A Bigger and More Beautiful Neighborhood
Thursday, October 22, 2026
In CAC’s virtual gathering, “How Can We Reclaim Jesus from Empire?” Brian McLaren shares how his faith has changed since he embraced the historical Jesus of the Gospels.
In the last couple of hundred years, wave after wave of theologians and Christian thinkers and activists have tried to free Jesus from our theological straightjackets and rediscover him in his historical and political setting. When you do that, you realize the core message of Jesus was not, “Here are the four steps to go to heaven when you die.” Jesus’s core message was, “The kingdom of God is at hand.”
“At hand” means within reach and available now. That’s revolutionary!
So few see this, in part because of misguided traditions of teaching and in part because of confusing translations.
Our English word kingdom comes from a Greek word basilea, which means empire. It’s the same word. So, Jesus shows up in a historical moment when the empire of Caesar in Rome is dominating the Mediterranean world. Jesus says, “Hey everybody! The empire of Caesar is a dirty little neighborhood within a much bigger kingdom—the empire of God. Stop framing your lives in that small, ugly, distorted frame of earthly human empire. Deconstruct all your Rome-dominated assumptions. Learn a whole new way of seeing the world because the empire of God is all around us and within reach!”
Sadly, too many Christians have done the reverse. They have shrunk God into the image of a human emperor. They see God as a supreme, dominating, authoritarian autocrat. They don’t see how Jesus is taking the language of empire and flipping it on its head.
What do empires do? They kill people. What does Jesus do? He dies as a nonviolent witness against empire.
What do empires do? They torture and imprison people. Jesus heals people and sets them free.
What do empires do? Empires forcefully relocate people. Jesus goes to people where they are and meets them where they are.
What do empires do? They create domination hierarchies: These people are over these people, who are over these people, who are over these people. What does Jesus do? He takes the role of the servant and washes people’s feet. He leads from below, kneeling at their feet. What a stark reversal of human domination systems.
Yes, Jesus talks about God being a father, but is Jesus’s father a Roman patriarchal father? No, God is the opposite: a merciful parent who doesn’t punish a disobedient son, but rather welcomes him home and throws a party to celebrate.
Suddenly, when you see this, you see everything in a new light. Jesus doesn’t legitimize human nation-states and their dominating systems of top-down control. In word and deed, Jesus exposes and inverts the whole pyramid.
He points to something bigger and more beautiful. Shouldn’t we do the same?
Reference:
Adapted from Brian McLaren with Randy Woodley and Edith Woodley, “How Can We Reclaim Jesus from Empire?” (Center for Action and Contemplation, July 10, 2026). Unavailable.
Image credit and inspiration: Bradley Pritchard Jones, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Ynys Llanddwyn, Wales. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like old stones slowly returning to the hillside, the structures of empire fade while the way of Jesus, rooted like the land itself, remains.
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Whose Image? Bradley Jersak
Homily – Church of the Magdalene — Oct. 18, 2026
| BRADLEY JERSAK OCT 18 |
I delivered this homily to the Church of the Magdalen. I’ve retained the personal nature of speaking to 20 people I know very well, seasoned Jesus-followers whose example I note. So in a sense, readers are overhearing a family discussion, but as the shoe fits, please wear it.
LECTIONARY READINGS (with links)
Psalm 96:1-13
Isaiah 45:1-7
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22
WHOSE IMAGE?
Today,
Today, mind you,
the Lord Jesus asks us,
us, mind you,
Whose image, whose icon,
whose likeness, whose face
is on the Coin?What caption, what inscription,
what slogans and titles
does our Coin bear?
Come to think of it,
what is our Coin (uppercase C)?
the Coin we carry
and has our allegiance?
As our Lord looks up from our Coin
we make eye contact, and he says,
“Render to God what is God’s.”
And because it’s you,
dear friends and siblings,
I see him break into a broad, warm smile.
CAESAR’S IMAGE
The first part is too easy, too familiar.
We know the image of Caesar is empire, domination, and control.
Caesar’s image is on our currency,
our flags, our anthems, our hand-on-heart pledges,
Caesar speaks from our capitol buildings and in our tax assessments.
Caesar knows you … by number, as number.
Caesar tells you what to render and renders it from you.
to pay for your water, your electricity, your highways, schools,
(thank you),
to pay for Caesar’s death rows, deportations, and genocides,
(damn it).
