a heresy? A heresy is an idea about God that shapes us in crooked ways, unhealthy ways, ways that diminish the image of God in either us or in others.

Some ways of describing the divine make God distant and unfamiliar, others leave humanity entirely on its own, and some place Jesus on equal footing with earthly kings, diminishing his him as a unique voice of peace, love, and mercy in the world —and diminishing the responsibility of the church to be that as well.

Jesus showed us that God is not known through adjectives, but through presence and actions.

Attempts to define God too rigidly often serve power and control, shaping theology to support human hierarchies rather than humble equality in the church.

Back to John 14

In John 14, Jesus prepares his disciples for his impending death and addresses the fear of what will happen once he is gone. He promises that they will not be left alone:

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth… I will not leave you as orphans.”

Jesus’ followers worried about how they could continue without him, they wondered:

“Would future generations be able to love and follow Jesus without having known him personally?”

Of course, the answer is yes, because his work continues through those who follow him and through the Spirit given to them.

He says, “If you love me, keep my commands,” and promises that the Father will send an advocate. The word used here, paraklētos, which carries the sense of one who comes alongside, one who helps and guides.

The Spirit is recognized in that pull toward God’s goodness that followers of Jesus feel, even in dark circumstances. When the Christians were facing injustice or conflict and they choose love rather than hatred, mercy rather than retaliation, that decision reflects the Spirit’s presence.

When the response of the church runs against normal human instincts towards power over, violence, judgement, and coercion —when they instead choose love, forgiveness, and mercy— it reveals divine guidance at work within the community.

We like to look for dramatic evidence of God’s presence, but mostly it appears in quieter ways, like when people resist bitterness and choose compassion, when communities endure suffering without surrendering to violence.

The prophets promised that a time would come when God would pour out the Spirit on all people, meaning, the world will join God in his mission of reconciliation. It was a message of hope that kept the people committed to the way of Jesus, believing that one day the world would see that the way of love is more powerful than the way of hate.

So how should one understand the Spirit?
I don’t know.

And to be honest, I don’t think anyone else does either because I don’t think the spirit is understood by defining her, but by learning to listen and follow her.

The Spirit’s presence looks like Christlikeness—love, healing, restoration, reconciliation. It does not manifest through fear, hatred, or violence. Most often, it comes through other people within the community, because believers are members of one body.

God’s presence among us remains mysterious, but how that presence becomes visible is simple: when people participate in what God is doing, God becomes visible through them. At the communion table, people witness a community making decisions for reasons different from the surrounding culture—decisions shaped by love and grace rather than competition or fear.

Christians are not commanded to solve the mystery of God for others, they are called to love, serve, and participate in God’s work so that others encounter God-with-us through the life of the community.

33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
(Jn 13:33–35).

John’s gospel tells us that multiple disciples had the same reaction to Jesus’ teachings at the Last Supper. Jesus is talking about his death. He’s going to be arrested and he knows it — they all know it. Jesus tells them that he’s going away, and they seem disturbed. Perhaps they are looking through a window of confirmation bias and they don’t want to accept the path that Jesus leads every disciple of His down, a path that leads to confronting the powers of this world, the same that make martyrs out of disciples throughout history.

Peter replies in 13:36:

“Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

Thomas replies in 14:5:

“Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Each gospel is written with intention — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

But John, written much later, is written to the second generation of Christians trying to live out their discipleship — to follow Jesus in a time when their leaders were corrupt and coercive. Only certain kinds of people were allowed in and treated as equals, something which seems familiar to me; I can see this spirit present in modern white evangelicalism. It is not a spirit of the cross, but of the sword, thinking that the community of God can be controlled and edited to fit a certain culture.

