Jesus the Emergent Pastor

John Frye has posted an amazing series of sharp pieces that bring the reality of Jesus into focus. The reality of the time in which he lived, the politics, the power games, the dust, the smell, the language all come into view. But above all the person of Jesus, His way of dealing with people and the kind of people he found important come into sharp focus. Here are the links:

Jesus the (First) Emergent Pastor
1. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: Worldview
2. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: God
3. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: Bible
4. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: New Ways of Seeing People
5. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: Redefining Everything
6. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: This Particular Jew
7. Jesus the Emergent Pastor: The Community of Explorers

Here are some quotes to whet your curiosity ...

Here comes Jesus with the song of the kingdom in his soul. It's a vision of the kingdom unsullied by commercial exploitation or military power or religious rule. The last thing the kingdom of God can be turned into is a synagogue or church or a barracks.
Part 1

I want a Jesus who invites dirty people to his Father's table because his Father is deeply in love with them to the shock of those who think they deserve a place at the table.
Part 2

Let me raise a hypothetical question. Now, this is just imaginary: would God---Father, Son, and Spirit---cease to exist if every Bible and every form of the Bible (tape, CD, chiselled stone, ancient manuscript, etc.) on the earth vanished? Think about it.
Part 3

Jesus, to our eternal well-being, grew up in a world of pain. He did not grow up in a culture like ours that does everything it can to deny or ignore pain. We live in a society that bows to the god of therapy.
Part 4

The Word of God is alive. If we reduce it to a book of words, static meanings carried in our puny minds, we lose the wonder of growing with truth. I want to live with truth, allowing it to continually expand my limited understanding of its beauty and depth and wisdom and surprises.
Part 5

What Ford did to the Model T and Kroc did to the hamburger, the Western Church has done to the gospel. Maybe that's why the world thinks that it's so tasteless.
Part 6

The "emergent conversation" is taking a long, long look at Jesus. At his way of life. ... we are wondering how to re-engage the cultural freedom Jesus lived out. We're banding together to learn how to subversively undo what USAmerican culture is doing to us---
Part 7

This seems to me a conversation worth listening to and worth joining, not only in the USA but also out here in other regions of the 'free world'. Thanks very much to John Frye for these challenging, hopeful fragments of the conversation. And thanks to TSK for the reference.