The Jesus I never Knew

I was just re-reading an old email my Pastor Ben Trolese sent me. He sent me some quotes from the a famous book by Philip Yancey, The Jesus I never Knew. I've read the book myself, and find it very inspirational, because for those of us who grew up going to church attending the canny Sunday school lectures with nice, smiling teachers, who spoke of the Jesus figure as the mystical human figure who, came down to earth to die for your sins, and furthermore, that He did it because He loved you, and wanted to spend the rest of eternity with you. This seemed as a nice little tale with a happy ending, but left my Jesus in the shadows as I tried to understand why He did it, and what love meant to Him, specially when I was taught that love was never to hurt those whom you loved the most, and that love would never bring any pain if it were to be true love.
So, I present to you, the quotes from the book I mentioned earlier, so that you may find something more than just amusement, and find the reality of Christ's cross


"I am drawn to Jesus, irresistibly, because he positioned himself as the dividing point of life-my life... "I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God," he said.
According to Jesus, what I think about him and how I respond will determine my destiny for all eternity."

"God's terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though he did not exist, to spit in his face, to crucify him."

"Jesus knew rejection. More, Jesus' life was defined by rejection. His neighbors laughed at him, his family questioned his sanity, his closest friends betrayed him, and his countrymen traded his life for that of a terrorist."

"Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert."

"Sidney Carter wrote this disturbing poem:
But God is up in heaven
And he doesn't do a thing,
With a million angels watching,
And they never move a wing....
It's God they ought to crucify
Instead of you and me,
I said to this Carpenter
A-hanging on a tree."

"The priest Henri Nouwen sat in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, for many hours meditating on Rembrant's great painting "Return of the Prodigal Son." While staring at the painting, Nouwen gained a new insight into the parable: the mystery that Jesus himself became something of a prodigal son for our sakes. "He left the house of his heavenly Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned through a cross to his Father's home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of God ... Jesus is the prodigal son of the prodigal Father who gave away everything the Father had entrusted to him so that I could become like him and return with him to his Father's home."

My deepest devotions,
ASD