February 10, 2025 • 40 mins
The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast
🎙️ Episode #6: Fr. John Dear on “The Nonviolence of Jesus: 10 Essentials”
đź“… Drops Feb. 10, 2025
What if Jesus wasn’t just a teacher of love, but a radical, nonviolent activist challenging empire, oppression, and injustice? What if his message wasn’t about passive faith but fearless resistance rooted in love?
In this episode, Fr. John Dear breaks down 10 essential lessons on the nonviolence of Jesus—a message more urgent than ever in our world of war, division, and systemic injustice. From the Sermon on the Mount to his bold civil disobedience in the Temple, from "Put down the sword!" in Gethsemane to the radical new covenant at the Last Supper (“My blood shed for you, do this!” — a total rejection of violence), we’ll explore how Jesus wasn’t just preaching peace—he embodied it in action.
This is more than theology—it’s a call to action. If you’re serious about peacemaking, activism, and following Jesus in a way that actually challenges power and transforms the world, this episode is for you.
Fr. John Dear is a renegade priest, activist, and author of 40+ books, including The Beatitudes of Peace and The Gospel of Peace. He’s been arrested for standing up against war and nuclear weapons, and he’s here to invite you into a new way of living the Gospel—one of courage, justice, and relentless nonviolence.
🔥 Are you ready to follow Jesus in a way that shakes the world? Tune in now.
👉 More from John Dear: www.johndear.org 👉 Join the movement: www.beatitudescenter.org
#Nonviolence #JesusTheActivist #RadicalChristianity #Peacemaking #SocialJustice #GospelAction
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm John, Father John Deere, and this is a project
(00:17):
of www.beattitudecenter.org where you can find many other podcasts and Zoom programs
on the nonviolence of Jesus, practicing nonviolence, and working for a more just,
more nonviolent world. I thought I would offer today a general reflection and overview on the
nonviolence of Jesus and make ten essential points, which I'll probably go into more detail later on.
(00:45):
Some of you may have heard this already, but we can never hear it enough. If you're interested
in exploring this further, I recommend my latest book, The Gospel of Peace, A Commentary on Matthew,
Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence, as well as my other books on Jesus,
The Beatitudes of Peace, Jesus as the Rebel, and Walking the Way.
(01:06):
So let's begin with a little prayer. And so I invite you just wherever you are,
just to take a deep breath and to relax, to notice how you're feeling as we
turn to this reflection and invite you to enter back into the presence of the God of Peace,
who loves you infinitely, personally. Let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus here into our hearts
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and ask for the grace to follow him ever more faithfully and to do God's will.
God of Peace, thank you for all the blessings of life, love, and peace that you give us.
Be with us as we reflect on the nonviolence of Jesus. Inspire us to be true to you,
inspire us, disarm us, heal us, and help us to become more nonviolent like him. That we might
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do your will and do our part to help end war, poverty, racism, nuclear weapons,
environmental destruction, and all violence. That we might welcome your reign of universal
love, compassion, and peace, and be who you created us to be, your holy peacemakers,
beloved sons and daughters. We ask this mighty blessing in Jesus' name, amen.
(02:20):
So, Gandhi and Dr. King spent their whole lives, morning, noon, and night, calling us to be people
of active, creative, consistent, steadfast, dedicated, relentless, truthful, prayerful,
loving, troublemaking, public, daring nonviolence. They described nonviolence as a whole new way of
(02:42):
life, and then as a political methodology for social transformation, and then as a spiritual path,
and then as power, the power of God at our disposal to help disarm the world if we dare
step up to the plate. They proved that active, creative nonviolence is a much better way of
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ending violent conflict and ending wars than anything else that we're doing in the world,
and a way of sowing seeds for a future of universal peace. So, in light of their teachings,
what we want to do is figure out how to become more nonviolent ourselves and work to create a
culture of nonviolence and educate every human being on the planet in nonviolent conflict
(03:30):
resolution, and even develop a new theology and spirituality of nonviolence, and fund and build
whole new structures of nonviolence. That's where we're headed, Gandhi said. And so, Gandhi said
nonviolence is way beyond the refusal to hurt or kill. It's active love and truth as a force for
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positive social change that always works. And this is where the rubber hits the road, because it uses
the method of suffering love, ultimately, to melt the human heart and disarm humanity, to disarm
liberate the oppressed and oppressors together. So, here's my definition. Active nonviolence
(04:12):
begins with a vision of reconciled humanity, the reign of God in our midst, the truth that all life
is sacred, we're all one, we're all equal, all ready sisters and brothers. And so, we can never
hurt or kill anyone again, much less remain silent in the face of war and poverty and global
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destruction. So, nonviolence is not passivity. There's nothing passive about the nonviolence
of Gandhi or Dr. King. It's a political methodology that ultimately involves organizing bottom-up
people power grassroots movements to confront systemic violence, even empires, as Gandhi showed
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getting the British to leave India nonviolently, as Dr. King showed through the civil rights movement,
bringing down the segregation laws nonviolently. So, it's organized love pursuing the truth of our
common humanity that stands up and resists the systems and structures of injustice and evil,
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and persistently reconciles with everyone, and that calls for unconditional, all-inclusive,
all-encompassing, non-retaliatory, universal love. Isn't this exciting? With one catch,
there is no cause, however noble, for which we will ever again support the killing of a single
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human being, much less support the mass murder of warfare. We don't kill people. We don't kill
people who kill people to show that you shouldn't kill people. We don't support our countries in
its projects of killing people. And instead of killing others, we are willing to give our lives
in the struggle for justice and peace to stop all the killings. And we work out the root causes of
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killing and warfare to educate every human being in nonviolence and to institutionalize nonviolence.
And Gandhi discovered that nonviolence is at the heart of every religion. So, he came to this
shocking statement. I'm going to read it. It's still awesome to me. Devotion to nonviolence
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is the highest expression of humanity's conscious state. Wow! Do you agree with that? I think it's
true. Well, so, in light of Gandhi and Dr. King, when you turn to the life of Jesus, they say
that the scandal of the four Gospels is clearly that Jesus was totally nonviolent,
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the greatest person of nonviolence in history, Gandhi said. That God, according to Jesus then,
is a God of total nonviolence, and that the Gospel of Jesus demands that every human being
is called to become totally nonviolent, like Gandhi and Dr. King and Dorothy Day and all the saints
and peacemakers of history. That the church and all the churches are supposed to be a global
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community of Gospel nonviolence. Wow! Not a church that supports war or blesses violence of any kind,
under any condition, for whatever justification. So, when Gandhi says that Jesus never hurt anybody
or never supported hurting or killing anyone, that he was totally nonviolent, he's saying therefore,
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as he wrote many ways and many times, Jesus had to be totally against the Roman Empire,
which was killing and oppressing millions of people, and the religious establishment
which blessed the empire and collaborated with it to make money off of the oppression of millions
of people. So, Jesus could not be passive. He taught active, creative nonviolence, built a
(08:04):
grassroots movement, a campaign of nonviolence, and the outcome could only be his inevitable
arrest and execution by the empire. But the Gospels show that I think anyone can be violent,
but it takes real courage and power and faith and trust in the living God to be totally nonviolent
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and go forward publicly into the world of violence like Jesus did with his vision of a whole new world
of nonviolence. And that's what the Gospel calls about. And there's so much to talk about,
and I've been talking about this for 45 years, but here's what I came up with, like 10 essential
points, angles to look on the life of Jesus as presented in the four Gospels. First,
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well, the first public words of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, the first thing he said
publicly, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the Gospel. Who says that today?
