David

“Recently a well-known megachurch pastor said, “When I’m looking for a leader I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find.” Whether he understands it or not, this evangelical pastor is saying, “Give us Barabbas!” For many American Christians the politics of Jesus are dismissed as impractical and so they kick the can down the road saying, “maybe someday we can turn our swords into plowshares, but now is the time for us to build more B-2 bombers and stockpile nukes so we can kill all our enemies.” The crowd that gathers on Good Friday shouting, “Give us Barabbas!,” is far more plausible and numerous than most of us imagine. If we think that killing our enemies is compatible with Christian ethics, we are in effect saying, “Give us Barabbas!” But Lent is the time to rethink everything in the light of Christ. We are not called to scrutinize the Sermon on the Mount through the lens of the Pentagon; we are called to follow Jesus by embodying the kingdom of God here and now, no matter what the rest of the world does.”
― Brian Zahnd, The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey

“There should be no theology that does not relate to the mission of the church – either by being generated out of the church’s mission or by inspiring and shaping it. And there should be no mission of the church carried on without deep theological roots in the soil of the Bible. No theology without missional impact; no mission without theological foundations.”
― Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission

“Mission arises from the heart of God himself, and is communicated from his heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global God.”
― Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission

“for God, doing justice means particularly attending to the needs of the weak and poor, it makes us question whether the traditional understanding of justice as ‘strict impartiality’ is really at all appropriate in the biblical context. On the contrary, it is so clear that the LORD is especially attentive to the needs of the marginalized (see Deut. 10:18–19) that it would seem to be the very nature of justice, on God’s terms, for humans also to have such a prioritized concern.”
― Christopher J.H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God