Ken Wilson - Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back

JESUS BRAND
SPIRITUALITY

HE WANTS HIS RELIGION BACK

KEN WILSON

Jesus Brand Spirituality

2008 by Ken Wilson

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, TODAYS NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Some details in the personal stories told in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Available upon request.
ISBN: 978-08-8499-2053-0 (U.S. Edition)
ISBN: 978-08499-2111-7 (International Edition)

Printed in the United States of America

08 09 10 11 12 QW 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FOR BRIAN MARTIN AND DICK BIEBER,
WHO GOT ME STARTED,
AND NANCY, WHO LED THE WAY

CONTENTS

by Phyllis Tickle

I am not much given to tears, not ordinarily anyway. For joy? Yes. I can, and sometimes do, cry for joy. Grief and sorrow? We all can cry over them. We all do. And beauty. Always for beauty. But the truth of the thing is that I dont have a definition for beauty. Neither, of course, do philosophers or aestheticians, when one gets right down to it. In fact, with beauty, almost all of us have to fall back into the tired old saw of I dont know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it.

With beauty, that trite saying means for me that I recognize immediately the strange stillness that always surrounds beauty, like an opening in space and time, making a corona or aura around it. I know by perceived sensation the way beauty goes straight to my thorax when it enters me, rising only later, if at all, to my head. I know the union I feel, if just for a few moments, with all things when I am in the presence of beauty. And I know that beauty makes me tear up just for the wonder of its being possiblejust for the sheer miracle that the stuff of creation can be so arranged as to become this that I receive as beauty.

This is not a beautiful book (though it is hardly an ugly one). This, instead, is a book that contains niches and corridors and apses of beauty that catch my thorax and make me feel the salt and burn of beauty rising. The faith we Christians claim has been so dented and chipped and discolored by the centuries, so institutionalized and codified and doctrinalized, so written upon and then so overwritten into palimpsest, that there are few Christians who still can discern the contours of the original. There are fewer still who know, and can persuasively teach, that Christianity was only and always just the container, the wrapping paper being used in shipment through the centuries of time. It is the Jesus beyond dent or chip or discoloring that is the beauty. It is the Jesus beyond the doctrine and the clashing commentary that is beauty.

I have known Ken Wilson for several years, have held in deep gratitude our friendship and his constancy, have sought his counsel, and have profited from his candor and forthrightness. I have also yearneda strong word, yearned, but an apt one in this context. I have yearned for him to set down on paper the words that follow here. But even having heard Ken Wilson preach, having spent innumerable hours with him in both conversation and correspondence, I was still unprepared for the result of this transposing of his scholarship and insights from oral delivery to printed presentation. The oral can be heard (and now reheard, thanks to technology), but in a print culture, it can never be considered with the same deliberateness or vulnerability as can the read words. The heard is external in formation; the read is first taken in and then sounded; and that principle makes a substantial difference always.

Wilson writes with an easy pen and a light, almost jovial, touch. Sometimes one suspects a bit of tongue is in his cheek. Sometimes one knows he is being deliberately droll. And sometimes he is just a very, very good storyteller. Always he is Jesus. And because he is secure in that positioning, he sees as naturally and unselfconsciously as a child contemplating his mother or her father. Why this matterswhy its recording here is shot through with beautyis that Jesus loves Ken.

This book, in effect, is a love story between one man and one Jesus. The distinction to be made between this story and all the others I have ever read is that this one is not entirely a monologue. In this one, we catch snatches of a two-way conversation. In this one, there are glimpses of a present Jesus as well as of a Jesus memorialized in photographs or word portraits; and that distinction makes a telling difference here.

But I want to say one more thing before I close this introduction to pages that, truth be told, need no preamble. I want to say that quite apart from the delight of these pages, there is a vital theme running through them, one that is itself beautiful the way a clear stream in a mountain valley is full and beautiful. The streambed is that the experience and exercise of spirituality are inherent in all human beings. The stream is that Christian spirituality is just that Christian. Or, as Ken Wilson would have it, it is Jesus Brand; and that truth makes the entire difference. Here. Everywhere. Always.

Phyllis Tickle

1
RECLAIMING THE PILGRIMS PATH

J esus wants his religion back. And he wants it back from the orthodox, the Bible-believing, and the defenders of faith as much as from anyone else. So it can be for the world again.

Ive been in the God business for more than thirty years. Never have I seen or personally experienced such angst over what it means to be associated with Jesus of Nazareth. If my fascination with Jesus had started today rather than so many years ago, I wonder what I would do with it. How would I begin to pursue faith today? Ill tell you what would put me off. Id be repelled by the witchs brew of politics, cultural conflict, moralism, and religious meanness that seems so closely connected with those who count themselves the special friends of Jesus. Its a crowd that makes me nervous. Beneath all the talk of moral values and high principles, I dont think I could get over the hissing sound.

I would be deterred by the impression that the more people organize their lives around Jesus, the more likely they are to become defensive, prickly, and dogmatic about their beliefs. Id have to stuff my questions, curb my curiosity, and be willing to get with the program. Id have to mindlessly accept some package deal agreed on by the gatekeepers of orthodoxyvirgin birth, heaven and hell, Jesus as the only way, the Bible as the unquestioned Word of God where would it stop?