Following Jesus in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy, and Creeping Fascism. (TAW058)

Episode 058 – Following Jesus in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy, and Creeping Fascism. (With Susan Carson, Bradley Jersak, and Brian Zahnd.)

We stand in a dire historical moment, and one of the questions that is swirling for many of us is about what it means to be a Christian right now. There are folks wearing the label Christian, many in good faith, who are endorsing things that seem so plainly unlike Christ. The chaos is swirling and it is all coming at us so fast that we are being overwhelmed. Because this is so important, I invited some friends to talk about this crisis, and how Other-centered, Co-suffering love can lead us.

Show Notes

In this conversation, motivated by the launch of my new book, Walking Otherward: Forty Meditations on Following Jesus’ Path of Other-centered, Co-suffering Love, Susan Carson, Dr. Bradley Jersak, and Brian Zahnd discuss how this path might help us face the moment.

Takeaways

• Fear makes us susceptible to the temptation to use power-over as a way to try to get good things done.
• This temptation is the same that Jesus faced in the wilderness, and the church is facing it again today.
• Gathering in church communities committed to practicing the other-centered, co-suffering way is essential right now.
• Praying the Beatitudes, and becoming intimately familiar with the Sermon on the Mount will guard our hearts.
• Stay focused. Be Patience. Engage in one-on-one acts of care, service, and advocacy.

Recommended Resources

• Postcards from Babylon: The American Church in Exile, by Brian Zahnd.
• When Everything’s On Fire: Faith Forged From the Ashes, by Brian Zahnd.
• Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News, by Brian Zahnd.
• A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel, by Dr. Bradley Jersak.
• A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way, by Dr. Bradley Jersak.
• A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith, by Dr. Bradley Jersak.
• Rooted (In): Thriving in Connection with God, Yourself, and Others, by Susan Carson.

• The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, by Alan Kreider.
• The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
• “The Grand Inquisitor” Filmed performance on Youtube.
• The Ladder of the Beatitudes, by Jim Forest.
• Beatitudes: When Mountain Meets Valley, by Ron Dart.
• Are We Done Fighting: Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division, by Matthew Legge.
• Direct support for Mercy Aiken, a peacemaker in Palestine.

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partners

Susan Carson

Susan is an author, speaker, podcaster, pray-er, and lifelong unlearner. She’s the founder and director of Roots&Branches Network, a listening and healing prayer ministry in Cincinnati, Ohio. With her team, she helps people encounter God in ways that transform and restore.

Find Susan Here

• Website: https://www.susancarson.net/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susanfcarson
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susancarsonauthor/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@susancarsonauthor

Dr. Bradley Jersak

Bradley is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC. He currently serves as the Principal of St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, where he continues as the Dean and faculty member of SSU’s School of Theology & Culture. He also teaches peace studies courses with JFI.SSU.ca and is a regular Open Table Conference crew lecturer. Through his books and seminars, Brad shares the good news that God is Love, perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ, and that God’s love heals wounded hearts and empowers us to heal this broken world.

Find Bradley Here

• Website: https://bradjersak.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradley.jersak
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradley.jersak/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@bradley.jersak

Brian Zahnd

Brian is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. He is also a pastor-theologian who has authored many books. Brian is enthusiastic about music, literature, mountains, and long-distance pilgrimages.

Find Brian Here

• Website: https://brianzahnd.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrianZahnd
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianzahnd/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@brianzahnd

Today’s Sponsor

• Walking Otherward – My new book! This is a 40-day devotional following the final weeks of Jesus’ life and inviting us to exchange our natural self-centered, ego-defending ambition for the other-centered, co-suffering way of Love.

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Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:05
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske. This is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 58: How Can Other-Centered, Co-suffering Love Provide a Way Forward in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy, and Creeping fascism. Okay, that is way too long of a title for a podcast episode. I’m gonna have to figure something else out. But anyway, that’s what we’re talking about.

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Walking Otherward. That is my new book, and it’s out. It’s in the wild. It can be ordered at bookstores. You can get it in all the book places, and it’s such a sigh of relief to finally see this thing out there living its own life. Today’s podcast is a conversation motivated by this book that was part of my online book launch party, so it seemed only right to name Walking Otherward as the sponsor for the podcast.

So, who’s this book for? It’s for folks who suspect that there’s more to the way of Jesus than what most current versions of Western Christianity are offering. It’s for folks who have had enough of control and manipulation and self-righteous pontification. Jeff Mears, a friend of mine, called it a devotional for the deconstructing. He’s right, even though I would never have put it in those terms. But the deconstruction here is away from forms of faith that are about using power-over or using the Bible to exclude others and justify exploitation.

Walking Otherward is a collection of forty-one short essays structured as a daily devotional that follows the gospel passages, narrating the final weeks of Jesus’ life as he heads toward the cross. With these scriptures, I’m asking the reader to reflect on our own attitude, how we see God, ourselves, and others. I’m inviting us to make a shift, to move away from self-centered, ego-defending ambition, toward Jesus’ way of other-centered, co-suffering love. I wrote this because I’ve seen a glimpse of a better way, and I want to invite you outside the gates managed by stingy religious gatekeepers, driven by fear. My friend, theologian Bradley Jerzak, calls this way a more beautiful gospel.

