Fleming Rutledge > Quotes

“With all due respect to the religions of the world, there is no other story like the Christian story. The god who thunders, the god who persecutes and condemns, the god who wreaks vengeance - yes, we know this god from the caricatures. We know this god from the old paintings. We know this god from hearing continual references to "the Old Testament God." But this is not who God is. "The Old Testament God" is the one who has come down from his throne on high into the world of sinful human flesh and of his own free will and decision has come under his own judgment in order to deliver us from everlasting condemnation and bring us into eternal life. He has not required human sacrifice; he has himself become the human sacrifice. He has not turned us over and forsaken us; he was himself turned over and forsaken. This is what the Old Testament prophet Isaiah says:
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. (53:4-5)”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“From beginning to end, the Holy Scriptures testify that the predicament of fallen humanity is so serious, so grave, so irremediable from within, that nothing short of divine intervention can rectify it.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Because this is an urban church in a downtown neighborhood, it is not so easy to avoid the presence of the poor. We see them. I wonder if that is not part of our vocation, to see the poor, to be the Lord's eyes - because the Lord sees the poor, and he loves the poor, and he sends his people to serve the poor. That is a message that pervades the Scriptures from end to end. There is something seriously out of balance in American Christianity. I am personally opposed to abortion, but there is nothing explicit in the Bible about abortion. There is nothing explicit in the Bible about prayer in the public schools; there is nothing explicit in the Bible about the American flag or the right to have a gun. There are, however, thousands of explicit words in the Bible about justice and compassion for the poor. There are thousands of words in the Bible about defending those who are defenseless.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“Here is an important distinction with far-reaching implications for Christian behavior. The deeds of Christians in this present time — however insignificant they may seem, however “vain” they may appear to those who value worldly success — are already being built into God’s advancing kingdom.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“In the church, this is the season of Advent. It’s superficially understood as a time to get ready for Christmas, but in truth it’s the season for contemplating the judgment of God. Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or too glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness. As our Lord Jesus tells us, unless we see the light of God clearly, what we call light is actually darkness: “how great is that darkness!” (Matt. 6:23). Advent bids us take a fearless inventory of the darkness: the darkness without and the darkness within.”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Here is an image. The young woman who lives in the Port Authority Bus Terminal has been a crack addict; she has lied, cheated, and stolen. She has learned to manipulate people. At twenty-six, she has wasted her education and lost several jobs. When she is asleep in her blanket on the floor, there is no way for a passerby to know whether or not she is trying to kick her habit and better herself. Yet, according to the article, she constantly finds that bus passengers put one dollar bill, two dollar bills, even a twenty-dollar bill into her blanket while she is asleep.
Jesus stoops down to us in our miserable condition, bringing the gifts of new life. He does not ask us what we are doing to make ourselves better; he just gives the gift. He does not ask if we are working to turn ourselves around; he does not ask for a receipt; he puts redemption into our blanket.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“When I say theologically mature, I mean just this: formed by the Bible, proudly Trinitarian, grounded in justification by grace through faith, dedicated to the person of Jesus Christ, convinced of his incarnation as Son of God, recognizing his death on the Cross as redemption from sin for the whole world, boldly convinced of the truth of the Resurrection, and committed to a worldwide mission of witness in Christ's name.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“Perhaps the strongest statement we can make about the resurrection in this book about the crucifixion is that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, we would never have heard of him.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Resurrection in and of itself was not unheard of; after all, gods who died and rose again were ubiquitous in the ancient Near East. 22 The unique feature of the Christian proclamation is the shocking claim that God is fully acting, not only in Jesus’ resurrected life, but especially in Jesus’ death on the cross. To say the same thing in another way, the death of Jesus in and of itself would not be anything remarkable. What is remarkable is that the Creator of the universe is shown forth in this gruesome death.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Justice for everyone is an alarming thought because it raises the possibility that it might come upon oneself after all. As the author of Ephesians puts it, “by nature” we are all “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Whenever we are sure that we are among the righteous, we immediately find ourselves among the arrogant.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“Our lives are eschatologically stretched between the sneak preview of the new world being born among us in the church, and the old world where the principalities and powers are reluctant to give way. In the meantime, which is the only time the church has ever known, we live as those who know something about the fate of the world that the world does not yet know. And that makes us different. —Will Willimon, Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“The crucifixion is the touchstone of Christian authenticity, the unique feature by which everything else, including the resurrection, is given its true significance. The resurrection is not a set piece. It is not an isolated demonstration of divine dazzlement. It is not to be detached from its abhorrent first act. The resurrection is, precisely, the vindication of a man who was crucified. Without the cross at the center of the Christian proclamation, the Jesus story can be treated as just another story about a charismatic spiritual figure. It is the crucifixion that marks out Christianity as something definitively different in the history of religion. It is in the crucifixion that the nature of God is truly revealed. Since the resurrection is God's mighty transhistorical Yes to the historically crucified Son, we can assert that the crucifixion is the most important historical event that has ever happened. The resurrection, being a transhistorical event planted within history, does not cancel out the contradiction and shame of the cross in this present life; rather, the resurrection ratifies the cross as the way "until he comes.