Jesus in the Margins

I’m speaking on Luke 4 this week. The passage is about Jesus stating his life’s work: to bless those we don’t expect, those in the margins – the poor, the oppressed, the very people that religious people tend to overlook.

I pulled out my friend Rick’s book because it is bang on.

After years in the church, I began to see that underneath those shiny suits and happy smiles were people just like me who were broken and sinful and desperately in need of acceptance and love and forgiveness. But for the first ten years of following Jesus, I tried to fit in with this consumer church culture, and it just didn’t work. I was still a marginalized kid. I was the redheaded cousin nobody wants to take credit for: I made it into the family, but only on a fluke.

…[Jesus is] a friend of sinners. He’s there in the margins with the average Joe, with people whose lives are broken and tattered and sinful. People who have had horrible things happen to them and done horrible things back.

It’s a great book on what it might look like to follow Jesus into the margins. I’ll be reading it again tonight.

Update: Rick is speaking at Mosaic, a church planting conference in Toronto in November. This from a guy who swore to me he would never come to Canada. We’re planning on taking him out for beaver and maple syrup and all the other food he thinks we eat up here.