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.

Prophecy #2 – Clouds on the Horizon

“When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?” —Jesus (Luke 12.54–56 NIV)This week, I want to continue our look at the final eight prophecies of Jesus concerning the two fates that lay before Jerusalem for her choosing. Remember, our look at these eight prophecies is an attempt to understand more deeply what Jesus’s kingdom is all about—this kingdom that is not simply a new way of doing life, but a way that is deeply rooted in a radically different way of seeing God, ourselves, and everyone around us, even our enemies.

Also, I’d like to remind you once again about the two paths Jesus laid out before the people of his day in Matthew 7.12–14. We have the eye-for-an-eye, retaliation-and-retribution way of doing life that intrinsically escalates till it ends in death. And we have the enemy-love, enemy-forgiveness, doing-to-our-enemies-what-we-would-want-them-to-do-to-us way of doing life that brings healing, peace, and life eternal.

This is our context. This week we are looking at the second of the eight prophecies:

He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? (Luke 12.54–57)

This second prophecy is the foundation and preliminary prophecy for the third prophecy recorded by Dr. Luke in Luke 13.1–9. I’d really like to discuss the third prophecy this week because what Jesus says in that prophecy is astounding! But in order for the third prophecy to make sense and to have its proper impact, we’ll have wait on that until next week and first do some pre-work this week with this passage.

The weather-wise Israelites of Jesus’s day could tell by watching the clouds over the Mediterranean or by observing the wind direction changes (when the wind veered around to the south) what the imminent weather would be in their region, and they planned accordingly. What Jesus is drawing attention to here is their keen ability to reason from cause to effect when it came to matters of weather, but their utter blindness and inability to reason from cause to effect when it came to the path they were on in relating to their political enemies, the Romans.

Jesus then uses a contemporary analogy, a metaphor if you will, of the then current court system to illustrate the trajectory of the path they were on with Rome, a path of retaliation, retribution, and violence.

As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Luke 12.58–59)

What Jesus suggests here is not militaristic rebellion but, on the contrary, peacemaking and reconciliation, rooted in love for one’s enemies and forgiveness. Who was their adversary at this time? Rome, represented in the person of Pilate the Roman governor. Without stealing too much away from next week, this is exactly why Jesus’s listeners object in the very next verse (Luke 13.1) on the basis of Pilate’s atrocity against some Galileans. They were in essence saying, “You want to us to practice enemy-love and forgiveness, peacemaking and reconciliation with Pilate? You have got to be kidding us! Don’t you realize what Pilate recently did to the Galileans who were offering sacrifices? How can you expect us to turn the other cheek, not retaliating but following the way of peace?”

In Matthew this instruction is placed within Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount:

Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5.25–26)

In Matthew’s account, this is directly in the context of leaving your gift at the altar when offering a sacrifice if you remember that you have an adversary who is against you. Jesus commands, “First go and be reconciled to that person; then come and offer your gift.” Twice in Matthew, Jesus is recorded as saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9.13; 12.7; cf. Hosea 6.6) This is the path that leads to life, and the God of nonviolence that we see in Jesus is intently working with Israel at this stage, endeavoring to have them to repent, to leave the path of eye-for-an-eye retaliation, and to embrace the way of mercy toward one’s adversaries or enemies. This is the way of enemy-love, enemy-forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. This was the path that would lead them to life eternal. If they did not change paths in relation to their present adversaries (the Romans), the trajectory of the path they were one would end in their “not getting out until they had paid the last penny.” It would end in their utter annihilation.

The options before them were transformation or annihilation. Remember, this was not an imposed annihilation force on them by a violent God, but rather a warning about an annihilation that would be the natural result of a course of action toward their adversaries that would escalate into their utter destruction and death in AD 70.

Jesus will say it again:

If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. (Luke 19.42)

Today we plan our daily activities around listening to weather forecasts or checking our weather apps on our phones, while we are strangely ignorant of the clouds of our own making that are gathering on the horizon of our lives in both our personal and global relationships. Last week we looked more personally at following Jesus’s way of nonviolence, of enemy-love and forgiveness, the way of mercy in relation to our family, friends, coworkers, or fellow students. This week I want to ask more global questions. Whether we ask these questions regarding our private relationships or our global ones, the implications are the same.

