The Pre-Constantinian Mustard Seed

“It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.” (Luke 13.19)

The last time I had seen this place was in the midst of a hasty departure when I was twelve. Many of you are aware of my childhood. When I was only seven years old, my mother and stepfather became enamored with the then-famous TV evangelist Jim Bakker and his PTL (Praise the Lord) Club. Shortly after encountering his television program, my parents sold almost everything we possessed and moved from West Virginia to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I would spend the next five years of my life. In 1988, when the ministry was in the midst of a full unravel, my mother decided it was time to leave and return to West Virginia. That was the last time I would see PTL. When I was a child, it was a place that was larger than life. It was a virtual, Bible-belt, evangelical, fundamentalist’s vacation paradise. From luxurious “Grand Hotels,” monstrous water parks, Christian dinner theaters, roller-skating rinks blaring Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant, outdoor Passion-Plays, Bible-based children’s amusement parks to an elaborate television studio and a Mega Church. Even the streets had names from the Bible. Everything the prosperity Gospel could promise and more. It was quite a production. (It’s no wonder that today I have such a low tolerance for most things religious!). When we left that place in the late 80s, it looked much different than it does now.

A few years ago, I was driving through Charlotte, and I thought, “Why not? I’ll just swing by and see the old place.” I was not prepared for what I would see. Today, most of those beautiful structures have fallen through. The horticulture of the area, once tamed by an extensive grounds crew, left to itself has overgrown many of the buildings. The bricks of which many of the hotels are comprised are worn away and chipped. The grey slate roof atop the giant auditorium called “the Barn”, where weekly church services were held, has fallen in, leaving an entire auditorium now with a giant sky light, or rather, just an unobstructed view of the clouds. Vines are growing uncontrollably up the sides of buildings. Sidewalks are barely distinguishable. Roads have completely disappeared. It once had the smell of new carpet, new construction, and now has the smell of wildlife. Where the sounds of children and families laughing and celebrating once filled the air, there now is an eerie, haunting silence as if you are the only person left on the planet. It has become a ghost town; a post-apocalyptic world that looks more like the set of a zombie film than the remains of a once vibrant Evangelical, Christian ministry.

What I want to draw your attention to is that as mighty as these edifices were both physically and ideologically, from dust these things had come and to dust they have returned. Flora’s (and maybe even fauna’s too) ever present pursuit of growth, if not vigilantly and continually opposed, will eclipse and overtake the mightiest inventions of humankind.

A fitting illustration of this point is my family’s return home this past summer after being gone for a six-week speaking tour. We came home to find a veritable jungle surrounding our home rather than the manicured state our “lawn and garden” had been left in.

Recently, I had the chilling experience of seeing some “before and after” pictures of Chernobyl, the site of a catastrophic nuclear accident on April 26, 1986. On that day at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine (then under the direct jurisdiction of the Soviet Union) an explosion released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. The Chernobyl disaster is widely considered to have been the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

To see pictures of Chernobyl today is even more chilling than a visit to my childhood stomping grounds. This truly was an apocalyptic event that destroyed an entire city that today, due to radioactive pollution, is deserted, devoid of inhabitants (save for a very few who are still too poor to leave.) Chernobyl, which was once a thriving metropolitan city, today stands empty, silent, and still. The streets are empty. Commercial buildings are shells of their former glory. Residences sit vacant. Within these pictures, Chernobyl is decomposing right before your eyes. What used to be a beautiful city is now a haunting example, once again, of how flora and fauna quickly work together to reclaim, slowly and determinedly undoing the work of human kind. If left to their will, they will eventually, given enough time, make the presence of humanity and the nightmare humanity created here, wholly undetectable.

The most chilling picture for me, even above the empty city streets, was that of an indoor Olympic swimming pool, which once was a beautiful symbol of lifestyle, wealth, and plenty, now standing there empty, abandoned, with tiles having been eroded over time, and the giant clock on the wall, no longer keeping time, but silently standing guard and collecting dust while it too decays.

All of this brought home to my heart this week the words of Jesus in our featured text this week from the Gospel of Luke:

“It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.” (Luke 13.19)

I, unabashedly, subscribe to a form of Christianity that is decidedly pre-Constantinian. Before Christianity was coopted by Constantine and made into a religion, it was a movement, centered on the person Jesus the Christ, and focused on what that Jesus called “the Kingdom of God.” As I look at Christian history, the Constantinian shift has done untold damage to the original Jesus movement of the first century. But in a strange way, my childhood home at PTL, and these pictures of Chernobyl, strange as it may seem, give me hope. Today, Christendom (Constantinian-Christianity, where Christianity became the whore of Empire) has died in both Europe and Canada. It is dying here in America as well. Today, many believe we are living in a “post-Christian” era, and I agree. The “culture wars” here in America are over, and the Fundamentalists have lost. But what many Christians today are seeing as a cause for mourning, I see as a cause to celebrate. You see, given enough time, the mustard seed will, slowly and determinedly, grow. To just say it simply, if grass can find its way through cement sidewalks to grow toward the sun once again, then maybe, the Kingdom, the original Jesus movement, can find its way through the wreckage of Constantine to humanity once again today. Christendom, even with all its accomplishments, has left each of the societies where she has reigned supreme in as desolate a condition along the spiritual landscape today as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant finds itself along the physical landscape of the city of Chernobyl. And yet, just as the flora and fauna in this once-beautiful city seeks to return Chernobyl to its former state before the abuses of humankind, the Kingdom, the mustard seed is still growing almost imperceptibly today. If one will stop and listen, if one will place their ear to the ground, one can hear the rumblings. There is a movement afoot within Christianity that transcends the boundaries between Eastern Orthodox, Western Catholicism, and Protestantism, as well as the divisions of denominations (or “names”, as Paul calls them, see 1 Corinthians 3) within Protestantism. In almost every group mentioned above is the sound of those who are awakening to the fact that something is wrong. Somewhere we have strayed. And among many within each of the divisions just mentioned is an awakening, as almost to a new thought, that we must return to a pre-Constantinian Jesus and become reacquainted with Jesus’s central teachings in the Sermon on the Mount to find out where we have gone wrong. Many, from various and different traditions, are coming to believe that it was Jesus and His landmark teachings in the Sermon on the Mount that were marginalized by Christiandom in the fourth century with the arrival of the influence of Constantine. I find this most encouraging! After all, we believe in a story that when all hope was gone, from the tomb came a resurrection. And where many believe that Constantinian Shift killed the original Jesus movement, and I believe it did, we are witnessing the resurrection of that movement in our lifetimes today.

If the flora can triumph over the man-made “Christian” edifices of my childhood home, as well as have the power to undo, given enough time, the wreckage of nuclear technology gone awry in Chernobyl, then maybe, just maybe, the fauna of the “Kingdom”, of the “Son of Man,” of the “narrow way” of the early Jesus movement, of the “Mustard Seed” of enemy-embracing, enemy-love and forgiveness, united with concern for the sick and hope to the poor, can undo the damage of Christiandom on our world. More blood has been shed in the name of the nonviolent Jesus than any other name in human history. It’s time for that to be reversed. Jesus came possessing hope, through His teachings, for this world (see John 3.17). If we are going to return to being His followers, embracing the early Jesus movement once again, the question we have to answer, as His followers, is “Do we?”

HeartGroup Application

1. This week I’d like you to spend some time prayerfully contemplating the following passages from the Jesus story:

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.” (Matthew 13.31)

He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17.20 [21])

It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. (Mark 4.31)

He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.’” (Luke 17.6)

2. Take a look at the context. What was the “mountain” Jesus’s Kingdom of nonviolent enemy-love and concern for the poor could overthrow? What was this “mulberry tree” Jesus was sure could be uprooted by the mustard seed like faith in Himself and His teachings? Write down any insights that come to you as you pray over these questions.

3. Be prepared to share any new insights you receive this week with your HeartGroup.

Jesus foresaw that His Kingdom, centered in Himself and His teachings, His new way of doing life here and now, of which He was the template, could significantly impact this world. Jesus was not so much concerned with helping people escape to heaven, as he was with reestablishing heaven on earth once again. Eighty-one times Jesus refers to Himself as the “Son of Man.” Even secular scholars today are almost unanimous that this is original to the historical Jesus himself. They also agree that this is one of the clearest insights we have to Jesus’s own headspace as to what He believed He was accomplishing. Lastly, they are agreed that this is a vision of the purpose of His own mission, rooted in Daniel 7.

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a SON OF MAN, COMING WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN. He approached THE ANCIENT OF DAYS and was led INTO HIS PRESENCE. He was GIVEN AUTHORITY, glory and sovereign power; ALL NATIONS and peoples of every language WORSHIPED HIM. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (Daniel 7.13, 14)

“But I say to all of you: From NOW ON you will see the SON OF MAN sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One (see Psalms 110.1) and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.” (Matthew 26.64)

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All AUTHORITY in heaven and on earth HAS BEEN GIVEN TO ME. Therefore go and make disciples of ALL NATIONS . . .” (Matthew 28.18,19)

The Kingdom has come. . . now go heal the sick. (see Luke 9.2) Until the only world that remains is a world where Jesus’s Love reigns.

I love you guys.

I’ll see you next week.

