The movement that Jesus begins is constituted by people who believe that they have all the time in the world, made possible by Godโs patience, to challenge the worldโs impatient violence by cross and resurrection.
Stanley HauerwasItโs hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of Godโs new age, a kingdom of surprise.
Stanley HauerwasThe church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.
Stanley HauerwasIn the Crusades, getting the Holy Land back was the goal, and any means could be used to achieve it. World War II was a crusade. The firebombing of Tokyo by Doolittle and the carpet bombing in Germany, especially by the British, showed that.
Stanley HauerwasWhenever a people are bound together in loyalty to a story that includes something as strange as the Sermon on the Mount, we are put at odds with the world.
Stanley HauerwasThe basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is - God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.
Stanley Hauerwas