54. Waging Peace: Seeing God Before the Resurrection with Jason Porterfield

About this episode

Author and self-proclaimed ‘aspiring peacemaker,’ Jason Porterfield, returns to the show to walk Bad Roman co-hosts, Craig Harguess and Abby Cleckner, through his new book, Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week.  

Come Spring we tend to look straight to Easter, to the miracle of the resurrection, but just how much do we miss when we forget the why and how of what led up to Christ’s crucifixion? By taking an in-depth look at each day in the final week of Jesus’ life, Jason’s book is a guide and game-changer for any Christian who still thinks Jesus died to protect us from a wrathful God. 

God is love! He is not a hammer or sword-wielding warrior, but a force of mercy, humility, and reckoning. How often do we forget this today? How often do we use the bible to justify violent means to imagined peaceful ends? 

“Jesus used a whip in the temple”

“Jesus told them to take swords”

“Jesus said render unto Caesar”

How many of our enemies must we fight or destroy to create peace? How many verses must we take out of context to justify our sin? Peter was scolded for his violence and we remain under the same command to disarm. 

To build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, to try to love one another and our enemies in the way Christ set forth is a radical position to take both in Jesus’s time and now. Holy Week is crucial to understanding how God’s love works. It is through those days we see and experience Jesus’s message and example in action. 

This episode is a challenge to you to look at yourself, your actions, and if they reflect what you think you believe. It can be easy to think we are on the right side of the resurrection, that we, of course, are on the side of Jesus, but it is just as easy to fail to see we are the ones plotting against the way of peacemaking, that we are the ones holding the hammer over our savior on the cross. We invite you to listen with an open mind, to humble yourself to the folly we all are susceptible to fall into in the midst of miracles. 

If you want to learn more about Jason’s work and message you can connect with him on his website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Episode Timestamps:

2:15 Episode #14 Fight Like a Christian with Keith Giles and Jason 

3:20 Motivation for writing Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week  

• Failing as a peacemaker

• How do you Love your enemy and neighbor when your enemy is oppressing your neighbor

• Holy week is when we see Jesus enacting all he has said as an active peacemaker

8:08 Why was Jesus shedding tears?

• Passover

• Pontius Pilate

• Hosana translates to “save us now”

• Palm Branches - politically loaded symbols of rebellion

  • Judas Maccabeus

14:16 Christians waging/supporting war vs. living out teachings of Jesus

• Jesus comes back as lamb not warrior

• Revelations 6

19:30 Monday - Jesus Cleansing the Temple

• Ched Myers

  • Jesus returns with planned, calculated action, not rash “temple fit”

• John’s mention of whip used to justify violence by Christians

  • St. Augustine

  • John Calvin, having Servetus put to death

  • Bernard of Clairvaux

• Did Jesus whip people?

  • No, it was more of shooing animal whip - not an instrument of torture

• Catholic Theologian Raymond Brown

  • Whip material was likely animal bedding materials

• John 2:15 

  • Greek translation reveals ‘tu’ modifies all to be sheep and cattle, i.e. John is clarifying who he is using the whip on

• Jesus was not passive in the face of injustice, he was an active pacifist

  • Jesus’s zeal does not destroy, it opens up more for everyone 

  • After the cleansing those who were excluded were invited in

31:32 Tuesday (part 1) - Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s

• Mark 12

• Jesus uses the word “repay” vs. “pay”

  • He switches the verb of the question, which requires you to answer the question of what belongs to God and what belongs to Cesar? 

• Did Jesus’s supporters hear (misinterpret) something else in “pay back” what is owed?

• Jesus leaves people with more questions than answers - makes you think

36:51 Tuesday (part 2) - The 7 Woes

• Speaking truth to power or using authority/power to bash and crush others?

