If You Meet Jesus On The Road, Kill Him

A famous old piece of Zen wisdom says: “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.” There are a couple of reasons why we are called to take Buddha out. The most commonly cited reason is that the prophet in the road is not really Buddha at all, but a figment of our imaginations–a psychological projection of the person we want Buddha to be. To approach the real Buddha we have to eliminate (kill) these projections.

The other reason for killing Buddha in the road is that by doing so we drop our last crutch and begin walking our spiritual path with full freedom and independence. In other words, we kill Buddha in the road to attain Buddha-hood ourselves. By killing Buddha we honor Buddha and ironically give him life.

This teaching actually finds great resonance in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In the Gospel narratives, the disciples insist on seeing Jesus of Nazareth only through the prism of their own psychological projections, expecting him to assume the crown of an earthly king,¹ all the while refusing to truly honor Jesus by accepting the kingdom of heaven within, where Christ reigns eternally.

So, today, let the Progressive Christian be the Zen Christian: If you meet Jesus on the road, kill him.

Where you want this killin’ done? God said, “Out on Highway 61.”
– Bob Dylan

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1. On the following day great numbers of people who had come to the festival, hearing that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, took palm-branches, And went out to meet him, shouting as they went: “God save Him! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord: the King of Israel!” John 12:12-13 [↩]

Where is Our Joy?

Henry David Thoreau, tucked away in his Walden cabin, famously said that most of us lead lives of quiet desperation. That was in 1845. Today, things are not so quiet. Anxiety and depression are regular rites of passage from which millions of Americans never graduate. Civility meanwhile has long been dropped from our national discourse. It’s a sad indictment of a country where so many pride themselves in a Christian heritage. We have the highest levels of church attendance in the world. Almost eighty percent of us say that we believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet, where is our joy? Where is our vitality? Where is our peace of mind?

The Son comes to complete our happiness in this life, (1) yet it’s clear not many are receiving “the good news“. Instead, we are sold a gospel that forsakes the living hour for a future heavenly reward: a spiritual reckoning that asks for little and receives even less in return. Simply accept Jesus Christ as your savior, we are told, and you’ll be hanging out with the good Lord for eternity. If it were only so easy. (2)

Jesus of Nazareth didn’t teach the idler’s path to God. He said that because much has been given us, much is expected. (3) He described the kingdom of heaven as a place that doesn’t suffer fools. (4) And he asked that his followers become as perfect as their Father in heaven (5), a seemingly impossible task, if it were not for the fact that all things are possible with the help of God. (6)

The first step toward perfection, according to Jesus, is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. (7) The mind gets short shrift from many Christians today. We forget that Jesus amazed people with both his miracles and his wits. (8) He was a man, we are told, whose wisdom grew as he grew in years. (9) Only after reaching maturity did his intellect surpass that of the legendary King Solomon. (10)

Clear thinking is essential for Christians because Jesus asks that we decide for ourselves what is right. (11) Making those correct choices requires intelligence and learning, as well as faith and a loving heart. God did not bless us with extraordinary minds, whose complexity dwarfs that of any computer, only to have us park them in storage. Instead, we are called to develop our logic and reason to transform our minds into Christ’s “winnowing fans.” So that the chaff might be removed from the wheat: (12) the dead teachings from the living Word…

Excerpted from the introduction to the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). A faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life.

Jesus’s Audacity of Acceptance (Not Hope)

The latest e-Bulletin from the Center for Progressive Christianity is titled “Why Do We Dare to Have Hope?“–a somewhat tepid title variation of Barack Obama’s well-known book The Audacity of Hope. In the newsletter we thus have articles dealing with the role of HOPE in the Progressive Christian path. We have President Fred Plumer talking about “hope” as an action of creative transformation, SBNR Pastor Ian Lawton arguing that being filled up with “hope” is a choice, and a book review about how “hope” brings beauty to the Christian journey.