This week, my friend Dr. Jared Stacey reminded me of Moltmann’s words that “the true critic of the Church is not philosophy, sociology, or ideology, but the crucified Christ, and whether or not he is welcome or simply a stranger in its midst.” Jürgen Moltmann

In John’s Gospel, there is a moment where Jesus begins to head into his time of suffering, persecution and execution at the hands of the religious elite mixed with a militarized government, and there is a question amongst the audience:
”do we follow him? Even into suffering?”

It is a question that stays with us today as the white evangelical church seems to have allied itself with the powers of empire — and what’s emerging bears the mark of the beast.

But there are streams of Christianity outside of the evangelical machine that recognize the moral moment and Christs call to take up our crosses. Just last week, Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire spoke to his congregation and those gathered at a vigil honoring Renee Good, murdered by United States Federal Agents on Jan. 7:

“I have told the clergy of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness,” Hirschfeld said. “And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

“Many Rooms”

Look at how Jesus frames the events that are coming:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms… I am going there to prepare a place for you… I will come back and take you to be with me… You know the way to the place where I am going.” (Jn 14:1–4)

The disciples have some questions about what is coming. They surmise that he is getting arrested, and maybe that’s what “going away” means… but they don’t know what to think, either that or they simply refuse to accept it. There are many who cannot accept a God that does not help them attain power, comfort, and that supports the dreams that the empire has conjured in their hearts, a view also prevalent in the white evangelical church in our time.

The beast never sleeps, and his discipleship never ceases.

Many Rooms

And so Jesus gives them another metaphor to ponder… wedding imagery.

When a young couple was engaged in the first century, the preparations were different than they are today.

Typically, and especially for a Jewish household, the boy who was betrothed would first have to build an additional room onto his parents’ house. It was very common to see a grandfather who has a house with many rooms added to it as the family grew and grew.

When the space was sufficiently ready, meaning, when the father approved and agreed that it was ready, the boy would go and receive his bride and bring her home.

Now, during this time the woman who was betrothed would have been in a time of waiting and watching, and there would be some mystery as to when he would come for her.

She would be waiting with the other women. They’d have oil lamps lit and kept full, waiting for the procession of the groom with all of their friends and family to make their way down to the place where the bride was waiting.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable about ten virgins awaiting the bridegroom to show up. Five of them kept their oil lamps ready, and five did not… so they ended up missing the wedding because they had to go out and get the oil they had neglected to prepare for beforehand.

The groom would come and receive her, and escort her back with lots of excitement and commotion as they parade through the streets.

So when Jesus says he is “going to prepare a place” for them, he is not telling them that he is going to heaven and will one day come back to rapture them… that’s modern American religious folklore.

The heart of this passage is really two thoughts:

1. The ancient Jewish Genesis creation narrative.

2. The union of God and humanity in the ancient Jewish Garden of Eden story.

The going away refers to his arrest, crucifixion, and burial.

Genesis 1 begins with the very beginning of creation — where the world is darkness and chaos and useless. The Spirit of God draws near to it, parts the waters, plants a bit of life, and creates a little space to dwell there.

The symbolism, the message, is that God draws near to the darkness of the world. God does not retreat from it. Instead, God and humanity are joined together in the small space that God has prepared in the midst of the dark world.

From there, new life — plants, fish, land animals, and birds of the air — begin to grow and flourish as God and humanity work together to tend the garden toward life and health and beauty.

And as the life grows, the darkness is pushed outwards, the darkness dissipates, and the whole world is illuminated.

Remember how John 1 started?

In the beginning was the Word… In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (Jn 1:1–5)

Do you see the parallel to Genesis — the creation of light in the midst of great darkness? Jesus enters in as Spirit and Light, creating space in a dark world… and on the cross, he went to the darkest place possible.

The cross is all suffering and all darkness, but there are other humans there — those whose suffering Christ joins and endures alongside.

Everyone in that room — listening to Jesus teach — was in darkness and chaos. Jesus is entering into that dark space ahead of them, and he’s going to prepare another place there for God to work. Jesus will enter into that darkness with love — for both those executing him, those standing around and watching, and those hanging next to him on their own crosses.

