It's easier to treat Jesus as a one-way ticket to heaven as opposed to following Jesus to the margins here and now: to feed the hungryto care for the sickto forgive debtsto welcome the stranger. But that's where Jesus is.And that's the kingdom come.
Jesus entered as he did, where he did, doing what he did, because God needed us to finally comprehend the truth: God is not a sky king who heads an empire; God is the love that gives itself away for the sake of more love. Jesus could only communicate that point by...
The folks you're shutting out of the church today will be leading it tomorrow. That's how the Spirit works. The future's in the margins.
In short, our congregations are marked by a warped spirituality. We have been formed spiritually in ways that bracket the realities of violence and poverty and oppression, ignoring them (at worst) or confining them (at best) to the margins of our attention. We have...