"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you weird," a friend of mine is fond of saying.

I am certainly aware that there is a strong strain throughout Christianity that is set on an image of Jesus that resonates with pictures of an angry king.

Such an understanding is even a part of our historic creeds..."He shall come again to judge the living and the dead."

But I wonder if a more helpful image is to remember the crown of thorns, to remember that Jesus changed the history of the world not by power and might but in simple, radical acts of sacrificial love.

What is really weird about being a Christian is to live in the conviction that lives are truly changed not by money, power, prestige or success but by love, simple, radical acts of love.