Subversive Spirituality

For Lent, I am taking on the big ticket items of the Christian faith:  Bible, Jesus, God, and Meaning of Life.​ Sermons are posted here.   The latest on Jesus was inspired in part by my radio conversation with Robin Meyers, author of The Underground Church:  Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus.    Robin will be speaking at the Westar Spring Meeting next week.   I wish I could have made that one, but it was not to be.

​It is time for progressive voices to be heard.  I am grateful that Robin is speaking clearly and forcefully in his context as a Christian minister.   Our Thursday study group finished his book, Underground Church, a few weeks ago and it was well-received.   Of the many books we have read over the years, this one sparked a great deal of conversation.  It resonated not only with the frustrations we have with the dominant religious voice in our nation, it also inspired hope that there are other voices announcing both a credible and a transformative faith.

For some time, many of us have wondered how the research done by the Jesus Seminar on the historical Jesus would translate in the context of current Christian practice.   In Robin's own church, Mayflower Congregational (UCC) in Oklahoma City, we see this transformation happening.  It is a movement away from allegiance to the creedal Jesus of the fourth and fifth centuries and a movement toward the subversive Jesus of the first century.   That subversive Jesus, as they say, "preaches."   ​Check out his book, listen to our conversation, and read my latest sermon and you will see what I mean.