ShaneBertou.com

How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God’s creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.

It’s true: The Bible does say that there is a time to build up and a time to tear down, a time to rejoice and a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war. But we live in anticipation of the day coming when there will be no more time to tear down. There will be no more time for weeping. There will simply be no more time for war. Soon we’re going to run out of time for these things. This is the day we work for. This is the day we pray into today.

-Derek Webb, singer/songwriter in a piece titled Jesus-Following vs. Social Activism.

“I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful.”

- Sen. Barack Obama in a recent interview with Christianity Today. (See comments for full context)

There are around a billion people in the world who don’t have clean drinking water, and 46 million Americans don’t have health care. That means if they get sick, they don’t have anywhere to go. Half of the world, 3 billion people, live on less than two American dollars a day, so the world is an emergency.

It’s on fire.

It’s drowning.

It’s an absolute crisis, and when followers of Jesus can think of nothing better to do with their time than to pick apart and shred to pieces the work of other followers of Jesus who are trying to do something about the world, that’s tragic, and I don’t owe those people anything. The world is desperately in need of people who will break themselves open and pour themselves out for the reconciliation of all things. When a Christian can find nothing better to do with their time in the face of this much pain and heartbreak, you start realizing that some Christians need to be saved.

- Rob Bell on dealing with his critics, taken from a recent interview with RELEVANT Magazine.

(ht x 2: Mudpuppy for posting it first and typing it out.)

“We’ve got to get what we can during Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. When the new year comes, nobody remembers you’re hungry.”

- Rochester homeless man, as told to RIT Associate Professor Loret Steinberg

“The Kingdom that has come is meant to impact all of our society. The salvation that Jesus offers comes with the responsibility to work to transform our society, economically, politically, and socially. We must believe that what Jesus has passed on to us is a great salvation for all mankind, because God is love and has created us in His image. “

- Paul Dordal, Pastor of Crestmont Alliance Church in Aliquippa, PA, in a blog post titled “A Greater Salvation”

“The church has historically labeled suicide an unforgivable sin, as the opportunity for repentance destroys itself with the victims’ final breath. However, before labeling suicide as “the cowards way out,” I think we need to look at our own corporate complicity in these deaths. … A suicide is anything but a personal transgression; it reflects an outright failure of community”

- Logan Laituri, a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq, in a recent commentary titled Soldier Suicides: Counting the Forgotten Casualties of War

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. - Ephesians 2:10

“…prepared in advance… That is a powerful and inspiring concept. Not only were we created in Christ Jesus to do good works, but the works themselves were prepared in advance. God, above and beyond time itself, has us uniquely prepared, uniquely placed, and uniquely empowered as agents of change for such a time as this. What is God’s plan for injustice? We’re it.”

- Brian Kammerzelt, a Loyola University professor and editor of the community blogzine The Just Life, in an article titled “We’re It.”

“The inner torment Mother Teresa describes through her correspondence with confessors and theologians lasted many years. Her dark night of the soul did not quickly pass and only rarely abated. Mother Teresa’s words are deeply moving—clearly, she was a woman of incredible depth and reflection. The pain, emptiness and grief she endured would have been enough to tear most people apart. And yet, I find her struggles strangely reassuring—that Mother Teresa was a real human being, with very real questions, doubts and difficulties with experiencing God’s presence in her everyday life. It gives me hope that, even with my doubt and failure, I can become the person God intends me to be.”

- Daniel So, a youth pastor and blogger from Southern California, in an article he wrote for RELEVANT Magazine about the Mother Teresa’s moments of doubt.

“We should just shoot him.”

- Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew when asked for his opinion on the Barry Bonds steroid controversy. (Yes, he was only kidding.)

“There are a number of ways we can touch the people of Aliquippa, and we wanted to be right there alongside them as we do,” he said. “I believe assets exist in any community, no matter how distressed it may be.”

- Paul Dordal, friend and pastor of Crestmont Alliance Church, in an article written about some of the work his church is doing in one of the poorest communities in America.

“Rochester is our community. It belongs to all of us. We all have a stake in what happens here. And we need to understand what happens when we allow people to live in destitution and poverty.

If we really want to end the violence, we need to look at the conditions, the suffering that so many of these young people are experiencing. It is not enough just to say, “You must not be violent.” They already know this. But they also see the hypocrisy and the injustice of inferior housing, no education, no jobs, and no future.

We have to transform this. We have to do better. We need to look seriously at the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. We have to address the problems that cause this anger in them, not just how it impacts the rest of society. I have been all over the world, and I am convinced that people are not born as bad people. They are unfortunately born into bad situations, and without our help, it is difficult to see a way out.”

- Arun Gandhi, grandson of the late Mohandas K. Gandhi, founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence and a Rochester resident. Taken from a recent interview with City Newspaper.

“A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

- Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence (Read Jefferson’s account of the document and its implications)

This one’s for my wife…

“Jazz, real jazz, is the most dangerous music in the world. Jazz is a howl from the brothel, a spasm of pain and ecstasy and rage and laughter all at once. The danger in jazz, absent from formulaic pop music, is that one has no idea what will come next. That’s what made the genius of musicians like Thelonius Monk so difficult to distinguish from insanity. Not their traditionalism, but their originality - the fact that their music seemed to come out of nowhere - is what made them true creators of jazz, the essence of which is creativity and spontaneity.”

- Ian Downey in a letter to the editor of City Newspaper concerning his dissatisfaction with the lineup of this year’s Rochester International Jazz Festival.

“It is in moments like these violent times that grace looks so magnificent. It is in the shadow of such violence, as was the case after the Amish school shooting, that the victims’ grace to the murderer’s family shines so brightly… So in these days after Easter, even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.”

- Shane Claiborne in an essay titled When Violence Kills Itself

“Let us, united to Him and ready to offer our lives for our brothers, become apostles of peace, messengers of a joy that does not fear pain. The joy of the resurrection.”

- From Pope Benedict XVI’s Easter address

“… it seems like the (Red) Sox hysteria of the last five years has cultivated a new breed of retard sports fan.  A sadder, angrier, more obnoxious, stronger strain of sports fan retard, the likes of which rivals those freaks at Raiders games.”

- From this dude’s blog posting in which he reflects on what it’s like being a Yankee fan in Boston.

“To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering something beautiful for God.”

- Mother Theresa in the book A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations

“I think that every generation of the real church has to work out what it means for them to follow Christ in genuineness and not mere robotic mimicking of the previous generation … I am hoping, praying, and working for a successful passing of the baton to the next wave.”

- David Linn, friend and pastor of English Road Alliance Church in Rochester, NY in a recent conversation about the Emergent movement and the postmodern generation.

“Jesus did not die to make you into a sanctified consumer. He died to bring you alive to God and to a desperately needy world. And if you really believe that, it’s going to change everything- both the way that you do church and the way that you live every moment of your life from here on out.”

- Bob Hyatt, pastor of evergreen community in an article titled “Escape from Consumer Church“.