Next week we will be looking at Jesus’s words concerning a tower that fell in Siloam. Last week in America, the nation spent time remembering those who lost their lives when two towers fell in New York City in 2001. For many, the way of retaliation is the only logical response. Anything else does not make sense. Anything less would possibly be “dangerous.” But Jesus is whispering to us to take a different path than that which is intuitive to us. There is a way that seems right to us, but its end is death. More violence, according to Jesus, only ensures, not our safety, but our own destruction. War-making has today become a kind of “religion” rooted in sacrifice. Jesus calls us to peacemaking rooted in mercy. (Matthew 9.13; 12.7; cf. Hosea 6.6) What would happen if instead of supporting a military-industrial complex, Christians began spending billions on feeding the world’s starving? What would happen if instead of supporting more loss of life in Iran and Afghanistan, Christians went to work to establish new schools and hospitals in Iran and Afghanistan? What would happen if Christians today stopped funding Israel’s occupation of Palestine and began embodying Israel’s Messiah in teaching and demonstrating enemy-love and forgiveness, the way of mercy rather than militaristic sacrifice, to Israel the same way Jesus did so long ago? What would happen if Christians stopped believing that Jesus’s way is impractical, naïve, or insufficient and flatly stating that it “doesn’t work” in the “real world” and began to follow the way of life Jesus came to teach us, no matter how difficult? What would happen if Christians simply began believing in Jesus once again?

The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is still whispering to the world today, “Overcome evil with good. Reject your tribalism, and love everyone on the planet. Reject your way of violence, and become people of enemy-love, forgiveness, mercy, and nonviolence. If you do not do this, you as a global community, will be destroyed. It will not be God’s doing. Your own violence will come down on you.”

Much to ponder for sure.

HeartGroup Application

1.This week I would like you to go back and spend some time prayerfully meditating on these two passages:

As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Luke 12.58–59)

Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5.25–26)

2.Get out a piece of paper, and with inspired imagination, tap into your creativity. Begin to brainstorm, writing down whatever comes to mind about what nonviolent conflict resolution might look like with those in your immediate life that you find most difficult to get along with. Begin by simply putting down on paper what ideas come to your mind, whether you think they are foolish or not, logical or not, practical or impractical.

3.Share and discuss with your HeartGroup what you come up with, getting constructive feedback and further creative options on ways you can follow Jesus’s path of nonviolent conflict resolution in your life.

Jesus gave us a way to heal the world, (Luke 9.2; John 3.17). Jesus did not come to this world to condemn this world, but so that this world, through Jesus and His teachings, might be saved. May it begin with each of us in our daily lives.

Wherever this finds you this week, keep living in Jesus’s other-centered, self-sacrificing enemy-love till the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I love you guys.

See you next week.

Conduits

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed . . .” —Jesus (Luke 9.22)

This week, I’d like to begin with something a little different. Are you ready? I want you to listen to an imaginary story.

Once upon a time, there was a God who sang a world into existence. He loved this world and its people. But these people, over time, through no fault of their own, became afraid. They began over time to believe that this God, who had made them, did not like them. They began to believe that He was angry with them. They came to believe that God even hated most of them—not all, but most. Because of these beliefs, they eventually became afraid of each other as well. These people were afraid—very, very afraid. They not only feared this God, but they also feared one another. They looked at each other with suspicion. Days were spent endeavoring to discern whom it was that God hated, so that those who deemed this to be true could hate them, too, and thereby invoke some possible favor from this God.

As fear had turned to hatred, hatred turned to anger, and anger ultimately turned into rage—murderous rage.

It was when this world was at its darkest that this God dreamed up something daring. He would attempt the impossible. Would it work? Some believe that not even this God knew for sure. It would be risky—really risky. Not pretend.

He would come to them in disguise. He would turn their entire social system on its head. He would embrace all, loved and revered, or hated, feared, and scorned alike. He would simply love, radically, inclusively, daringly, and somewhat dangerously. This would unsettle everything, top-down, upside-down. And then it would happen. If it worked the way He planned, they would turn on His threatening love, this love that challenged and threatened to change everything. This social system, remember, was how they even provoked the “favor of God.” Their life, their security, their assurance, what defined them, EVERYTHING for them was bound up in this. How would they respond?

They would label Him as their ultimate enemy. They would let loose their murderous fear on Him. Yet how would He respond? Having loved them, He would love them to the end. And if this worked, He would do one final thing that would pull back the veil and show them all who He really was the whole time. This would change everything, banish the lies, illuminate hearts, and set the world right once again.

Would it work? If only God knew. But they would be worth the risk. They would be worth risking it all.

I want to take a moment and talk about conduits. Jesus believed He would be a conduit of God Himself. Jesus also understood that God would be taking on Their enemy, who would be using humanity, the object of Their love and affection, as his conduit. How do you defeat an enemy that is using your loved ones as a weapon against you? In light of last week’s fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, I’d like to quote, at length, a Christmas sermon of King’s from the winter of 1967:

“I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we’ll still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’” (Emphasis added.)

You see, from Jesus, King learned to look on his enemies not really as enemies, but simply as victims. They were conduits of the real enemy, held in captivity to a systemic evil, and as someone who was to be won over from the real enemy and the systemic evil, over to the cause of truth. But where exactly could King have discerned this from the Jesus story? I believe this is exactly what the closing week of Jesus’ life was all about.

