The Jesus Manifesto....

Somehow in my cyber travels, I came upon a site called The Jesus Manifesto.  I vaguely remember visiting there before, back when I was reading a lot of Girardian stuff and hanging out at sites like Preaching Peace and Every Church a Peace Church. It is an interesting site...set up in blog format. The Jesus Manifesto..an interesting name. On the "About JM" page it proclaims:

When Jesus started his ministry, he issued a manifesto–a statement declaring the coming of the Kingdom. To find Jesus’ manifesto, some people look to the Sermon on the Mount, but my vote is for Luke 4:18-19:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

I looked up the word "manifesto" for this post.  It is one of those words I "know" the meaning of but am hard pressed to find synonyms to define it.

Emily will often ask me what a word means when I use it in a conversation with her. 

"What does, blah blah mean, Mom?" or "I don't know what blah blah means."

I pause, think a moment and often answer, "You know...blah blah." as if by some magic power repeating the word or phrase will bring the definition from the depths of her subconscious.  It has become sort of a family joke. 

"No, I don't know what it means.  That's why I asked."

Then I struggle to find the synonyms to describe "blah blah." Sometimes synonyms are elusive and putting familiar words in "other words" is difficult. 

So to add to my own mental cache of words and their meanings...and in case Emily ever asks me for a definition of manifesto in the course of a conversation, I offer the following from Wordsmyth:

a public statement of principles and intentions, usually by an organized political group or person.

One of the synonyms listed is "pronunciamento."  Oh, that should come in useful if Emily ever asks.  :)

Anyway, the site comes from an emergent, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, my allegiance is to the Lord sort of perspective.  I don't mean that in an offhanded or condescending way at all.  I didn't spend a lot of time there because I visited on a weekday morning when time is limited.  There were a few writings that piqued my interest. I converted them from text to speech (using Text Aloud) and listened to them on my MP3 player when I took my lunch break stroll around the neighborhood. 

The post called "Ghandi Was Wrong" explores the tension of living in a "now/not yet" Kingdom.  The victory has been won, Jesus accomplished it on the cross yet the lion has yet to lie down with the lamb.  Their view is that we are living in overlapping kingdoms.  It is finished but that is not what we see with our natural eyes...and just what is our responsibility in this overlapping time warp?

Another post I read there is called "Striving for a Just Peace without the Myth of Redemptive Violence" The authors of the writing refer to this myth as the envisioning of:

.....a utopian future brought into the present by efficient violence and skillful use of less violent, but still coercive, soft power.

The post discusses the allegiance to political parties (and in fact the insistence by many members of those parties, that in order to be a Christian one must side with their particular ideology and vote for their candidate.) The solution?

The only way to confront this compartmentalized form of syncretism is to do what Paul does in his letter to the Colossians: announce that Jesus is Lord Redeemer of all areas of life, including all powers and authorities, and that his victory over the forces of evil happened on the cross and in his resurrection.

Anyway, it is an interesting site to go take a look-see.