10/22/2026
At CAC’s recent virtual gathering, How Can We Reclaim Jesus from Empire?, Brian McLaren shared how his faith has changed since he embraced the historical Jesus of the Gospels.
A passage from that event is featured in today’s full Daily Meditation https://buff.ly/8c9be65:
In the last couple of hundred years, wave after wave of theologians and Christian thinkers and activists have tried to free Jesus from our theological straitjackets and rediscover him in his historical and political setting. When you do that, you realize the core message of Jesus was not, “Here are the four steps to go to heaven when you die.” Jesus’s core message was, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” “At hand” means within reach and available now. That’s revolutionary! So few see this, in part because of misguided traditions of teaching and in part because of confusing translations.
Our English word kingdom comes from a Greek word, “basilea,” which means empire. It’s the same word. So, Jesus shows up in a historical moment when the empire of Caesar in Rome is dominating the Mediterranean world. Jesus says, “Hey everybody! The empire of Caesar is a dirty little neighborhood within a much bigger kingdom—the empire of God. Stop framing your lives in that small, ugly, distorted frame of earthly human empire. Deconstruct all your Rome-dominated assumptions. Learn a whole new way of seeing the world because the empire of God is all around us and within reach!”
Sadly, too many Christians have done the reverse. They have shrunk God into the image of a human emperor. They see God as a supreme, dominating, authoritarian autocrat. They don’t see how Jesus is taking the language of empire and flipping it on its head.
What do empires do? They kill people. What does Jesus do? He dies as a nonviolent witness against empire.
What do empires do? They torture and imprison people. Jesus heals people and sets them free.
What do empires do? Empires forcefully relocate people. Jesus goes to people where they are and meets them where they are.
What do empires do? They create domination hierarchies: These people are over these people, who are over these people, who are over these people. What does Jesus do? He takes the role of the servant and washes people’s feet. He leads from below, kneeling at their feet. What a stark reversal of human domination systems.
Yes, Jesus talks about God being a father, but is Jesus’s father a Roman patriarchal father? No, God is the opposite: a merciful parent who doesn’t punish a disobedient son, but rather welcomes him home and throws a party to celebrate.
Suddenly, when you see this, you see everything in a new light. Jesus doesn’t legitimize human nation-states and their dominating systems of top-down control. In word and deed, Jesus exposes and inverts the whole pyramid.
He points to something bigger and more beautiful. Shouldn't we do the same?
Reference: Adapted from Brian McLaren with Randy Woodley and Edith Woodley, “How Can We Reclaim Jesus from Empire?” (Center for Action and Contemplation, July 10, 2026).
