Samuel Wells > Quotes

“Bonhoeffer knew that when the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing to say. And when it assumes dominance, it’s not talking about Jesus.”
― Samuel Wells

“Christus is het logische en misschien wel onvermijdelijke gevolg van het feit dat God elk idee over vernietiging van de eigenzinnige schepping heeft opgegeven: na alles wat er in het Oude Testament tussen God en Israel is gebeurd, staat er eindelijk iemand op die volkomen Israel en volkomen God is, die in zijn eigen persoon de vernietiging ervaart waarvan God had beloofd dat Hij die op aarde nooit meer zou aanrichten en die in zijn lichaam het nieuwe verbond aanbiedt dat God met de mensheid sluit. Christus is de boog in de wolken, het gevolg van het feit dat God oorlogswapens afzweert: net als we bij het zien van de regenboog aan Gods belofte denken, zo zien we in het kruis de vervulling, kosteloos voor ons en met de hoogste prijs voor God.”
― Samuel Wells, A Cross in the Heart of God: Reflections on the death of Jesus

“And that same ‘with’ is even more evident when we turn to the relationship within the Godhead itself, the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is three, which means God is a perfect symmetry of with, three beings wholly present to one another, without envy, without misunderstanding, without irritation, without selfishness, without two ganging up against the third, without anger, without anxiety, without mistrust. So present to one another, so rapt in love, and cherishing, and mutuality, and devotion, that they seem to transcend with and become in.”
― Samuel Wells, A Cross in the Heart of God: Reflections on the death of Jesus

“Why do I say we’re in the gutter? Perhaps I should speak for myself. I am a Westerner, and I benefit from a global system of trade that keeps the majority of the world’s population in poverty. I am an educated white resident of one the world’s leading economic giants, and I benefit from a social system that privileges me and my dependents in almost every conceivable way, at the expense of other cultural and ethnic groups. Until recently I was living in a country that props up numerous tyrants abroad and whose militarism costs the lives of civilians around the world every day. I am a man, and participate in a gender system that has perennially denied women full flourishing and, in most cases, still does. I am a twenty-first century citizen of the developed world, and I take for granted that my country and my generation gets to consume up the vast majority of the world’s non-renewable resources even though it is other countries and other generations that will likely bear the consequences; and I cannot imagine things any other way.5”
― Samuel Wells, A Nazareth Manifesto: Being with God

“St Laurence gathered the poor, the blind, and the lame together in the church in Rome and brought in the rapacious Roman authorities, proclaiming, “Here are the riches of the Church!”

Whenever Christians refuse to use the word “Church” as a synonym for “those in prominent roles in the clergy hierarchy,” but instead assume and take for granted that “Church” means principally the uncelebrated, the downtrodden, and the poor, the Holy Spirit is active in making the stories of Church history live in the habits of Christian speech.”
― Samuel Wells, God's Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics

“How do we reach Gilead? Remember, Gilead lies beyond the River Jordan. That's where God meets us. The waters of the Jordan are made up of the tears of God, blended with the tears of all our grieving. The journey to Gilead crosses that river of tears. It's the journey we call baptism. That's what baptism is: being bathed, healed, cleansed, and renewed in the waters that flow from the broken heart of God. That's the balm in Gilead. The tears of the living God. The tears that make up the water of our baptism. To be baptized in the tears of God: this is the truest balm of all.”
― Samuel Wells, Be Not Afraid: Facing Fear with Faith

“One of Origen’s arguments for the truth of Christianity was that while philosophy had only made the elite good, Christianity had lifted people of all levels of society and of every different type and race to a “philosophical” way of life. . . . Just as male needs female, rich needs poor, white needs black, so intellectuals need the simple. . . . The church is itself when it bridges all these gaps and tensions between people of different kinds.”
― Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics

“no man can be in danger by loving others too much, that loveth God as he ought.”
― Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics

“Stories...told with...heroes at the centre of them...are told to laud the virtues of the heroes---for if the hero failed, all would be lost. By contrast, a saint can fail in a way the hero can't, because the failure of the saint reveals the forgiveness and the new possibilities made in God, and the saint is just a small character in a story that's always fundamentally about God.”
― Samuel Wells

“Church means giving up the fantasy that we can find fulfillment and righteousness alone. It means doing things at inconvenient times with eccentric people in sometimes clumsy ways--because life is a team game, and on judgment day God will have nothing to say to us if we think we can come without the others.”
― Samuel Wells

“I will always be marked by the struggle. But it is through it that I have seen God.”
― Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics

“with us, forever now, guiding us to be with”
― Samuel Wells, Humbler Faith, Bigger God: Finding a Story to Live By

“Bonhoeffer did not expect his life to be a tidy edifice of perfection.”
― Samuel Wells

“An artist who is inspired is being obvious.”
― Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics

“Instead we have a tradition of common prayer, a general commitment to the well-being of all, including nonmembers of the church, and a desire to seek a faith that can be shared by people of a wide diversity of”
― Samuel Wells, What Episcopalians Believe: An Introduction

“There are two dimensions of discipleship. Ons is the learning of habits and the forming of character, the shaping of commitments and the inscribing of rhythms, the training in disciplines and the facing of sacrifices, Some people speak as if that were the only part. But the other dimension is perhaps even more important. It is the acknowledgment of weakness, the asking for help, the naming of failure, the request for forgiveness, the desire for reconciliation, and the longing for restoration.”
― Samuel Wells, Be Not Afraid: Facing Fear with Faith

“Our society celebrates nothing more than the overcoming of limitation – in sport, in science, in communications, in health. Every invention, every new world record, every new gadget is a sacrament of the deepest human desire of our age – to become free by transcending limitation, and thus, for a moment, believing we can withstand even death.”
― Samuel Wells, A Nazareth Manifesto: Being with God

“The Eucharist is the technology God uses for constructing a new society.”
― Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics

“He assumed that the shape of renewal is death and resurrection.”
― Samuel Wells

“People with dull lives often think that their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone chooses more or less what kind of events will happen to them by their conscious patterns of blocking and yielding.”
― Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics