Marginal Christianity

Theological Journal – March 16 (Lent 2020) Moltmann Monday – The Crucified God “The one will triumph who first died for the victims then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind with a new humanity. Only where righteousness becomes creative and creates right both for the lawless and for those outside the law, only where creative love changes when is hateful and deserving of hate, only where the new man is born who is oppressed nor oppresses others, can one speak of the true revolution of righteousness and of the righteousness of God.” ― Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology , 178. Jesus’ cross scandalizes us, always scandalizes us, even his most faithful followers with its morality-ignoring, boundary-transgressing, propriety-busting, political...

We all know the Christmas story, right? Even if we don’t realize that the angels and shepherds and wise men don’t really belong together in our Nativity scenes we know the basic story from Matthew and Luke and its key point, don’t we? Sure we do – the Savior is born in the manger to a virgin named Mary! And that’s all we really to get, isn’t it? Well, apparently not – because the Bible has a 3 rd Christmas story! Yeah, it really does. And in the most unexpected place. The last place you’d think to look for it. Literally the last – the book of Revelation. That’s right, the book of Revelation. Smack dab in the middle of that strangest of biblical books sits a birth story of the Messiah. Radically and strangely different from Matthew’s and Luke’s stories, I am tempted to borrow Paul Harvey’s trademark phrase and describe John the Seer’s version as “the rest of the story.” It’s found in Revelation 12 and goes something like this: “Revelation does not mention shepherd...

Part 2: The Slaughtered Yet Standing Lamb (chs.4-11) John Goes to Heavenly Worship (4:1-11) The seven messages of Christ to his churches concluded, we turn to Part 2 of John’s Revelation. This part begins with a scene of heavenly worship in the heavenly temple around God’s throne. This means John is ushered into the innermost sanctum of the temple, the Holy of Holies, where none but the high priest was allowed to enter but once a year on the Day of Atonement. John sees a door standing open in heaven – a door to the very presence of God (see 3:8). That trumpet-like voice that announced his vision of the regal Christ calls him to come up to heaven. Again he is “in the Spirit” (v.2). He sees a throne whose occupant he can only describe as precious stones with a emerald rainbow surrounding the throne (v.3). Twenty-four thrones surround God’s throne seating twenty-four white-robed, gold-crowned “elders” (possibly either angels in the heavenly council, the 24 orders of priests serving...

John’s First Story of Jesus (1:9-3:21) John’s Vision of the Regal Divine-Human Christ (1:9-20) John tells Jesus’ story three times in three different modes to make certain his people understood his identity and significance as fully as possible. We only trust the Jesus we know and in too much contemporary Christianity the Jesus it knows is too small. And perhaps he was for John’s churches too. At any rate, John wants to make sure that it not true for them. But first he gives a few words about himself and his own situation. We’ve already noted his external situation on Patmos. John establishes his solidarity with these churches by noting they share “persecution, kingdom, and “consistent resistance” in Jesus. - persecution : the evidence for an empire-wide empire-sponsored persecution of the church does not exist. Local and sporadic dust-ups with the Jews are what the seven messages attest and then in only two of the seven churches. Let’s call this physical persecution (i...