• Easier to see ourselves on the side or Jesus vs. Pharisees

 38:18 Wednesday - Eye of the Hurricane, Quiet Day with  'Backroom Deals’ 

• Jewish leaders scheme to murder Jesus

  • Caiaphas and The Sanhedrin 

• Judas excepting price to betray Jesus

• Unnamed woman

  • First to anoint Jesus as messiah 

• USA Bombing of Cambodia

  • Khmer Rouge 

• Fictional future to justify a present means

 45:10 Thursday (Part 1) - The New Command

• Love each other as I have loved you

  • New standard of love he set in how to love

• What is true evangelism?

  • Living and being the community of God so others can experience it

  • Make others curious about your life by how much you love God 

• 1 Peter 2 

• Faciniation precedes explanation

51:30 Thursday (Part 2) - The Two Swords (Gun Culture)

• Jesus healed the roman soldier harmed by Peter

• Not “time is not right” but “time is never right” attitude to violence

• Two swords allow them to appear as a violence mob, but then reject that violence as an example

• Disciples fled when Jesus revoked Peter’s violence  

  • They were ready to fight for a new king

59:10 Friday - Understating the Crucifiction 

• Did Jesus die to save us from God?

• Fear of God vs. Love of Christ

• Comparison and choice of Jesus (Peaceful nonviolent) or Barabbas (the violent insurrectionist Messiah)

  • They chose person who would fight and crucified Jesus

• Peacemakers cultivate the future Jesus promised

  • Do the work, stop waiting for Jesus to come back and solve all of the problems

• We are passive in our violence

1:09:00 The Resurrection

• Eschatology

  • Understanding of how things end

• Sunday’s Resurrection - symbolized the end we seek is starting to be lived out

• Early church decided to live out the future now

  • Model the way of Jesus

• Dave Andrews

  • “On our best days we’ll approximate the kingdom of God on earth and on our worst days we’ll  parody and mimic kingdom of God”

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45. Radically Following Jesus with Shane Claiborne

In this episode, Shane Claiborne joins us to talk about living like Jesus, abortion, gun violence, Christian nationalism, and whether we should get involved in politics as a way to help others live in freedom. 

We know the teachings of Jesus, but what does it look like to actually follow them? How can we care for other humans as God instructed, and how can we do that when we live amidst a corrupt and often unjust government? As Shane points out, “If anybody should be suspicious of state power, it should be Christians who worship an executed and risen savior.” Our Lord was killed by the government. We should not trust in our rulers, but in Him, but, as Shane would argue, we can use their system to help people by getting bad policies changed.

Who is Shane Claiborne? He is a radical advocate for living as if Jesus really meant what He said. He heads up an intentional, simple-living Christian community called Red Letter Christians, and is the co-founder of The Simple Way, an intentional neighborhood-based Christian community in North Philadelphia. Shane has been to jail multiple times while advocating for the poor and against war. You can connect with him on his personal website, Twitter, email, and Instagram. 

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Timestamps:

1:26 What following Jesus looks like

• “Man, I was pretty together, met Jesus, and He messed me up.” -Shane

  • Teachings like

    • To be great, become the least

    • Love your enemies

    • Sell possessions and give to the poor

  • Started a community for local homeless people who were being evicted from a church. They

    • Fix up abandoned houses

    • Create gardens

    • Paint murals

    • Care for neighbors’ needs 

7:24 Pro-life or just anti-abortion?

• “We shouldn't be in other countries dropping bombs on people” -Craig

• One-issue voting is inconsistent

• Christians are the obstacle to progress

9:45 A Bible in one hand; a newspaper in the other

•  Know what's going on in the world around you

• “When you look at Jesus, He was talking about the Kingdom of God coming on Earth, as it is in Heaven. Not just something we go up to when we die, but something we bring down while we're alive.” - Shane

• Study the Bible and sociology together

11:41 Christian Nationalism

• Trump didn’t change the church; he revealed their true beliefs 

• “A lot of white Christians have been shaped more by whiteness than by Christ.” -Shane

• People use the Gospel to justify all kinds of atrocities

• Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

• Compare Trump and his policies to The Sermon on the Mount

• Christians betrayed Jesus with a kiss for a couple seats on the Supreme Court

• Welcome the stranger -- not because you're Republican or Democrat, but because you follow Jesus, and that is His example

