Water To Wine Quotes

“Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“It’s not the task of the church to change the world by legislative force. It’s the task of the church to be the world changed by Christ. This is revolutionary in a way that conventional politics never can be.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“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.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“But it’s not unprocessed grain and grape that we find on the Communion table, it’s bread and wine. Grain and grape come from God’s good earth, but bread and wine are the result of human industry. Bread and wine come about through a cooperation of the human and the divine. And herein lies a beautiful mystery. If grain and grape made bread and wine can communicate the body and blood of Christ, this has enormous implications for all legitimate human labor and industry. The mystery of the Eucharist does nothing less than make all human labor sacred. For there to be the holy sacrament of Communion there must be grain and grape, wheat fields and vineyards, bakers and winemakers. Human labor becomes a sacrament, a farmer planting wheat, a vintner tending vines, a miller grinding wheat, a winemaker crushing grapes, a woman baking bread, a man making wine, a trucker hauling bread, a grocer selling wine. Who knows what bread or what wine might end up on the Communion table as the body and blood of Christ. This is where we discover the holy mystery that all labor necessary for human flourishing is sacred. A farmer plowing his field, a worker in a bakery, a trucker hauling goods, a grocer selling wares—all are engaged in work that is just as sacred as the priest or pastor serving Communion on Sunday. The Eucharist pulls back the curtain to reveal a sacramental world.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“We are scripted to believe that reality is zero-based and that we live in a closed system. This paradigm of scarcity and insufficiency is the philosophy that undergirds our structures of systemic sin. We fear there won't be enough land, water, food, oil, money, labor to go around, so we build evil structures of sinful force to guarantee that those we call 'us' will have what we call 'ours.' We call it security. We call it defense. We call it freedom. What we don't call it is what it is — fear.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Jesus overturned money-changing tables in the temple, but set up banqueting tables in his Father’s house.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“this—when we feel hurt, threatened, or angered by a person, people-group, opinion, or situation, we instinctively look through the lens of self-defense. It’s like looking at something through the sights of a gun—it’s a narrow perspective framed in fear and held in hostility. Such a perspective is certainly not the full or true perspective. But if we are dualistic, non-contemplative people, we will think of our highly limited perspective as total truth. It’s all we can see. This is the black-and-white world where everything is framed as win-or-lose, us-versus-them.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“We lessen the sin of the world by joining the Lamb of God in bearing sin and pardoning sinners. But as the church as become a powerful institution, a consort with kings and queens, a confidante of presidents and prime ministers, our dispensing of grace has become distorted. We show grace to the institutions of systematic sin while condemning the individual sinner. It should be the other way around. It was never the “rank and file” sinners who gnashed their teeth at Jesus, but those for whom the present arrangement of systematic sin was advantageous. Jesus condemned the systematic sin that preserved the status quo for the Herodians and the Sadducees, but showed compassion to publicans and prostitutes. This is grace. But the church, courting the favor of the powerful, has forgotten this kind of grace. We coddle the mighty whose ire we fear and condemn the sin of the weak who pose no threat. We enthusiastically endorse the systems of greed that run Wall Street while condemning personal greed in the life of the individual working for the minimum wage. We will gladly preach a sermon against the sin of personal greed, but we dare not offer a prophetic critique of the golden calf of unfettered capitalism. Jesus and Saint Francis and Dorothy Day did the opposite. They shamed the principalities and powers, but offered pardon to the people. This is the grace of God the church is to embody.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“The Lord’s Prayer Expanded Our Father, Holy Father, Abba Father, in the heavens, Hallowed, holy, sacred be your name. From the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, The name of the Lord is to be praised. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, The whole earth is full of your glory. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, Who was and is and is to come. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy government come, thy politics be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy reign and rule come, thy plans and purposes be done, On earth as it is in heaven. May we be an anticipation of the age to come. May we embody the reign of Christ here and now. Give us day by day our daily bread. Provide for the poor among us. As we seek first your kingdom and your justice, May all we need be provided for us. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Transform us by the Holy Spirit into a forgiving community of forgiven sinners. Lead us not into trouble, trial, tribulation or temptation. Be mindful of our frame, we are but dust, We can only take so much. Lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land that flows with milk and honey, Lead us out of the badlands into resurrection country. Deliver us from evil and the evil one. Save us from Satan, the accuser and adversary. So that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. So that every tongue that rises against us in accusation you will condemn. So that every fiery dart of the wicked one is extinguished by the shield of faith. So that as we submit to you and resist the devil, the devil flees. So that as we draw near to Jesus Christ lifted up, His cross becomes for us the axis of love expressed in forgiveness, That refounds the world; And the devil, who became the false ruler of the fallen world, Is driven out from among us. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“We pray the Psalms, not to express what we feel, but to learn to feel what they express. In”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“In the politics of Jesus the world will be changed by non-coercive love or not at all. It’s not the task of the church to change the world by legislative force. It’s the task of the church to be the world changed by Christ. This is revolutionary in a way that conventional politics never can be.