Part 9: The Coming of the Son of Man in an Unexpected Way

Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Do not go, do not set off in pursuit. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them—it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take them away; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it. I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.” Then they asked him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” (Luke 17.22-37)This week I want to wrap up this nine part series on the eight final prophecies of Jesus in Luke’s gospel by returning to the fifth prophecy in Luke 17. I want to warn you. This final ninth part is twice as long as any of the other eight parts that have preceded it, but I want to promise you it is worth the read. Let’s begin.

What must be kept in mind from the beginning is that just as Matthew 5-7 is a Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus to his “disciples” and Luke 6 is a sermon on the plain spoken to “the people,” so the Olivet discourse given to “the disciples” in Matthew 24 is a Temple discourse given to “the people” in Luke’s gospel (Luke 21) , as is the passage we are looking at this week spoken to both a Pharisee and Jesus’ disciples in Luke 17.

Where I believe the majority of modern commentators run into problems is that they try and force Luke 21 and Luke 17 (as well as Matthew 24) into either being primarily about the destruction of Jerusalem or primarily about the Second Coming. They are primarily about neither, but rather about the coming of the Nonviolent Kingdom and Reign of Christ on earth as it is in heaven. Two quick words of caution for both audiences. First, I want you to know from the very beginning that I believe in a literal second coming of Jesus that is still in the future, although I believe the passages in the gospels that are traditionally believed to be speaking of Jesus’ second coming are really speaking of the coming of the Bar Enasha (the Son of Man and the new community centered in him; see Daniel 7.13,14 which is also about the coming of Christ’s Kingdom and not the “second” coming. Christ’s coming in this passage is to the Ancient of Days, not the earth at the end of time.) and the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom instead. In other words, the second coming and the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom are not the same event in the gospels. Christ’s Kingdom, according to Jesus, was actually established on this earth through the events of the first coming of Jesus, although His kingdom today is in its obstructed form. Also, secondly, the destruction of Jerusalem (which actually was the result of Judaism’s rejection of a nonviolent Messiah and the possibility of a nonviolent Kingdom, and their choice of violent, militaristic revolution against Rome instead) would now be a part of the history that would surround the coming of Christ’s nonviolent, enemy-embracing Kingdom. In other words, certain pieces of these passages may refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in so much as it plays a part in the overall scheme of the prophecies, yet these prophecies are not primarily about the destruction of Jerusalem, but the coming of Christ’s nonviolent reign on earth. This will become clear as we progress through the passage. Let’s start to unpack the passage this week. Please keep in mind, problems arise with these passages only when we try to make these words primarily about either the destruction of Jerusalem, or the literal second coming, rather than the establishment of Christ’s nonviolent Kingdom on earth.

Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.”

Within the cultural context of Jesus’ message of nonviolent, enemy embracing, enemy love, and forgiveness, was a document highly regarded by the Pharisees entitled The Rule of the Messiah (or The Rule of the Congregation, depending on your source). The coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of the kingdom of the “Son of Man” (see Daniel 7.13,14) would be ushered in by a violent war between the Messiah and Israel’s enemies. Jerusalem would be established through the violent destruction of Jerusalem’s enemies. When Jesus uses the phrase here, “the days of the Son of Man” of which the disciples would long for, Jesus is referring to the contemporary beliefs surrounding how the kingdom of the “Son of Man” would be established. Jesus clearly says that a coming of the “Son of Man” that looks like The Rule of the Messiah that “you will not see.” It won’t be happening like that at all. On the contrary, he says that because of Jerusalem’s rejection of a nonviolent Messiah in favor of a violent one, Jerusalem will now be the victim of destruction at the hands of her enemies, rather than the other way around. This was a blatant contradiction of the contemporary beliefs of the coming of the Kingdom of the “Son of Man” as presented in The Rule of The Messiah. To give you a taste of how this document reads, after the mass destruction of Jerusalem’s enemies, there is a banquet spoken of, of which it reads:

“At a session of the men of renown, those summoned to the gathering of the community council, when God begets the Messiah with them: the chief priest of all the congregation of Israel shall enter, and all his brothers, the sons of Aaron, the priests summoned to the assembly, the men of renown, and they shall sit before him, each one according to his dignity. After, the Messiah [War Lord] of Israel shall enter and before him shall sit the heads of the thousands of Israel, each one according to his dignity, according to his position in their camps and according to their marches. … And when they gather at the table of community or to drink the new wine, and the table of the community is prepared and the new wine is mixed for drinking, no-one should stretch out his hand to the first-fruit of the bread and of the new wine before the priest, for he is the one who blesses the first-fruit of the bread and of the new wine and stretches out his hand towards the bread before them. Afterwards, the Messiah of Israel shall stretch out his hands toward the bread. And afterwards, they shall bless all the congregation of the community, each one according to his dignity. And in accordance with this precept one shall act at each meal, when at least ten men are gathered.”

It is this document, this portrayal of how the Kingdom of the “Son of Man” will be ushered in, that Jesus repeatedly contradicts in passages such as Luke 14 and in his last supper in Luke 22. But the comparison of these will have to wait for another time.

What Jesus is sharing in this passage in Luke 17 is that not only will Jesus’ Kingdom not be established with this type of violence, but because of Jerusalem’s rejection of enemy love, enemy forgiveness, enemy embracing, and nonviolence, in Jerusalem’s future now lies her own destruction, rather than that of her enemies.

They will say to you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Do not go, do not set off in pursuit.

Please see Part 5 for a full treatment of this section. Suffice it to say here that Jesus is saying that the Kingdom will not come through a violent insurrection against Rome as Jesus’ contemporaries were expecting.

For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.

I believe Jesus is saying here that the Kingdom of the “Son of Man” rooted in Daniel 7.13,14 would not come the way The Rule of the Messiah had spoken, but rather it would be a light in the heavens, lighting up the dark night sky, from the east as far as the west. It would be radically more inclusive than they had understood or were willing to embrace. It would include those in the east as well as those in the west, as a light to both, bringing reconciliation, restoration, and healing.

But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation.

In this passage, Jesus clearly believes he will be rejected rather than embraced. This makes the next passages extremely insightful.

Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them—it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.

Look at these stunning parallels Jesus is making. Noah had preached 1) of a coming destruction, 2) of a way to prevent that destruction, and was 3) rejected by his generation, which 4) lead to that generation’s destruction. In the exact same pattern, Jesus had come 1) warning of a coming destruction upon Jerusalem if they continued on their current path of an eye for an eye retaliation and violence toward their enemies; 2) presented a way to prevent that destruction through embracing his “narrow path” of nonviolent, enemy embracing, enemy love, and forgiveness; just like Noah, was 3) being rejected by his generation; and 4) this rejection would also end in the generation of Jesus’ day being annihilated by Rome.

The parallels between the days of Lot and Jesus’ ministry are just as stunning. Jesus, just like the messengers in Lot’s day, had come to Jerusalem warning of a coming destruction and of a way to escape that destruction by abandoning the way of eye-for-an-eye retribution and retaliation, and instead, embracing the path of nonviolent, enemy love. Just as with Sodom and Gomorrah, as a result of the path of violence, Jerusalem’s fiery destruction was now in Jerusalem’s future too. Jerusalem would see too late, she would become aware; it would be “revealed” to her in the midst of this fiery destruction that Jesus was right. There is a violent path that seems right to mankind, but the end thereof is death. Jesus’ Kingdom, the way of nonviolence, would be seen (would be revealed) to truly be the way of life when Jerusalem’s reluctance to let go of violence would end in her going up in smoke—a smoke that would ascend forever and ever.

On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take them back; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.

This passage is so closely related to Jesus’ words in Luke 9.23 that it is a wonder that so many scholars have missed it. “Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it’” (emphasis added). This is another clear case of where today there will be those who see in this the destruction of Jerusalem, as well as those who argue for an application of the second coming. I’m submitting that it is primarily about neither, but rather about the two paths we have been seeing continually in each of the eight final prophecies of Jesus concerning Jerusalem. Remember, the choice was nonviolence or nonexistence. It was a choice between two paths: 1) nonviolent, enemy embracing, enemy forgiving, enemy love; or eye-for-an-eye retaliation and retributive, violent resistance against the Romans. Luke’s use of these words of Jesus is unmistakable. To come down off the rooftop to “take back” one’s belongings that are being threatened is to try to resist Roman occupation through violent insurrection. The word Jesus uses here for those who come down to “take them back” is the Greek word “airo.” It is the same word used early on by Jesus in His Sermon on the Plain. “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away [Airo] your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods [Airo], do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Jesus was warning of a time when Rome would come and Airo the possessions of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and even then, Jesus was saying the Kingdom response’s would be to NOT “Airo” [take] your possessions back through violent insurrection but to turn the other cheek, love, and turn those possessions into a gift. I’m reminded of Victor Hugo’s priest, who instead of “taking back” [Airo] the candlesticks Jean Valjean had stolen, simply gave them to him as a gift, thus bringing radical transformation to the heart of a thief. To come down to “take back” one’s goods was to “turn back” to try and fight against Rome’s soldiers through violent retaliation in an endeavor to “save” one’s life, to try and make one’s “life secure” through violent means against the threat of violence from Rome. This is the exact opposite of what Jesus has been saying ever since Luke 6. To be willing to let go of Jewish pride, and of a vision of the Kingdom rooted in the destruction of one’s enemies; to seek the eternal welfare of the Romans over and above making one’s own life secure; to abandon the tribal nationalism of Judaism in favor of losing one’s life, even for the coming of the nonviolent, enemy-embracing Kingdom of the “Son of Man”—THIS is what it means to choose between “taking goods back” or “turning back” to violently protect possessions and one’s life, and learning the way of nonviolent noncooperation. Jesus equates the path of violent retaliation against a Roman attack as akin to when Lot’s wife turned back to try and save her possessions from destruction.