How do you win your loved ones away from the real enemy and his systemic evil?

They process is very simple, and it’s the same every time.

It’s rooted in something original to the ethics of Jesus—enemy love.

First you provoke the system of evil.

Second, the system responds violently.

Third, you bear that violence, that hatred, that “sin” in your own body, choosing to love nonetheless. Through the power of nonviolence, you pull off the veil of the very system itself, hopefully winning the very ones held captive by that system away from the evil, through empathy, to the cause of the victim. In short, you seek to overcome evil with good.

It is the same in every era that Jesus’ example has been followed. I’ll give three examples.

Steps

1. Provocation

2. Violence of System

2. Nonviolent Love

Jesus

Temple “Cleansing”

Crucifixion

Nonviolent Love

MLK

Sit-ins

Beatings/Prison

Nonviolent Love

Gandhi

Salt Marches

Imprisonment

Nonviolent Love

(*for more on this, see the presentation A New Way, in the new Life Unlimited series at https://renewedheartministries.com/AudioPresentationSeries.aspx?series=30)

You see the perplexity was never about how we can make an angry God loving again through some kind of appeasement. Rather it was a question of how a loving God could make us good again through becoming the victim of our violence Himself.

“Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”—Jesus (John 12.31)

HeartGroup Application:

1.Remember the cross, to the original followers of Jesus, was viewed as something Jesus did for them, but never instead of them. They believed that they too were called to embrace Jesus’ way [a cross] of putting the world right again, forming human society once more into the image of love rather than fear, hatred, and violence. In light of this reality, ponder the following texts:

John 18.11: Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

Mark 10.38: Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized…”

Luke 9.23-24: 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.”

Romans 16.20: The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.

2.Go back and prayerfully re-read this entire eSight. Write down any thoughts, questions, insights, or perplexities that surface as you, through Jesus, meditate on the cross. Do this not as a means of changing God, but as a means of changing the world.

3.Share with your HeartGroup this week what you have written down, respectfully and openly encouraging one another to keep following this Jesus and way of healing the world. Remember, “if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you (plural, as a HeartGroup) are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you (as a group)?” – Paul (1 Corinthians 3.12-16)

Remember, Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but intended that the world, through Him, might by saved. Wherever this finds you, keep living in love, loving like Christ, until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I love you guys.

I’ll see you next week.

New Wine in Old Wine Skins

He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”—Luke 5.36-39This week, I’d like to contrast two ways that I often see folks responding to “Jesus” and His ethical teachings today when something Jesus taught challenges their present paradigm.

The first is the way of continuity. In other words, Jesus is not really bringing anything new to the table. If we feel He is bringing something new, it is simply that Jesus is correcting a present day application of the same old ethics as long ago. This view has its advantages for sure; the ethics of the Biblical narrative, in this view, have an unchanging quality. They belong to a consistent whole, a narrative that is seamless. And, on a very surface level, it gives folks a strange sense of security.

What are the pitfalls with this way of responding to Jesus’ teachings when they challenge a previously held paradigm of ours? Well, for starters, the Bible-believing dwellers in the Southeastern region of the United States in the late 19th century used this view to justify simultaneously possessing both a ticket to heaven and slaves. This so-called continuity view also enables some more marginal religious groups to practice polygamy, believing they are well within the boundaries of Biblical ethics. Although not Christian, this way of looking at a sacred text also allows those following the religion of Islam to still practice a modern-day version of stoning. And it allows some Bible-believing Christians today to practice a sanctified, patriarchal and mild form of misogyny. At the very minimum, the continuity view restricts Jesus from truly ever challenging our deeply held paradigms. The best we ever really get from Jesus is either a pat on the back that we have it all right, or simply a “tune-up” of our already smoothly running theological systems—but never do we become fundamentally different. God simply becomes, for us, the justification for our social dysfunctions.

But look again at Jesus’ words in Luke 5.36-39:

He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”

There are three things I want you to notice about this passage.

First, the piece from the new garment is incompatible with the old one.

Second, new wine doesn’t work in an old wine skin, or it bursts the old one and you lose the new wine.

Third, Jesus was lamenting that when faced with the option of the new wine He was offering in contrast to the “old” ways, no one really wanted this “new” stuff Jesus was teaching. For whatever reason, they were too content with the old. And really, no one who is accustomed to aged wine says the new is better. Jesus laments this reality again in Luke 16.16 when he states, “The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone is attacking it.”