But as is so often the case when it comes to “hope,” none of the writers seem compelled to seek out their answers in the Gospels and teachings of Christ. The reason so many Progressive Christian writers omit the Gospels when writing about “hope” is because the Books teach not hope but the trappings of hope misdirected. The disciples in their longing for Jesus to become an earthly messiah who rules over Rome become poster children for those who place misguided expectations on others.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus preaches not the audacity of hope, for hope is as common as a lack of hope: they are natural human reactions to the events around us. What he teaches (which truly is unusual) is the audacity of acceptance. To accept God’s Kingdom “at hand” even when the hand we are dealt is hard or painful. Jesus calls us not to pray for future wants but for simply “our daily bread,” because God already knows what we need before we ask him.¹

Some will say, “But won’t this steal the zest from living? Won’t this allow evil to thrive without opposition? Won’t this halt the progress we all so long to see?” The answer is No, No, and No. For the audacity of acceptance should not be confused with the lassitude of resignation. Acceptance means to accept the challenge of life today, without injecting the future with our personal desires: To work with love and diligence at whatever job is at hand, no matter how small or insignificant: To embrace the skills that God has blessed us with and put them to use for the joy and benefit of others: To speak the truth, regardless of the consequences: And to forgive abundantly.

When we do this successfully, the future will take care of itself, and his Kingdom will have indeed come–and that is the only hope that matters.

Let God Almighty rule eternity. My precincts are the minutes and hours of every day. And as long as people have hopes and dreams, well then, I will have work to do. – The Devil in The Book of Life by Hal Hartley.

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1. God, your Father, knows what you need before you ask him – Matthew 6:8 [↩]

Ways of Escape

The Catholic writer Graham Greene famously summed up his life as a search for “Ways of Escape.” He said that his abundant writing and travels were simply a means to escape the panic fear, madness, and melancholia of contemporary life. Green’s life summation goes a long way in helping to explain some events found in the canonical Gospels of Jesus the Christ.

It often strikes the objective reader as odd that the future disciples drop everything on a dime when the stranger named Jesus comes walking along and says “follow me.”¹ But is it really that strange? As Thoreau said, the majority of us do live lives of quiet desperation, and thus are seeking ways of escape.

Yet few of us have the intestinal fortitude of Graham Greene–the courage to fashion an escape route on our own. But if we have the opportunity to follow someone else, someone who can lead us, then the decision to break away becomes much easier. Strength in numbers, as they say. That is why cult leaders are so successful.

Jesus wasn’t a cult leader, though, no matter how much his disciples wished him to be one.² Jesus sought to give his followers the strength to escape the chains that bound them, but once the break was clean, he wanted them to walk their own path.

Jesus Christ calls us all to be strong. Not strong for him, but rather our true selves, for the Christ in us.

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1. As Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers–Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew–casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. “Come and follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” The two men left their nets at once and followed him. – Matthew 4:18-20 [↩]
2. On the following day great numbers of people who had come to the festival, hearing that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, took palm-branches, 13 And went out to meet him, shouting as they went: “God save Him! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord: the King of Israel!” – John 12:12-13 [↩]

Mark – Gospel 3 – Satan Can’t Drive Out Satan

On another occasion Jesus went in to a synagogue, where there was a man whose hand was withered. 2 And they watched Jesus closely, to see if he would cure the man on the Sabbath, so that they might have a charge to bring against him.

3 “Stand out in the middle,” Jesus said to the man with the withered hand; 4 And to the people he said: “Is it allowable to do good on the Sabbath? Or harm? To save a life, or destroy it?” 5 As they remained silent, Jesus looked round at them in anger, grieving at the hardness of their hearts, and said to the man: “Stretch out your hand.” The man stretched it out; and his hand had become sound. 6 Immediately on leaving the Synagogue, the Pharisees and the Herodians united in laying a plot against Jesus, to put him to death.

7 Then Jesus went away with his disciples to the sea, followed by a great number of people from Galilee. 8 And a great number, hearing of all that he was doing, came to him from Judea, from Jerusalem, from Edom, from beyond the Jordan, and from the country round Tyre and Sidon. 9 So Jesus told his disciples to keep a small boat close by, for fear the crowd should crush him. 10 For he had cured many of them, and so people kept crowding upon him, that all who were afflicted might touch him.