I think this is total revolution, that he's saying, today I'm announcing the revolution
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of nonviolence is at hand. Renounce the Roman Empire, therefore the American Empire,
and join me in welcoming God's reign of universal love and total nonviolence here on earth starting
today. So change your life and get with the program. Now, remember, the Gospels are the
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first of the four Gospels. Now, remember, after every Roman army imperial victory,
the Roman troops would march into the next town and what? They would proclaim the Gospel
of Caesar. Hey, we've just killed another thousand people and taken over another region for
Caesar, and this is the good news of Caesar. So when the Synoptics say Jesus is announcing
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God, it's in direct opposition to the Roman Empire and every empire since. In other words,
the days of empire and the culture of violence and war are over. A new world of nonviolence,
what he called the kingdom of God, the reign of God, is at hand. The word repent, well,
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in the Greek metanoia actually means not what we say it means today in the mainstream, it means
turn around and go in the opposite direction you're going in. Now think about that. He's
saying where everyone, millions of people are going right along with the world of culture and
the Roman Empire and you do what you're told, otherwise you're going to get in trouble.
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He says turn around and go against the maddening crowd, the whole world as it goes along with the
Roman Empire, the American Empire, the Russian or Chinese Empire. A translation of this would mean
renounce the United States. We are done with its wars, racism, violence, nuclear weapons,
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destruction, and we are pursuing and living in God's reign of universal love and peace. We are
citizens from now on in God's kingdom, not in the Roman Empire or the American Empire. So this has
huge political consequences. Well, this really was good news for the poor oppressed people.
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He's saying you don't have to go along with empire anymore. We're going to build a grassroots
movement like Gandhi and Dr. King and bring down the Roman Empire, which by the way, the early
Christians did nonviolently. So that's the message and that's what he trained the disciples to say.
And so the question for you is, for all of us, how are we doing with this command? How can we
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turn away today from America and seek first God's reign of universal love and peace and nonviolence
from now on? Do you want God's reign or are you quite comfortable living off the comforts
of the first world American Empire? How do you proclaim this? The way I've been doing it
over the course of my life is I learned this from the abolitionists 200 years ago.
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Those people, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were amazing. They literally said around
1820 in one famous launching of the movement, today we are announcing the abolition of slavery.
Well, that's what Jesus did. And so we're saying today in 2025, today we are announcing
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the abolition of war and nuclear weapons and corporate greed and gun violence and systemic
racism and environmental destruction and global poverty and the coming of a whole new culture
of justice, nonviolence and peace. This is our work and this is what we're going to be talking
about for the rest of our lives. Point number two, all of the teachings of Jesus are about
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total nonviolence. I'm convinced of this now having really studied Gandhi and Dr. King
that they were right. He's practicing nonviolence, promoting nonviolence, calling us to work for a
more nonviolent world and teaching nonviolence left and right. I could go on forever about this.
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What does he mean when he says other than total nonviolence in these teachings? Love your neighbor,
love one another, love yourself, love God, show compassion to every human being like God,
seek justice for the poor, liberate the oppressed, forgive everyone, do unto others as you'd have
them do unto you, turn the other cheek, take up the cross and the nonviolent struggle for
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justice and peace. There's no greater love than to lay down our lives in love for humanity.
So, you know, as I said when I talked about the Beatitudes, the climax of the Sermon on the Mount
is blessed with the peacemakers. They're the sons and daughters of God. That's the beginning
of the Sermon on the Mount. But then he goes on, and I'm going to do a podcast about these
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two climactic teachings later on, and he says, well, first he says,
you have heard it said, thou shalt not kill. I say to you, do not even get angry at another.
And here's the commandment, instead go be reconciled. So, he's getting deep into the
roots of the violence, the roots causes of war in our own hearts, and he says, oh, you're angry,
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you go and make amends with all the people you've hurt who are angry at you. This is deep.
But then it leads to, you've heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,
which Gandhi said just makes the whole world blind and toothless.
But I say to you, and this is the fundamental teaching of the gospel,
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offer no violent resistance to one who does evil. That is the teaching of nonviolence.
And Gandhi read that sentence from Matthew chapter 5 every morning and every evening for
the last 45 years of his life. And he's the one who took it seriously and unpacked it and discovered
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that it wasn't just meant for us personally, but for communities and nations in the whole world.
It's powerful. The world says you can only respond to violence in two ways.
You respond to violence by using violence, or you do nothing and be passive or run away.
And Jesus comes in with a third way, a third option, active, creative, nonviolent resistance.
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You don't run away from the threat of violence. You stand your ground, but you creatively respond
to your opponent with love and truth, trusting in the Spirit of God to work through you to disarm
the opponent until you're reconciled. And you go, well, that's never going to happen. That's what
all the peacemakers in history have tried. And it works if you try it. It's certainly been my
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personal experience. And Gandhi proved it can be worked on a national level, and now we're seeing
it being played out if you look carefully throughout the last century. But that's not even the climax
of the teachings. He says, you have heard it said, love your countrymen and hate your enemies.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. Then you will really be sons
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and daughters of the God who lets the sun rise on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the
just and the unjust. So this is the climactic teaching of Jesus. Notice he doesn't say, by the
way, they're, however, if they're really bad and you follow these seven conditions, bomb the hell
out of them. There is no such thing as a just war here in the Sermon on the Mount. There's no excuse
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for killing or warfare. Christians are forbidden to participate in war or in any military ever again.
So I think this sentence not only outlaws war and killing. Actually, I think it undoes the whole
nation-state system because it's calling us to universal love. We're all one with everybody. It's
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so beautiful. But did you listen to what he said? Here in the most political sentence in the entire
Bible, love your enemies. No more war, no more nation-states. Here in this political sentence,
I submit Jesus gives us the best description of the nature of the mystery of God in the whole Bible.
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I already said it to you. Why do we do this? Jesus says, well, didn't we just agree you are
sons and daughters of God? You are the sons and daughters, listen to this, the God who lets the
sun rise on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. In other words,
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God practices universal, generous, all-inclusive, all-encompassing, nonviolent love. Jesus here
describes the nature of God as totally nonviolent. And he says, well, if you are son and daughter
of God, this is what you do. You practice universal love. You go into the world of war and make peace
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and you live out your true identity as the beloved sons and daughters of God. So, my question as we
reflect on this is, how have you been offering no violent resistance to one who does evil?
How do you practice nonviolent resistance today in a world on the brink of global destruction?