What is the alternate way of relating to Jesus and His ethical teachings when they challenge our favorite paradigms? I call this way of looking at the ethical teachings throughout the narrative of the scriptures the trajectory view. In this view, one looks at the narrative of the Scriptures as a story in which God is meeting people within their own cultures where they are, then slowly and patiently leading them along a trajectory as fast as they can be changed without pushing them too far too fast and ending up rejecting God altogether. A great illustration of this view is the fact that I have a five-year-old, a ten-year-old and a sixteen-year-old. I have taught my five-year-old not to talk to strangers. But with my ten-year-old and my sixteen-year-old, I’m teaching both of them, in ways that are appropriate to where they are in their own developmental growth, how to reach out safely and effectively and talk to the strangers that they do meet. And even between my ten-year-old and my sixteen-year-old, there are differences between even them. Now, there is no way to harmonize the “no talking to strangers” rule with the “how to talk with strangers” rule within a continuity way of looking at my parenting because they present a brazen contradiction. But when one views my parenting along the trajectory view—that I am teaching my children according to where they are and what they can safely do—then it all begins to make sense. What I’m teaching my five-year-old is not the way I want it to always be. It is only temporary. It’s what he needs now, but it will not be what I dream for him in the long run.

Look at this, if you will:

No one who has been EMASCULATED BY CRUSHING OR CUTTING may enter the assembly of the LORD . . . No AMMONITE OR MOABITE OR ANY OF THEIR DESCENDANTS may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation . . . Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them AS LONG AS YOU LIVE. (Deuteronomy 23.1-6)

Now this:

Let NO foreigners who have bound themselves to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.” And let NO eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.” For this is what the LORD says: “To the EUNUCHS who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—TO THEM I will give WITHIN MY TEMPLE and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. And FOREIGNERS who bind themselves to the LORD TO MINISTER TO HIM, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy IN MY HOUSE of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be ACCEPTED on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for ALL NATIONS.” (Isaiah 56.3-7)

There is no way to harmonize these two passages according to the continuity view. But harmony can be found—if one adopts a trajectory view.

On an ethical scale of 1 to 10, let’s image that Jehovah is trying to get people at various times and through various ways, to move from maybe point 1 to 2, or 2 to 3, or 3 to 4. I would be detrimental to see any point from 2 to 9 as the revelation of who God really is and the ethics He wants us to ultimately live by. Granted, “9” would be a lot closer to an accurate understanding of God and His character than “2” per se, but even “9” is not a full “10.”

The people in Moses’ day were moving, let’s say, from 1 to 2, while Jesus came to show us what a full-blown 10 looks like. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the contrast between Jesus’ new wine of nonviolence and the golden rule, and the old wine of commanded violence and the eye-for-an-eye way of doing life.

Old wine:

Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures a neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. (Leviticus 24.17-21)

New wine:

You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.” But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. (Matthew 5.38-39)

Old wine:

Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. (Psalms 139.21-22)

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3.8)

New wine:

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor [fellow Israelite, see Leviticus 19.18] and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies. (Matthew 5.43-44)

Jesus said it best:

I give you a NEW commandment, that you love one another, JUST AS I HAVE LOVED YOU. (John 13.34)

Jesus challenges us, calling us to become more like the Father than ever! Yes, he had been guiding us at each step of the way, all along the ethical trajectory that he has had us on. But now he is calling us even higher. Further up and further in, as C.S. Lewis put it, “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5.45) Yes, God has spoken to us through the old prophets at various times and in multiple ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, Jesus, who gives us the exact image of what God is really like. (See Hebrews 1.1-3 cf. John 14.9.)

Jesus is calling us to accept not just his new wine, but also new wine skins to hold the new wine, so that we may participate—not in a path that leads to this world being destroyed, but to participate in, even if by fire, his saving and restoration of Eden, the coming of the Bar Enasha, the full unobstructed reign of His Kingdom, on earth as it is in Heaven. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world, through him, might be saved.” (John 3.17)

New wine simply won’t work in the old wine skins. You can’t incorporate it into your present way of looking at things. The new wine doesn’t conform to the old wine. They are both different. They belong to the same trajectory, but they are different. Jesus’ new wine is the final advancement along the trajectory of being restored into the image of God, which was almost wholly lost among mortals. We must not only allow Jesus to give us new wine, but also new paradigms for those ethical teachings to grow in as well.

HeartGroup Application:

1.Take some time to see if you can find your own examples of the ethical trajectory that we find in the narrative of the Bible. See if you can also find examples of where Jesus was moving us into a more full “Father-like” way of doing life. We already mentioned quite a few in this eSight. Look at aspects of the old laws; look at Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos; also look at Jesus. The ones that are obvious to us today are things such as slavery, polygamy, Israel having a king, violence, nationalism, patriarchy, etc.

2.Write down and prepare to share what you find with your HeartGroup this upcoming week.

3.Share with your HeartGroup and be willing to openly discuss your findings.

May Jesus give us all new wineskins this week as we seek to follow Him more fully in the way that leads to life, and life to the full…until the only world that remains is a world where love reigns.

I love you guys. We’ll see you next week.