Intrigued? Well, now you can get Walking Otherward: Forty Meditations on Following Jesus’ Path of Other-Centered Co-suffering Love in all the normal book places. You can learn a bit more about it, see endorsements, reviews, and even read a sample chapter at this website: www.walkingotherword.com.

INTRODUCTION

Today’s podcast episode is out of the normal pattern in several ways. First, what I’m about to share with you is an edited excerpt of a live online event I did a couple of weeks ago. This event was the online launch party for my new book, Walking Otherward. Now, book launch parties are supposed to be celebrations of the book, but I’d felt for some time that sort of party wasn’t right for this book.

The world around us is a mess. Much of the church seems caught up in this fever dream of power, playing chaplain to a regime in my country that every day acts more and more autocratic. The most painful revelation has been the shocking number of my fellow Americans who seem excited about this shift. In this historic moment, the question of what it means to be Christian and how Christians can resist this shift is top of mind. So, instead of having a traditional rah-rah book launch, I invited some friends to have a conversation with me about this subject.

So first, let me introduce you to the friends you will hear in this recording. Susan Carson is a friend of mine who served as the Launch Manager for this book. She and I met in our graduate program at St. Stephen’s University and connected over our hopes for a more life-giving way of being Christian. Susan is also an author, she’s a spiritual director, she leads a prayer and healing ministry in Cincinnati, Ohio called the Roots&Branches Network.

The second friend you’ll hear is Pastor Brian Zahn. He’s been a long-time mentor of mine and is now a new friend. He’s the pastor of Word of Life Church in St Joseph, Missouri, and a public theologian. His writing has been deeply influential to me in the past few years and even formed the background to why I got started writing the book Walking Otherward. As luck or circumstances or God would have it, I had the opportunity to spend three weeks with him last spring on a study tour of Türkiye and Greece.

The third voice you’ll hear is my friend, Dr Bradley Jersak. He’s a theologian, a teacher, a Reader in the Orthodox Church. Bradley’s writing is another deep influence of mine, and I had the distinct pleasure of having him be the supervisor for my master’s thesis.

So, the question I asked my friends to discuss with me was this: How can other-centered, co-suffering love provide a way forward in the face of political panic, Christian supremacy, and creeping fascism?

Now, before I turn you over to the recording, I have to mention this event was done via Zoom, and apparently, I did not understand how Zoom recording works. The audio throughout is excellent, but Zoom itself made many weird and unexpected decisions about who to focus on during the event, so I’ve done my best to edit the video so that it’s watchable. Learned a lot. So sorry for the less-than-ideal video footage, but I hope that the wisdom found in this conversation is much greater than the irritation of Zoom’s annoying behavior. Here we go.

THE CONVERSATION

I am really excited to have a chat with this crew here tonight for a number of reasons, but I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the impact that Brian and Bradley have had on me, personally, and on the book that you all have. I think that it’s not an exaggeration to say that the book wouldn’t exist without them, and it’s definitely not an exaggeration to say that the thought behind it wouldn’t be what it is without their influence.

I’ve been following Brian since 2017, I think. I think maybe Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God was my first experience of Brian, and I was sort of taken aback to hear this guy who sounded like a charismatic preacher who was saying things that were so in line with intuitions I’d been having that I didn’t stereotypically place into the mouth of a pastor on the stage of a big church. And yet, following that path and since having read all of his books, I’ve just been challenged so deeply to keep the gospel picture of who Jesus is central, not just as my picture of Jesus, but as the way that I imagine God entirely.

Because of that, Brian’s been kind of a mentor at a distance–you know, one of those folks that you’ve got the books on the shelf and you’ve read them some multiple times, and you listen to what they say on the internet and consider them a mentor. And then last year, thanks to Bradley, I had the opportunity to do a study tour in Greece and Türkiye, which Brian was on. We talked about early church fathers, and we walked through ancient Greek cities that Paul was in. We talked about what it must have been like to be there and how the dots connect from those places to our own ministries today. I got to see Brian as a real human being, not just a voice on a stage somewhere. I really loved that experience and came to trust him at a deeper level. And so, when he was willing to write the foreword to this book, it was just an incredible joy and honor for me.

My connection to Brian is wrapped up in my connection to Bradley. I was thinking back. I honestly can’t remember when I first ran across Bradley. I suspect it might be through the Open Table circle. The Open Table conferences started here in Portland, so that might be where I originally ran into you, Bradley. I’m not really sure. Very much like Brian, some of Bradley’s books just really stunned and cracked open my brain. His Beautiful Gospel series put pieces together that I had been wrestling with from Scripture and the footnotes of other books I’d been reading and spiritual intuition that I’ve been having, and and gave me permission to name some things that I hadn’t been brave enough to name. And then COVID came along and Bradley suckered me into a master’s degree program… that’s not true. It’s not his fault. But I ended up in a master’s degree program, which has been one of the highlights of my adult life. There, I got to meet the human being, Bradley, and we became friends.

So, the thought process and theology behind this book are deeply shaped by both of these guys. I’m just so deeply indebted, and I’m thrilled and honored to be able to have even a short conversation tonight about what this way might mean for us as followers of Jesus. So, thanks, guys.

Brian Zahnd 9:04
You’re welcome.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 9:06
Thanks, happy to be here. The only correction I’d make is that we’re dear friends. Dear friends.