Jesus then drives the point home:

I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.

From the beginning, Jesus has been contrasting two paths: the narrow path of nonviolent noncooperation, which could create a whole new world; or the wide path of violent retaliation, which leaves the whole world blindly escalating toward annihilation. Here Jesus personifies each option by two in a bed and two grinding meal. The one who chooses the path of violence will be “taken” away,” while the one who chooses nonviolence will be “left.” The one who seeks to “make their life secure” will be “taken,” they “will lose it.” While those who choose the path of nonviolent noncooperation, those who are willing to “lose their life” will be “left,” they will “keep it.”

Then they asked him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”

The question is asked “Where? Where will they be taken, Lord?” And Jesus’ answer is most likely the one phrase in the entire passage that would have created the greatest paradigm shift in the entire conversation. “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Here, Jesus is referencing Ezekiel’s prophecy in Ezekiel 39 and combining it with Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 25. Space does not permit me to quote both of these passages at length, but I would like you to go back and read each of these for yourself. Ezekiel 39 is the prophecy that Israel will be restored, while Israel’s enemies are destroyed. In verses 17-19, Ezekiel prophesizes, “As for you, mortal, thus says the Lord GOD: Speak to the birds of every kind and to all the wild animals: Assemble and come, gather from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel, and you shall eat flesh and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the MIGHTY, and drink the blood of THE PRINCES OF THE EARTH—of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan. You shall eat fat until you are filled, and drink blood until you are drunk, at the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you. And you shall be filled at my table with WARHORSES and BATTLE CHARIOTEERS, with WARRIORS and all kinds of SOLDIERS, says the Lord GOD.” What Jesus is doing here is amazing. He is taking Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the fate of Israel’s enemies, turning it on its head (Jeremiah 18.5-10), and using Ezekiel’s imagery to prophesize about what would actually happen to Israel herself at the hands of her enemies because of her failure to forsake violence and embrace the nonviolence of Jesus as their Messianic hope. Just stop and think about that. Isaiah prophesized in Isaiah 25, “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for ALL PEOPLES a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over ALL PEOPLES, the sheet that is spread over ALL NATIONS; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.” Isaiah prophesized of the restoration of Israel, which would include all peoples of every nation, kindred, and tongue. Yet those of Jesus’ day would rather embrace the eschatology of The Rule of the Messiah, which spoke of Israel’s enemies being annihilated by the Messiah, leaving only the Jewish nation itself. Jesus is combining both of these “banquet” prophesies (Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s) alongside of the “banquet” prophecy of The Rule of the Messiah, and then gives the final blow, “there the vultures will gather.” The word here for “vulture” could be translated as “eagle” equally as well as “vulture.” Rome’s national symbol was the eagle. Surely the eagles of Rome would soon be circling Jerusalem if they continued to refuse the path of nonviolence.

Luke’s continuing context confirms our interpretation of Jesus’ words. Luke follows all of this up with Luke 18, where Jesus gives the parable of the unjust judge, who refuses to be moved, for those who might feel that Jesus’ nonviolence doesn’t seem to be working, saying that they should not give up, and they should keep praying and keep loving. Then Luke has Jesus once again contrasting the two paths (narrow/life vs. wide/death) of violence and nonviolence: the two in bed and the two grinding grain, with the two who went to the temple to pray. What is deeply profound is that Jesus places the Pharisees, who consider themselves more favored by God than anyone else, in the category of the ones who are “taken,” while the Jewish tax-collector, who sought the path of “mercy,” is in the category of those who would be “left.”

Much to ponder for sure.

HeartGroup Application

1.This week I want you to take the time to take each of the eight prophecies (one a day) and dedicate a portion of your day to prayerfully contemplating what it meant for Jesus’ audience, and what each prophecy could mean for us today.

2.Keep notes of any insights you receive throughout the week.

3.Share those insights with your HeartGoup this upcoming week.

In Luke 17.6, Luke records the words of Jesus, “The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.’” Mulberry trees in this region were over twenty feet tall, but something as small as a mustard seed could uproot it, according to Jesus. What was this seemly insignificant, small means of accomplishing such a significant task? Jesus was clear. Faith in Jesus’s teaching on enemy love, enemy forgiveness, nonviolent, enemy embracing, noncooperation, to believe in nonviolent enemy love as the means whereby we can change the world, is to practice a faith with mustard seed qualities. Jesus was clear, “For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.” Today our world is enveloped in the darkness of violence. It would be good to remember that the darkest part of the night is just before the dawn. Christ’s nonviolent Kingdom will light up the dark night sky from the east to the west, showing us a better way, the way that leads to life. I want to close this series with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ arose and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ There is something in the universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’” (The Gospel Messenger; 1958)

This is the same hope given to us in Jesus’ sermon on the plain and repeated throughout the final eight prophecies of Jesus concerning Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke. The Kingdom has come! It is among us! Christ’s way of nonviolent noncooperation combined with Truth and enemy love, places the means of significant world change, of healing, restoration, and reconciliation in the hands of each of us. May the world of enemy inclusion, forgiveness, and love continue to grow through us today. We are not irrevocably fated for nonexistence. We can choose the path of nonviolence and love.

Till the only world that remains, is a world where enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving, enemy-loving, nonviolent love reigns.

I love you guys.

I’ll see you next week.

Prophecy #8 – A Green Tree verses a Nation of Dry Trees

Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.28–31)We’ve reached the eighth and final prophecy of the last eight prophecies of Christ in Luke’s version of the Jesus story. We will be returning to the fifth prophecy in Luke 27 for the ninth and final part of this series, but this week we are looking at Jesus’ words to the women weeping for him on his bloody march to Golgotha.

Jesus was just moments away from being crucified. Luke tells us that “a large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him.” (Luke 23.27) It is difficult to discern whether these women were sincerely weeping for Jesus and Jerusalem’s rejection of him or because of the dashing of their hopes that this Jesus would be their Messiah. Days earlier this same crowd had ushered Jesus into Jerusalem. There is much that is missed in the details of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem by today’s Christians who still trust in militaristic saviors in our current global climate. Here Jesus is borrowing imagery used by Rome itself. It must be remembered that Caesar himself was referred to as the “son of God.” He was called “the savior of the world.” It was through the victories of Rome (i.e., Caesar) that the political propaganda of Jesus’ day proclaimed that “peace on earth” would come. It was called the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome.” When Caesar would approach a city within the Roman Empire, emissaries from the city would go out to meet the dignitary and escort him on his way into their city. They would welcome Caesar and the “peace” that Roman occupation brought to their lives.

At a bare minimum, the fact that Jesus used the image of taking honor thought to be due only to the “Lord” Caesar would have been interpreted as a threat to Rome and could have been met with swift retribution. This is why “some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” (Luke 19.39) They did not wish to bring on themselves the same retribution Caesar had recently exercised against the Galilean insurrectionists. (See Part 3.) As Jesus approached Jerusalem, the crowd was crying out, “Blessed is the KING who comes in the name of the Lord!” and “PEACE in heaven and glory in the highest!” But what must be noticed first and foremost is how Jesus was turning this imagery on its head. Where Caesar would have been riding a warhorse in his triumphal entry, Jesus came riding on the foal of a colt, a young donkey. Jesus was doing two things here—providing his own nonviolent, enemy-embracing imagery in contrast to Rome’s violent warhorse imagery and pointing those present that day to the words of the prophet Zechariah:

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your KING comes to you, righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a DONKEY, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will TAKE AWAY the CHARIOTS from Ephraim and the WARHORSES from Jerusalem, and the BATTLE BOW will be broken. He will proclaim PEACE to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9.9, emphasis added)

Jesus was trapping his audience once again in a catch-22. To admit that Jesus was their “King,” as Jesus’ fulfillment of Zechariah’s words would indicate, would be to also accept this contrast between the imagery of violence used by Caesar riding a warhorse and the nonviolent Jesus riding a donkey. He was announcing a nonviolent, enemy-embracing “peace” revolution of love and enemy-forgiveness in which the “warhorse,” “war-chariot” and “battle bow” would all be laid down by Jerusalem so that the world could be healed of its violence rather than simply liberating Jerusalem from the Romans and allowing it to become another unstoppable, violent, world-dominating, empire. That was the catch. To embrace Jesus as King was to embrace the path of nonviolence.

When Jerusalem came into view, Jesus stopped and wept. “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you PEACE—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come on you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19.42–44, emphasis added.)

We covered this passage in Part 6, but suffice it to say here that this is the same crowd in our prophecy this week, not shouting in joy, but weeping in lamentation. Crucifixion meant defeat. These people did not want to embrace their enemies, to forgive the Romans, or to learn from this prophet of nonviolence how to even love the Romans. No, they wanted a Messiah that would defeat the Romans and liberate Israel. (It should be noted that Rome would, by the fourth century, be defeated by the nonviolent revolution Jesus began, yet this was not the kind of defeat those in Jesus’ day desired.) For a Jewish Messiah to end up on a Roman cross meant that Rome had won. (Little did they realize that in reality Rome’s defeat was just beginning.) Jerusalem had rejected Jesus and his nonviolence in favor of a more militaristic hope of defeating Rome. Thus, Jesus proclaimed to those weeping:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ then “‘they will say to the mountains, “fall on us!” And to the hills, “cover us!”’ (Luke 23.28–30)

Jerusalem, rather than learning to love its Roman enemies, would continue on the path of an eye for an eye, retribution, retaliation, and violence against Rome. And what would be the result? That path would end in its annihilation by Rome. Jesus here was quoting the prophet Hosea, who centuries before had spoken those same words referring to the way Israel would be destroyed by Assyria. “The high places of wickedness will be destroyed—it is the sin of Israel. Thorns and thistles will grow up and cover their altars. Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’ . . . I will come against the wayward people to punish them; and nations shall be gathered against them when they are punished for their double iniquity.” (Hosea 10.8, 10) Jesus applied Hosea’s words to how Jerusalem would be destroyed by Rome.