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Sentimental, overly “spiritualized” love is not capable of the sustained, unconditional agape of Christ shown on the cross. Only from the perspective of the crucifixion can the true nature of Christian love be seen, over against all that the world calls “love.” The one thing needful, according to Paul, is that the Christian community should position itself rightly, at the juncture where the cross calls all present arrangements into question with a corresponding call for endurance and faith.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. He did not need to have his mind changed. He was never opposed to us. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God’s side, by God’s initiative, from inside human flesh — the human flesh of the Son.44 The divine hostility, or wrath of God, has always been an aspect of his love.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“In the final analysis, the book of job is asking this great question: Is there a living God beyond what we can imagine? Is there a Being independent of us, beyond the boundaries of earthly life and earthly struggle? Is there a God who speaks with a voice that is not simply projected out of our human religious consciousness ?6 Is there a God who can deliver us from the dust? Job's great longing is for revelation. He craves a God who is really God. He wants to be shown that God has a power that he cannot discern in the world that he knows.' That is why he is different from his friends, whose entire message is bound up with their need to believe that there are "explanations" for everything.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“From this time forth I make you hear new things, hidden things which you have not known. They are created now... Before today you have never heard of them." (48:6-7)
Notice the most radical announcement here. "Before today you have never heard of the things that God will do. They are not accessible to human imagination. "They are created now." They are "hidden things which you have not known." This feature of Second Isaiah is what has led interpreters to call this prophet the first apocalyptic theologian - meaning, the first to show in an unmistakable way that God will interrupt the normal progression of things by arriving in - indeed, invading - the midst of human events from a sphere of power capable of calling into existence the things that do not exist (as Paul says in Romans 4:17).”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“The mercy of God does not depend on human virtue for its fulfillment.”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Now it's very interesting that although we are told that modern Christians don't believe in the Last Judgment anymore, no one objects when a judge in a courtroom hands down a judgment. We believe in that kind of judgment - as long as it's a judgment on someone else, someone who deserves it. So in our minds we are already dividing the righteous from the unrighteous, with ourselves - of course - on the side of the righteous.
But isn't that a rather perilous place to be? How much effort does it take to remain on the right side of that balance sheet? And by what criteria, and by whom, will this determination be made?”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“The Son of God did not come to make good people better but to give life to the dead.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“If our preaching does not intersect with the times, we are fleeing the call to take up the cross. We can learn from the example of Dostoevsky, who in The Brothers Karamazov used material that he read in the newspapers to give a human face to the problem of evil.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Studying the Bible and trying to make sense of it in our own lives has been called "thinking God's thoughts after him." The Bible is unique among books because it is written from God's point of view. Let's pause over that for a moment, because it is a staggering claim. That claim could not be made if it were not for one conviction: that God has truly revealed himselfin his Word. If it is true, then the Bible - despite the assertions of a great many textual critics and historians of religion - is written not from the point of view of North or South, Israel or Egypt, Jew or Gentile, but from God's point of view. And God knows what he is doing with his right hand and what he is doing with his left. We don't, but he does. And it is God's right hand that does his proper work, his ultimate work. His left hand is doing his penultimate work, his alien work, the work of judgment that will finally be taken up into his saving work, the work of his right hand.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“The New Testament writings all presuppose that the fallen human race and the equally fallen created order are sick unto death beyond human resourcefulness.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“The entire thrust of this season at the end of the church year is designed to bring us face-to-face with reality—reality about sin and death, reality about the human race, reality about God. Something ultimate has entered our world, something or Someone that calls us to attention, calls us out of our daily preoccupations and our routine points of view. That is what this season with its special biblical readings is designed to reveal”
― Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“If we think of Christian theology and ethics purely in terms of forgiveness, we will have neglected a central aspect of God’s own character and will be in no position to understand the cross in its fullest dimension.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Nothing in the Bible makes any religious sense unless we are people of faith who believe that God's own self speaks to us in this living Word.”
― Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament

“Only God can execute a regime change in which the tyrannical Powers are displaced and overthrown. This is the story of the purpose of God, “which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10).”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“By becoming one of the poor who was deprived of his rights, by dying as one of those robbed of justice, God's Son submitted to the utmost extremity of humiliation, entering into total solidarity with those who are without help.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Although people feel blessed in the presence of a holy man who wants the world to be right and people to be happy, the holy man cannot make that happen.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