Adam Allen began this week’s sermon with an invitation to vulnerability — vulnerability as a strength. Before seminary, and becoming a hospital chaplain, Adam was a prison guard at a maximum security prison. Along the way, a lot of transition was required in his thinking. His work as a guard required annual training, and in this training he was told that the only way to overcome violence is with more — and greater — violence. This clashed with his examination of his beliefs in beginning seminary, and with the teachings of the Mennonite church he had begun attending. In the same week at church, he was invited there to envision overcoming violence by breaking the cycle through love and self-sacrifice.

Here Adam enters into the week’s scripture passage of John 18:33-37 in light of this experience — especially Jesus’ words to Pilate, ” ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.”

He invites us to examine our images of God through the lens of Jesus’ words, to examine our ideas of the atonement, and break cycles of violence as Jesus himself did on the cross “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Hear more in the audio.