Jesus the Subversive
I read an article entitled “Subversive Jesus and His Trojan Horse” by Glenn Packiam today on boundless.com. It pricked at my heart…
I’d encourage you to link back and read the whole article, but if you won’t, at least consider this exerpt:
For all the blessings, opportunities, healings, miracles, provisions, protections, and stability that He [Jesus] has given you, there’s one thing that He values more, one thing that He would trade all of the above for: you.
And that’s precisely what makes our faith in Christ so unexpectedly subversive to our own agenda. This faith that we’ve embraced, this Life that we have taken into our hearts, will be our undoing. And it means to be that. It’s designed to be the end of us. The Jesus I’ve come to see and know at work in my life is the One who comes to undermine my own small-minded and wrong-headed plans. He is the Trojan Horse of blessing that we readily welcome into our hearts without knowing His mission to destroy us. For He has not come to bring peace, but a sword. This is the subversive Christ.
But this subversion is the means to His ends. In our death, we find His life. In our surrender, we find His sovereignty.
Sovereignty is an attribute of God I am seeking to grasp more fully, and this article has provoked more thought and prayer for me. What do you think?
(also posted on erinleigh.wordpress.com)
Wow Erin, I’m working on a lesson for my high school Sunday school class and decided to base it on an article from “The Lutheran” (March ‘0
The article is “Was Jesus subversive?” by George S. Johnson. In looking for more to give the kids, I found your blog. Thank you. It’s giving me more to think about. Jesus was definitely a subversive. Johnson quotes an Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, saying, “…it becomes a problem when we add the word “alone” to Paul’s emphasis on grace (Lutheran faith is based on salvation by grace as opposed to works). Could it be that our fixation on “grace alone” has left us deaf to God’s call to ‘do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God’ (Micah 6:8)? When Jesus dis exactly this, he was considered a subversive. I think if we love Jesus and his subversive messages, and follow Him/them, we must be doing it right.
Thanks again for your writing.
Laura