The Nonviolent Jesus

Dear friends, Next week we will be publishing highlights of our 52 episodes here on the first year of The Nonviolent Jesus podcast. Next year we will continue to explore and expand our dedication to nonviolence with conversations with inspirational thought leaders and icons of peacemakers and nonviolent activists. Thank you to everyone who listens and subscribes and shares the nonviolent Jesus in your world. This week I take a deep dive into Matthew 2, the famous story of the three Magi. I offer this Christmas reflection as four movements: 1) The journey to the nonviolent Jesus; 2) The epiphany of meeting the nonviolent Jesus; 3) What we do after we meet the nonviolent Jesus; and 4) The epilogue, and how the empire, the culture of violence and war, reacts to the coming of the nonviolent Jesus and the threat of active nonviolence.Let's take our inspiration from the Magi, as I propose that their story is our story. Like the three wisdom figures, we too are on a spiritual journey, a holy pilgrimage, one that lasts a lifetime—the journey to the God of peace, to God’s reign of peace and the nonviolent Jesus.During this episode we ask ourselves: When did you have an epiphany of the God of peace? When have you met the nonviolent Jesus among the poor, the homeless and the marginalized? How does nature lead you to the God of peace? What gifts do you bring the nonviolent Jesus? The shocking part of Matthew 2 is what happens after the Epiphany. The Magi were ordered to report back to the warmaking, sociopathic tyrant, King Herod, but instead they commit civil disobedience and head home a different way!Matthew invites us this Christmas to seek the nonviolent Jesus on the margins of the culture of violence, empire and war.Let our encounter with the nonviolent Jesus lead us away from the corrupt culture of violence and war.We too, can live as wisdom pilgrims of nonviolence who obey Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount teachings.Let's do our part to stop the ongoing slaughter of the innocents; and to serve God and God’s reign of peace only from now on. Merry Christmas to everyone and may the God of peace bless you on your Epiphany journey! ---Fr. Johnbeatitudescenter.org

This week I reflect on what I call “Mary’s Advent Journey of Nonviolence,” from the Anunciation to the Visitation to the Magnificat.Luke tells her story as the three movements of the spiritual life--from contemplative nonviolence to active nonviolence to the Magnificat as prophetic nonviolence.How did Jesus learn his spectacular nonviolence? Luke tells us it is from his Holy Jewish mother, Mary and she can be our teacher too. In the Anunciation, contemplates what God has told her in silence and stillness. In the Visitation as active nonviolence, Mary reaches out to “love her neighbor” and “show compassion to someone in need.” These public actions would become the bedrock teachings of Luke’s Jesus. In this second movement of nonviolence, when we reach out in love to serve someone in need, we bring peace, joy, and consolation. That’s what peacemakers do.Mary also proclaims the greatness of the God of peace, announces that God is throwing down the rulers from their thrones and lifting up the lowly, and remembering God’s promise of mercy, of nonviolence!, for generations to come! Like Mary, this Advent, we proclaim a prophetic announcement about the coming of God’s reign of peace and nonviolence here and now.Listen in, take heart, and go forward into the Christmas blessings of contemplative, active and prophetic nonviolence! God bless everyone—Fr. Johnbeatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with my friend Mike Martin, a blacksmith and founder of RAWtools.org, one of the most creative Christian peacemaking projects in the country.To me, this is what the Advent work of "beating guns into garden tools" is all about: getting ready for the coming of peace on earth.Mike Martin is a former Mennonite youth pastor and licensed for this specialized ministry by the Mennonite Conference. He learned to how to blacksmith in order to turn guns into garden tools. He is the co-author of a great book with our friend Shane Claiborne, Beating Guns: Hope for people who are weary of violence. See www.beatingguns.comI first met Mike about 10 years ago at the Wildgoose Christian summer festival in North Carolina. I was giving a talk on peacemaking in a tent, and Mike was outside banging away on handguns and putting them into a fire, and eventually, turning them into plowshares, garden tools, and little crosses to wear around your neck--I kid you not.It was thrilling. I was talking about beating swords into plowshares, but he was actually doing it, and you could take part in it, and hammer on a gun, and maybe buy one of his new creations.Since then, his project has taken off around the country. Check out: www.rawtools.org“I've probably hammered on a gun barrel thousands of times and it feels meaningful every time,” he tells me. “We're using raw tools--not war tools--to transform the world. We offer a safe space for gun violence survivors to heal.”"Gun violence survivors tells us it's the first time they can deal with their anger or pain in a healthy way, you're destroying the thing that brought you harm to transforming something that can cultivate life ." Be inspired by a former Mennonite pastor and blacksmith that has created a unique movement to disarm hearts, promote peace and cultivate justice. Listen in and learn how to do your Advent part of preparing for the coming of peace on earth. God bless everyone!www.rawtools.orgbeatingguns.combeatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with Congressman Jamie Raskin, one of the strongest voices and advocates for democracy and truth, about movements, democracy, and nonviolence. He represents Maryland’s 8th Con. District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Raskin was previously a state senator in Maryland where he helped abolish the death penalty and gain marriage equality. Before that, he was a professor of constitutional law at American University for more than 25 years. He has authored several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People, the acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and About America’s Students, and the New York Times #1 best-seller Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy, about the death of his beloved son Tommy, followed two weeks later by the Jan. 6th insurrection led by Trump.Jamie shares with us his harrowing story of hiding under a desk with his daughter and son-in-law sending what they thought were farewell texts while a violent mob was pounding on the door screaming death threats. He was appointed to lead the 2nd impeachment trial of Donald Trump. It ended in the most sweeping bipartisan vote to convict an impeached president in history. He also served on the committee to investigate the Jan. 6th attack. "We're in the fight of our lives and have been since the beginning of this nightmare,” he says at the start. “But people are galvanized and mobilizing all across the country." Listen to this incredible leader of democracy and constitutional expert explain in his own words what democracy means to him and how we have to be a part of saving the country we live in. “The whole Constitution is under attack, and we need the whole people to defend it. Democracy is the system that relies on nonviolent expression.” Hear why he calls to us to "be the hope!” https://raskin.house.govbeatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with my friend, filmmaker and author Gerry Straub about his life making films about extreme poverty around the world, and then his move to Haiti where he founded the Santa Chiara Children’s Center, an orphanage for children in war-torn Port au Prince.Last year, he had to flee Haiti because of the total violence and anarchy that has swept through the country. Since then, he’s been living in Florida and helping the orphanage online and via zoom.He has now written a new book about his mythic journey from Hollywood, where he was once the director of the soap opera “General Hospital,” to Assisi, where he wrote his award- winning book about St. Francis called The Sun and the Moon Over Assisi, to his founding Pax Et Bonum Communications, where for twenty years he traveled into the poorest slums on the planet and made some 20 movies about extreme poverty. All those films can now be watched for free online at www.paxetbonumcomm.org (including the film he made about my work for nonviolence, “The Narrow Path”).“I was just trying to understand St Francis' love of the poor and poverty itself,” he tells me at the start. “I knew could put the power of film to the service of the poor.”Gerry moved to Haiti himself and started the orphanage. His new spiritual memoir, The Cross of Love, The Pain of Poverty, (with a foreword by me) is available online and all proceeds go to the orphanage. To learn about Santa Chiara, or offer a donation, please visit www.santachiaracc.org.“We wanted the children to live a nonviolent life. In this horrible place of screaming kids and gun shots, something beautiful was created.” Listen in and be inspired!www.paxetbonumcomm.orgwww.santachiaracc.org