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How are you loving the enemies of your nation-state? And most of us listening, the enemies of the
United States government. Is your God nonviolent? Do you want a God of nonviolence? If Jesus is your
Lord and Savior, shouldn't we obey these commandments of total nonviolence and universal love?
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Why not? What's holding us back? Third, then Jesus goes and organizes a grassroots bottom-up
people power movement of nonviolence. It's actually more like a nonviolent military campaign,
like Gandhi's salt march, really like Dr. King on the march from Selma to Montgomery.
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And it's very clear, all this is in Luke 10, and this is critically important, I think,
in the life of Jesus. I don't know of anyone in my whole life I've ever heard talk about this,
and yet here it is. Go study it, Luke 10. He sends 72 people in pairs ahead of him.
Well, that's classic labor movement organizing. Jesus is just a movement organizer. Here's the
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sentence, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. As I always say when I talk about
this, are there any questions? You know, have you ever thought about a little tiny lamb surrounded
by, let's say, 100 starving wolves? That's Jesus' image of you and I as disciples. And that's why
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the early church talked about him as a good shepherd, his flock, his sheep, but then named
him as the Lamb of God. This is very rich. So we're supposed to be totally nonviolent,
building a movement, and he says you're to do three things. It's amazing. And they totally apply
today. Number one, you're to heal all those wounded by the culture of violence. Well, that's
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what we're all trying to do, isn't it? We're all wounded now. Every human being is wounded by
violence in one form or another, whether from our families and our childhood or from the culture of
racism and sexism to just dealing with a culture of war and nuclear weapons and now climate change.
Number two, you're to expel all the demons of violence. Well, that's not brain surgery.
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He's just saying free each other from your allegiance to empire and war and weapons.
You don't have to be stuck in the Roman Empire anymore or in America and all its lies and myths.
You're free now to live in the new life of nonviolence and peace. And three, you're to
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proclaim God's reign of peace and nonviolence is at hand. Isn't that what Dr. King did in 1963?
I have a dream. A new day is coming when we're all reconciled. So it's so beautiful. So he
sends us all forth as innocent, gentle, nonviolent lambs into the culture of violence to proclaim
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God's reign of total nonviolence and universal love. How have you been doing this with your life?
How are you carrying on that mission today? Fourth, so the movement is going to Jerusalem.
He's marching to Jerusalem. He gets closer. He sees Jerusalem. And what does he do?
He breaks down sobbing. And here's the teaching. If today you had only understood the things that
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make for peace, that's why Jesus weeps. And if we're his followers and we're people of nonviolence,
we're weeping over the world today. Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan,
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all the world's violence, all have 13,000 nuclear weapons, the war on children, the war on the poor,
the war on Mother Earth. Now, what should the disciples have done? What should we do?
It seems to me they should have tried to comfort the poor guy and say,
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hey, Jesus, we want to be the holy people who learn from you the things that make for peace.
So remember that the Roman Empire marched in, we all know this, it's historically documented,
in the year 70, and they totally destroyed Jerusalem. So Mark's Gospel is written just
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after that, Matthew and Luke, I'm sorry, Mark is written just before that, and Matthew and Luke
are written just after that. And that's where they frame this moment. Well, today, friends,
Jerusalem is the whole world. We're on the verge of destroying the whole planet in a culture,
in a world of permanent warfare, nuclear weapons, corporate greed, and environmental destruction.
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And who's talking about or trying to learn the things that make for peace? So I invite us to
really hear this moment, which is very important, I think, in the life of Jesus, and say, well,
if they didn't do that, then you and I want to do that. We want to be the people, Jesus,
who learn and teach the things that make for peace. And that means the Sermon on the Mount,
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where he outlined it all, the practices of nonviolence, and how we can dismantle empire
and end war and injustice, and even imperialism and all of militarism, and create a more just,
more nonviolent world. That's our agenda for the rest of our lives. Fifth, now, normally,
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if that were us, we'd give up. You know, you break down crying, there's nothing that can be done.
No, that's not the nonviolent Jesus. Just at this moment, he takes action, and he marches into
Jerusalem, into the temple, and engages in nonviolent civil disobedience at the place where
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the empire works with the religious authorities to bless and control the people, to make them
pay all their life savings to worship God, but to have to pay all this money to the religious
authorities, and therefore the temple is a total racket. And, you know, Jerusalem goes from 30,000
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people a year to 150,000 people a year. They're all marching in, and you have to pay to get,
you know, have a lamb slaughtered for you to appease the God of war, or you unholy, unclean,
poor people. Okay, you can buy a dove. And Jesus says, no, this is a house of prayer,
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no more injustice. And he nonviolently turns over the tables of the money changers and prevents
people from coming and going. That's why I've been arrested 85 times throughout my life. He
just does a sit-in. It lasts for about five minutes. He doesn't hit anybody, hurt anybody,
kill anybody, or drop any bombs. But he's not passive. He disturbs the false peace of empire
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and injustice blessed by the religious structures and says, no more injustice.
Basically, he gave his life calling for justice. And this is the person we claim to follow.
You know, people are already arguing with me. I can hear you, what you're thinking. No, he made
a whip. No, Matthew, Mark, Luke does not mention any whip. And it says, he spent the rest of the
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teaching. And there's massive crowds, thousands of people, and they all would have been struck
silent. He would have done this act, and then he would have taught them the Sermon on the Mount
about love and peace. No, it doesn't hurt people. And that's my experience in doing civil disobedience.
It's John's gospel. Fifty years later, rewrites the whole story and begins his gospel. You
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remember, there's the wedding of Akhena, and the next thing you know, he's turning over tables in
the temple. So, he rewrites the story, and he ends with the raisin of Lazarus. But there he has
this line, he took cords and drove them all out. Actually, it's a very strange, long Greek word
that basically means, he picked up a few strings of hemp. How do you get tens of thousands of
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animals up a five-story building? Well, if you're, you know, poor farmers, he took the hemp,
and he opened the door, and he led the thousands of animals out. Instead of killing people or
whipping people, he actually saved the animals. Don't get me started, he was also an animal rights
activist, I think. He doesn't whip anybody. He's totally nonviolent. But if he's upset about the
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temple, what would he say about our plans to blow up the planet? The way we killed a hundred million
people in the last century and vaporized people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, you know,
if you really want to follow in all of this, in the last year and a half, as we funding Israel's
genocide of Israel, the equivalent of two Hiroshima bombs have been dropped on that little 21-mile
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stretch of Gaza. You can research this yourself. What about climate change? What would he say
about our plans to destroy the planet? What bold public nonviolent direct action have you been
engaged at as a disciple of this most daring nonviolent person in history? That's the question.
And what are we going to do now as things are getting worse? We grieve, and then we go forward
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and organize public nonviolent direct action. The plot thickens. Point six. It's Passover.
They're in the upper room. He takes the bread, and what does he say? My body broken for you.