Marc Schelske 9:12
Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you. We’re dear friends. I feel that way. Alright, so here’s the big question. It’s way too big of a question for us to solve, but I think it will give us a space to talk about some things that are important. So we find ourselves, as Susan mentioned, in a dire historical moment. The political disagreement that’s always been present in society has metastasized into dogmatic polarization. Certain leaders, some of them Christian leaders, seem to be aggressively pushing toward a kind of supremacist regime where certain kinds of Christianity are the official religion of at least the country that I’m part of. (I know we have folks in the Zoom tonight from multiple countries.) and there’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of perspective that the people who disagree with me are my enemy, and they want bad things for me, and so we must fight. There’s a lot of this in the air right now, and that is leaving a lot of us worried and wondering what to do.

I think Christians, in particular–as I’ve had many conversations in the last few weeks–are wondering what to do. What is the Christlike thing to do at this moment? And so I wanted to start by just asking your thoughts on why it seems like in so many places, the church–and I’m using that language to refer broadly to all of our siblings around the world–why does the church seem to fall so easily into the temptation to collude with this mess, or, on the other hand, seem to be standing so passively watching it all unfold. What do you think about that?

Brian Zahnd 10:53
I think it’s very easy right now to be overwhelmed, but I’m not despairing in any way. I think it’s important to understand that when the New Testament talks about our citizenship being in heaven, that’s to be taken actually quite seriously. Paul writes that as a Roman citizen. It’s valuable to him. It gets him out of a few scrapes here and there. Eventually, the Empire is going to cut his head off, but I mean, he’s able to use that citizenship to his advantage on multiple occasions.

But when Paul says our citizenship is of heaven, he really means that, and he really thinks that way. The empires of this world are always going to be, to some degree or another, Antichrist. That’s the nature of the beast. That’s kind of a double entendre, the idiom and then just the nature of the beast. I think we’re maybe surprised when we shouldn’t be. I’ll speak frankly here for a moment. I think that whereas maybe a lot of people who might be joining us tonight would be comfortable with speaking of America as an empire (I’ve been doing that for 20 years, and I think people get that) but I think maybe we thought it was like a maybe a little better than it really is.

Marc Schelske 12:23
Right..

Brian Zahnd 12:23
What concerns me most is to see my brothers and sisters sometimes, as you already alluded to, colluding with the powers that be. That’s been a mistake the church has made repeatedly for the past seventeen centuries. I wish we could get beyond that, but that’s where my real concern lies. I’m not a politician. I don’t belong to a party. I do live in America, and so I’m affected by various things, but when the day is done, I’m really a citizen of the kingdom of the heavens.

And so my response, as a pastor, has been to lean into the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let Jesus do the heavy lifting. Jesus shines through. And if we can just draw people’s attention to the living Christ, then we don’t have to do all the work and change all the minds. Let Jesus shine. That’s what I like about your book.

So, this is a book we’re launching at the beginning of Lent because it’s a book to be read during Lent. I’m old enough to remember when Lent was an exclusive Catholic thing. Maybe a high Anglican here and there would talk about Lent, but for the most part, outside of the Catholic world, nobody was talking about Lent. That has changed, and it’s been changed dramatically, increasingly, year by year. I think it indicates that we long for rhythm and roots. So, we’re drawn to the church calendar with its rhythms and its rootedness in the Gospel story of Jesus Christ. Just inviting people to really engage with Jesus by seriously considering the gospel texts–that’s super important pastoral work.

This coming Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday. I was reading some church fathers on this today. Origen says, Do you want to see the transfiguration? You can’t climb up on that mountain that they were on, but what you can do is go to the Gospels, pay attention, and you will see Jesus being transfigured before your eyes. And in his Transfiguration, we find our transfigurations.

Marc Schelske 14:51
I do want to hear from Brad and Susan, but I will just connect the dot, because as you talked about the value of Lent and focusing on Christ, one of the questions that we’re going to have next I think you answered, which is, what are our resources as we face this time of chaos and uncertainty? That’s a perfect example. We’ve got to go deeper into a real and nuanced and careful reflection on who Jesus is.

Brian Zahnd 15:17
I mean, you do this in your book, Marc. We’re engaging with Jesus. Each reading is about what Jesus is doing. What we’re doing is we’re actually on the road with Jesus, headed towards Jerusalem. You set it up perfectly. We’re to take up our cross and follow Jesus. There is a resistance to that because that sounds like loss and pain and death and suffering. Sometimes it does involve that, but we know that on the other side of that is resurrection. And so I don’t think we have to feel like we have to change everybody’s mind. And if you do feel that way, well, good luck, you know.

Marc Schelske 15:55
Right?

Brian Zahnd 15:55
That’ll drive you insane. Rather, our work is more modest. It’s to gently but persistently point people to Jesus and then trust that Jesus, because he actually is the living Christ, can be the one to bring about change that we can’t bring about.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 16:16
One thing that Brian didn’t address in your original question is what made the church so susceptible to this. Maybe we can just nod to it on our way to these other things that I think are more important because it’s speculative. You’ve mentioned chaos, you’ve mentioned confusion, and I think we’re in that period on a grand scale. So, there’s a temptation that comes when you feel like things are slipping, and the temptation is to power and specifically to power-over.