We might think that God is a million miles from this type of place — but that is exactly the kind of place where the scriptures say he will meet us.

Jesus Is Going Into the Darkness and He is Preparing a Place for Us There

It will be a garden, and God will meet us there… and we will be fruitful, and new life will grow.

Sometimes we look at the genocide in Gaza, the terrorism of new American Fascism, and the murder of our neighbors in Minnesota and other places, and we gather at the table of Jesus to see what he has to say about it all.

We expect the advice to be how to avoid the difficulty of it all, how to walk through unscathed.

But He’ll have none of that, either for himself or for us. Instead, Jesus transforms that darkness into rebirth and new life.

“He descended into hell…”

My favorite part of the Apostles Creed is where it says:

Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven…

After the work of Babylon’s rulers is over, God will spring new life from the ground once again. That’s the part that links Jesus with all who suffer under Pontius Pilate — then and today. All those who have been unjustly arrested, unfairly tried and sentenced, and even those executed by the false powers of this world… Jesus is with you.

The defining document of the church gives a clear proclamation:

To all who are the victims of unjust laws, to those who suffer at the hands of corrupt rulers — GOD IS WITH YOU.

The body of Christ — present with them, broken for them, poured out for them.

Where God is in times of genocide?
When we declare along with the creeds of the early church that Jesus has descended to hell… We declare that Christ dwells among them.

And that if you want to draw near to Christ then you must also draw near to those who suffer — even if it’s just in your heart and mind, thinking and praying and loving from afar.

The way forward will look like Jesus. It will include loving all kinds of people, making space for them at the table, and being generous. And it might include a cross. But Jesus has gone ahead of us, and he is preparing the place for us. And after the powerful evils of this world are finished raging, new life will grow.

He will come to us.
He will join us there.
He will lead us to the new place he is preparing…

And like the work of God’s Spirit in Genesis, new life will grow out of this chaos.

⁴ [Jesus] got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵ After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

⁷ Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

⁸ “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
(Jn 13:4–8)

Setting the Table

Meals in the first century typically happened around a U-shaped table, with the guests sitting around the outside of the table and the servants serving the table from the middle.

At the top of the U sat the host. To his right, the guest of honor — possibly John. To his left, a close friend — maybe Peter. The rest of the guests sat in descending levels of status —with the lowest at the far ends. The servants, however, ate in another room entirely.

Meals weren’t just just gathering to eat food with friends, like we tend to think of it today. Meals were ceremonies. They affirmed and legitimized status and roles, the structure of the meal was meant to mirror the structure of everyday society. So those on top, ate at the “top.” Those on the bottom, ate at the “bottom” of the table, reinforcing in here what was also true out there.

There are Roman sources that describe meals where guests of differing ranks were placed in separate rooms, and even served different foods and wines depending on their status.1 For intsance, Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century, described a meal where the head table received elegant dishes while he and others received cheap, low-quality food and wine. He noted there were three vases of wine: one great, one good, and one of poor quality — distributed according to rank. The meal was a rehearsal of the order of things, and a reminder not to violate that social ladder.

Kingdom Order

Even though the disciples had spent years with Jesus, they still cared very much about that worldly table order. They couldn’t shake their discipleship towards Rome:

Luke 22:24–26
“A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.’”

The fact that all four gospels have multiple examples of the disciples arguing and jockeying for position —wanting to be called the greatest disciple— shows us how deeply they struggled. When we have been discipled by the empires of this world, we eventually come to see some people as more important than others.

This meal was a disruption of that discipleship, and a jarring lesson about how we order ourselves in this world, and it changed them forever.

Dirty Jobs

The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist, poured water into a basin, and began to wash his disciples’ feet — drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
(John 13:2–5).

Washing people’s feet was a pretty gross job. It meant cleaning off both human and animal waste — the residue of traveling through city streets where such things were tossed out the window.

