Wright's Right

I'm going to start a new series of posts that I am calling "Wright's Right."  These will be quotes, mostly without commentary from me, from his writings.  Wright is the biblical writer who has been very influential in my own thinking--and I am not alone.  He is among the most prolific of writers, and writes at different times for scholarly, pastoral, and popular audiences.  I just finished his latest book, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, and I highlighted a number of passages that I'll be interspersing among my other posts in the near future.  Here's the first: 

The disciples wanted a kingdom without a cross. Many would-be “orthodox” or “conservative” Christians in our world have wanted a cross without a kingdom, an abstract “atonement” that would have nothing to do with this world except to provide the means of escaping it. Many too have wanted a “divine” Jesus as a kind of “superman” figure, a heavenly hero come to rescue them, but not to act as Israel’s Messiah, establishing God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. Jesus’s shocking combination of scriptural models into a single vocation makes excellent historical sense; that is, it explains at a stroke why he did and said what he did and said. But...it remains as challenging in our world, and indeed in our churches, as it was in Jesus’s own day.

Wright, N. T. (2011-10-25). Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (pp. 173-174). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.