Marc Schelske 16:45
Yes, right?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 16:46
And when you can get a little whiff that maybe we could have that if we get in bed with partisan politics! Maybe we could have some certitude. Maybe it’s better just to be told what to do than to wonder what to do. Those are some of the temptations I think make people susceptible. But I think Brian’s exactly right that the solution, then, isn’t, “Well, it’s our job to go fix that.”

He mentioned despair. I’ve been having this thought that we are both tempted to despair and invited to despair. And so the temptation to despair is to see all this and just go quiet on it, right? It’s just all hopeless. I’m tempted to paralysis, despondency, and resentment because I’m despairing good things. But I think Jesus is inviting us to despair, too. To despair of fixing things the way the world fixes things. To try to push back at partisan politics with partisan politics, to choose our emperor instead of the other one. Despair of that! The subtitle of your book really matters to this. So can you read it?

Marc Schelske 17:58
Yeah. 40 Meditations on Following Jesus’ Path of Other-Centered, Co-Suffering Love.

Bradley Jersak 17:59
So, following Jesus. And it’s a path that I identify specifically with the Sermon on the Mount. That path is infused with a way of being that is other-centered and co-suffering. Those are words all of us have really embraced. While we preach the gospel, we also enter into a kind of allyship, which is absorbing the violence of others in order to put a stick in the spokes of the wheel of the cycle of violence. But (and I’m getting this from my colleague, Andrew Klegger), we can’t impose that calling on others, especially the victims of oppression.

Marc Schelske 18:46
Right.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 18:47
So, I don’t say to, let’s say, a Gazan, “You need to practice co-suffering love and radical blah, blah, blah.” No, no, that’s for me to do.

Brian Zahnd 18:54
Yeah.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 18:55
And the other thing that Andrew says is that we cannot change the world quickly. But we also know we’re dripping in privilege to say, “Take the slow route” when there are urgent needs. But it’s also true that the kind of exercises we do as we’re journaling, using your book, and deliberately, slowly following the path of Jesus–that’s required. I’m not out to fix the world. I am out to participate in an alternative society that looks like the way of Jesus.

Brian Zahnd 19:23
When you forsake patience and think, “I have to speed this up. I have to speed Jesus up,” That’s how you become Judas. We all know that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Why? Why a kiss? Why does Judas come up and greet him? Why, if he’s just doing it for the money? Go on, take the money and run! He just stands in the shadows and points and says, “That guy right there. Yeah, alright, see ya. I’m out of here. I got my 30 pieces of silver.” I think that’s not what’s going on. Judas wants to be a disciple. He wants to force Jesus to fight, to back Jesus into a corner, and then Jesus will use the miraculous power that Judas knows that he has to launch this war against the occupying Romans. He’s tempting Jesus to do what the devil tempted Jesus to do in the third temptation in the wilderness.

I think we have to resist that. I’m thinking about Alan Kreider’s book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. The early church grew up under nothing but despotic, oppressive regimes, but they were just patient. They believed that Jesus was Lord and that the world would be saved, but they just didn’t see it necessarily as their job to force it to happen. What they were more interested in was creating alternative communities within the Roman Empire that lived by a completely different ethic, a completely different vision of how humans could share life together. And so their own communities were this alternative society that Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God.

I’m always struck by Origen’s debate with Celsus, the pagan philosopher and polemicist against Christianity. Oregin’s ultimate apologetic is, “You don’t believe that our communities are really different and that they actually do function through love, through actual altruistic love? Then come to our churches and see. Just check it out.” I wonder how many of us would dare to say, “Here’s my ultimate argument that the kingdom of Christ is real. You can see it lived out day by day in our local churches.” I think some would be nervous to do that, but I think that’s the hope, to actually become communities of Christlike co-suffering, other-oriented love that actually plays out. Not in perfection, but in an actual, real experience that people can see with their own two eyes,

Marc Schelske 22:02
Rght! It’s organic; it’s not mechanized. This is Bradley’s language–it’s rooted in consent and participation rather than hierarchical control. It’s vulnerable. Maybe this is the tying point back to when Bradley said that the struggle that causes the church to fall into this is that fear that comes up, that uncertainty, the struggle with the way of Jesus–this other-centered, co-suffering way–is that it is also a call to vulnerability. That’s not the thing I most want when I’m feeling at loose ends. I want a guarantee. I want to feel secure. I want to know that my investment is going to pay off. The call of the cross is the opposite. It’s vulnerability. It requires trust that God is actually at work in the larger picture. It isn’t up to me to make the outcome be the outcome. I’m participating in what God is doing. And that’s a very vulnerable position to take.

Brian Zahnd 23:00
That’s what your book’s about, Marc!

Marc Schelske 23:06
Susan, is there anything in your thoughts that this is sparking?

Susan Carson 23:09
Well, fear, I think, is at the heart of it. The thing that keeps coming to mind for me is a quote I heard, I think initially, from John Philip Newell, who’s a Celtic theologian. He said If you see turmoil and travail in the world, move towards it, because something is trying to be born. And so it seems to me that in this, there’s something revelatory. The things we sort of smelled and knew were there but didn’t think could really happen here are happening here. It’s really clear. It’s out in the open. And now we have the chance to decide who we’re going to be as people of Jesus.