But let’s back up. Luke tells us that, as Jesus approached Jerusalem, he had an outburst of emotion:

“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes.’” (Luke 19:41–42)

Jesus mourns over the city. Not because he’s raging about bad guys doing bad things — though they were. He’s distraught because “they didn’t know what would bring them peace.” They were doing all the things that empire does, trying to create peace by forcing order. Jesus weeps because he knows they are destroying themselves in the process.

Perhaps he planned on talking with his disciples about it.
Then they walk in to the Passover meal. And what does Jesus see?

His disciples are at the table, and they have organized themselves like the Romans do, and placed Jesus at the center of their Roman order.

They have organized themselves by status and importance. Every one of them have come to the table with dirty feet — expecting someone else to clean them. They still believe in the worldly order of things. It is their default setting, and they have defaulted to culture.

But instead of teaching and telling and arguing with them to change their minds, he shows them what would bring them peace.

He poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand” (John 13:5–7).

Peter says, “I don’t get it,” and Jesus says, “You will.”
Peter objects again — emphasizing the order of society, that some wash feet and some get their feet washed.

“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” (John 13:8).

Washing feet is the only way to take part in what Jesus is doing. This is how we enter in.

What Should We Do When Evil Spreads?

There was just as much evil growing in their world as there is in ours. Jesus was going to be arrested within 24 hours and they knew it. They knew injustice abounded all around them.

We often panic about what we should do when evil is spreading. Should you be posting something? Are there some shirts and hats that you can wear to really get your point across, perhaps a flag or a sign?

Some will absolutely do those things. They are wired and gifted for it — they are thick-skinned prophets.

But most people are students, parents, bankers, dentists, cashiers… average people.

We are one body — many parts. It is still enough to wash the feet of the people around you, and I don’t always mean that literally.

Curated Reality

When I was a teenager, I built a connection with a local Ana-baptist church and eventually my parents would drop me off there on their way to their Baptist church. I say this because our tradition was that once a year we did a foot-washing, paired with communion and a whole meal. It was beautiful, but most of the teens skipped out right as the foot washing was getting underway because … ew (we were kids!).

I point this out because I have seen Christians at weddings and various other gatherings do a foot washing as well. Last year, I remember the “He Gets Us” campaign running a Super Bowl add with all kinds of people washing the feet of punk rockers, club kids, and various other subcultures of society.

While I find all of this a beautiful reminder of what Jesus did, it would benefit us to focus on the meaning of Jesus washing their feet, not the act of doing so.

Washing the disciples feet was Jesus was of disrupting the disparity in his immediate vicinity. The servants washed away the filth, cleaned up the guests, and whisked away all that dirt — out of sight, just like them.

The Roman meal was meant to emphasize the high status while hiding the low status another room, this is the opposite of how the Spirit gathers them in Acts 2. It was curated reality. Your feet were clean, but someone else had to do it.

That is one of the features of Babylon: curated reality, through ritual, storytelling, and embellishing history.

Hiding the filth (An example from last summer with pics!):

In July, 2025, I was on a summer solo tour in Germany, specifically for the Freakstock Festival. Instead of bringing the band this year, I brought my wife and kids, who had never been to Europe. They came with me to the shows, and then we would site see along the way.

While we were there, my youngest turned 11, and to celebrate we took him to a real life castle (it was a way more impressive than the one we have down the road at Disney). We opted for a tour of the Hohenschwangau Castle in Bavaria, Germany.

During the tour, the guide took us through a room called “The Hall of Heroes,” where there were paintings of great battles of the Germanic people during the medieval period. Our guide pointed out that, in all of these battle scenes, the paintings were completely absent of blood and wounds.

Some dead men were lying about — but they looked peaceful, not like dead found in war. The ground upon which they laid was rich soil or grassy fields.

He explained that for militarized kingdoms and hierarchies, it’s of the utmost importance to only present the past as good and their battles as majestic and heroic.

