The Challenge of Jesus

My favorite way to review a book is to pick my favorite quotes. For this book I underlined hundred of lines, starred about 25, and then selected 10 of those to share with you:

"It has far too often been assumed that church leaders stand above the nitty-gritty of biblical and theological study; they have done all that, we implicitly suppose, before they come to office, and now they simply have to work out the 'implications'. They then find themselves spending countless hours at their desks running the church as a business, raising money or working at dozens of other tasks, rather than poring over their foundation documents and enquiring ever more closely about the Jesus whom they are supposed to be following and teaching other to follow."

"When Jesus came to Jerusalem there was bound to be a confrontation between himself and the temple. The city, the system, was simply not big enough for the two of them."

"Suddenly, with the right story in their heads and hearts, a new possibility, huge, astonishing and breathtaking, started to emerge before them. Suppose the reason the key would not fit the lock was because they were trying the wrong door. Suppose Jesus' execution was not a clear disproof of his messianic vocation but its confirmation and climax. Suppose the cross was not one more example of the triumph of paganism over God's people but was actually God's means of defeating evil once and for all."

"How long must it be before we learn that our task as Christians is to be in the front row of constructing the post-postmodern world?"

"Some have (argued that)...there is really no point in attempting to reshape the present world by the light of Jesus Christ. 'Armageddon is coming, so who cares about acid rain or third world debt?' That is the way of dualism; it is a radically anticreation viewpoint and hence is challenged head on by John's emphasis on Easter as the first day of the new week, the start of God's new creation. On the other hand, some have so emphasized the continuity between the present world and the coming new world that they have imagined we can actually build the kngdom of God by our own hard work."

"We are like musicians called to play and sing the unique and once-only-written musical score. We don't have to write it again, but we have to play it."

"As Jesus was to Israel, so the church is to be to the world...Bearing God's image is not just a fact, it is a vocation."

"God did indeed accomplish it. The foundation has been laid. The garden has been planted. The musical score has been written. The principalities and powers that kept us in exile have been defeated; they need reminding of this, and we need reminding too, but it is a fact- if it isn't, the cross was a failure. Out task is now to build the house, to tend the garden, to play the score."

"The proper way to expound the parables today is to ask: What should we be doing in God's world that would call forth the puzzled or even angry questions to which parables like these would be the right answer."

"We are discovering what the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to as, yes, 'divinization.' Ultimately, if you don't believe that, you don't believe in the Holy Spirit. And if you think that sounds arrogant, imagine how arrogant it would be even to think of trying to reshape our world without being indwelt, engergized, guided and directed by God's own Spirit."

"I believe, and I challenge my readers to work this out in their own worlds, that there is such a thing as a love, a knowing, a hermeneutic of trust rather than suspician, which is what we most surely need as we enter the twenty-first century."