The whole idea of co-suffering love, as Americans, maybe as Western Christians… we don’t really have a great place in our theology for suffering at all. So, to learn the way of co-suffering love, I think you learn it through suffering. And I don’t know what that means, and that’s not happy news. But it just seems to me that some things can be born and shaped in us through this that might not be born and shaped in any other way. It’s horribly uncomfortable, and the fear would drive us in not great directions, and yet, other-centered, moving towards the other, moving towards Jesus? In this moving towards one another, think something is being born.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 24:41
Yeah, that word “co-suffering,” I mean, it’s the literal meaning of compassion, empathy, sympathy. Weirdly, lately, public leaders and teachers and preachers have actually pronounced that empathy is a sin. And I’m like, what happened? And it seems to me that the thing we’re pushing back against is the construction of a Christianity that’s the opposite of the Beatitudes.

For those who don’t want to be susceptible to the lure of power-over Christianity, I recommend praying the Beatitudes every day. You just set an alarm on your clock or your phone and pray them every day. And I’m telling you, it is a furnace of discernment like none other. There is no power-over theology or prophecy that can get through the first three Beatitudes. They will be fried before you get there. It’s such an amazing shield of faith from the the three temptations of the Grand Inquisitor, who said the church needs to say yes to what Jesus said no to. And we say, “No, we won’t, because we have this shield that’s been given, this furnace of discernment in these words.”

Brian Zahnd 25:51
We get going on Dostoevsky, and we’re just going to go! So, in the Grand Inquisitor, Ivan is trying to destroy his brother Alyosha’s faith. And he comes up with this parable, “The Grand Inquisitor and Jesus.” And, of course, Jesus never says anything. At one point, Alyosha breaks in and says, “You’re praising Christ, you’re not reviling him,” and Ivan doesn’t disagree. Then you have that dramatic episode at the end where Christ simply kisses the Inquisitor, and the kiss burns in his heart. He’s still clinging to his old idea, but the kiss burns in his heart.

My point from that is we can just keep driving the conversation toward Jesus, quoting Jesus, quoting the Beatitudes, quoting the Sermon on the Mount, without necessarily trying to make people see the point, but just, let Jesus be Jesus. I would say the vast majority of non-Christian people who are witnessing what’s occurring in the present moment under the flag of Christian nationalism know that Jesus has nothing to do with that.

Marc Schelske 25:51
Yes.

Brian Zahnd 25:51
What it really does is it reviles the church. It gives the church a terrible reputation, but Jesus somehow stays above that. They’ll say things like, “I don’t I don’t know much about religion. I don’t know much about Christianity, but I know Jesus isn’t like that.” And how do they know? But they’re right. They do know, and they’re accurate. I just refuse to hand over Jesus to those who want to use him for an imperial theology. I just want to bring everything back to Marc’s book. You’ve got these forty meditations where Jesus gets to be Jesus, and then Marc helps us consider what the implications of that are. But the best part is that the light of Christ just shines.

Marc Schelske 27:47
I just want to back up a second on two things. One is that you kind of blitzed through the Grand Inquisitor scene. I want to give a very brief Wikipedia version because I don’t know everyone’s familiar. I feel like The Grand Inquisitor is maybe one of the most important pieces of prophetic literature in the modern age. It’s just one scene from the larger book, The Brothers Karamazov. There’s a version of it on YouTube. The story, very simply, is that Jesus shows up in a Spanish city. It’s the 15th century, or something like that, and he begins doing the things that Jesus does in the Gospels. As a result of that, he gets arrested. The entire scene takes place in the dungeon where he is being confronted by the Grand Inquisitor. Jesus is sitting in the room, and the Grand Inquisitor is talking to him. Jesus never says anything in the entire scene. In short, the Grand Inquisitor basically says, “The temptations that you faced in the wilderness–the three temptations–you made the wrong choice. What people actually need from you would have been for you to make the other choice, but you didn’t do that. You failed. Now, we are entrusted with the responsibility of doing what you couldn’t do. So, we will give the people certainty. We will give the people rules so that they don’t have to think for themselves. We will make sure that they know they are taken care of. That’s what they want; that’s what they need, and you didn’t give that to them. Does that feel like a fair summary?

Brian Zahnd 29:21
Exactly. He argues that Christ has too high an opinion of humanity. Christ tries to give them freedom, but people don’t want freedom. The Cardinal, representing more or less atheistic religious leaders who are just a religious arm of imperial power, or at least, in league with imperial power, have tried to undo what Jesus was trying to do.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 29:52
Hence, timely.

Marc Schelske 29:53
It’s a pragmatic picture, right? That we’re using faith, we’re using the way of Jesus, and we’re giving the people what they want, and that’s the right thing. What’s prophetic about this scene, and matters for the moment we find ourselves in, is that the temptation in the wilderness–the three temptations–are really, I think, what the church is facing now…

Brian Zahnd 30:14
Yes, exactly.

Marc Schelske 30:15
We are being asked what kind of people we will be in the world. Will we be people who use power? Will we be people who compel agreement through overwhelming people’s perspectives and experience? Will we be people who depend on spectacle to overwhelm people’s thoughts and compel them to do what we want? Or will we do something different? The gospels say that Jesus bested the devil in this temptation. And how did Jesus do it? By not going down that path.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 30:48
It is tempting, right? That’s the temptation of the hour. It is so easy to see the Them in our US/Them dynamic and then just mirror them.