“As the legions charged in [the Temple], neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command . . . Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heap of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom . . . Next [the Romans] came to the last surviving colonnade of the outer court. On this women and children and a mixed crowd of citizens had found a refuge—6000 in all. Before Caesar could reach a decision about them or instruct his officers, the soldiers, carried away by their fury, fired the colonnade from below; as a result some flung themselves out of the flames to their death, others perished in the blaze: of that vast number there escaped not one.” Josephus, The Jewish War, Williamson and Smallwood, p. 359 (6.5.1; 271–76)

This is where the path of violence, of an eye for an eye, of retributive justice, and of retribution ends. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind!

Lastly, we come to Jesus’ final sentence to these weepers:

“For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.31)

Jesus was bringing to their minds the warning given by Ezekiel in the days when Babylonian captivity loomed on the horizon:

“Hear the word of the LORD. This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to set fire to you, and it will consume all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched, and every face from south to north will be scorched by it. Everyone will see that I the LORD have kindled it; it will not be quenched.” (Ezekiel 20.47)

Jesus clearly was the green tree, bearing the fruit of nonviolent, enemy-embracing love. This was the fruit the Father desired. This was the “will of the Father” that Jesus had referred to so many times. What Jesus is saying here is: “If Rome will do this to me—a prophet of nonviolence, leading a subversive, peaceful revolution—if Rome sees nonviolence noncooperation as a threat, how much more will they do this to Jerusalem when it—a dead tree—chooses the path of violence and insurrection under the headship of a militaristic messiah!” Jesus is proclaiming, “Do not weep for me. No, no! Weep for yourselves because the violent path you have chosen will end in horrifying events that are neither imaginable nor conceivable.”

What does this mean for us today?

The greatest victories of the church were won in its nonviolent days before Constantine. This is how bloody and violent Rome was brought to its knees by pacifistic Jesus-followers. There were no Christian armies, and every true Christian soldier was a martyr. It was martyrs who conquered Rome. Today Christians and non-Christians alike have to rediscover the sources of Christianity. It began, not as a religion, but as a pacifist movement of people placing their hopes in a nonviolent Messiah or Lord, an enemy-forgiving, loving, and embracing revolution and a final resurrection whereby the world would be restored, renewed, and healed. We must come to realize that we have, to a great extent, abandoned the early Christian ideal of peace and nonviolent action.

It is a curious thing that in the twentieth century the one great political figure who made a conscious and systematic use of Jesus’ principles for nonviolent political action was not a Christian but a Hindu. What is more curious is the fact that so many Christians today continue to think of Gandhi as some kind of eccentric whose nonviolence remains impractical, a sensational fad, or at best naïve. What may lie underneath all of this is the reality that we may have to admit that a Hindu, being oppressed by Colonial Christianity wedded to Empire, understood the meaning and intent of the nonviolent Jesus’ teaching more deeply than many post-Constantinian Christians.

Today we, much like Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, still hold to the idea that evil must be met with evil. Today we are faced with the same options Jerusalem had—nonviolence or nonexistence—both in our personal lives as well as in our global lives. According to experts, we live, every day, each moment, only five minutes away from total genocide of the entire human race either through global nuclear war or new developments in ecological science that could inflict irrevocable harm. All along those who claim to follow the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are “straining gnats” while by their silent approval they are “swallowing camels.”

The question is appropriately asked: “How are we today to live at the end of the world?” I’m suggesting we do so by beginning a new one, rooted in the nonviolent teachings of the enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving, enemy-loving Jesus. Nonviolence, as Jesus taught it, is a steadfast love, in resistance, of those behind technologically advanced violence, behind the massive oppression that causes the masses to continually go hungry, and a global debt crisis that keeps the poor of this planet in slavery to larger and stronger empires. It is to love, in resistance, the conduits of violence in our local communities, our private and public relationships, and even within our families no matter what they do. It is the force of this kind of unrelenting love that can overcome anything.

To live the prayer of desiring Christ’s “Kingdom” to “come . . . on earth as it is in heaven” is to believe in a Kingdom whose coming will cause “swords to be beaten into plowshares.” Or in language that would be more appropriate to our culture today, it is a Kingdom where technologically advanced forms of mass violence will be abolished and the world’s masses will be freed from hunger and the poor freed from oppression.

We will discuss the two prevailing views of how Christ’s Kingdom will come in the final part of this series (Part 9) when we return to Jesus’ words in Luke 17, and I will actually offer a third option. But to believe in Christ’s Kingdom is to believe that a new world will eventually come into existence (one way or another) and to be working toward that end in our daily lives today, not just putting on display what such a world will look like! The Kingdom has come! The Kingdom is at hand! The Kingdom starts now! The Kingdom of God is within your power! All of these words, spoken originally by Jesus, are to be our proclamation to the world. His parting words in Luke were the promise of repentance [metanioa] for the forgiveness of sins” being “preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:47, emphasis added)

HeartGroup Application

1.This week I want you to prayerfully meditate on Jesus’ words in Matthew 6.33: “But seek first his kingdom and his justice, and all these things will be given to you as well.” This is a law of the universe, just like gravity. If we seek God’s Kingdom, God’s justice, God’s new world of nonviolence, everything we could need in life will be provided for us. To many, embracing the way Jesus tells us that life on this planet is to be done provokes fear—fear of being violated, going hungry, going without, going unloved, losing everything. What’s the meaning of Jesus’ words that if we seek to establish God’s Kingdom and God’s justice on earth as it is in heaven, all of these will be added to us? What do these words not mean?

2.Keep notes, write down any thoughts, questions, fears, anxieties, insights, or assurances—anything that Jesus gives you during your daily time of meditating on this passage.

3.Share with your HeartGroup this upcoming week any insights you have discovered about what it means to follow this enemy-embracing, enemy-loving, enemy-forgiving, nonviolent Jesus.

We live in that final time that offers humanity the same choice as the final eight prophecies of Jesus about Jerusalem in the book of Luke—the Kingdom or global holocaust. Where do we start? Put down this eSight right now, go into the bathroom, and look in the mirror. It starts right there. As the old adage goes, “As you are, so is the world.” It starts with one person at a time, beginning with today, not with Jerusalem but with each one of us. It starts with me. It starts with you. In our own lives, in our own spheres of influence, wherever this finds us today, will we be followers of the nonviolent, enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving, enemy-loving Christ? If nonviolence does not begin here, it goes nowhere. The revolution starts now! Look deeply into that mirror, and by the power of God’s Spirit, let a new world begin today!

Till the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I love you guys.

See you next week.

Prophecy #7 – The Coming Kingdom, By Two Possible Paths

Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.” (Luke 21.5-9)This week we are looking at the seventh of the eight final prophecies of the nonviolent Jesus concerning the two fates that lay before Jerusalem. In each prophecy up to this point, we have seen Jesus laying out two potential paths, each having its own outcome, either life in a world made new, or annihilation. In this part, we will see that this is the final time Jesus will lay out these two contingent outcomes. In this seventh prophecy, he will do so in greater detail than he has in any prophecy up to this point. This will be the final time. His eighth prophecy, which we will look at next week, will be given while he is actually carrying his cross to Golgotha. In that moment, he will only give a warning of what is coming, for at that stage, to all appearances, Jerusalem has rejected the way of nonviolence. They have chosen a militaristic messiah instead of Jesus, a nonviolent one. But we will get to that in part 8. For this week, we have the most extended outlay of events, in cause-and-effect fashion, that we have seen up till now. Let’s dive in!

Reread the above passage, Luke 21.5-9.

The disciples are remarking about the beauty of the temple, Jesus warns of the temple’s destruction, and then the people ask how they will know when this is about to happen. What is missed by many is that the title used by the questioners for Jesus is “Teacher.” The Greek word here is didaskale. In the book of Luke, this title is never used by the disciples when addressing Jesus. It is used 11 times in the book of Luke, and in each instance it is used by the people—never by Jesus’s disciples. This will become relevant in just a moment.

As he did in the fifth prophecy, Jesus responds by warning the people not to follow false militaristic messiahs (see part 5) placing their hope in violently overpowering Rome. Stating that these violent false messiahs will come, Jesus offers the people another path, a path of hope.

What Jesus lays out next are two possible futures. In the first, Jesus describes what the future will look like if Jerusalem should, in this final hour, turn and follow Jesus’s teachings. In the second, he describes what the future will look like if she [Jerusalem] does not.

