The media Jesus and the Gospel Jesus aren’t the same person. Not even close. The Jesus we read about in the Gospel walked the Earth asking two questions everywhere he went: Who is power forgetting? Who is religion oppressing? And then he gathered them and ate with them and listened to them. And so back then he found himself eating with lepers and bleeding women and the poor and prostitutes and tax collectors. He just gathered these people and broke bread with them. And so today—if Jesus’ followers asked the same questions their leader asked with his life; if we looked hard at our own communities, in our own countries today and asked: Who is power forgetting? Who is religion oppressing? And then we gathered those people. And ate with them. And listened to them. We’d find ourselves listening to black kids. Black women. Black men. Brown people. Muslims. Addicts. The mentally ill. Children. Gay kids. Transgender kids. Refugees. Immigrants. Widows. The financially poor. And if we look around our churches and we do not see those faces, then we can be certain we are not doing the work that Jesus did. And we might ask ourselves if what we have is a church—where the vulnerable find allies and refuge and hope and where we step back and let the forgotten lead us—or if what we have ourselves is a country club where we can be comfy with folks who look and love and think just like we do.
Glennon Doyle Melton
Facebook post from the author of Love Warrior