Marc Schelske 30:57
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 30:57
They’re using power-over, so now I will. They’re using attack and accusation and condemnation, so now I will. It’s very subtle, and it feels right and righteous, and it feels honest. There is a place for praying the Imprecatory Psalms, but you only do that in the presence of Jesus as a way to confess the malice in your heart and have it expunged so that you don’t do violence to the Other. Again, I don’t want to say that as a privileged person to others who are being oppressed, but it is for me to avoid becoming the thing I hate.

Marc Schelske 31:31
The other place I want us to back up to–and then I’m going to hand this back to you, Bradley–you said that maybe the best way to envision what this other-centered, co-suffering path looks like is the Beatitudes. So you offered that as a resource. I’d like us to talk a little bit about that more, and maybe the general question of the resources we have as followers of Jesus to stick to the other-centered, co-suffering path when the temptation to the ways of power and coercion are so dominant for us right now.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 32:00
Of course, the Beatitudes, or the first section of the Sermon on the Mount–I would say that as Jesus’ fundamental foundational sermon as he launches the kingdom in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters five to seven), it behooves us to know that sermon inside and out. And there are those who can help us do so. Unfortunately, there came a time in the church where people actually were teaching, probably since Luther, that we need to read the sermon on the mount as something we can’t obey and, in fact, shouldn’t obey. It’s meant only to cause us to despair, so we’ll cast ourselves on Grace. So you don’t live the Sermon on the Mount. You’re not even invited to. In fact, if you try to, you’re probably forsaking grace. But what is the sermon?

Brian Zahnd 32:46
That’s Bonhoeffer’s Cheap Grace. Bonhoeffer was attacking that. He knew that they’d gone there. What Bonhoeffer is saying was, the reason you can go to a Nazi rally on Saturday night and go to church on Sunday morning and feel no contradiction, is because of cheap grace. The gospel is no longer something you live. It’s just a means by which the grace of God exonerates whatever you do.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 33:10
Yep, and what does the sermon actually say, though? Well, “Many will say, Lord, Lord, and I’ll say, I’ve never knew him because you didn’t do the things I told you to do.” The wise man who builds his house on the rock at the end of that sermon is the one who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. So I start with the Beatitudes because they set up an orientation of the soul of surrender to God, of lowliness of heart, of meekness, of renunciation of ego. Our friend, Ron Dart, actually translates the first Beatitude this way: “The divine life is for those who have learned to say no to the demands of the ego.” Poverty of spirit is a bankrupting of self-will. And so that’s the thing. Is it going to be self-giving love, or is it going to be power-over and domination? You can’t do both. So if we can just keep cleansing our own hearts with the Beatitudes, that’d be great.

And on that note, I would say some good resources: Jim Forest has a book called Ladder of the Beatitudes that’s magnificent. Ron Dart has a book called Beatitudes: Where Mountain Meets Valley. There’s a good book by a Quaker named Matthew Legge, called, Are We Done Fighting? It’s a pushback against the whole power-over thing in that temptation. So, I’m a Beatitudes guy. I’ve tried to pray it daily for now fifteen years. I feel like it’s a way to guard your heart, not only from the ways of the Empire, but also the ways of pushing back at the empire through self-will that just end up… you’re hooked anyway. That’s kenosis, right? Self-emptying. But self-emptying what? Well, that urge to grab the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil instead come to the Tree of Life.

Marc Schelske 35:08
As I was writing this, we had a text exchange fairly early in the manuscript process of this book, where I was trying to get my head around how to make the contrast clear. If the direction we’re going is the other-centered, co-suffering path of Jesus, what is the thing that we tend toward instead? The language that came out of that text interaction was “self-centered, ego-defending ambition. This is the natural human state. I make decisions based on how they serve me. I do all kinds of different things to defend my ego–my sense of self. I want to feel strong. I want to feel right. I want to feel secure. I want to feel loved. And so I do all of these things to defend my ego. Ambition is that I want everything to be getting better and growing. I want to make a big change. All of that stuff is very natural to us as humans. And so in the contrast to that… maybe, I don’t know if it’s too arrogant to say, maybe that’s a little bit of what Paul was getting at when he would use the word “the flesh.”

In contrast to that, the way of Jesus is other-centered. I will consider how my actions and words in the world impact others. I’m even going to consider that there are others, right? Other people exist; the world is not solely here for me. Then, I’m going to think about how my words and actions and the things I participate in impact them. Then there’s co-suffering–which doesn’t necessarily mean that every one of these decisions will be actual suffering. It means burden-bearing. I’m coming along beside you. If this decision or circumstance is putting a load on you, I will come alongside to help bear that burden with you. Maybe that’s a way of understanding what the church ought to be up to in this moment We ought to be a community of bearing one another’s burdens, not just our burdens in the community, but the burdens of those around us that are being hard pressed in the culture that we find ourselves in.

My friend, Tara, has jumped in with a question: “This is all great and feels right on a normal Tuesday, but that ain’t now. So what is our role on the other centered, co-suffering path for us when wrongs are being perpetrated. What do we do?”

There’s a way that we as Christians–particularly those of us who are majority culture Christians, middle class. We have our difficulties. We have our struggles. But we haven’t sat in the place of war. We haven’t sat in the place of persecution–There’s a way of holding Christianity that is still very self-centered. And I think the journey of other-centered, co-suffering love is always going to do what the title of this book says. That is why I picked this weird phrase as the title. It is always going to take us toward the Other. So, to Tara’s question, what do we do right now?

