Subversive Jesus by Craig Greenfield

Loved this book! Here are my favorite quotes:

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what gospel is that?” Oscar Romero

“As we were faced with the reality of the poor each day, it was easy to examine our decisions in light of the lives of our impoverished friends, who might even ask us about those decisions, causing some awkward conversations. We could gain perspective simply by looking out the window or stepping through the door, because our well-being became tied to their well-being. We prayed that a local movement of Christians loving their poor neighbors might be raised up. We stumbled on an obscure Cambodian proverb: “It takes a spider to repair its own web.” Using this piece of cultural wisdom as our catchphrase, we began challenging young Cambodian Christians to take on one vulnerable child each. We dubbed the movement Alongsiders.”

“My friend Joyce Rees says that if you want to understand the good news that Jesus offers for the poor in a particular place, you first have to discover what the bad news looks like. During the excess of time Jason and I had to sit and contemplate, we learned that if the bad news of the inner city was rejection, isolation, and loneliness, the good news might look something like radical hospitality. We realized that Jesus would welcome these folks inside—not just into a drop-in center or shelter but into a family. 

“It’s no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” St. Francis 

“Jesus begins with the resources already available in the community. He takes a handful of loaves and fish from a little boy, thus including the poor and what they have to offer as a central part of the solution. He prays, inviting God to work, to be central to the process, for it is only when we are open to the Spirit that we will be inspired to share and welcome. Then he asks his disciples to organize the people, forming temporary mini-communities so they can break bread together, relationally. And the rest is history. A beautiful miracle of sharing and abundance takes place that meets the immediate needs of the people and revolutionalizes the way the disciples understand community transformation. Jesus subvers the usual power structures. He undermines the status quo in a time when soup kitchens have replaced radical hospitality in our own homes. He neither leaves folks to fend for themselves individually nor allows his followers to engage in a one-way act of charity that would set them up as benefactors and beneficiaries. Instead, he asks them to share.” 

“Charity ‘wounds’ because it excuses the recipient from obligations to repay that are deeply embedded in both culture and psyche and fundamental to human social life.” Anthropologist Mary Douglas

“As followers of Jesus, we need to figure out what that good news looks like as we respond to those who are suffering because of poverty and oppression, whether a beggar on the corner or an orphaned child in a slum halfway around the world. God wants us to not only care for the well-being of his children, but also to see that they are central to his redemptive purposes for the world.” 

“It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is ALWAYS a way to solve a problem without violence” –some jokester 

“We often fall into the trap of thinking that the solution to injustice is to gain power, hoping that once the roles of power have been reversed, the coercion will stop. But every bloody revolution in the history of the world shows that this does not work. The oppressed persons who seize control simply become the oppressors. When faced with oppression, Jesus tapped into the fruit of the Spirit and exerted self-control rather than using his power and privilege to control others.” 

“There’s something deeply unethical about using people’s poverty to force them to listen to our message. It is not the way of Christ, who comes gently to serve and offer freely and not to force his own agenda on people. More and more, our team was learning that one-way acts of charity would never bring freedom to our friends. We needed to not only learn their names but also to discover more of God’s purpose or their lives. “

“If we’re all busy running around raising money for charity or maintaining charitable organizations, who will be left to agitate for real change? Because most charitable word is donor driven, the entire system runs on money instead of relationships. Thus many donors demand tax receipts because they don’t want to give if they can’t receive some benefit.”

“I realized that whenever rich people like me want to follow Jesus, we are invited to sell our possessions and give to the poor.  Somewhere along the line, some of my great-great-great-great grandfathers got rich off the backs of those they exploited. And some of my ancestors traveled the world, plundering resources from Asia and Africa for their own gain. And some in my family were colonizers, who stole land from indigenous people and placated them with trinkets and liquor. Though our ties to ancestral connections may be remote, the wealth and privilege we have inherited remains in our hands in in our bank accounts. That wealth, both my family’s wealth and the wealth of my nation, is the foundation of my privilege, the head start I got in life. Though I didn’t steal it myself, I have some responsibility for it now. Like Zacchaeus, I come face-to-face with Jesus and am confronted by the realization of what my privilege has cost others.”

“Three phases of biblical justice: First, in SOLIDARITY, we tie our well-being to the well-being of those God leans toward—the poor. Next, we enter a season of RESISTANCE together, and as we are inspired by the Spirit, we speak truth to power and take symbolic actions to highlight injustice and ask for change. Finally, by God’s grace, we long to reach the place of LIBERATION, where both the oppressed and the oppressors are transformed when they open themselves to the work of God.”

“Through activism we confront the toxicity in our world, through contemplation we confront the toxicity in ourselves” Phileena Heuertz