11 The foul spirits, too, whenever they caught sight of him, flung themselves down before him, and screamed out: “You are the Son of God”! 12 But he repeatedly warned them not to make him known. 13 And Jesus made his way up the hill, and called those whom he wished; and they went to him. 14 And he appointed twelve, whom he also named ‘apostles,’ that they might be with him, and that he might send them out as his messengers, to preach, 15 And with power to drive out demons.

16 So he appointed the twelve: Peter (which was the name that Jesus gave to Simon), 17 James, the son of Zebediah, and his brother John (whom he surnamed Boanerges, meaning the sons of thunder), 18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, 19 And Judas Iscariot, the man that betrayed him. 20 Jesus went into a house; and again a crowd collected, so that they were not able even to eat their food.

21 When his relations heard of it, they went to take charge of him, for they said that he was out of his mind. 22 And the teachers of the law, who had come down from Jerusalem, said: “He has the devil in him, and he drives the demons out by the help of Beelzebub, their chief.” 23 So Jesus called them to him, and answered them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 When a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot last; 25 And when a household is divided against itself, it will not be able to last. 26 So, if Satan is in revolt against himself and is divided, he cannot last; his end has come!

27 No one who has got into a strong man’s house can carry off his goods, without first securing him; and not till then will they plunder his house. 28 I tell you that men will be forgiven everything: their sins, and all the slanders that they utter; 29 but whoever slanders the Holy Spirit remains unforgiven to the end; he has to answer for an enduring sin.” 30 This was said in reply to the charge that he had a foul spirit in him.

31 And his mother and his brothers came, and stood outside, and sent to ask him to come to them. 32 There was a crowd sitting round Jesus, and some of them said to him: “Look, your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” 33 “Who is my mother? and my brothers?” was his reply. 34 Then he looked around on the people sitting in a circle round him, and said: “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

To read the next chapter of the Book of Mark, please go to The Gospel of Mark – 4.

This Online New Testament Gospel of Mark is excerpted from the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Century Gospels). Including over 200 bookmarked citations from the canonical Gospels, this Progressive Christian book appeals to the Unitarian spirit at the heart of all faiths.

Give Us This Day

Give us this day our daily bread… Up to this point in The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus has been laying a foundation–one that establishes our relationship to God and his creation. When we recite the beginning of the prayer, we are thus engaging in an act of grounding, reminding ourselves that at the core of our existence we remain rooted in Christ. (1)

With the foundation complete, Jesus moves on to what many of us think is the business of prayer: asking for things. But as we mentioned in Chapter 2, prayer isn’t about asking for special favors. In fact, it isn’t even about “asking” at all–since, as Jesus says, God already knows what we need before we ask him. (2) So what is prayer about? The simplest answer is that it is about gathering and release.

When we think about gathering and Christ, the first image that comes to mind is probably the shepherd. Many of us see Jesus as the “Good Shepherd” (3) gathering his lost flock back within the fold of his love. This image is popular because Jesus often used sheep and shepherds as metaphors when he taught. He described those who deliver the gospel of Christ as lambs among wolves, (4) and those without Christ’s guidance as sheep without a shepherd. (5) He also warned us of embracing false teachers who come in the guise of innocent sheep but have sinister hidden agendas. (6)

What we don’t usually think about when contemplating gathering is the story of the prodigal son. We talked earlier about how this parable reveals the will of God as a matter of choice. But when we turn our attention to the son, and view the story through his eyes, the parable reveals a different lesson–which is the wonderful thing about parables: like crystals, they reflect new light (insight) as we turn them…

This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). A faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life.

If you have benefited from the work of LivingHour.org, please support us today by linking to our website. We also welcome and appreciate your financial support. You can make your secure online donation via PayPal by clicking the following icon:




To read the next excerpt from The Lord’s Prayer Book, please go to The Lord’s Prayer – Gathering Our Inheritance.