Then he said to them:”Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. And so you will bear testimony to me. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. Everyone will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. Stand firm, and you will win life. (Luke 21.10-19)

Jesus initially lays out the great cosmic signs that would accompany the coming of his Kingdom, but he is doing so as if it would happen through Jerusalem, as if Jerusalem would still in the end embrace Jesus and be his conduit of an enemy-loving revolution. The context of this whole section is vital. Luke has couched this seventh prophecy within a time of Jesus’s ministry where the people (the ones asking the questions here) are actually receiving and following Jesus as their messiah. Just before the passage we are looking at this week, Luke is careful to point out the positive response of the people after Jesus’s behavior at the temple: “Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words” (Luke 19.47-48). And just afterward, Luke is quick to remind us, “Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple” (Luke 21.37-38). The picture we get from Luke is that this was a time in Jesus’s ministry when it looked as if Jerusalem might be turning the corner and actually beginning to embrace this “narrow way” of enemy love that Jesus was offering the people. According to Luke, Jesus is speaking here to a very large, supportive audience. Those who are presently surrounding Jesus are farmers forced by taxes and debt to become day laborers. They are also the destitute and the starving who have been drawn to Jesus given his promise that his Kingdom would restructure society in their favor. (See Luke 6.20-26.) Jerusalem, at this time, was a large center of poverty, where streets were lined with “beggars.” A significant section of the population of Jerusalem lived chiefly or even entirely on charity. Jesus’s words gave this crowd hope! Therefore, Jesus’s seventh prophecy includes what a future would look like in which Jerusalem would not be annihilated by Rome, but instead would be the avenue through which Jesus’s Kingdom is established once again on Earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus speaks of the persecution, arrest, and imprisonment this nonviolent revolution/movement, growing out of Jerusalem, would encounter. Yet God would use all of this for Jerusalem to “bear testimony.” Before the great cosmic “signs” that would accompany the coming of Jesus’s kingdom, Jesus lays out the plan for the healing of the world from the self-destructive way of violence through the Jewish followers of Jesus embracing their own crosses of nonviolent noncooperation. Jerusalem, if she would in this late hour follow Jesus, she would be brought before the judges of the Roman Empire to give their testimony. (Although Jerusalem ended up rejecting Jesus and therefore not experiencing this, we do see this is exactly what happened with the Apostles who actually did embrace this movement that began in the nonviolent teachings of Jesus.) Yes, even at the hands of loved ones Jerusalem could expect that many would be put to death, losing their lives in this revolution, but they would not perish permanently. No, though they did not fully understand, Jesus was saying that even if they lost their lives for the Kingdom, their lives would be given back to them. They would find life given back to them, not in a world as it had been, but in a whole new world, renewed, restored, healed, once again under the reign of the nonviolent Christ. Here, Jesus was offering, as an alternative to Jerusalem’s destruction, a transforming nonviolent movement that would turn Jerusalem and even the entire world around. It is well worth noting that even in this, Jesus is emphasizing the way of the cross (both his and his followers’) as the means of transformation.

(For more on this, please see the presentation “A New Way” from our new series On Earth as It Is in Heaven at https://renewedheartministries.com/AudioPresentationSeries.aspx?series=40.)

Then Jesus quickly warns of another possible outcome if Jerusalem should end up rejecting Jesus. Jerusalem’s fate was on the edge of the blade during this final week of Jesus’s life. Jesus’s Kingdom could come through them if they embraced his way of nonviolent enemy love. But if Jerusalem did, in the end, choose to remain on their path of violent, eye-for-an-eye, punitive retribution toward the Romans, Jesus is quick to warn of Jerusalem’s possible annihilation and the coming of the “times of the Nations”:

“When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its DESOLATION [rather then restoration] is near. THEN let those who are in Judea FLEE to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. THEY WILL FALL BY THE SWORD AND WILL BE TAKEN AS PRISONERS TO ALL THE NATIONS. JERUSALEM WILL BE TRAMPLED ON BY THE NATIONS UNTIL THE TIMES OF THE NATIONS ARE FULFILLED. (Luke 21.20-24, emphasis added.)

But this next section is the best part of Jesus’s seventh prophecy. Even if Jerusalem should be annihilated, even if the nations wiped her out, Jesus’s Kingdom would still come. The nonviolent reign of Christ would still ultimately triumph even if Jerusalem and the temple should be no more. Jesus is saying that the Kingdom could come through Jerusalem, if she so chose. Yet even if she rejected this Kingdom of nonviolent, enemy love, she would be destroyed by her enemies, and the Kingdom would still come. If Jerusalem chose the way of annihilation, the “times of the Nations” would then ensue. But even given this worst-case scenario, the “times of the Nations” would also have their limits. The prophecies of the Son of Man would be fulfilled: “He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion.” (Daniel 7.14). Jesus describes the coming of his Kingdom if rejection of Jesus, Jerusalem’s destruction, and the victory of the Nations (i.e. “the times of the Nations”) should be the path Jerusalem would choose.

“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, NATIONS will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time THEY will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near” (Luke 21.25-32, emphasis added).

The imagery of the sea and the waves, in the culture to which Jesus was speaking, had long been used to refer to the Gentile world. “Woe to the many nations that rage! They rage like the raging sea! Woe to the peoples who roar—they roar like the roaring of great waters!” (Isaiah 17.12). “Reach down your hand from on high; deliver me and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hands of foreigners” (Psalms 144.7). John, too, uses this imagery for the times of the Nations in his Apocalypse: “Then the angel said to me, ‘The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages’” (Revelation 17.15). The heavenly bodies were identified by the Jewish people with the gods of Greco-Roman religion and regarded by them as “the powers” which presided over the pagan nations. “In that day the LORD will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on the earth below” (Isaiah 24.21). “Come near, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world, and all that comes out of it! The LORD is angry with all nations; his wrath is on all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter . . . All the stars in the sky will be dissolved and the heavens rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall” (Isaiah 34.1-4, see also Ephesians 6.12). What Jesus is explaining in the passage here from Luke is that even if Jerusalem falls to Rome, there is nothing permanent in Gentile domination. In the end, the reign of the nonviolent Christ will be restored. Jerusalem could be a significant part of that, or she could become a stepping stone herself, in her destruction, toward that end. Ultimately, all nations, including Jerusalem, would be judged in history from the standpoint of a new, nonviolent humanity centered on Christ. That the path of violence would end in destruction was not only for the Jews. Unless “the nations” would turn and be transformed, the nations too would destroy themselves by their violence, each in turn, until Christ’s Kingdom is the last Kingdom standing. (This is the mustard seed prophecy in which the Kingdom of Christ is growing subversively all while “nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” till the last Kingdom standing is the Christ’s. See Luke 13.19, Revelation 11.15, and the presentation “The Revolution” at https://renewedheartministries.com/AudioPresentationSeries.aspx?series=40.)

Yet, even this second option had contingencies. Even if Jerusalem did reject and crucify Jesus, even then, she was not beyond repenting still, turning from violence and embracing Jesus’s upside-down kingdom in which the poor and suffering are given first place and in which we love our enemies: “He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name TO ALL NATIONS, beginning at Jerusalem’” (Luke 24.46-47).

If Jerusalem should reject and crucify Jesus, she would be no different from any other nation, but called still to submit to the nonviolent reign of Jesus and His Kingdom, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

What we see Jesus doing here is describing a revolution, an alternative to destruction. Every generation faces these inflexible alternatives: violence and annihilation, or nonviolent, enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving love, and thus eternal life in a world made new. Transformation or annihilation—these are the inflexible alternatives Jesus sets before us. These are the events, the alternatives, that the “generation” Jesus was speaking to that day would see transpire before them. Which path would they choose?

“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Luke 21.33)

When will the nonviolent, enemy-embracing Kingdom of God come for our generation? It comes right now. Our choice right now, globally, is the same as was Jerusalem’s. It is a choice between the inflexible alternatives, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also said, of “nonviolence or nonexistence.” Our generation too will choose either the nonviolent Kingdom that Jesus told us is within our power, thereby bringing healing to the world, our we will choose the horrific alternative of annihilation. “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

I close this look at Jesus’s seventh prophecy with the hope that is found in the following passages, hoping against hope that it will give you, dear reader, the courage to believe in the healing power of Jesus’s Kingdom of nonviolent, enemy forgiveness and love as well. Our world doesn’t have to end in annihilation, but our world, as it is now, must end and a new world begin. Either way, the nonviolent reign of Christ must—and will—come. Will we be a part of that revolution, or as in Jerusalem, will it pass us by, leaving us to our own demise? I still hold out hope:

Daniel 7.14—He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; ALL NATIONS and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Revelation 15.4—Who will not fear you, Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. ALL NATIONS will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.

Revelation 21.24—THE NATIONS will walk by its light, and THE KINGS OF THE EARTH will bring their splendor into it.

Revelation 22.2—On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS.

The nonviolent revolution, the enemy-embracing Kingdom, starts now! Till the only world that remains is a world where Christ’s enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving, nonviolent, nonretaliating love reigns.

Our Lord has come! Let us follow the nonviolent Lamb.

Prophecy # 6 – The Way of Enemy-Embracing, Nonviolent Love and A God Who Changes His Mind

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”—Jesus, Luke 19.41-44This week, I want to look at prophecy number six in our eight-prophecy lineup. For me, this one is the most gut wrenching. Jesus is fully aware that Jerusalem is rejecting her only chance at life. In rejecting Jesus, this prophet of nonviolent, enemy-embracing love, she is sealing her fate. Her feet are sternly set on the path of retaliation, eye-for-an-eye, and violence toward her enemy Rome, and this path will not end well. Jesus sees where their violent path will end, and he weeps:

“Your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another.”

Yet even now, it was still not too late. Follow closely. Let’s begin with Jeremiah, who also warned of a coming destruction on Jerusalem.