I think that some of the immediate pastoral things I can say are we don’t isolate. We don’t turn inward. We look for ways to move toward the Other. And it might be that there are people in your circle that are being directly injured. Someone that comes up, as I think about that, is that some of us have friends, family, folks in our circle that are queer or trans. Those folks, with the shift that has happened in terms of policy in our country in the last month, are honestly feeling existential fear. Regardless of what you think about the issue, they are feeling existential fear. So what would it look like to move toward those people in your life, to hear them, to be present to them, to walk with them? Maybe it’s in a practical way, like they’re saying, “I need to run an errand in this part of town, and I’m afraid to go there,” and you say, “Okay, let me go with you.” Or, maybe you create space for them to say what they need to say, where they can be heard. You could apply that same template to whoever must bear the burden that our society is generating right now. Don’t isolate. Don’t move inward to only safe spaces. Move toward the Other and invite Jesus to guide you in who those others are and how you would do that.

Tara’s follow-up question is, “But do we speak truth to power? Do we fight the wrongs being perpetrated? What do we do?” Alright, so which of you is ready to jump in on that?

Brian Zahnd 39:48
I don’t know what you do, necessarily. I do know that the practical expression of the kingdom of God is what the church is. Because of its practical nature, it’s imperfect, but it is also visible, tangible, and real. I think we get in trouble when we think it is our task to change the world. When the church tries to change the world, the church becomes the world. Because with that very language, we tend to reach for the political, coercive means of power. We can call it Caesar’s sword. We can call it the Ring of Power if you want to go all Lord of the Rings. Our task is more modest. Our task is not to change the world. Our task is to be that part of the world already transformed by Christ.

So what do we do? We work on creating that radical alternative society where love flourishes, where it’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed those who mourn for they shall be comforted. The meek shall inherit the earth, etc.” We focus on creating those communities. Jesus calls them the ecclesia, the church, the called-out ones, the ones called out of their own little private life into some public expression, but it’s the public expression called the church, and that is practical. If you want to go beyond that, that’s fine, but that’s beyond my scope as a pastor. I speak as a pastor-theologian, and I limit it to that because I don’t have much more to say. I’m not a political activist. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that. I’m just saying I’m not the guy to talk to about that because that’s not what I do.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 41:25
It’s a great question: “Do we speak truth to power?” Well, what do we mean by that? First of all, I learned from Brian to ask, “Who is we?” But when I do, what do I think that is? Like writing Instagram memes? That’s not actually speaking truth to power. It’s performative usually, and it’s cathartic. That’s why I do it a little bit–a little bit. But it has such little impact. I’ve marched with one million people against the second war in Iraq, and it did nothing. I vote in elections, and I will keep doing that, but I’m aware that’s like buying a lottery ticket.

But the person in front of me today who’s suffering, the trans person that I know in my family who’s afraid, my black friend, who has to check every doorway he enters to see if it’s a safe place–I can say “I’m with you, no matter what.” That has a massive impact. That seems to be a more fruitful way to be Christian in the world. Yeah, sure, sign a petition. I will. But I also am aware of the relative power. For example, I wrote a letter to the passport office today for an ex-convict who needed an advocate. Okay, that could have a big impact on him, his wife, and his children. So I measure my time out in those kind of ways and my energy. Because when I see the fruit of that, I’m energized. When I see the fruitlessness of the other and my frustrations around it… But what about big things like Gaza? Well, give $20 to Mercy Aiken. She’ll get food to people. That’s actually going to do something. The cruciform way is a narrow way that takes one step at a time in co-suffering love with those you can actually walk with and accompany.

Marc Schelske 43:15
Let me take a stab at maybe weaving these two together. Brian encourages us to gather in the local expression of the community of followers of Jesus who are living this new kingdom life. Bradley says the practical hands-on service and care and advocacy that we do in a one-on-one way is where we can really make a difference. Okay, so maybe the way to weave these together is this: What if the church is a place where we come together to talk about this very thing, so that we each have courage and spiritual imagination for engaging in that one-on-one advocacy and care? What if church is a place where we come together and do a little bit of that Acts 2 pooling of our resources? Maybe those resources are our best ideas, the links to articles that we have, or some money?

In my own church situation recently, some people were able to come together and help a person who desperately needed a vehicle to get to work get a vehicle. That was Acts 2. Somebody else brings the little immigration Red Cards that say what exactly you should say to immigration official when they are acting beyond their constitutional authority and to say nothing else. Those little cards can be easily distributed to people. That’s sharing resources. The fact that that we could come together in community and share our questions and our fears, and someone else could say, “Yes. What about this? I can walk with you in that. Or have you tried this?” That’s Acts 2. Then maybe the gathering in the local community embodies Jesus’ desire for us to walk the other-centered, co-suffering path. Then we can do more of that individual, one-on-one care, love, and advocacy because we are empowered and encouraged, and our spiritual imagination has sparked because we are part of a community that’s committed to that.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 45:10
Josh had a contrarian question, which I don’t think is really contrarian. “How do you think about or act on this kind of love when when the Other we’re talking about is a fundamentalist or MAGA right winger?” A couple of thoughts on that. One is that we’re dealing with two different things when it’s people versus ideologies. And so, if we provide a gospel that is far more beautiful and embracing than the ideologies at work, I think there’s a market for that, and those who are hungry for it will come first.