He takes the cup, and what does he say? My blood shed for you. On bad days, dear friends,
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when I'm saying mass and recording these, you know, teaching these teachings,
I think everybody in the world is confused and thinks Jesus is the Roman emperor or a Russian
dictator or a good American general, as if Jesus says what? Go break their bodies for me.
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Go shed their blood for me. No, friends, listen to the methodology of nonviolence,
which is communion, which is Eucharist. My body broken for you. My blood shed for you. Do this.
Every time we participate in communion in Eucharist, we are entering into what the Gospel
writers call the new covenant of nonviolence. Gandhi understood this. This is the methodology
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of Jesus, his preference to accept suffering and death rather than inflict suffering and death.
We don't cooperate with the way of war and militarism and empire, whether it's the
Roman Empire or the American Empire. We're done with that. You can't go to communion
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and have anything to do with war anymore, I think. Seventh, he's in Gethsemane. The soldiers arrive,
and what does Peter think? He's going, oh my God, they're going to arrest our guy.
We can't let this happen. We've got to protect the Holy One. And he's thinking,
if there's ever a just war in all of human history, if violence is ever divinely sanctioned,
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this is the moment. I've got to do something. And he's right. So, just as he picks up the sword
to go and kill to protect the Holy One, the commandment comes down. Put down the sword.
Dear friends listening to this, these are the last words of Jesus to the church,
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to his community, to the 50 men and women around him before he died. It's the last thing they heard
him say, and it's right there in the gospels, and no one's talking about it. And I think it's the
very first time, let's say in three years, they understood how serious he is about this daring
creative, active, demanding way of nonviolence. And they realized, oh my God, he's serious about
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that. Yeah, we can defend ourselves, but we can't use violence to defend ourselves. We have to use
nonviolence to defend ourselves. So, what do they do? They all run away. Mark is very clear.
Everyone, every single one of them, abandoned him. And Jesus, he's going to be the last one to
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come. And Jesus is arrested and tortured and taken away. That's why I consider Jesus the bravest,
most courageous person who ever lived. So, let me ask you my questions.
Who are you taking up the sword against? How is Jesus asking you to put down the sword today,
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whether the gun or supporting America's wars? How have you run away from the nonviolent Jesus,
precisely because of his nonviolence? And you think you know a better way than he does.
Or maybe a better question is, how can we not take up the sword and run away from Jesus? I always
think about that. Jesus, how do I not betray you? How do I not deny you? How do I not run away like
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everybody else, instead stand with you, accompany you, and walk with you to the end and say,
I trust you, I'm here at your side? So, then you end up going with Jesus into the only and ultimate
prayer there is in Gethsemane. Not my will, your will be done. I invite us all to start saying that
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a hundred times a day. Eighth, so Jesus is hauled in and out of court. Something I know well, I've
been in courtrooms probably 300 times in my life, nonstop since 1982 for all my arrests. And
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there's no justice anywhere. But imagine the nonviolent, unarmed, vulnerable, bruised,
condemned Jesus standing in front of the representative of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate.
And in John's gospel, I think it's chapter 19, he says three sentences, which I think we totally
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ignore and sum up the whole shebang. Here it goes. He says to Pilate,
My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world,
my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans.
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But as it is, my kingdom is not here. Period. So according to John's gospel, and as he sums up
the life of Jesus, the only difference between the world back then and today, a world of war
and empire from Pilate to Trump on the one hand, and Jesus and the reign of God on the other hand
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is violence. The world is a world of violence, which uses violence to try to stop violence.
But violence in response to violence only leads to further violence. Jesus' reign, his kingdom,
his realm is one of total nonviolence. If it were of this world, my attendants would fight.
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They would take up the sword and the machine guns and be marching and trying to mow down the Roman
troops and be leading wars for the Roman Empire and for Christians in America. Nope. My followers,
my attendants are people of nonviolence. My attendants are not allowed to fight.
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They are totally nonviolent because I am totally nonviolent because God is totally nonviolent
and God's reign is a whole new world of total nonviolence and therefore universal love. So let
me ask you some questions. Do you want to be an attendant of the nonviolent Jesus? I actually
find that a very beautiful image. You know, I think of a flight attendant. Is there anything
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I can do for you nonviolent Jesus? What can I get for you? You just wait to serve the nonviolent
Jesus and you're like him. I think this is the best thing we can do with our lives. I think it's
actually a relief. We're freed from the world's insanity and we're free from the world's
vanity of global destructive violence and attend to the nonviolent Jesus for the rest of our lives.
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Here are the last two. Number nine, so they kill him. The Empire brutally, legally executes Jesus
and Gandhi says he goes to his death in perfect nonviolence. I kid you not, Gandhi, the Hindu,
wrote the best stuff I've ever read on the execution of Jesus. And Gandhi marvels at how
Jesus forgives his killers and surrenders himself completely to God saying, in effect,
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the violence stops here in my body. You're all forgiven. But from now on, you're not allowed to
kill. Into your hands, I surrender my spirit. So I think in some that the nonviolent Jesus teaches us
not how to kill, not how to wage war, much less how to make money or be afraid or be in control
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or be a success in the empire of death and destruction, but very simply how to live.
He teaches us how to love, how to make peace, how to be compassionate, how to forgive, how to pray,
how to be nonviolent, how to suffer nonviolently and to die well in peace, prayer, love and nonviolence.
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So like Jesus, we want to give our lives to stop the killing and the forces of death,
to prefer to undergo suffering and death rather than inflict suffering and death.
That's why the way of the cross means actually practicing daring public nonviolence in a world
of total violence, come what may. And we're going to get in trouble, maybe arrested,
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maybe some people will be killed, but you continue like Gandhi and King did and the saints and the
peacemakers on the path of nonviolence. So what do you think of all this? And if you're confused
or you don't know what to do, as my friend, Maread Maguire says, just go and meditate in front of
an image of the nonviolent Jesus as he carries the cross or as he dies on the cross and notice
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his nonviolence and ask for the grace to be willing to be as nonviolent as him. And so lastly, lo and
behold, we're told the nonviolent Jesus rises from the dead and he comes back as gentle and
nonviolent as ever. You know, if it were any of us, we'd come back mad. Why'd you leave me?
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I'd be resentful for 5,000 years. He comes back and makes breakfast for these guys.
And he says, here's my resurrection gift of peace. Now you carry on my campaign of nonviolence.
Friends, I think the whole world has rejected the resurrection gift of peace.
The resurrection gift of peace. And I invite us all as we mature and grow older in these bad times
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to accept it like never before and welcome it and take it to heart and say, okay, Jesus,
I'm going to accept your gift of peace and live in your peace for the rest of my life,
come what may. And yes, I will carry on and join your global grassroots people power movement of
creative nonviolence like never before. Friends, I think resurrection means having nothing to do
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with death. That means having not a trace of violence in you. Resurrection is all about
nonviolence, the victory of nonviolence, if you will. So we're saying with the, we're realizing
with the resurrection of the nonviolent Jesus, that death does not get the last word. Actually,
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if you dare want to follow him to the end and into the new life of peace, our survival is
already guaranteed. We have nothing to be afraid of. Total nonviolence is the way forward into the
fullness of life. So why not just throw in all our chips with the nonviolent Jesus and
really root out the violence within us, be as nonviolent as we can and do our part to
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work with him today as he continues his underground, illegal nonviolent movement
organizing. And when you do that, when you're practicing active creative nonviolence,
my take is we can take to heart because we're getting ready for resurrection.