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“All the great biographies of the Bible involve suffering. The great souls grown in the Lord’s vineyard all know what it is to suffer. American Christianity, on the other hand, is conditioned to avoid suffering at all cost. But what a cost it is! Grape juice Christianity is what is produced by the purveyors of the motivational-seminar, you-can-have-it-all, success-in-life, pop-psychology Christianity. It’s a children’s drink. It comes with a straw and is served in a little cardboard box. I don’t want to drink that anymore. I don’t want to serve that anymore. I want the vintage wine. The kind of faith marked by mystery, grace, and authenticity.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Jesus never intended to change the world through battlefields or voting booths. Jesus has always intended to transform the world one life at a time at a shared table. At”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“As long as we look at the world through the eyes of self-interest and self-defense we will never see the world as God sees it. Contemplation”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Jesus never intended to change the world through battlefields or voting booths. Jesus has always intended to transform the world one life at a time at a shared table.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“The problem of the American evangelical church being led primarily by those who are committed to a reactive form of Christianity is widespread. It’s why so few of our best known pastors look anything like contemplative mystics. Yet contemplative mystics are precisely the kind of women and men that need to be leading our churches. More so now than ever. We’re in a situation where it is often very difficult, if not impossible, for a pastor to make spiritual progress while being a pastor. I know, because I talk to these pastors all the time. Being familiar with my story, they seek me out. Many of them feel they have to make a choice between their own spiritual growth and their pastoral vocation. Something needs to change. As long as our churches are led by those who view being a Christian primarily as a kind of conferred status instead of a lifelong journey, and view faith as a form of static certitude instead of an ongoing orientation of the soul toward God, I see little hope that we can build the kind of churches that can produce mature believers in any significant numbers. The”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Feeling intimidated by the Scientific Revolution, fundamentalism takes a “scientific” approach to the Bible—which is perhaps the worst of all ways to approach Scripture. The Bible is not interested in giving (or even competing with) scientific explanations. The Bible is working on a different project than scientific inquiry.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“When we pray the Psalms we are continuing a three-thousand-year-old tradition—a tradition practiced by Jesus and the Apostles. We pray the Psalms, not to express what we feel, but to learn to feel what they express. In praying the Psalms we learn to experience the whole range of human emotion in a way that is healthy and healing.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“The great monotheistic faiths have always answered the question of why there is something instead of nothing in the same way, the only way it can be answered: GOD. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). But why? Why did God bother? Why did God create? Why did God say, “Let there be”? The mystics have always given the same answer—because God is love, love seeking expression. From what the Cappadocian Fathers called the perichoresis—the eternal dance that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there burst forth an explosion of love. Some call it the Big Bang. Some call it Genesis. If you like we can call it the genesis of love as light and all that is. What is light? God’s love in the form of photons. What is water? A liquid expression of God’s love. What is a mountain? God’s love in granite, so much older than human sorrow. What is a tree? God’s love growing up from the ground. What is a bull moose? God’s love sporting spectacular antlers. What is a whale? Fifty tons of God’s love swimming in the ocean. As we learn to look at creation as goodness flowing from God’s own love, we begin to see the sacredness of all things, or as Dostoevsky and Dylan said, in every grain of sand. All of creation is a gift—a gift flowing from the self-giving love of God.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Love all of God’s creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“While Einstein’s theory of relativity may one day put Earth on the intergalactic map, it will always run a distant second to the Lord’s Prayer, whose harnessing of energies in their proper, life-giving direction surpasses even the discovery of fire.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Seen in the light of the Easter dawn, the cross is revealed to be the lost Tree of Life. In the middle of a world dominated by death, the Tree of Life is rediscovered in the form of a Roman cross. The cross is the act of radical forgiveness that gives sin, violence, and retribution a place to die in the body of Jesus.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Christian faith is more about connecting our lives with Christ than it is about gaining spiritual information.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“The path to paradise is often the path of suffering. If our chief goal is to avoid suffering, we will probably never find paradise. Paradise is not found in the mall, it’s found on the Easter side of Good Friday.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“At the cross a world of sin is absorbed by the love of God and recycled into grace and mercy. This is what the cross is about! This is what Christianity reveals. Christianity”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Christianity is a confession, not an explanation. We will attempt to explain what we legitimately can, but we will always confess more than we can explain.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“But shouldn’t Sunday be a Christian Sabbath, a time to quiet our souls and receive the gift of silence? What if, instead of being another contributor to this clatter, our churches became a shelter from the storm offering respite to shell-shocked souls?”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“The Spirit of God is an artisan, not an industrialist.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“To belittle the work of the theologian is to advocate a spiritual poverty.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story