The Jesus I Never Knew

reputation as “a wine-bibber and a glutton.” Those in authority, whether religious or political, regarded him as a troublemaker, a disturber of the peace. He spoke and acted like a revolutionary, scorning fame, family, property, and other traditional measures of success. I could not dodge the fact that the words in Pasolini's film were taken entirely from Matthew's gospel, yet their message clearly did not fit my prior conception of Jesus.

For me, the film helped to force a disturbing revaluation of my image of Jesus. In physical appearance, Jesus favored those who would have been kicked out of Bible college and rejected by most churches. Among his con‍

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In 1971 I first saw the movie The Gospel According to St. Matthew, directed by Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.2

Bill Milliken3, who had founded a commune in an inner-city neighborhood, wrote So Long, Sweet Jesus. The title of that book gave words to the change at work inside me

Can we trust that God can make something holy and beautiful and good out of a world that includes Bosnia and Rwanda, and inner-city ghettoes and jammed prisons in the richest nation on earth? It's Saturday on planet earth; will Sunday ever come?

They had learned that when God seems most absent he may be closest of all, when God looks most powerless he may be most powerful, when God looks most dead he may be coming back to life. They had learned never to count God out.

Our faith begins where it might have seemed to end.

The author and preacher Tony Campolo delivers a stirring sermon adapted from an elderly black pastor at his church in Philadelphia. “It's Friday, but Sunday's Comin'” is the title of the sermon, and once you know the title you know the whole

Nothing—not even the murder of God's own Son—can end the relationship between God and human beings. In the alchemy of redemption, that most villainous crime becomes our healing strength.

Although he was a son354, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”Elsewhere, that book tells us that the author of our salvation was “made perfect”363 through suffering