It's Jesus Week Here @ ABN

Yep, last week was "Gift Week." This week it's "Jesus Week" @ ABN.

I'll be digging up some quotations attributed to Jesus - and not in that high falootin' King James english, either. We here at ABN don't subscribe to the old addage, "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me." (That was Ma Ferguson, former governor of... Texas.) No, we recall that Jesus was: a late bloomer, a commited bachelor, a footnote of the contemporary counterculture, a cultist, a mearly homeless man of the streets, an outlaw, at times a flowery idealist and at other times a bitter cynic, full of fire and brimstone. And he wasn't a Christian, ironically enough, or the idolatrous member of any particular church or congregation. He was a nomad and in many ways not the institutional monolithic, megachurch big whig preacher man of his times, not the John Wayne or the Ronald Reagan or those devilish Pats of the True Blue Right. He had more in common with Michael Moore than he did with the devoutly "born again" Reagan aid Michael Deevers. Yes, it turns out Jesus was a rebel with a fairly unpopular cause, one the government AND the rabble considered dangerous at the time. Spiritually, Jesus was the James Dean of his time.

We must also remember that no one who ever knew the man personally ever wrote about him. All accounts are second hand, third hand and many times more removed from their mysterious and enigmatic source.

But back to that source, if we can, here are a few things Jesus supposedly said, some in the frustrating midst of his penultimate conversion to pacifism:

"Be as cunning as snakes but as innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16b)

"But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one." (Luke 22:36)

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" (Luke 12:29)

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34-36)


"The reason I speak to them in parables is that 'seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.'" (Matthew 13:13)

"Woe to you when all speak well of you." (Luke 6:26)



More surprising golden nuggets tomorrow, sans The Golden Rule (which Jesus was not quoted as having proclaimed).