The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast is a free, weekly thirty-minute podcast, posted on every Monday, featuring Fr. John Dear and his reflections about Jesus, Gospel nonviolence, and peacemaking, and guests who teach, speak out, organize and work for a more just, most peaceful, more nonviolent world. Through these weekly reflections, we hope to inspire everyone to follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully and do our part to welcome God’s reign of peace with justice on earth!

Here is the schedule for the first five podcasts. The link we will provided on the day they are posted; the podcast APP will be available in early February. It will also be posted every Monday on the homepage of the National Catholic Reporter, HERE.

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear reflects on the climactic teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, the sixth antithesis, Matthew 5:43-48, the central command to love your enemies: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your countrymen and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons and daughters of your heavenly God, for God makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

These are the most radical, political, revolutionary words in the entire Bible, John says. As we mark the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s a good time to take them to heart, and figure out how to apply them concretely to our own day to day lives in this terrible moment of permanent war and global destruction.

Notice Jesus uses explicit nation/state language, John points out. He is not referring to a disagreeable neighbor or a difficult boss or a mean relative. The enemy here refers to that nation which is under attack by your nation. For North Americans, that would mean, over the past five decades, the people of Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Jesus would want North Americans not only to stop the wars against these people but to actively love these people.

We cannot love people and at the same time wage war against them, so this commandment, John suggests, outlaws war, war preparations, killings, bombings, and the development of weapons of mass destruction. He’s trying to get us ready to enter God’s nonviolent reign of universal love, so he instructs us to see beyond our borders and embrace every human being as a sister and brother, to live in peace with everyone, especially those threatened by our nation/state.

Nowhere in the text does Jesus offer an exception, John adds. He does not say, “Love your enemies, but if they’re really hateful and violent, then you can kill them.” There is no exception, no justification, no permission for killing. Killing our enemies is completely forbidden, because we are commanded to love them with agape love. The so-called Just War Theory is never mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount or the four Gospels or the New Testament. It is heresy and blasphemy.

Notice, too, John concludes, that Jesus commands us to love our enemies because God loves universally, and we are the children of God. Here in this one verse, Jesus describes the nature of God in the simplest, clearest terms—God loves every human being no matter what, and if we want to worship, serve, and be related to this God, we must do the same. The text challenges us to question our image of God. Is our God violent or nonviolent? Do we want the God of universal nonviolent love that Jesus announces? If we want to be sons and daughters of the living God, are we willing to practice the same universal nonviolent love as God and to accept the social, economic, and political consequences for our public stand? Check it out and be inspired!

Upcoming Podcasts

August 11th. #32. John Dear in conversation with Terry Rynne
August 18th. #33. John Dear in conversation with Brad Wolf
August 25th. #34. John Dear in conversation with Ken Butigan
September 1st. #35. John Dear in conversation with Rivera Sun
September 8th. #36. John Dear in conversation with Stanley Hauerwas

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast” John Dear welcomes teacher and organizer, Terry Rynne, author of two important books, Jesus Christ Peacemaker, and Gandhi and Jesus” (Orbis Books).

Terry is a former priest from Chicago, who became a hospital administrator. Then from 1983-2003, he was President of Rynne Marketing Consulting Services which advised over 400 hospitals, in 48 states, over the 20 years. In 2006, he received his PhD in Theology from Marquette University, and then in 2008, he co-founded, with his wife Sally, the Center for Peacemaking at Marquette University, which has gone on to make a huge difference in Milwaukee teaching nonviolent conflict resolution skills in schools. For years, he has taught the Introduction to Peace Studies course at Marquette University. He helped launch the Beatitudes Center and is chair of the board.

Terry spoke about the power of Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March to mobilize the people of India to demand justice and independence, and in particular, the famous silent march to the Dharasana Salt Works, where the British hit each of the 1500 peaceful marchers over their heads with steal poles just as they approached the gate. This deliberate British violence and the unarmed, nonviolent response of the wounded shocked the world and forced Britain to begin the process of granting independence and leaving independence. That’s the logic of the cross, Terry explained. That’s what we have to pursue.

“Jesus devoted his life to confronting the structures of oppression and violence and changing them through active nonviolence,” he says. In the earliest Gospel, in one of his first public actions, Mark’s Jesus heals the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, and in the next sentence, we read that that the religious authorities met with the political leaders to plot the assassination of Jesus. What did Jesus do? Terry asks. Why do they want to kill him? How are we to model his approach in our unjust world? Do we want to follow his bold, risky example?

“Why did Jesus die?” Terry asks. “Because he was killed! Why was he killed? Because he stood up and offended the powers that be!” We, too, need to stand up, speak out and resist the structures of violence and oppression, even to the point of offending the powers that be, he teaches, if we want to follow Jesus.

Jesus removed suffering from people, Terry adds. He changed the culture’s attitude towards violence; he turned enemies into friends. That’s his challenge for us today

“Nonviolence is the heart of the gospel,” he concludes. “Nonviolence adds love in the midst of conflict. These days, I have hope in the Catholic Church becoming a peaceful church that embraces nonviolence. We can get there.” Terry Rynne encourages us to go forward with the same daring nonviolence of Jesus, even in the age of Trump, and be forces of disarmament, justice, and positive social change. Listen in and be inspired!