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. (Jeremiah 18.7, 8)

Jeremiah had promised that God would change his mind if there were a change of path by those who had been warned.

We see this over and over again in the narratives of the Old Testament:

From the history of Isaiah and King Hezekiah:

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.” Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, “Remember, LORD, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: “Go and tell Hezekiah, this is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: ‘I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city.’” (Isaiah 38.1-6, emphasis added)

To Jonah’s angry rant after the repentance of Nineveh:

When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened. This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the LORD about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, LORD? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, LORD! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.” (Jonah 3.10-4.4, emphasis added)

What Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Jonah present to us is the picture of a God who actually does change his mind, a God who repents and changes what He has foretold if we choose a different path. A great example within the Gospels is in Jesus’ dialogue with Peter, just hours before Peter’s denial.

But Jesus said, “Peter, let me tell you something. Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.” (Luke 22.34)

Once Jesus prophesied this outcome of events for Peter, was Peter’s future now set? Was Peter trapped within a fate beyond changing, or, on the other hand, was Peter on a path with a certain and definite intrinsic end? Yet if Peter heeded Jesus’ forewarning and changed the path upon which he was traveling, the denial would also be avoided.

Jesus words in Luke 22.31 make the point clearly: “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail.” Jesus was praying that Peter would change paths and not end up in the fate of thrice denial. Jesus was actually prophesying toward Peter, in hope that Peter would change paths, and what Jesus prophesied would then never come to pass. (Much like when the Lord told David that the men of Keilah would turn him over to Saul, so David fled and that which the Lord foretold never came to pass.) What all of this indicates is that the intended purpose of threatening prophecy is fulfilled most profoundly when its threats do NOT come to pass, rather than when they do come to pass. For if the destruction takes place that has been foretold, in this, the prophecy has failed even though it’s predication came true, for the purpose of the prophecy was that paths would be changed and the predicted destruction would never take place.

Take a moment and reread Jesus’ words in Luke 19.41-44 with all of this in mind. As final as Jesus’ words sound, they were not beyond hope. Jerusalem could still, like David, Hezekiah, and Nineveh, change paths, repent of their violence, and embrace the way of nonviolent, enemy-embracing love, and live.

Today, the most conservative experts once placed their hope in being able to deter global violence escalating into a potential global annihilation. Today, they are saying that ever since the mid-’80s, humanity today has reached, through political structures coupled with technological achievement, a point of no return, guaranteeing that at some point soon in the future the human race will cease to exist. The political structures to which I’m referring to include monopolies on resources that cause those who are hungry and oppressed around the globe to rapidly grow desperate, thus producing, to the same degree, varied forms of terrorism threats around the globe as well. By technological achievements I am referring to the rapidly advancing, daily scientific breakthroughs that allow violence to be used so massively, so efficiently and effortlessly. The mere creation of such technology simultaneously brings into being the risk of it being hijacked and potentially used by the desperately hungry and oppressed, against their oppressors. The most conservative experts, once again, are now expressing that the fears of the Cold War are miniscule compared to what will (note, not could, but will) happen once terrorism is combined with nuclear warfare.

Yet, I refuse to change “could” to “will.” A future annihilation of the human race is still simply a possibility, not a definite. I still hold out hope that Jesus and His Kingdom of nonviolent, enemy-embracing love will win in the end. Jesus is, today more than ever, the last great hope of this world. Just like with Jerusalem of old, our turning from violence and injustice would fulfill the purpose of every Biblical and Secular prophecy regarding global annihilation. Remember, prophecy is not intended to simply predict the future, but to warn of a possible future that we will definitely meet if our choices are not altered today. Are we beyond hope? I do not believe so. But I will say we have one, and only one, hope left: embrace the nonviolent, enemy love of the God revealed in the person of Jesus the Savior of the World. Again, the condition for us is the same as that which Jesus presented to pre-70 A.D. Jerusalem of old: To know the things that make for peace, to recognize the “time of our visitation from God” in the invitation to join Christ’s nonviolent Kingdom.

For most of us, we don’t have the resources at our disposal to make global change. But we do have within our power, as we looked at last week, the ability to create local change. We can start today, wherever this finds you. Within your family, within your circle of friends, even if it is simply choosing to immediately forgive the driver in front of you who will cut you off on the way home from work after an exhausting day. One person at a time, we can change the world. The revolution starts right now, with you, with me, with each of us in our daily lives.

HeartGroup Application

1. This week I want you to spend some time contemplating a section of what many have labeled, “The Lord’s Prayer.” The section is:

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew 6.12)

I explain what I believe Jesus is telling us in this phrase at the end of a recent presentation I gave entitled What About Prayer? that you can listen to at https://renewedheartministries.com/AudioPresentationSeries.aspx?series=36

In short, these are not debts we owe God, but debts we owe to others, given the cultural context of Jesus’ teachings here, that God will cause to be dropped by our creditors as we drop the debts of those who are indebted to us. It’s a domino effect. By our setting forgiveness in motion, we can create a revolution, by the empowerment of God’s spirit. Our forgiving of others will travel from person to person, being paid forward, until it circles back around to those whom we have hurt or offended also being willing to forgive us. What Jesus is describing in the Lord’s Prayer truly is a revolution.

2. After listening to that presentation and getting your mind around Jesus’ intent here, contemplating what this might look like, I want you to meditatively pray for God to show you ways you might set in motion His Kingdom revolution in your own daily relationships.

3. This next week, share with your HeartGroup what discoveries you wrote down.

Jesus said it best, “God did not send his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but to heal the world through him.” (John 3.17) In Luke 9.2, Jesus tells us our first job in proclaiming the arrival of this new nonviolent Kingdom is to be a conduit of healing! “Then he sent them out to tell everyone about the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Certainly our world is sick, infected with the disease of retaliation, of demanding eye for an eye, of punitive justice rather than the Godlike healing of restorative justice. Gandhi solemnly admonished us, “We must be the change, the change we long to see in the world.” I close this week with a statement regarding Einstein’s theory of relativity I found recently from Gandhi’s secretary:

“Einstein has given us his well-known equation setting forth the relationship between matter and energy which states that when even an INFINITESIMAL PARTICLE of matter attains the velocity of light, the maximum velocity attainable in the physical world, it acquires A MASS WHICH IS INFINITE.”—Pyarelel (Gandhii’s secretary, emphasis added.)

For AS THE LIGHTNING comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Bar Enasha, the new Humanity, the nonviolent Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.—Jesus (Matthew 24.27, personal paraphrase)

Who said one “infinitesimal” person empowered by nonviolent enemy love, can’t “infinitely” change the world?

Thanks for the hope, Einstein!

Wherever this finds you this week, keep living in love toward one person, one heart at a time, putting on display the Father’s character of love as seen in Jesus, until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I love you guys.

See you next week.

Prophecy #5 – Signs That Can Be Observed

Once Jesus was asked by a Pharisee when the kingdom of God was coming. He answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Do not go, do not set off in pursuit. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation . . . (Luke 17.20-37)In this week’s passage, Jesus is once again presenting two options to Jerusalem: nonviolent, enemy love, or nonexistence. These really are the same options that we are faced with today, but that discussion is for another time.

With brilliant clarity, Jesus lays out a contingent prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction and a statement about the transforming alternative to that destruction, saying that Jerusalem’s destruction need not happen.

Jesus provides the alternative in verses 20-21:

Once Jesus was asked by a Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming. He answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

Remember, for Jesus, the kingdom is a radical new way of orienting and doing life that is rooted in and based on a radical new picture of God and His character of loving one’s enemies. This kingdom would result in the political and social liberation of the Jewish people from the Roman Empire. The kingdom would not only accomplish this, but would also liberate the entire world from “the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” and the systemic way of death they have us enslaved with. (Ephesians 6.12, though the inclusion of this larger liberation was not in the thinking of the Jewish people in Jesus’ day.) The proclamation of this “kingdom” is the gospel! It is the centerpiece of Jesus’ entire ministry. It is also the common thread that runs through the entire story, from Anna’s words in Luke 2.38, “At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for THE REDEMPTION OF JERUSALEM“, to the words of the disciples on the road to Emmaus found in Luke 24.21, “But we had hoped that he was the one to REDEEM ISRAEL.”

Pervading each step of the way is the notion of the kingdom of God:

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of THE KINGDOM OF GOD. (Luke 8.1);

And he sent them out to proclaim THE KINGDOM OF GOD and to heal. (Luke 9.2);

Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘THE KINGDOM OF GOD has come near to you.’ (Luke 10.8-9).

When the Pharisee questions Jesus, he is actually challenging Jesus as a “prophet” to present his “revolutionary vision.” What he is actually asking Jesus to do is explain what its look like when Jesus envisions the people being liberated from Rome by Yahweh. Jesus, in his customary fashion, transforms the question into a contingent prophecy with two potential outcomes: embrace nonviolent love of your enemy and be liberated or remain entrenched in the world of an eye for an eye and retribution looking for a militaristic Messiah and be destroyed.

Jesus’ words, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you”, contain both their most cherished dreams (the favor of God on Israel) and their worst nightmares (the favor of God also on their enemies, the Romans). Loving one’s enemy and nonviolent mutual liberation of Jerusalem and Rome from the real Enemy was a path that would require Jerusalem to forgive Rome, to love Rome, and to endeavor not only to save itself from Rome, but to save Rome from its allegiance to “the Powers” and encourage Roman to follow the nonviolent, enemy loving Messiah. The potential for all of this was among them and the choice was within them.

