"Jesus was killed by both the religious and political authorities of his time because his teachings and being aimed at creating a new form of life that would make both obsolescent. Jesus was killed because the glory of his vision of human equality in God and the sacredness of every individual implicitly subverted the entire order on which both religious and political society was based. Had Jesus simply been some kind of mystic healer with some vague 'spiritual' ideas, he would have been left alone. Jesus' fatal gift was to see the cruelty of all man-made cultures and power systems, and to call for a unification of the world in the spirit of God's justice and mercy, and to show in his being, teaching, and practice that such a new fusion was real and possible. Had Jesus, like a modern archbishop or guru, combined a kind of 'spiritual' ministry with acceptance of the status quo (dining with Herod, perhaps, on the shores of Tiberias, accepting the odd invitation to speak on abstruse theological matters with the Sanhedrin), he would have survived comfortably and now been totally forgotten.
"But Jesus was the most dangerous kind of rebel — a rebel who had seen the Kingdom and knew it was the only reality. He was the most dangerous kind of rebel because he not merely talked about the Kingdom; he lived and manifested its splendor in the beauty of his presence, in the clarity and inner coherence of his teaching, in his fearlessness in the face of opposition. He was the most dangerous kind of rebel because he could not be swerved from his purpose by anything, and he could not be bought by any lure, not even that of being a "master" or a "god"; his integrity was terrible and final.
"Jesus was the most dangerous kind of rebel, too, because the vision that guided and inspired him through everything flamed from a direct mystical knowledge of God and would give him the courage to die, if necessary, for what he believed; not even torture, humiliation, and death would destroy his spirit."
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