15 December 2010

Jesus and the Revolution

Rachel and I have been reading through Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, a compilation of daily readings offered by various voices, from Thomas Aquinas to C.S. Lewis and from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Philip Yancey.  Below is a quote from Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder on The Original Revolution, which met me where I was:

"But for Jesus in his time, and for increasing numbers of us in our time, the basic human problem is seen in less individualistic terms.  The priority agenda for Jesus, and for many of us, is not morality or anxiety, but unrighteousness, injustice.  The need is not for consolation or acceptance but for a new order in which men may live together in love.  In his time, therefore, as in ours, the question of revolution, the judgement of God upon the present order and the imminent promise of another one, is the language in which the gospel must speak.  What most people mean by "revolution," the answer they want, is not the gospel; but the gospel, if it be authentic, must so speak as to answer the question of revolution.  This Jesus did."

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