Transcript – Jesus was too dangerous
(Note that all transcripts were created from audio recordings, and therefore any mistakes are the transcriptionist's, not the speaker's.)
Filename -- Extract_Hope_in_a_World_Gone_Mad_20030423a_JesusDangerous_Transcript.htm
In Jesus’ day there was a big collision going on as well. Jesus Christ was not crucified because he was religious. He was crucified because he was dangerous.
And the people to whom he was most dangerous were the people who had the most vested in Christian religion. And so they wanted religion, and the way Matthew shapes it out, Jesus wanted the reign of God. The book of Matthew is primarily about the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is not the church, it’s the rule and reign of the Almighty throughout the universe and in the hearts and lives of the people who receive him as king.
And so they wanted… these people that kept colliding with the values of Jesus, they saw the kingdom of God as a religious system, a religious institution. If you preserve it, you preserve the values. And they had a vested interest in that because their sense of security was tied up in membership in the religious institution and their sense of value on the whatever rung they were on in the pecking order of the religious institution. Even their economic well-being was tied up with organized institution.
Do you think anything like that ever happens today?
And that meant then that the whole idea was to protect and organize religion, and they would do that since that was the highest value, and whatever weapon they chose -- sometimes it was social pressure, sometimes it was a police force, sometimes it was the military or the government, and sometimes they used money, and sometimes they lied.
Now when you come down to the end of the Gospel of Matthew you find three little stories linked together in that last chapter. And you see this collision between the reign of God and religion. Jesus tumbled that whole idea on its head.
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