Into the Jaws of a Crocodile

On October 26, 2018October 25, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

Cross in desert (1) — PC: Rebecca Heskamp

By Joyce Hollyday

To our right the desert sunset was a dazzling blaze of gold with streaks of red behind towering saguaro cacti, as my partner Bill, our friend Becca, and I drove south from Phoenix to the Arizona-Mexico border. To our left a glowing, salmon-colored full moon rose and perched on a blue-gray mountain peak. We were on our way to participate with a hundred other people of faith from around the country in a week of prayer and protest, communion and confrontation, organized by the Southwest Conference of the United Church of Christ. Continue reading “Into the Jaws of a Crocodile” →

Wild Lectionary: Persistent Truth-Telling and Way-Making Disciples

On October 25, 2018October 25, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Proper 25(30) B
23^rd Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10:46-52

By Rev. Miriam Spies

As a woman who lives with a disability (Cerebral Palsy), I have a complicated relationship with healing stories in our scriptures. I tend to read physical healing stories as restoring people into life in community, and restoring community to live as a whole. That being said, the story of Bartimaeus is a call story, as well as a healing story, demonstrating it requires truth-telling even and especially in our vulnerability to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Colleen Grant writes,

“There is also another type of healing story found in the Gospels, a type that shifts the focus from Jesus to the individual being healed. Its aim is to communicate something about the nature of discipleship and the necessity of having faith in Jesus. Thus, upon healing blind Bartimaeus, Jesus tells him, ‘Go, your faith has made you well’. At these words, Bartimaeus regains his sight and he assumes the quality of a disciple, that is, he follows Jesus on the way.” (74) Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Persistent Truth-Telling and Way-Making Disciples” →

Help Wanted

On October 24, 2018October 23, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

By Tommy Airey, co-curator of RadicalDiscipleship.net and the author of Descending Like a Dove: Adventures in Decolonizing Evangelical Christianity

On that Spring day in Lansing, when Lindsay joined the band of holy rebels getting arrested for civil disobedience (right), I participated in civil discourse with a police officer hired to keep the peace at the peaceful demonstration. Despite the overtime pay, he wasn’t happy. He confessed that he was reluctant to support anyone too lazy to get off their butts to get a job. I shared with him the data—there are hundreds of jobs for hundreds of thousands of applicants. But he had a comeback: “No way. I see help wanted signs everywhere.” Continue reading “Help Wanted” →

Rebels and Saints

On October 23, 2018October 22, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Uncategorized1 Comment

By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

For the last two weeks, Isaac has asked me to read the same story every night- The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq by Jeanette Winter. It is the story of Alia Muhammad Baker who saved all the books from her library just before the library was burned to the ground during the US bombing of the Iraq War. It ends with her dreaming of peace from her home filled with books from floor to ceiling. Each night, Isaac asks what happened to Alia? What happened to the books? We finally looked it up and they re-built the library and she is the librarian again with all the books and stories she held safe from our mass destruction. Continue reading “Rebels and Saints” →

I Speak of Jesus of Nazareth

On October 23, 2018October 20, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation, Uncategorized2 Comments

will-headshot4-225x300 By Will O’Brien

While I loathe almost everything about the Trump Administration, it is fitting to applaud and be grateful for the release of Pastor Andrew Brunson after two years of detention in Turkey. Now it is time to turn our attention to another tragic case of a religious leader being unjustly imprisoned in a hostile country.

I speak of Jesus of Nazareth, who for many years has been imprisoned under harsh circumstances in the United States. Reports suggest he has suffered brutal torture during his detention – some followers who have glimpsed him in prison say he has been beaten so badly they could hardly recognize him. The regime insists that Jesus is not being detained and in fact has complete freedom to function in society, though in fact he has not been seen in public for many years. Regime supporters also frequently mention him in positive terms, but his followers say the statements about him are utterly false and distorted, which they cite as further proof that Jesus himself is not in fact active in ministry. Scattered appearances of “Jesus” are, according to human rights observers, highly staged state events, using a poorly disguised double.

The regime denies claims of Jesus’ imprisonment, labeling them “fake-Good New propaganda” by Jesus’ supporters, who it asserts are a threat to the social order. International observers say that the Trump regime’s treatment of Jesus is a departure from similar situations under modern authoritarian rule, such as the case with Pastor Brunson: Rather than charging the religious leader with crimes against the government as a justification for detention, the U.S. is instead denying the detention and instead promoting the notion that Jesus is free, active, and working in support of the government. One regime spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, “We saw how Rome tried to handle Jesus through state-sanctioned law-and-order violence – which obviously didn’t work. We felt that the strategy of Constantine was more appropriate to the U.S. situation, and so far it is working quite well” …

Alas, a little levity is in order, … but conscientious disciples must undertake the hard work of “liberating Jesus” if we are to have the power to be liberators.

