what a thought...

"As my class in Chicago read the Gospels and watched movies about Jesus' life, we noticed a striking pattern: the more unsavory the characters, the more at ease they seemed to feel around Jesus. People like these found Jesus appealing: a Samaritan social outcast, a military officer of the tyrant Herod, a quisling tax collector, a recent hostess to seven demons.

In contrast, Jesus got a chilly response from more respectable types. Pious Pharisees thought him uncouth and worldly, a rich young ruler walked away shaking his head, and even the open-minded Nicodemus sought a meeting under the cover of darkness.

I remarked to the class how strange this pattern seemed, since the Christian church now attacts respectable types who closely resemble the people most suspicious of Jesus on earth. What has happened to reverse the pattern of Jesus' day? Why don't sinners like being around us?"

"Projecting myself back into Jesus' time, I try to picture the scene. The poor, the sick, tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes crowd around Jesus, stirred by his message of healing and forigiveness. The rich and powerful stand on the sidelines, testing him, spying, trying to entrap him. I know these facts about Jesus' time, and yet, from the comfort of a middle-class church in a wealthy country like the U.S., I easily lose sight of the radical core of Jesus' message"

"Jesus went out of his way to embrace the unloved and unworthy, the folks who matter not at all to the rest of society - they embarrass us, we wish they'd go away - to prove that even "nobodies" matter infinitely to God"

"Regardless of how the world treats them, the poor and the sick have assurance, because of Jesus, that God knows no undesirables"

- "The Jesus I Never Knew", Philip Yancey