Meanwhile, I’ve found it easier to deal with the left/right spectrum. I can kind of transcend that and build bridges. But when you’re moving between dealing with authoritarian things that appear to you like a cult or something, remember that this is a spectrum too. There are those who just honestly believed we needed a bit of a course correction, and there are others who would like to drive people of other color out of the nation. That’s a big, big spectrum.

So if we can ask questions that invite, that act like seeds–and I would pray about that. “Lord, would you give me questions that act like seeds?” I don’t know when the sprouts will poke through the hard ground. I don’t know, but I think we can waste a lot of time arguing with people when there’s already a market for those who are so sick of the conflict that they’re ready to talk about Jesus. If we can maintain a few friendships, and just say, “We see it so differently, I’m going to do my best not to alienate you, if you want that.” We’ll play this the patient route, but in the meantime, there are those who are who are really hungry for the Jesus way now, and that does transcend left and right.

Marc Schelske 47:00
That’s why this book! That’s why we’re having this conversation tonight. That’s why I wanted, quite frankly… It’s kind of weird to have a conversation like this for a book launch. A book launch party is supposed to be celebrating the book, making it lots of fun. And here, instead of that, I opened up this difficult conversation, which doesn’t feel very much like a party. But it this feels essential to me because of the moment that we’re in and because of the complexity and nuance of how to follow the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus, when the fact is that there are a lot of folks wearing the label Christian, many of whom are wearing it in good faith, who see these things differently, and that is creating some of this additional stress and pressure.

I want you to know that if you’re thinking these kinds of thoughts and you’re wanting to know how we as followers of Jesus can live in a path that is more generative in the world, you’re not alone in that. You may feel alone. You may be in a geographical region where you feel like everyone is thinking differently than you, but it’s not true. You are not alone. We can connect here. There are other people we can get connected to. Seek that out because as the intentional chaos that is designed to trigger our limbic systems and push us into fear unfolds, what we need is community. That is one of the things Jesus calls us into. So that’s my last word.

I want to thank Brian so much for being here tonight, especially with the time zone changes and all of the many, many busy things that you do. It means a lot that you’d be here. Bradley, my friend, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you have a big bottle of NyQuil at hand and you can immediately go knock yourself out. It’s a real gift that you would be here tonight, even when you feel so horrible. Everybody else: Thanks so much for being here, for being part of my extended community. Let’s maybe try this other-centered, co-suffering thing for a while and see if it makes a difference. All right?

Brian Zahnd 49:08
Amen.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 49:12
As this conversation unfolded, I saw two distinct themes surface.

Brian Zahn, speaking as a pastor, suggested that the way forward at this moment was to double down on the life of this alternative community we call the church. He meant more, I think, than just to go to church every week. He invited us to make our churches more than clubs of like-minded folks, challenging us to have our churches actually be communities that pursue the other-centered, co-suffering way. Brian was suggesting that this alone–the witness of the presence of Jesus in functional, compassionate, loving communities–is our best response to a world absolutely enamored of power.

Bradley Jersak, speaking as a theologian who has some experience in communities of advocacy, suggested that our best investment is the kind of care and mutual support that can be offered to real people. In the context of real relationships, when we serve and give and advocate, when we stand with folks in the world around us–because of the gospel, not as an act of evangelism, but simply as our response to other-centered, co-suffering, love–this is when we will make the most difference in the world.

Now, neither Brian nor Bradley are suggesting we bury our heads in the sand. Neither is suggesting that we can entirely opt out of participating in the politics of our culture. Both remind us, though, that power is always gonna power. Capitalism is always going to seek maximum profits at the expense of people. Oligarchs are always going to seek to increase their control. Self-centered, ego-defending ambition will always be self-centered, ego-defending ambition until it’s transformed from the inside out. It always seeks whatever justifications it can find, even good Christian justifications. To assume different is to be naive about the nature of the human heart. However, Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and resurrection open up a new way of imagining the universe and break the chains of ego, death, and sin. So, even though we must live in the cultures we find ourselves in, we don’t have to accept the ways of the culture or buy into their promises.

The wisdom that I took from this conversation is that we need both sides of this coin. We need vibrant, healthy communities, communities not built on hierarchical power or self-protection or ego-driven, theological self-defensiveness. We need these communities of mutual care, the church, both to encourage us and to help us bear up under the pressure of the moment. We need a lab to practice other-centered, co-suffering love, which is what the church is when it’s at its best.

However, we also need the personal conviction that moves us into those one-on-one interactions of care and support. Empowered by the support of a healthy church, we can love and share, advocate, protest, and stand with those most burdened by the structure of society and those most at risk by the plans of the current regime. We need to follow Jesus toward each other. If that all seems a big ask, you’re right, but we live in a moment that I think is asking more of us than any I’ve seen in my lifetime.

This historical moment echoes that interaction between Frodo and Gandalf in Tolkien’s famous story. Frodo says, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened”. And Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has given us.” That’s where we are, friends. Who will we be? This moment is the time that’s been given to us. For me, the other-centered, co-suffering path is the only way through.

May you have the courage to walk the coming path of discomfort, trusting that the gentle way of love will accomplish the deep reconciliation our world needs.

Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW058.

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