• “A lot of times it's been more Fox news or a political party that's shaping our imagination than the Gospel” -Shane

• Christians wind up saying ugly things like that they want to go to the border and shoot people when they follow Trump instead of Christ

19:15 Nothing new

• People fear the transfer of power from white people

  • They want to take America back; to make it great again

    • To counteract any progress Black Lives Matter made

• Fear and love cannot occupy the same space 

  • “What would America look like if love rather than fear were compelling our policies and shaping our minds on a lot of these things?” -Shane

22:45 Debate: Do we need to get involved in politics to love our neighbor?

• Shane: Laws can either improve or destroy people's lives

  •  We need to work to get harmful laws changed for the good of our neighbor

• Craig: Politics are not our thing; we're of a different Kingdom

  •  Jesus didn't use politics to advance His agenda

• Shane: Opting out has consequences

  • We're not putting our hope in a politician; we’re voting to change policies that make life harder for our friends

  • Vote on behalf of those Jesus blessed

    • The poor, the mourning, the refugees, the incarcerated... 

  • Don't only help them through the ballot. Work every day for their freedom.

  • Fight for laws that make it harder to kill them

• Craig: Ballots don't do that. Voting doesn't change anything and doesn't help anyone.

• Shane: We should use every weapon we have; harness the principalities 

• Craig: Christians live on the fringes of society and shouldn't be involved in the system at all

• Shane: Moving to a community with black folks changed my perspective

  • Dr. King went to jail for political change 

  • “I do believe that the church is a primary instrument for God transforming the world.”

  • God can redeem the system using us

  • Legislation helps people flourish

    • We use it to keep people safe in cars; need for guns too

    • Jesus judges nations on how they cared for the poor

31:14 The early Church’s politics

• They were called atheists because they denied the deity of Rome

• They disrupted the empire by claiming another Emperor

• But Jesus didn’t kill anyone to overthrow the empire

  • He died.

  • And many details leading to His death can be seen as a parody to Caesar’s rule

• “If anybody should be suspicious of state power, it should be Christians who worship an executed and risen Savior.” - Shane

• Irreconcilable vocations

  • Brothel, executioner, anyone who had to kill for the state

    • Jesus said love your enemies, which means not killing them

• They were consistently against all violence

  • Abortion, execution, gladiators…

36:09 Living like Christians

• People use the Bible to justify terrible things

• We cannot live like a Christian and go against the teachings of Christ

• Gandhi wished we would. He liked Jesus, but was not a fan of the church

• We should view the entire Bible’s contents through the lens of Jesus 

39:13 Guns into Gardens Project; Beating Guns book

• Old Testament prophets speak of turning swords into plows

  • Similarly, turning guns into garden tools

    • And crosses

      • One says I want to kill; the other says I’m willing to die

    • And jewelry for victims of gun violence to wear and sell

  • People say it's not a gun problem; it's a heart problem

    • It's both

    • God transforms the heart; people transform the laws

  • Jesus should inspire us to protect life

42:04 The American Revolution

•   Claimed to be following God

  •  If they were, they never would have gone to war 

  • America began with guns. It's impossible to imagine our country without them

    • How else could they have started a country on stolen land with stolen labor?

42:56 Red-letter Christian Intentional Community

• A glimpse of Heaven on Earth

• Sharing everything in common end taking care of each other

• Reducing gun violence through:  

  • Hospitality

  • Drug addiction recovery

  • Lifting people out of the ditch

    • Figure out what's landing them in the ditch in the first place

      • It’s often government laws and policies

        • So we vote and advocate for change

• It'll probably land you in jail 

  • Charged with a felony for leaving water in the desert for immigrants 

  • Obey the good laws; disobey the bad ones

    • Expose how crazy they are by loudly getting in trouble 

    • A rich tradition of civil disobedience 

    • Be willing to suffer the consequences of exposing injustice

• Issues around the world

  • Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan…

    • Preemptive Love

• We spend more on the military than social uplift and are headed for spiritual death