And today,
today, mind you,
self-anointed prophets insist we vote and bow to their chosen Caesars,
even anointing them with the name “Cyrus” to justify their blasphemies.
THE TRUE IMAGE
BUT, but, but!
That’s just coin.
The reality is far more radical, more beautiful, more joyous.
All of today’s readings,
today’s message from heaven,
lift our eyes to the One true Image of God,
to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
PROCLAIMED IN THE PSALMS
The Psalmist proclaims the beautiful Gospel of the Coming One—
the Lord who is great and greatly to be praised,
whose compelling image we receive and proclaim and sing and declare…
His Psalm, our song, is not raised
to some tribal God of the elect de jour,
our Lord does not serve any nation’s political expansion,
or exclusive religious movement like “Christian” nationalism,
that crave dominance.
The Psalmist says our Lord is good news
for everyone,
for all the earth,
for the whole world,
for the families of the peoples in every nation!
When they hear he is coming as Judge,
they do not cower in dread.
The heavens are glad,
the earth rejoices,
Creation exults
Precisely because it is Jesus coming to judge the earth
Because, finally, we have a ruler whose reign is mercy
and whose judgments are equity for everyone,
The image on his banner is the Cross
where the scales of justice
always render a verdict of God’s peace on all the earth
and divine goodwill to all people.
PREVIEWED IN THE PROPHETS
This same Lord the Psalms proclaim,
the Prophets also preview.
Isaiah offers Emperor Cyrus as a mere shadow of a far greater Reality.
However dimly, Cyrus blindly prefigures
the Image of God we now behold in Christ.
Cyrus, who does not know God,
is anointed as a gesture to the Messiah
who does know God,
comes from God,
was with God from eternity,
and is the Image and Likeness of God.
Those local, temporary, political exploits of Cyrus
are fulfilled in Christ on a cosmic, universal scale
that delivers us all from the Empire of Darkness.
Let’s give ear to the fulfillment,
Today,
today, mind you,
Jesus is God’s anointed,
Jesus subdues nations,
Jesus strips the prince of darkness of power,
Jesus breaks open the gates of Hades to conquer death,
and the gates of His fair city will never be shut.
Jesus goes before us to level mountains of injustice,
he breaks in pieces the iron bars of bondage,
and he has and is and will deliver us,
us, mind you,
his treasure and his riches and his inheritance,
retrieving—rendering—from darkness
everyone, everyone.
Jesus is Lord, and there is no other,
Jesus is Lord, and you do know him,
from the rising of the sun to its going down,
there is just no one like him,
not even the false image of Jesus
that false prophets of Caesar parade before us.
You know the Jesus of the Psalms, the Prophets, and the Gospels,
and every shadow is washed out in the Light of his glory.
The Epistle picks up the image or face of Christ,
the icon of God proclaimed in the Psalms,
prefigured in the prophets,
and locates it … where?
PORTRAYED IN HIS PEOPLE
Today,
today, mind you,
the Image of Christ is reflected in the people called by his name.
The Thessalonians and the Magdalenes
are and are becoming the icon,
the image of the Image of God—
the face of Christ in the world,
for the life of the world…
Listen to Paul describe you,
as he describes himself
and his Lord:
I always give thanks to God for all of you,
always mentioning you in our prayers,
constantly remembering
your work of faith,
your labor of love,
your steadfast hope,in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Magdalene image of Christ
bears and shares
the message of the gospel,
In word, yes,
and in the power of the Holy Spirit,
So, when I look for the image,
I see the imitators,
an example to all the believers,
and not only in Macedonia and Achaia.
No, you lot have sounded forth in
Mexico, Canada, and the United States,
you’ve traversed Europe and the UK
and touched hearts in the Middle East,
you’ve ventured from Southeast Asia,
and lived your peace in far-off Islands.
What continent has Sister Gillian
not mentored from her home?
(maybe Antarctica?)
What a strange, eclectic little collection of Maggies,
in whose faces I see the Image of the Image of God,
in whose hearts and hugs I’ve encountered Jesus.
WALK THIS WORLD AS THE PARDON OF GOD
Our friend Peri, reflecting on Francis of Assisi,
leaves us with this commission to bear the image
and render our lives to Christ:
Walk the world as the pardon of God
Always affirm the Christ you see in others
Let your faces and your words
radiate the radically inclusive welcome of Jesus.
Be the image you bear and who bears you.
Lord, make us an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
