"The concentrated calamity of the cosmos..."

N. T. Wright's Simply Jesus. This is a fascinating book. Wright carefully depicts the particular conditions, political and religious, which form the social context of Jesus' ministry. You come away with a renewed sense of the sheer boldness of what Christ was telling people. How utter radical (and apparently crazy) it is to stand before a crowd and say the things he said. Here's a brief snip:

This, Jesus believed, is what it would look like when Israel's guide came back to Zion. It would not be the three men visiting Abraham, not the burning bush, not the pillar of cloud and fire, not Isaiah's smoky, seraphim-surrounded vision, not Ezekiel's whirling wheels, but a young man on a donkey, in tears, announcing God's judgement on the city and temple that stood on the cosmic fault lines, establishing his own still-uncomprehending followers as its surprising replacement, and then going off to take upon himself the full weight of evil, the concentrated calamity of the cosmos, so that its force would be annulled and the new world would be born.