Babylon does not want their kingdoms portraying anything negative. They do not want to be reminded of their violence and the mass suffering they have caused in the construction of such a powerful system.

Illuminating the filth

Part of foot washing is illuminating and emphasizing the filth — the presence of lower statuses, and the ignorance of the disciples. Jesus becomes the servant, puts himself shoulder to shoulder with them. He puts on their clothes, and joins them in their duties.

I would imagine that, in that moment, everyone suddenly in the room became hyper-aware of the servants.

Peter has been so assimilate by the empire that he thinks Jesus is instituting a new honor system, and he instantly tries to turn the act of washing into a way to gain status:

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” (John 13:9)

Jesus answered:

“Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not everyone was clean (John 13:10–11).

Jesus says it is enough to wash people’s feet. It’s was never about being clean, it was about being loving and empathetic.

Also notice that Jesus didn’t limit foot washing to his loyal friends. Jesus also washed the feet of Judas — whom he knew was betraying him, thereby earning himself a seat at higher tables.

It didn’t change Judas’s mind — but that wasn’t the point. It was to create a contrast between the empire and the Kingdom.

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.
I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.
Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:12–17).

Christianity is a wisdom tradition, and the wisdom here is right at the end:
“Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

Richard Rohr warns against trying to think your way into better living — you have to live your way into better thinking.2 If you don’t know what to do, or how to respond to the world — get on someone else’s level today, lower yourself.
You will find blessings there.

Perhaps there’s some way you could identify with them. Some way to let them feel that you empathize, and that they are seen. The first step to loving your community and neighborhood well is to let them know they are seen.

This is the order of the kingdom:
The high and mighty come down.
The low and lowly are lifted up.
They happen at the same time.

One’s status in this world does not determine their status in the kingdom of God.

I encourage you to practice pointing to someone who is unseen — someone the system is designed to minimize. It is enough to just silently “wash someone’s feet," which means to lower yourself before them.

I might look like a smile and a nod, or saying someone’s name who doesn’t often feel seen. Perhaps it looks like holding a baby for a mom who remains both drowning and unnoticed, so that she can enjoy a meal, a nap, or simply a conversation.

I want you to be free of the anxiety of creeping and growing evil and hatred.
It is okay not to know what to say or do.

Writers get sent books to read and review, and this year I’m posting reviews to some of those books here for my substack readers. I get asked for book recommendations more than anything else, so perhaps this will help you find what you are looking for.

This weeks review is Barry Harvey’s Madness, Theocracy, and Anarchism: Political and Cultural Reflections on the Church, which was originally posted at The Englewood Review of Books, whom I owe a big thank you to for sending it.

This book could not have come at a better time for me as I am currently in a swirling Enneagram-5 deep-dive into Theo-politics in preparation for a book on Revelation that I’m working on.

Thank you for reading, enjoy!

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A Nuanced Conversation About Reality

In the final days of the Roman Empire, the Christian philosopher Boethius (524 CE) described humanity as those who have forgotten what they are and therefore do not know what they ought to do; made for communion with God, yet allowing themselves to be ruled by circumstance and fortune. For the American church, a similar amnesia seems to have taken hold. After generations of donning the sacred vestments of capitalism, democracy, and militarized empire, the order of our Christianity has made us subservient to the nations in which we live. We no longer ask whether the order in which we live is the true order of things or whether we have interrupted the work of God with the systems we have designed. But mostly, our energies are spent trying to argue which of our political inventions are the ones most approved by God. Like a tree with its limbs tied back so that it will grow into the shape which best fits the palace gardens, so the church conforms to the symmetry of the state.