Thank you, dear friends, for listening to this episode of the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. You
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can hear many more at www.beattitudescenter.org and make a donation there to help support this
free work. Join me next week when my guest will be the legendary prophet, author, and teacher,
Sister Joan Chichester, and we'll dig deeper into the Beatitudes and the life of Jesus.
May the God of peace bless us all. Keep on following the nonviolent Jesus. See you next time.
Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm John, Father John Deere, and this is a project
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of www.beattitudecenter.org where you can find many other podcasts and Zoom programs
on the nonviolence of Jesus, practicing nonviolence, and working for a more just,
more nonviolent world. I thought I would offer today a general reflection and overview on the
nonviolence of Jesus and make ten essential points, which I'll probably go into more detail later on.
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Some of you may have heard this already, but we can never hear it enough. If you're interested
in exploring this further, I recommend my latest book, The Gospel of Peace, A Commentary on Matthew,
Mark, and Luke from the Perspective of Nonviolence, as well as my other books on Jesus,
The Beatitudes of Peace, Jesus as the Rebel, and Walking the Way.
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So let's begin with a little prayer. And so I invite you just wherever you are,
just to take a deep breath and to relax, to notice how you're feeling as we
turn to this reflection and invite you to enter back into the presence of the God of Peace,
who loves you infinitely, personally. Let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus here into our hearts
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and ask for the grace to follow him ever more faithfully and to do God's will.
God of Peace, thank you for all the blessings of life, love, and peace that you give us.
Be with us as we reflect on the nonviolence of Jesus. Inspire us to be true to you,
inspire us, disarm us, heal us, and help us to become more nonviolent like him. That we might
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do your will and do our part to help end war, poverty, racism, nuclear weapons,
environmental destruction, and all violence. That we might welcome your reign of universal
love, compassion, and peace, and be who you created us to be, your holy peacemakers,
beloved sons and daughters. We ask this mighty blessing in Jesus' name, amen.
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So, Gandhi and Dr. King spent their whole lives, morning, noon, and night, calling us to be people
of active, creative, consistent, steadfast, dedicated, relentless, truthful, prayerful,
loving, troublemaking, public, daring nonviolence. They described nonviolence as a whole new way of
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life, and then as a political methodology for social transformation, and then as a spiritual path,
and then as power, the power of God at our disposal to help disarm the world if we dare
step up to the plate. They proved that active, creative nonviolence is a much better way of
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ending violent conflict and ending wars than anything else that we're doing in the world,
and a way of sowing seeds for a future of universal peace. So, in light of their teachings,
what we want to do is figure out how to become more nonviolent ourselves and work to create a
culture of nonviolence and educate every human being on the planet in nonviolent conflict
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resolution, and even develop a new theology and spirituality of nonviolence, and fund and build
whole new structures of nonviolence. That's where we're headed, Gandhi said. And so, Gandhi said
nonviolence is way beyond the refusal to hurt or kill. It's active love and truth as a force for
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positive social change that always works. And this is where the rubber hits the road, because it uses
the method of suffering love, ultimately, to melt the human heart and disarm humanity, to disarm
liberate the oppressed and oppressors together. So, here's my definition. Active nonviolence
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begins with a vision of reconciled humanity, the reign of God in our midst, the truth that all life
is sacred, we're all one, we're all equal, all ready sisters and brothers. And so, we can never
hurt or kill anyone again, much less remain silent in the face of war and poverty and global
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destruction. So, nonviolence is not passivity. There's nothing passive about the nonviolence
of Gandhi or Dr. King. It's a political methodology that ultimately involves organizing bottom-up
people power grassroots movements to confront systemic violence, even empires, as Gandhi showed
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getting the British to leave India nonviolently, as Dr. King showed through the civil rights movement,
bringing down the segregation laws nonviolently. So, it's organized love pursuing the truth of our
common humanity that stands up and resists the systems and structures of injustice and evil,
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and persistently reconciles with everyone, and that calls for unconditional, all-inclusive,
all-encompassing, non-retaliatory, universal love. Isn't this exciting? With one catch,
there is no cause, however noble, for which we will ever again support the killing of a single
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human being, much less support the mass murder of warfare. We don't kill people. We don't kill
people who kill people to show that you shouldn't kill people. We don't support our countries in
its projects of killing people. And instead of killing others, we are willing to give our lives
in the struggle for justice and peace to stop all the killings. And we work out the root causes of
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killing and warfare to educate every human being in nonviolence and to institutionalize nonviolence.
And Gandhi discovered that nonviolence is at the heart of every religion. So, he came to this
shocking statement. I'm going to read it. It's still awesome to me. Devotion to nonviolence
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is the highest expression of humanity's conscious state. Wow! Do you agree with that? I think it's
true. Well, so, in light of Gandhi and Dr. King, when you turn to the life of Jesus, they say
that the scandal of the four Gospels is clearly that Jesus was totally nonviolent,
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the greatest person of nonviolence in history, Gandhi said. That God, according to Jesus then,
is a God of total nonviolence, and that the Gospel of Jesus demands that every human being
is called to become totally nonviolent, like Gandhi and Dr. King and Dorothy Day and all the saints
and peacemakers of history. That the church and all the churches are supposed to be a global
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community of Gospel nonviolence. Wow! Not a church that supports war or blesses violence of any kind,
under any condition, for whatever justification. So, when Gandhi says that Jesus never hurt anybody
or never supported hurting or killing anyone, that he was totally nonviolent, he's saying therefore,
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as he wrote many ways and many times, Jesus had to be totally against the Roman Empire,
which was killing and oppressing millions of people, and the religious establishment
which blessed the empire and collaborated with it to make money off of the oppression of millions
of people. So, Jesus could not be passive. He taught active, creative nonviolence, built a
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grassroots movement, a campaign of nonviolence, and the outcome could only be his inevitable
arrest and execution by the empire. But the Gospels show that I think anyone can be violent,
but it takes real courage and power and faith and trust in the living God to be totally nonviolent
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and go forward publicly into the world of violence like Jesus did with his vision of a whole new world
of nonviolence. And that's what the Gospel calls about. And there's so much to talk about,
and I've been talking about this for 45 years, but here's what I came up with, like 10 essential
points, angles to look on the life of Jesus as presented in the four Gospels. First,
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well, the first public words of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, the first thing he said
publicly, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the Gospel. Who says that today?
