Water To Wine: Some of My Story

by Brian Zahnd

A huge religious marketplace has been set up in North America to meet the needs and fantasies of people just like us. There are conferences and gatherings custom-designed to give us what we need. Books and videos and seminars promise to let us in on the Christian “secret” of whatever we feel is lacking in our life: financial security, well-behaved children, weight-loss, exotic sex, travel to holy sites, exciting worship, celebrity teachers. The people who promote these goods and services all smile a lot and are good-looking... We have become consumers of packaged spiritualities. This is idolatry. We never think of using this term for it since everything we are buying or paying for is defined by the adjective “Christian.” But idolatry it is nevertheless: God packaged as a product; God depersonalized and made available as a technique or program. The Christian market in idols has never been more brisk or lucrative.

Turbulance I was once so sure So sure of myself So sure that what I wanted Was one in the same with what God wanted How could it be otherwise? Child of God that I am I was once so sure I was taught to assert my will In the name of the Lord, to be sure For the name of the Lord is a talisman To endorse and empower my will to be done For what else could my god have to do But to make all my wishes and dreams come true? I was once so sure That I knew what was good for me And what was good for me Was good things for me Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Oh, I knew better than to say it just so I knew how to dress it up in altruistic robes And how to crown it with chapter and verse Nothing like a plucked verse to make you so sure (Yet it and I weren’t all bad, oh no, far from it) But the point of this confession is I was once so sure That I knew good and evil, right and wrong In me, in thee, in theology, in policy But there’s a snake that lives in that tree Is original sin a sin of epistemology? To be so sure Certitude in doctrine and politics And just where the dividing line runs Safe in the certain knowledge That I’m on the right side Of the right-and-wrong line I was once so sure And it’s fun being so sure People like it when you’re so sure (If they share your certainty) And isn’t that what faith is? Being so sure? Well... I’m not so sure Cock-sure, can’t-miss certainty Is not the faith that I see When I look at the patriarchs, prophets, and poets And Jesus (“My God, My God, why have...

I saw the cross as the place where Jesus refounded the world. Instead of being organized around an axis of power enforced by violence, at the cross the world was refounded around an axis of love expressed in forgiveness.

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