St. Romero

On October 22, 2018October 20, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Uncategorized1 Comment

By Chava Redonnet
From her weekly bulletain at Oscar Romero Inclusive Catholic Church

At about 4 pm on Saturday, October 13, Ruth Orantes, Gustavo and I pulled into a gas station across from the statue of El Salvador del Mundo in San Salvador, about 2 miles from the cathedral. Sometimes the journey from Santa Ana feels a bit endless, but all of a sudden, we were there. Ruth parked the car and we joined the gathering throng. There was music and dancing, vendors selling t-shirts and keychains, posters and even an umbrella, all with the joyful message that our beloved Monseñor Romero was at last to be officially declared a saint. A giant poster erected by the comunidades eclesial de base [the base communities of the churches] declared, “Tu pueblo te hizo santo” (Your people have made you a saint), with a picture of Monseñor Romero’s face made up of thousands of photos of Salvadorans, also martyred during the civil war of 1980-92. The atmosphere was peaceful, joyful, full of good energy. We might have been mostly strangers to each other but we were bonded in our love and joy in the moment. Smiles came easily. Continue reading “St. Romero” →

On the Right and the Left

On October 21, 2018October 19, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

30 years in and Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988) is more relevant than ever. This week’s commentary homes in on Mark 10:35-45.

The petition by James and John shows that the disciples are still “deaf” to Jesus’ portents, continuing to understand his talk of the manifestation of the Human One’s “glory” (en te doxe sou) to mean some kind of messianic coup. Convinced their leader will prevail, they are already considering the administration of the new regime; they lobby for “first and second cabinet position.” The image of “sitting on the right and left” could be an allusion to Psalm 110:1, or to places at the messianic victory banquet, or subordinate thrones. In either case, it is an overtly political euphemism. Continue reading “On the Right and the Left” →

Functioning Democracy

On October 20, 2018October 17, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

An excerpt from Noam Chomsky’s brilliant speech “Prospects for Survival.”

Let’s return finally to the main line of defense: functioning democracy. We can begin with the leader of the free world, the model of democracy for centuries.

In a democracy, the voice of the people is heard. Let’s ask what might happen in the United States if this principle were upheld. One consequence would be that the most popular and respected political figure in the country would have an influential role, maybe even be president. That’s Bernie Sanders, by a very large margin. Continue reading “Functioning Democracy” →

A Spirituality of the Feet Moment

On October 19, 2018October 17, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Just Peacemaking, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

By Dr. Oz Cole-Arnal (far left in photo), former professor emeritus at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary

As a “once upon a time” born-again fundamentalist Lutheran, nurtured and raised in a Pennsylvania steel town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who bought into that epoch’s anti-Catholicism and anti-Communism, I reflected the standard “White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant—Male” (WASP-M) privilege while being blithely unaware of the advantages this reality provided. My intense discovery of the quintessential Protestant core belief that we are made right with God, through no works of our own but solely though divine love manifested through Christ’s cross and made personal through trust in this radical God of love, combined with my academic love and success, led me to the ordained Lutheran ministry and the hope of teaching New Testament after a stint in parish ministry. Such a dream was turned on its head by a more profound conversion on the evening of April 4, 1968 when the blood of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. poured out on the balcony of Memphis, Tennessee’s Lorraine Motel. At the very moment I heard the news of his death, I feel to my knees and through my tears, vowed never to be silent in the face of injustice. Whether or not I have been true to that pledge remains in God’s loving hands, precisely where it belongs, but I highlight here one glorious moment of a fifty-year pilgrimage that I celebrate to this very day. Continue reading “A Spirituality of the Feet Moment” →

Wild Lectionary: Wild God, Wild Beauty

On October 18, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

Proper 24 (29)B
22^nd Sunday after Pentecost
Job 38:1-7, 34-41

By Wendy Janzen

The the first reading and Psalm for this Sunday are both creation texts – passages that describe God’s amazing work in creating the cosmos. The text from Jobs is part of the longest passage in the bible about more-than-human creation (Job 38-42). It is written in exquisitely beautiful poetry, and it is God’s rhetorical answer to Job’s probing questions about God’s justice – why bad things happen to good people. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wild God, Wild Beauty” →