I think this is total revolution, that he's saying, today I'm announcing the revolution
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of nonviolence is at hand. Renounce the Roman Empire, therefore the American Empire,
and join me in welcoming God's reign of universal love and total nonviolence here on earth starting
today. So change your life and get with the program. Now, remember, the Gospels are the
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first of the four Gospels. Now, remember, after every Roman army imperial victory,
the Roman troops would march into the next town and what? They would proclaim the Gospel
of Caesar. Hey, we've just killed another thousand people and taken over another region for
Caesar, and this is the good news of Caesar. So when the Synoptics say Jesus is announcing
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God, it's in direct opposition to the Roman Empire and every empire since. In other words,
the days of empire and the culture of violence and war are over. A new world of nonviolence,
what he called the kingdom of God, the reign of God, is at hand. The word repent, well,
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in the Greek metanoia actually means not what we say it means today in the mainstream, it means
turn around and go in the opposite direction you're going in. Now think about that. He's
saying where everyone, millions of people are going right along with the world of culture and
the Roman Empire and you do what you're told, otherwise you're going to get in trouble.
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He says turn around and go against the maddening crowd, the whole world as it goes along with the
Roman Empire, the American Empire, the Russian or Chinese Empire. A translation of this would mean
renounce the United States. We are done with its wars, racism, violence, nuclear weapons,
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destruction, and we are pursuing and living in God's reign of universal love and peace. We are
citizens from now on in God's kingdom, not in the Roman Empire or the American Empire. So this has
huge political consequences. Well, this really was good news for the poor oppressed people.
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He's saying you don't have to go along with empire anymore. We're going to build a grassroots
movement like Gandhi and Dr. King and bring down the Roman Empire, which by the way, the early
Christians did nonviolently. So that's the message and that's what he trained the disciples to say.
And so the question for you is, for all of us, how are we doing with this command? How can we
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turn away today from America and seek first God's reign of universal love and peace and nonviolence
from now on? Do you want God's reign or are you quite comfortable living off the comforts
of the first world American Empire? How do you proclaim this? The way I've been doing it
over the course of my life is I learned this from the abolitionists 200 years ago.
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Those people, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were amazing. They literally said around
1820 in one famous launching of the movement, today we are announcing the abolition of slavery.
Well, that's what Jesus did. And so we're saying today in 2025, today we are announcing
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the abolition of war and nuclear weapons and corporate greed and gun violence and systemic
racism and environmental destruction and global poverty and the coming of a whole new culture
of justice, nonviolence and peace. This is our work and this is what we're going to be talking
about for the rest of our lives. Point number two, all of the teachings of Jesus are about
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total nonviolence. I'm convinced of this now having really studied Gandhi and Dr. King
that they were right. He's practicing nonviolence, promoting nonviolence, calling us to work for a
more nonviolent world and teaching nonviolence left and right. I could go on forever about this.
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What does he mean when he says other than total nonviolence in these teachings? Love your neighbor,
love one another, love yourself, love God, show compassion to every human being like God,
seek justice for the poor, liberate the oppressed, forgive everyone, do unto others as you'd have
them do unto you, turn the other cheek, take up the cross and the nonviolent struggle for
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justice and peace. There's no greater love than to lay down our lives in love for humanity.
So, you know, as I said when I talked about the Beatitudes, the climax of the Sermon on the Mount
is blessed with the peacemakers. They're the sons and daughters of God. That's the beginning
of the Sermon on the Mount. But then he goes on, and I'm going to do a podcast about these
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two climactic teachings later on, and he says, well, first he says,
you have heard it said, thou shalt not kill. I say to you, do not even get angry at another.
And here's the commandment, instead go be reconciled. So, he's getting deep into the
roots of the violence, the roots causes of war in our own hearts, and he says, oh, you're angry,
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you go and make amends with all the people you've hurt who are angry at you. This is deep.
But then it leads to, you've heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,
which Gandhi said just makes the whole world blind and toothless.
But I say to you, and this is the fundamental teaching of the gospel,
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offer no violent resistance to one who does evil. That is the teaching of nonviolence.
And Gandhi read that sentence from Matthew chapter 5 every morning and every evening for
the last 45 years of his life. And he's the one who took it seriously and unpacked it and discovered
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that it wasn't just meant for us personally, but for communities and nations in the whole world.
It's powerful. The world says you can only respond to violence in two ways.
You respond to violence by using violence, or you do nothing and be passive or run away.
And Jesus comes in with a third way, a third option, active, creative, nonviolent resistance.
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You don't run away from the threat of violence. You stand your ground, but you creatively respond
to your opponent with love and truth, trusting in the Spirit of God to work through you to disarm
the opponent until you're reconciled. And you go, well, that's never going to happen. That's what
all the peacemakers in history have tried. And it works if you try it. It's certainly been my
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personal experience. And Gandhi proved it can be worked on a national level, and now we're seeing
it being played out if you look carefully throughout the last century. But that's not even the climax
of the teachings. He says, you have heard it said, love your countrymen and hate your enemies.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. Then you will really be sons
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and daughters of the God who lets the sun rise on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the
just and the unjust. So this is the climactic teaching of Jesus. Notice he doesn't say, by the
way, they're, however, if they're really bad and you follow these seven conditions, bomb the hell
out of them. There is no such thing as a just war here in the Sermon on the Mount. There's no excuse
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for killing or warfare. Christians are forbidden to participate in war or in any military ever again.
So I think this sentence not only outlaws war and killing. Actually, I think it undoes the whole
nation-state system because it's calling us to universal love. We're all one with everybody. It's
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so beautiful. But did you listen to what he said? Here in the most political sentence in the entire
Bible, love your enemies. No more war, no more nation-states. Here in this political sentence,
I submit Jesus gives us the best description of the nature of the mystery of God in the whole Bible.
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I already said it to you. Why do we do this? Jesus says, well, didn't we just agree you are
sons and daughters of God? You are the sons and daughters, listen to this, the God who lets the
sun rise on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. In other words,
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God practices universal, generous, all-inclusive, all-encompassing, nonviolent love. Jesus here
describes the nature of God as totally nonviolent. And he says, well, if you are son and daughter
of God, this is what you do. You practice universal love. You go into the world of war and make peace
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and you live out your true identity as the beloved sons and daughters of God. So, my question as we
reflect on this is, how have you been offering no violent resistance to one who does evil?
How do you practice nonviolent resistance today in a world on the brink of global destruction?
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How are you loving the enemies of your nation-state? And most of us listening, the enemies of the
United States government. Is your God nonviolent? Do you want a God of nonviolence? If Jesus is your
Lord and Savior, shouldn't we obey these commandments of total nonviolence and universal love?
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Why not? What's holding us back? Third, then Jesus goes and organizes a grassroots bottom-up
people power movement of nonviolence. It's actually more like a nonviolent military campaign,
like Gandhi's salt march, really like Dr. King on the march from Selma to Montgomery.
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And it's very clear, all this is in Luke 10, and this is critically important, I think,
in the life of Jesus. I don't know of anyone in my whole life I've ever heard talk about this,
and yet here it is. Go study it, Luke 10. He sends 72 people in pairs ahead of him.