A window into Jesus’ words, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” is given to us by Josephus. Josephus writes incidents that occurred around the mid-first century (50 A.D.) when revolutionary prophets would lead large groups of people into the desert under the pretense that, once there, God would show them signs of approaching freedom. During these incidents, the Roman procurator, Felix, regarding this as the first stage of revolt, would send cavalry and heavy infantry to cut the mob into pieces (see Josephus, The Jewish War, Williamson and Smallwood, p. 147). The most infamous of these revolutionary prophets who promised “signs to be observed” was a militaristic messiah referred to as “the Egyptian” and who is mentioned in Acts 21. 38: “Then you are not the Egyptian who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand assassins out into the wilderness?”

Josephus describes the event as follows:

“Arriving in the country, this man, a fraud who posed as a seer, collected about 30,000 dupes, led them round from the desert to the Mount of Olives and from there was ready to force an entry into Jerusalem, overwhelm the Roman garrison, and seize supreme power with his fellow-raiders as bodyguard.” (Josephus, The Jewish War, Williamson and Smallwood, p. 147)

In a parallel account of this event, Josephus includes the “sign” that this “Egyptian” had claimed would be shown to the people in the course of their liberating Jerusalem. It would be a sign like Joshua’s sign at the Battle of Jericho. At the “Egyptian’s” command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down so that his followers could enter and seize the city. However, before any such a sign could be attempted, the Roman cavalry and infantry slayed and captured hundreds and put the rest to flight, including the militaristic messiah, the Egyptian. (Josephus, Antiquities, 170-172)

These were not lunatic leaders, but hopeful militarist messiahs, action prophets who contemporary scholars see as attempting to lead movements of Jewish peasants in active engagements of human effort that would be accompanied by divine acts of empowerment and deliverance. The lie went something like, “Success is dependent on combining human effort with divine power.” If they wanted divine deliverance, they must first present the violent human effort for Yahweh to bless. God would meet their efforts if they acted. The rhetoric of these militaristic messiahs was steeped in the symbols of the Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan. (Much like Augustine’s arguments for marginalizing Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence also centered on the story details of the Exodus and Conquest of Canaan of the Old Testament. For more on this, see part 7 of the series, The Active Nonviolence of Jesus, within the eSight posts of 2012.) Today, this is called Sign Propaganda and is similar to when a politician uses symbols of the American Revolution to inspire a following. The militaristic messiahs of the mid-first century in Jerusalem used this same technique by employing symbols of the Exodus and of the Conquest of Canaan.

Josephus also describes another event where Romans massacred a thousand Jewish women and children who were acting in obedience to another Jewish militaristic messiah “prophet.” This militaristic messiah had declared to the people in Jerusalem that God had commanded them to go up to the Temple to receive the signs of deliverance. (Josephus, The Jewish War, p. 360) Elsewhere, Josephus describes a “Samaritan prophet” who was a contemporary “messiah” of Jesus during the time of Pontius Pilate. This prophet’s “sign” was to lead the people up the sacred Mount Gerizim to find holy vessels left there by Moses. Instead, the armed crowd was attacked and overwhelmed by Pilate’s troops at the foot of the mountain. (Josephus, Antiquities, 85-87)

When Jesus says “the Kingdom is not coming with signs to be observed,” he is emphatically rejecting the specific way in which popular prophets led masses of Jewish people to their deaths at the hands of Roman soldiers. The reference to such leaders becomes more specific when he warns, “They will say to you, ‘Lo there!’ or ‘Lo, here!’ Do not go, do not follow them.” (Luke 17.23) Those who followed these would-be messiahs and used violence, retribution, and retaliation would perish needlessly in horrific slaughters by Rome.

The hope that Jesus gives them is of an enemy-loving, forgiving, nonviolent, and yet noncooperative approach, a nonviolent Kingdom that would change the world through embracing a Roman cross, rather than avoiding it or by picking up of a sword. Neither flight nor fight, Jesus offered a third way, a narrow way, a narrow gate that would lead through death to life. It was counter-intuitive, but it was the way of wisdom. The way that seemed right to them [violent retaliation] would lead to their death instead (Proverbs 14.12; 16.25).

“The Kingdom of God is among you!” can also be translated as “within you.” It can also be translated as by the power of the Spirit, “within your doing.”

“But the justice that comes from faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?”’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, ON YOUR LIPS AND IN YOUR HEART” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord [rather than Caesar, and call Jesus, according to last week, “blessed.”] and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”(Romans 10.6-9, emphasis added.)

Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today IS NOT TOO HARD FOR YOU, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” NO, THE WORD IS VERY NEAR TO YOU; IT IS IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART FOR YOU TO OBSERVE. (Deuteronomy 30.11-14, emphasis added.)

Again, Jesus was presenting a way to live, but it was a way that first passed through death, not of one’s enemies, but of oneself at the hands of one’s enemies. It was a path that possessed the hope of a resurrection, believing in one’s heart that God “raised Jesus from the dead.”

Jesus was clear. To follow the illusive and falsely promising way of violence was a trap. To trust in a future hope by using violence in the present was an illusion. Jesus was not offering them the annihilation of their enemies, but the nonviolent transformation of themselves, their enemies, and the entire world. “The Kingdom of God is within your power.” This nonviolent, enemy loving and forgiving kingdom offered to them by Jesus was both a means and the end of all their hopes. Through the power of the Spirit, this path was both within them, within their doing, and also present among them or, as Jesus said in other places, “At hand!” Overthrowing kingdoms of this world through the power of the sword, through the way of violence, is rarely within our power. But to transform and change the world one person at a time by embracing your enemy, nonviolence, forgiveness, and healing love—THAT is always at your disposal. By staying connected with Jesus (John 15), those means are always within our power and waiting simply for our choosing. This centers on showing kindness toward the “ungrateful and the evil.” (Luke 6.35)

HeartGroup Application

1. This week I’d like you to spend some time contemplatively praying through these three verses:

Luke 6.27—”But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.

Luke 6.32—”If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

Luke 6.35—”But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”

2. As you are praying through these passages, I want you to write down any insights that Jesus gives you into ways that you can be a part of healing the world in your daily lives.

3. Share what you discover with your HeartGroup this upcoming week.

As odd as saying it this way sounds, the reason the healing of the world is “within our power”, according to Jesus, is because the power itself is love. It is this love that Jesus wants to not only educate us in, but also empower us for. It is a way of life flowing from God’s love for us AND for our enemies. It is an indiscriminant love, showered like the rain and shining like the sun on all creation. This way of life is “within our power” because we can choose to accept God’s transforming love, not just for ourselves, but for our enemies as well. To view our enemies through the lens of what is in God’s heart for them is transforming. It transforms us! And then, by relating to our enemies, it transforms them too! Before long, we have set in motion a contagious chain of events, dominoes tipping upon dominoes, until a world where love reigns is the only world that remains. Regardless of who they may be or what they may have done to us, we must see that within our loving of them, our forgiving of them, our choosing the way of nonviolent love rather than eye-for-an-eye retribution, lies the hope of our world. Like the Samaritan of old, we will be saved by our enemies, specifically by learning how to forgive and love them. They, and the lessons that are related to them by love, are the means of our salvation.

God’s love for our enemies is the Kingdom within our power and is there for our choosing, waiting for us to affirm it’s divine power, the divine power of agape, and to begin experiencing it. Through our enemies, we meet the heart of God’s love and the possibility of salvation from the way that leads to death.

In the movie of Gandhi’s life from 1982, there is a scene where a Hindu is conscience stricken over his own violent slaying of Muslims. Gandhi offers him a way out of “hell.” Gandhi tells the Hindu to find a Muslim child who has lost their parents due to the violent fighting of the civil wars between Muslims and Hindus and to take that Muslim child into his home, his family, his heart and to raise him, not as a Hindu, but as a Muslim.

I wonder what forgiving your enemy will look like?

We’ll continue next week with prophecy number 6.

I love you guys.

See you next week.

Prophecy #4 – Mother God and the Roman Eagle

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” —Jesus (Luke 13:34–35)Last week we looked at Jesus’ call to Israel to repent of her “eye for an eye” way of relating to the Romans, and to embrace loving and forgiving her enemies, which would end in life through the narrow gate of a nonviolent revolution.

The Hebrew (and remember, Jesus was a Hebrew) word for repentance is teshuvah. Teshuvah is defined as “turning”—it is a turning from sin to God. But what does this mean in the context of Jesus’ use of this concept? Jesus was calling them to repent for their violence and turn to nonviolence. The verb form of teshuvah is shuv, which actually means to “return.” Originally it held the meaning “to return to God from exile,” from the place of alienation and separation back to God. It referred to a return from the path of annihilation, the way of violence, to God and God’s path of life, the way of peace. It is returning from Babylon (Rome) to the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel. Jesus clearly taught that the way of violent retaliation and revolution against Rome accompanied simultaneously by stricter obersvance of the Torah was not the repentance he was referring to. Repenting, for Jesus, meant leaving the path of violence toward our enemies and entering the path of forgiveness and love of others, including love for our enemies (see Matthew 7:12–14).