Toni Morrison used the image of a city to reveal the delusions of freedom that people live with. We are “free” to move wherever we please so long as we keep to the roads and sidewalks that the authorities have established for us. The Christian religion that was once free and wild –bucking hierarchy, unable to be contained, growing, changing, and challenging the systems and powers– has become moldable by the powers it once challenged. And the church, having taken interest in these modern structures, must now fit within them if it is to continue to exist. The problem, however, is that the anarchy inherent in the church from its inception is naturally both allergic to –and disruptive of, the rule of empire. Yet somehow the Christian must make a home, build a life, be immersed in culture, and live and work in connection with the citizens of these empires.

This raises questions: How can the world create a politic with a people (the church) who see themselves as a surrogate government all by themselves? How does one rule over a people who already have a king and see themselves as citizens of hiskingdom? How do we tell our counter-story to the Empire while still living at peace among them? Christianity is a group project, but the group has grown divided on many fronts and, unsure of both our identity and our role in the cosmos; we are failing the project.

These are a few of the questions and ideas Dr. Barry Harvey engages with in his latest book, Madness, Theocracy, and Anarchism: Political and Cultural Reflections on the Church. It is a collection of essays that work together to explore how the church—a people from nowhere, who live everywhere, who are disloyal to kings yet devoted to the welfare of their neighbors—is called to live as a separate people in a world violently devoted to its own rulers. The author brings the voices of disciples throughout the ages to be our conversation partners, as we wrestle with these ideas. Harvey pulls from hundreds of sources, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Wendell Berry, and spans church history from the ancient writings of Augustine to the works of contemporary thought leaders like Jemar Tisby. As Professor of Theology in the Honors College at Baylor University, Harvey has done much to help the church see itself, not as a religious arm of the state, but as a community that embodies the alternative politic of the Kingdom of God. His previous works, including Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World, reveal a sustained concern for the church’s role as a counter-community to the nation-state.

For the American church the recent decade has laid bare the puzzling relationship between the church and the governing authorities. As the pastor of a local church for over two decades and under four presidential administrations, I have watched with dismay as the church in America continues its steady trajectory towards alignment with the powers of the state. Many have been caught up, captured, and assimilated by the empire. And now, perhaps having realized too late that the ground we built upon is soft, we recognize that very little foundational work has been done to root us in a counter-story to the nations. Madness, Theocracy, and Anarchism reads like an academic work with pastoral sense; it places the counter-story of Christ at the center of the conversation, daring the disciple to be disrupted by it, immersed in it, and to embody it.

Harvey reaches across both culture and time, arguing (and often with much back and forth) that the church must learn once again to embrace a vocation of “not belonging,” a vocation that, as Harvey argues, “will require imagination, because women and men can only live in a world they can envision.” This is not to say that we ought to follow the desert Fathers into isolation, shunning society. Instead, Harvey offers the distinct challenge to the American church to “resist the inertia of a social order whose time is past, and to embrace the call not to separate ourselves from the rest of the world in an imaginary realm of moral and doctrinal purity, but to cultivate a distinct presence and difficult witness that the world lacks on its own.”

While it is true that many pastors and theologians have been calling for a greater allegiance to the Christ in our time, the attention of the parishioners remains mostly focused on the mechanisms of government –which people and party are pulling the levers— rather than asking deeper questions about the way that things are, versus the way things ought to be. Harvey reminds us also that it is not our ought, but rather, Christ’s ought; that we may be unknowingly defending something that was never legitimized by Christ in the first place. The church stands to benefit immensely from a nuanced and informed conversation about the true reality of things, theologically speaking, and that is what Dr. Harvey has given us here. I’m confident that ideas gathered in Madness can help the church to find its eschatological imagination once again and accept that “the current modus vivendi,” as Harvey refers to it, is merely our temporary interruption to the world that God is building.

Madness, Theocracy, and Anarchism would complement the syllabus of any good Christian Theo-political course, but in my discontentedness with the Theo-political conversations thus far, I have also found it to be a much-welcomed resource for pastoring disciples through this moment. I recommend this book to lay Christians, students, and clergy alike. It is a demanding read, most will move slowly through it. But it is a deeply rewarding book, well worth the journey.

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