Well, that's classic labor movement organizing. Jesus is just a movement organizer. Here's the
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sentence, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. As I always say when I talk about
this, are there any questions? You know, have you ever thought about a little tiny lamb surrounded
by, let's say, 100 starving wolves? That's Jesus' image of you and I as disciples. And that's why
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the early church talked about him as a good shepherd, his flock, his sheep, but then named
him as the Lamb of God. This is very rich. So we're supposed to be totally nonviolent,
building a movement, and he says you're to do three things. It's amazing. And they totally apply
today. Number one, you're to heal all those wounded by the culture of violence. Well, that's
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what we're all trying to do, isn't it? We're all wounded now. Every human being is wounded by
violence in one form or another, whether from our families and our childhood or from the culture of
racism and sexism to just dealing with a culture of war and nuclear weapons and now climate change.
Number two, you're to expel all the demons of violence. Well, that's not brain surgery.
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He's just saying free each other from your allegiance to empire and war and weapons.
You don't have to be stuck in the Roman Empire anymore or in America and all its lies and myths.
You're free now to live in the new life of nonviolence and peace. And three, you're to
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proclaim God's reign of peace and nonviolence is at hand. Isn't that what Dr. King did in 1963?
I have a dream. A new day is coming when we're all reconciled. So it's so beautiful. So he
sends us all forth as innocent, gentle, nonviolent lambs into the culture of violence to proclaim
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God's reign of total nonviolence and universal love. How have you been doing this with your life?
How are you carrying on that mission today? Fourth, so the movement is going to Jerusalem.
He's marching to Jerusalem. He gets closer. He sees Jerusalem. And what does he do?
He breaks down sobbing. And here's the teaching. If today you had only understood the things that
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make for peace, that's why Jesus weeps. And if we're his followers and we're people of nonviolence,
we're weeping over the world today. Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan,
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all the world's violence, all have 13,000 nuclear weapons, the war on children, the war on the poor,
the war on Mother Earth. Now, what should the disciples have done? What should we do?
It seems to me they should have tried to comfort the poor guy and say,
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hey, Jesus, we want to be the holy people who learn from you the things that make for peace.
So remember that the Roman Empire marched in, we all know this, it's historically documented,
in the year 70, and they totally destroyed Jerusalem. So Mark's Gospel is written just
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after that, Matthew and Luke, I'm sorry, Mark is written just before that, and Matthew and Luke
are written just after that. And that's where they frame this moment. Well, today, friends,
Jerusalem is the whole world. We're on the verge of destroying the whole planet in a culture,
in a world of permanent warfare, nuclear weapons, corporate greed, and environmental destruction.
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And who's talking about or trying to learn the things that make for peace? So I invite us to
really hear this moment, which is very important, I think, in the life of Jesus, and say, well,
if they didn't do that, then you and I want to do that. We want to be the people, Jesus,
who learn and teach the things that make for peace. And that means the Sermon on the Mount,
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where he outlined it all, the practices of nonviolence, and how we can dismantle empire
and end war and injustice, and even imperialism and all of militarism, and create a more just,
more nonviolent world. That's our agenda for the rest of our lives. Fifth, now, normally,
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if that were us, we'd give up. You know, you break down crying, there's nothing that can be done.
No, that's not the nonviolent Jesus. Just at this moment, he takes action, and he marches into
Jerusalem, into the temple, and engages in nonviolent civil disobedience at the place where
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the empire works with the religious authorities to bless and control the people, to make them
pay all their life savings to worship God, but to have to pay all this money to the religious
authorities, and therefore the temple is a total racket. And, you know, Jerusalem goes from 30,000
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people a year to 150,000 people a year. They're all marching in, and you have to pay to get,
you know, have a lamb slaughtered for you to appease the God of war, or you unholy, unclean,
poor people. Okay, you can buy a dove. And Jesus says, no, this is a house of prayer,
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no more injustice. And he nonviolently turns over the tables of the money changers and prevents
people from coming and going. That's why I've been arrested 85 times throughout my life. He
just does a sit-in. It lasts for about five minutes. He doesn't hit anybody, hurt anybody,
kill anybody, or drop any bombs. But he's not passive. He disturbs the false peace of empire
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and injustice blessed by the religious structures and says, no more injustice.
Basically, he gave his life calling for justice. And this is the person we claim to follow.
You know, people are already arguing with me. I can hear you, what you're thinking. No, he made
a whip. No, Matthew, Mark, Luke does not mention any whip. And it says, he spent the rest of the
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teaching. And there's massive crowds, thousands of people, and they all would have been struck
silent. He would have done this act, and then he would have taught them the Sermon on the Mount
about love and peace. No, it doesn't hurt people. And that's my experience in doing civil disobedience.
It's John's gospel. Fifty years later, rewrites the whole story and begins his gospel. You
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remember, there's the wedding of Akhena, and the next thing you know, he's turning over tables in
the temple. So, he rewrites the story, and he ends with the raisin of Lazarus. But there he has
this line, he took cords and drove them all out. Actually, it's a very strange, long Greek word
that basically means, he picked up a few strings of hemp. How do you get tens of thousands of
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animals up a five-story building? Well, if you're, you know, poor farmers, he took the hemp,
and he opened the door, and he led the thousands of animals out. Instead of killing people or
whipping people, he actually saved the animals. Don't get me started, he was also an animal rights
activist, I think. He doesn't whip anybody. He's totally nonviolent. But if he's upset about the
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temple, what would he say about our plans to blow up the planet? The way we killed a hundred million
people in the last century and vaporized people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, you know,
if you really want to follow in all of this, in the last year and a half, as we funding Israel's
genocide of Israel, the equivalent of two Hiroshima bombs have been dropped on that little 21-mile
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stretch of Gaza. You can research this yourself. What about climate change? What would he say
about our plans to destroy the planet? What bold public nonviolent direct action have you been
engaged at as a disciple of this most daring nonviolent person in history? That's the question.
And what are we going to do now as things are getting worse? We grieve, and then we go forward
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and organize public nonviolent direct action. The plot thickens. Point six. It's Passover.
They're in the upper room. He takes the bread, and what does he say? My body broken for you.
He takes the cup, and what does he say? My blood shed for you. On bad days, dear friends,
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when I'm saying mass and recording these, you know, teaching these teachings,
I think everybody in the world is confused and thinks Jesus is the Roman emperor or a Russian
dictator or a good American general, as if Jesus says what? Go break their bodies for me.
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Go shed their blood for me. No, friends, listen to the methodology of nonviolence,
which is communion, which is Eucharist. My body broken for you. My blood shed for you. Do this.
Every time we participate in communion in Eucharist, we are entering into what the Gospel
writers call the new covenant of nonviolence. Gandhi understood this. This is the methodology
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of Jesus, his preference to accept suffering and death rather than inflict suffering and death.
We don't cooperate with the way of war and militarism and empire, whether it's the
Roman Empire or the American Empire. We're done with that. You can't go to communion
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and have anything to do with war anymore, I think. Seventh, he's in Gethsemane. The soldiers arrive,
and what does Peter think? He's going, oh my God, they're going to arrest our guy.