The context of our passage this week is that Jesus was about to return to Jerusalem:

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’” (Luke 13:31–33)

Then Jesus stops and muses:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Luke 13:34–35)

Jesus, in a rare moment of clarity, through a momentary window, lets us into His heart to see what is transpiring within Him. Jesus steps into the role of a mother hen, as Mother God, and weeps over Jerusalem’s rejection of Him and the way out that He has been offering them. How fitting that Jesus would take up the image of a mother hen, covering her baby chicks with her wings, protecting them from the circling predatory eagle in the sky above (a very fitting description, as Rome’s symbol was the eagle)! Yet Jerusalem’s hope was fading. For three years Jesus had been holding on to the hope of nonviolent transformation through a divine love of enemies offered as an alternative to Jerusalem’s destruction by the eagle of Rome. The mother hen was now leaving Jerusalem to her own devices, yet she was very willing to return at any moment if Jerusalem would simply turn from this path of violent retaliation, this path of placing her hope in a militaristic messiah, and instead call blessed this coming to them by God himself in the form of a prophet of nonviolence. Instead, Jesus was seen not as blessed, but as dangerous. We see this most clearly in the words of Caiaphas:

You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed. (John 11:50)

As Jesus said, three days later He would enter Jerusalem. Would the people of Jerusalem repent and call him blessed, or would they take another step toward their annihilation and ruin?

As He rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, all of His disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:36–38)

Would Jerusalem join the disciples in calling Him blessed? I’m afraid that’s not what happened. Instead:

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:39–40, emphasis mine)

Where does this leave us today?

I’m convinced, both within Christianity and outside of it as well, that Jesus is still longing and waiting with deep expectation for a people who, like the early Jesus movement itself, say, “Blessed is this this prophet bearing the message of hope for a world faced with annihilation! Blessed is the prophet that has come, giving us a way to heal broken people, to heal broken relationships, and ultimately the way that leads to the healing of the nations and the healing of the world!”

Lord Irwin is reported as having asked Gandhi at one point what he thought would solve the problems between Great Britain and India. Gandhi picked up a Bible, opened it to the fifth chapter of Matthew, and said, “When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries, but those of the whole world.”

Blessed is He who comes with the way of life, the way of nonviolently loving and forgiving our enemies, of restorative justice (rather than retributive) rooted in nonviolence. This forgiveness, with a view toward redeeming, restoring, and reclaiming, is the way to heal the world.

The thought that it is too late is of demonic origin. There is still hope, but that hope today is the same as it was back then. Wherever we are right now, the last great hope for us and our world is in calling blessed that Prophet Who came to us two thousand years ago with the message of an enemy-forgiving God Who is inviting us into His nonviolent way of living life.

HeartGroup Application

Too many times our rhetoric betrays us. Today we speak of inviting Jesus into your lives, into our agendas, into our hopes and dreams and aspirations and goals. But the question I would like to ask is, “Are we simply asking Jesus to join our world, or are we ourselves joining Jesus and stepping into His world?” Rather than inviting Jesus into your life this week, ask Jesus to show you how you may more fully step into His life, His agenda, His hope for this world, His dreams, His aspirations. Ask Jesus to take you further up and further into the reality of His passions becoming your passions.

1.I want you to go back and prayerfully meditate on two passages. The first is John 3:17: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be HEALED [Sozo] through him.” The second is the parable of the pearl of great price (found in Matthew 13:45). Remember that the pearl is neither Jesus, nor ourselves—it is the establishment of Jesus’ kingdom on a restored, healed, and reconciled earth. This is the pearl for which Jesus gave up everything to accomplish, and it is the pearl He calls us to give up everything to join Him in accomplishing.

2.As you meditate on these two passages, write down each day what thoughts, questions, insights, or even other passages Jesus gives to you.

3.Share what you write down with your fellow Jesus followers in your HeartGroup, encouraging one another, spurring each other on to love and deeds that put on display what the world changed by Jesus looks like.

Wherever this finds you this week, keep living in love, loving like Christ, putting on display the beauty of the God we see in Jesus, restoring one human heart at a time, until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I love you guys,

See you next week.

Prophecy #3 – Two Headlines and a Fig Tree

At that very time, there were some present that told him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”—Jesus (Luke 13.1-9)This week we are looking at the third of Jesus’ eight final prophecies concerning Jerusalem.

What I want you to notice right from the beginning is the phrase “At that very time.” As we discussed last week, Jesus had just plead with his audience to work in the specific direction of reconciling, of their own initiative, with their much-hated adversaries. Specifically, he wanted them to reconcile with Pilate, who represented the Roman Empire to them. What we are looking at this week is Jesus’ audience’s response: “Don’t you realize what Pilate did to the Galileans?” Enemy love is never initially responded to positively, but it is the way of life, whether it appears to be so from the outset or not.

Remember, the background of Pilate’s slaying of the Galileans is as follows. Rome very carefully watched the congregating of any of its subservient people, but especially those with subversive tendencies leaning toward revolt. The Galilean Jews certainly fit this description. Those who hoped for militaristic violence as the means whereby the Jewish people would throw off the yoke of Roman oppression also held to the belief that moral uprightness, obedience to the Torah, would ensure God’s blessing of their violent revolt, and also their success. This is the paradigm of the Maccabean revolts saga. It was the paradigm of those who still subscribed to this methodology in Jesus’ day as well. If there were an engagement between Rome and insurgent Jews and Rome won, the reason is because there must have been some “sin in the camp,” so to speak. It had nothing to do with using methods God could not bless, but rather the level of religious obedience and purity in regards to the Torah by those who were fighting. The details of the story are not clear, but it appears that the Galileans were offering sacrifices in preparation for their engagement with the Romans. According to scholars, Roman soldiers had surprised some Galilean insurgents while the rebels were engaged in these sacrifices. The soldiers slaughtered the men right then and there. The excuse offered by the religio-political part of the Pharisees would have been, based on Deuteronomy 28, “If we obey God will bless us, if we disobey God will curse our efforts.” When there was failure in revolting against Roman oppression, the reason was because those revolting must have been “sinners.” Thus Jesus’ response:

“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?”

Jesus goes on to say:

No, I tell you; but unless you repent [turn from your violence; your eye-for-an-eye retaliation against the enemy is instead love and forgiveness; this turning-the-other-cheek way of life I am presenting you with], you will all perish as they did.

Then Jesus responds to these objectors with a second occurrence everyone was talking about during that time:

Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?

According to some sources, this was one of the weaponry towers used by Rome for weapons storage. A group of zealot insurgents had tried to dig a tunnel under the tower, with hopes of seizing the weapons stored there and using those weapons themselves in a violent revolt against the Romans. But the tower’s foundation was already in a state of decay, and the tunnel further compromised the integrity of the foundation, leading to the entire construction suddenly collapsing, claiming the lives of several Galileans.

Again, the logic was not that the approach itself was flawed, but rather how strictly those seeking to carry out the given approach were adhering to the Torah.

Jesus goes on:

No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.

The problem was not how strictly they were adhering to the Torah or not. The problem was the concept of eye for an eye, the violent methods they were endeavoring to use themselves. Jesus warns, looking all the way down to 70 A.D., that if they did not repent, did not turn away from their eye-for-an-eye retributive violence, it would continue to escalate until they themselves were destroyed.

Remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 7.13-14:

“Enter through the narrow gate [of forgiveness, enemy love, nonviolent noncooperation]; for the gate [of eye for an eye, violence, and retaliation] is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life,, and there are few who find it.”(Emphasis added.)

Jesus then finishes this third prophecy with a story. Please read this story prayerfully, fully remembering the social and political context within Jesus himself told this story:

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Jerusalem was set on a collision coarse with annihilation if something didn’t change. What was the fruit the gardener looked for that would ensure it remaining?

I point you to the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not retaliate against an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies [i.e., the Romans] and pray for those who persecute you [i.e., the Romans], so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil [i.e., the Romans] and on the good [i.e., Torah observing Jews], and sends rain on the righteous [i.e., Torah observing Jews] and on the unrighteous [i.e., the Romans]. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5.38-48)

What does this mean for us today?

A lot!

Last December, the Washington Times published research that 84 percent of the world population practices some sort of faith; a third of those are Christian. That’s 2.2 billion Christians (32 percent of the world’s population). There are 1.6 billion Muslims (23 percent), 1 billion Hindus (15 percent), 500 million Buddhists (7 percent), and 400 million people (6 percent) practicing various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, American Indian religions, and Australian aboriginal religions. There are 14 million Jews, and an estimated 58 million people—slightly less than 1 percent of the global population—belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, and others.

Notice that those claiming to have some connection to the Jesus revolution of the first century (Christianity) are the largest of these groups. Imagine the world we could create if Christians simply insisted on following the clear call to non-violence represented by Jesus’ teachings, which were rooted in His picture of God as well as the way He looked at all of us. Again, I’ll ask the question I asked last week: What would happen if Christians started believing in Jesus once again?

HeartGroup Application

1.This week I’d like you to spend a few days praying through this passage one phrase at a time. I want you to pause at each phrase to contemplatively talk to Jesus about each one. I also want you to be listening for what Jesus does in each of your hearts. What is the passage?

Our Father in heaven,

And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

2.I want you to write down any insights, questions, or inspiring gems each day that Jesus gives you.

3.Be prepared to share these with your HeartGroup this upcoming week.

Wherever this finds you, keep living in the enemy-embracing, self-sacrificial, other-centered, nonviolent love we see in Jesus, until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I’ll close this week with the words of N.T. Wright:

“‘Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.’ That remains one of the most powerful and revolutionary sentences we can ever say.”

I love you guys.

We’ll see you next week.