Marginal Jesus

I continue to be amazed by grace.  Not that I have any real grasp of it, I  only understand that I have received it—but not WHY I have received it, but I continue in my feeble attempt to understand it and recognize it when I see it in my life and the life of others.

The world we live in is “graceless.”  Not in the sense that there is no grace…but in the sense that we are NOT graceful people (although we love to pretend that we are!).  The past month has been a living testimony to that. It appears to be that if we REALLY understood grace we would understand Thanksgiving as a unique holiday.  Instead, our consumer culture has one shift dismantling the Halloween candy and decorations and the next shift putting up Christmas trees and snow globes filled with Santa and his reindeer. “Thanksgiving?” the clerk asks in response to my query.  “I believe we have some ‘fall’ decorations over in the corner.” Fall?  Really…? we have merged Labor Day, Halloween, Fall Break, and Thanksgiving into “Fall?”  I guess I didn’t get the memo!!  Only a graceless culture would lose sight of all that we truly have to be thankful for…perhaps only the grocery stores celebrate because it is, after all, “turkey day.”

Perhaps that is PRECISELY the point.  We have become graceless because we have been SO blessed by grace.  In other words…we have been given so much that we now have come to expect it.  Please allow me to ask you a personal question…have you been “good” enough to receive gifts this Christmas?  No really!!! Has your behavior throughout the year ACTUALLY been so exemplary that you deserve a gift?  Every kid is going to give an unqualified “yes” to this question but I would suppose that we as adults actually believe that we have not been that bad…and whether we actually get gifts or not we believe that we are entitled to get them…well…because we do (after all, as Scrooge tells Marley… “you are no better or worse” than anyone else)!

I often struggle with people.  I don’t want to go further down this road…I’m just stating the facts. AND, conversely, I am certain that there are people who struggle with me (and I am COMPLETELY okay with that!). When I read the gospels and I see how Jesus has some of the same issues.  Though He is clearly different than me in that He loves everyone equally it also seems evident that He was frustrated at some points.  In fact, it seems as though He reserved His harshest critiques for His disciples and the “religious leaders” of His day (perhaps He thought that they should have known better?) But He always seems to err on the side of grace (NOT the side I usually err on!).  I am fascinated by the sociology displayed in the gospels—whether actually by Jesus or inferred by the authors of His biography.

It appears, even from a cursory reading, that Jesus spends most of his time with three groups of people: the disciples He chose, the “spiritual leaders” of His day—which usually led to a conflict, and the disenfranchised and marginalized people of His culture (it is also unique to note that Jesus accepts some of both in His group of disciples!) which usually led to grace.

Since Christmas season is soon upon us, allow me to illustrate from the Christmas narratives. From our hindsight it is easy to see what is going on in Matthew and Luke.  Matthew a Jew, who is concerned about the Kingdom, shows how there is to be a Kingdom reversal with the birth of Jesus.  The earthly powers that be enter into the story with much fear and resort to all kinds of violence to thwart the attempted subversion.  Luke, a Gentile doctor, who is always concerned about the poor in his gospel, focuses on the earthly impact that this baby will have on our world. While both are concerned about the theological implications of the birth (Matthew identifies Jesus as Emmanuel meaning “God with Us” and that He is to be “the Christ” (the anointed one of God), and Luke whose account tells us that the baby will be called, “Yeshua” (Jesus) which means “God Saves,” and reminds the shepherds that today a “Savior” is born) they diverge on other details.  No kings or wise men in Luke…only lowly shepherds (the “hom-r-air-its”—the people of the land) who go to the manger because “there was no room in the inn” (where “rich” and “middle class people stay?). Could Luke be telling us something?  It is after all, Luke alone who has Jesus proclaiming the year of Jubilee (cf Luke 4) in the synagogue in Nazareth.  Who benefits the MOST from the year of Jubilee?  The poor and marginalized!

Luke goes to great lengths in his gospel to place Jesus “eating and drinking with sinners.”  In fact, in the original language the phrase “reclining at the table” is used of Jesus more frequently in Luke than any other Gospel!  According to Donald Heinz in his work, Christmas: Festival of Incarnation, people who were shepherds in Jesus day were considered to be COMPLETELY marginalized and ostracized by their world:

In the first century shepherds got no respect…the original shepherds were unlikely candidates for epiphany. Unshaven and drinking hard, shepherds starred among the thieving and cheating professions; they could not hold office or be admitted as witnesses in court. Just because of who they were, they were important to Luke, who always makes heroes of the lowly, the marginalized, the foreigner, and women.

Imagine someone who could not testify in a courtroom chosen to testify to the world about the most important event in human history!!  They became important for the first time ever!!  They were struck by grace in a graceless world where the “haves” did not care about the “have-nots!” Isn’t there a bit of irony in the fact the John would later give Jesus the title “THE Great Shepherd?”  Whatever else Jesus did for humanity he brought the divine and human together where Spirit touched matter and that would be “Good news for ALL people.”

Perhaps the marginalized people of the world find so much hope in Jesus because they cannot find hope (grace?) in any other place?  They are thankful for the small things because they have nothing?  They live in, and extend grace, because they understand how truly blessed that they are, and have no expectation that they deserve anything.  This is indeed the case with Christians in Haiti who struggle to survive, much less thrive.  When we were there a few years ago they were so gracious to receive instruction (from Scripture, for the dulcimer or guitar) that it was reflected in the way that they lived, worked, and most poignantly, in the way that they worshipped.

Is it any wonder that in our “graceless” culture Jesus, who loved the marginal, has been pushed to the margins?  Where ever Jesus was, grace was also present…perhaps that is why we are “graceless” in our Western world today? This Christmas seems no different than the last two thousand and something Christmases…there is still no room for Jesus!  And yet wherever people are oppressed and marginalized…grace shows up…because Jesus is there.

I just wonder if grace abounds in the marginal because Jesus feels appreciated there?