We can't let this happen. We've got to protect the Holy One. And he's thinking,
if there's ever a just war in all of human history, if violence is ever divinely sanctioned,
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this is the moment. I've got to do something. And he's right. So, just as he picks up the sword
to go and kill to protect the Holy One, the commandment comes down. Put down the sword.
Dear friends listening to this, these are the last words of Jesus to the church,
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to his community, to the 50 men and women around him before he died. It's the last thing they heard
him say, and it's right there in the gospels, and no one's talking about it. And I think it's the
very first time, let's say in three years, they understood how serious he is about this daring
creative, active, demanding way of nonviolence. And they realized, oh my God, he's serious about
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that. Yeah, we can defend ourselves, but we can't use violence to defend ourselves. We have to use
nonviolence to defend ourselves. So, what do they do? They all run away. Mark is very clear.
Everyone, every single one of them, abandoned him. And Jesus, he's going to be the last one to
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come. And Jesus is arrested and tortured and taken away. That's why I consider Jesus the bravest,
most courageous person who ever lived. So, let me ask you my questions.
Who are you taking up the sword against? How is Jesus asking you to put down the sword today,
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whether the gun or supporting America's wars? How have you run away from the nonviolent Jesus,
precisely because of his nonviolence? And you think you know a better way than he does.
Or maybe a better question is, how can we not take up the sword and run away from Jesus? I always
think about that. Jesus, how do I not betray you? How do I not deny you? How do I not run away like
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everybody else, instead stand with you, accompany you, and walk with you to the end and say,
I trust you, I'm here at your side? So, then you end up going with Jesus into the only and ultimate
prayer there is in Gethsemane. Not my will, your will be done. I invite us all to start saying that
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a hundred times a day. Eighth, so Jesus is hauled in and out of court. Something I know well, I've
been in courtrooms probably 300 times in my life, nonstop since 1982 for all my arrests. And
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there's no justice anywhere. But imagine the nonviolent, unarmed, vulnerable, bruised,
condemned Jesus standing in front of the representative of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate.
And in John's gospel, I think it's chapter 19, he says three sentences, which I think we totally
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ignore and sum up the whole shebang. Here it goes. He says to Pilate,
My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world,
my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Judeans.
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But as it is, my kingdom is not here. Period. So according to John's gospel, and as he sums up
the life of Jesus, the only difference between the world back then and today, a world of war
and empire from Pilate to Trump on the one hand, and Jesus and the reign of God on the other hand
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is violence. The world is a world of violence, which uses violence to try to stop violence.
But violence in response to violence only leads to further violence. Jesus' reign, his kingdom,
his realm is one of total nonviolence. If it were of this world, my attendants would fight.
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They would take up the sword and the machine guns and be marching and trying to mow down the Roman
troops and be leading wars for the Roman Empire and for Christians in America. Nope. My followers,
my attendants are people of nonviolence. My attendants are not allowed to fight.
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They are totally nonviolent because I am totally nonviolent because God is totally nonviolent
and God's reign is a whole new world of total nonviolence and therefore universal love. So let
me ask you some questions. Do you want to be an attendant of the nonviolent Jesus? I actually
find that a very beautiful image. You know, I think of a flight attendant. Is there anything
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I can do for you nonviolent Jesus? What can I get for you? You just wait to serve the nonviolent
Jesus and you're like him. I think this is the best thing we can do with our lives. I think it's
actually a relief. We're freed from the world's insanity and we're free from the world's
vanity of global destructive violence and attend to the nonviolent Jesus for the rest of our lives.
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Here are the last two. Number nine, so they kill him. The Empire brutally, legally executes Jesus
and Gandhi says he goes to his death in perfect nonviolence. I kid you not, Gandhi, the Hindu,
wrote the best stuff I've ever read on the execution of Jesus. And Gandhi marvels at how
Jesus forgives his killers and surrenders himself completely to God saying, in effect,
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the violence stops here in my body. You're all forgiven. But from now on, you're not allowed to
kill. Into your hands, I surrender my spirit. So I think in some that the nonviolent Jesus teaches us
not how to kill, not how to wage war, much less how to make money or be afraid or be in control
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or be a success in the empire of death and destruction, but very simply how to live.
He teaches us how to love, how to make peace, how to be compassionate, how to forgive, how to pray,
how to be nonviolent, how to suffer nonviolently and to die well in peace, prayer, love and nonviolence.
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So like Jesus, we want to give our lives to stop the killing and the forces of death,
to prefer to undergo suffering and death rather than inflict suffering and death.
That's why the way of the cross means actually practicing daring public nonviolence in a world
of total violence, come what may. And we're going to get in trouble, maybe arrested,
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maybe some people will be killed, but you continue like Gandhi and King did and the saints and the
peacemakers on the path of nonviolence. So what do you think of all this? And if you're confused
or you don't know what to do, as my friend, Maread Maguire says, just go and meditate in front of
an image of the nonviolent Jesus as he carries the cross or as he dies on the cross and notice
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his nonviolence and ask for the grace to be willing to be as nonviolent as him. And so lastly, lo and
behold, we're told the nonviolent Jesus rises from the dead and he comes back as gentle and
nonviolent as ever. You know, if it were any of us, we'd come back mad. Why'd you leave me?
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I'd be resentful for 5,000 years. He comes back and makes breakfast for these guys.
And he says, here's my resurrection gift of peace. Now you carry on my campaign of nonviolence.
Friends, I think the whole world has rejected the resurrection gift of peace.
The resurrection gift of peace. And I invite us all as we mature and grow older in these bad times
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to accept it like never before and welcome it and take it to heart and say, okay, Jesus,
I'm going to accept your gift of peace and live in your peace for the rest of my life,
come what may. And yes, I will carry on and join your global grassroots people power movement of
creative nonviolence like never before. Friends, I think resurrection means having nothing to do
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with death. That means having not a trace of violence in you. Resurrection is all about
nonviolence, the victory of nonviolence, if you will. So we're saying with the, we're realizing
with the resurrection of the nonviolent Jesus, that death does not get the last word. Actually,
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if you dare want to follow him to the end and into the new life of peace, our survival is
already guaranteed. We have nothing to be afraid of. Total nonviolence is the way forward into the
fullness of life. So why not just throw in all our chips with the nonviolent Jesus and
really root out the violence within us, be as nonviolent as we can and do our part to
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work with him today as he continues his underground, illegal nonviolent movement
organizing. And when you do that, when you're practicing active creative nonviolence,
my take is we can take to heart because we're getting ready for resurrection.
Thank you, dear friends, for listening to this episode of the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. You
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can hear many more at www.beattitudescenter.org and make a donation there to help support this
free work. Join me next week when my guest will be the legendary prophet, author, and teacher,
Sister Joan Chichester, and we'll dig deeper into the Beatitudes and the life of Jesus.
May the God of peace bless us all. Keep on following the nonviolent Jesus. See you next time.
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