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"Jesus chose Losers. Not always a smart choice to further his cause. But to be loved by the Son of God, one must become counted among the child-like losers." Constance Hastings
The Trouble With Jesus...
The Trouble with Jesus is he was a hacktivist, someone who uses hacking to bring about political and social change.
Jesus, let’s ask the hard question. Are you a communist? All this talk about helping the poor (or however you describe economically deprived, marginalized people) along with negative criticism of the rich and powerful is getting a little heavy. I mean, what have you got against people getting ahead in this world and having a measure of wealth, enjoying life, amassing friends and followers? “Woe to you who are rich…what sorrows await you who laugh…” This country has its success due to capitalism. Free enterprise made us what we are today. We’ve got our faults, but Marxists we ain’t.
The Trouble with Jesus: To understand what Jesus was calling them to do, you can’t ignore the changing political, economic and social scene.
Lord, have mercy, but The Trouble with Jesus is his kind of Good News looks like DEI.
DEI: Divine Example Incarnate
Securing the border? Eliminating racial equity training and affirmative action? Roll back of programs and instituting tariffs that favor big money? Deportation without due process? Repeal of birthright citizenry?
The Trouble with Jesus was he stretched meaning into an explosive reversal from what people want to believe.
The Trouble with Jesus: Water becomes Wine and Wine becomes his blood. Only his blood could reverse that which would separate all who have breathed from the God who gives breath.
Here we are, the first full week of a new year, and do we ever need one. Sure, much has happened that we didn’t see coming, but we’re almost too familiar with that now. The thing is, are we willing to accept, buy into, focus on what that means? Will we have influence, impact, or at least be open to any newness of life in the coming months? Or again, will we passively accept what has been without resolution to change?
Life must be positioned for change. Prepare to Pivot.
The Trouble with Jesus: Most of the world thinks religion is meant to tell people how to find God. No wonder it doesn’t ring true for most. Magi tell the other side of the story. God comes to find us in quiet, unseen or unexpected ways
The Trouble with Jesus: he comes as a God whose love will change and consume one’s soul to the point of being reborn.
We never get what we want for Christmas. That’s what we think God should do, and almost always, God never does...In a real way though, this is likely the closest to God’s Christmas we may ever know. If we are still as church mice on Christmas Night, we just might see a strange sight through the frosted windowpanes of our souls. God shows up, not how we want, not bringing us all we want. God’s plan is not to fix everything that is wrong in the world, but to meet all the wrong in the world with Love.
Rev. Constance Hastings
Author of, soon to be released, The Trouble With Jesus
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Easy answers are not my goal, so you won’t get from me a saccharine-sweet line. We’ve all experienced too much to swallow them and be satisfied. I’ve lived long enough to know trials and challenges will sink your soul if that’s all you’ve got in your grasp. On the other hand, the hard questions can be the ones that take a person to new heights of perspective while providing foundations that are as old as excavated rocks. Tough, scary questions are the ones with most value in a fully examined life.
