The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD –

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears… (NIV)

Professor Bryan E. Beyer in his Encountering the Book of Isaiah summaries these verses, “His [the Messiah's] wisdom and discernment enabled him to get beyond what he saw and heard to the heart of the matter and to rule with true justice, righteousness, and faithfulness (11:3-5)” p 90. One of the essential traits of the Messiah was discernment. Other leaders in the Davidic line ruled for power or selfish ends, but the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” would be saturated with the Spirit of God and rule righteously. Discernment was a major player in his rule.

The tendency of evangelical leaders (pastors and teachers) to pronounce endless moralisms and offer a smorgasbord of holiness hints and rules smells bad. The odor is the absence of the Spirit. We create a distasteful atmosphere driven by what we hear and what we see. Very few take the time to contemplate why this endless litany of “Bible based” principles, guidelines, steps and how-to’s is not producing a holy church. These holiness helps pile up and begin to get musty and after a while they begin to stink. In our sincere desire to urge holy living, we think we are smarter than the Holy Spirit. The Spirit just cannot do without our holy two cents’ worth. What does it tell us if evangelical leaders do not trust that the Holy Spirit of the Living God can lead teenagers into holy living? We actually believe hormones trump the Holy Spirit. And we do this in all good conscience. It smells really bad, and condescendingly disrespects teenagers.

I don’t think we even give a compelling enough vision to the church for which holy living even matters. The Spirit-empowered Messiah (of Isaiah 11) was on a mission from God (with all due respect to the Blues Brothers). How much holiness is required to be part of the average local church? Does holiness even come up? We are so busy reacting to the sometimes turbulent obvious that we miss the weightier, unseen matters of  hearts and souls. We harp about external issues–what our eyes see and hears hear–until people can’t stand it anymore and give up. We are long past “the tyranny of the urgent.” We are in the mediocrity of the minutia. “Directions! Give the people more and more holy directions! Discernment? We don’t have time for it.” Well, we better make time.  Jesus did.

Holiness is about being long before it is about behavior(s). God urges us to “be holy, for I am holy.” God does not say “Do holy things because I do holy things.” We try to get people to tie holy behaviors on lives driven by ill-equipped, disinterested hearts. As if I would tie apples to a dead apple tree and say, “Look! It’s an apple tree.” Not long. Soon it will begin to smell. The Spirit works, always works from the inside out. That is the beauty of the Spirit. Discernment is an inside job. Any hack can give directions.

Discernment,  the Scriptures  and the Spirit are happy allies. Discernment presupposes that Jesus is in the process of making all things new. Discernment is newness directed to a specific situation or person, to a specific community or missional venture. Discernment is much more like a compass in a wilderness than like a GPS on a busy urban freeway. Discernment provides space to maneuver and learn and does not scream, “Take this exit!” Discernment is not frantic. Discernment is not judgmental, though it will lead sometimes to tough moral decisions. Discernment will never violate Scripture or the character of Jesus Christ. To the contrary, discernment will always honor Scripture and express the presence of Jesus. Discernment will rarely feel like a law. It will feel like a strong, loving arm around the shoulder of someone confused or questioning.  Because discernment cares more about the heart and maturity, it will often ask more questions than it gives answers. Discernment will not get antsy when someone suggests something new or something never tried before. Discernment, moving in the strong currents of the Spirit, will often carve new paths in old ground. The “rivers of living water” that the Spirit is will not be bottled and sold for profit. Discernment is not for sale like so many of the packaged holy moralisms of our day. Discernment will never be a commercial template on sale at the local Christian bookstore. Discernment is ferociously local and specific, communal and situational. Discernment is the Spirit guiding a surrendered community who are fascinated with the person and mission of Jesus Christ.

I sense some will bristle up with the old barb: “This discernment stuff will lead to unholy living, you just wait and see. People need rules. They need direction.” My response is “Where have all the unceasing holy rules and directions gotten the church?” Not very far.  Christians in the U.S.A. are living by the same prevailing values as the secular culture. Data confirm it. Come, Holy Spirit, come. The time for discernment is now.

I mentioned the unhealthy propensity of evangelical leaders to provide directions; to make things plain and doable. I’ve come to see that this is not a beneficial service to the church because it does not provoke thought and thus short-circuits discernment.

The Apostle Paul spent a relatively brief time in the city of Thessaloniki and a young church was birthed. Paul writes to the vigorous Jesus-followers in the city and in his first letter he addresses a serious topic: sexual purity.

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.           – 1 Thessalonians 4: 3 – 8

Note Paul’s encouragement for the believers to “learn” and he offers little specific sexual direction. God calls us to a holy life. Paul concludes that on the issue of being holy (sexually) that God in fact “keeps on giving the Holy Spirit”  (present active verb). Little instruction, few directives.

I once was at a pastors’ seminar in Detroit attended by hundreds of Christian leaders being taught by a renown Bible teacher. The topic of sexual purity was on the agenda. This famous Bible teacher, based on teachings of Jewish Rabbis, taught that the Levitical sexual purity laws (e.g., Leviticus 15) given to Israel were God’s continuing directives today for the church. I am not kidding. I sat stunned. This was a blatant expression of the Galatian heresy confronted by Paul in the fiery little Book of Galatians. This guru of the faith was dragging New Covenant believers back under the legislation (Law) of the Old Covenant…without even batting an eye! I looked around and saw hundreds of leaders taking notes like this was the best news since the resurrection of Jesus.

Now compare that example of “Bible teaching” in Detroit with Paul’s words to the Thessalonians. If anyone knew the levitical code for sexual purity and cleanliness, it was the former Pharisee named Paul. When he wrote that it was God’s will for the Thessalonians to be sexually holy, he could have whipped out a divinely revealed litany of directions (from Moses) and written it to the new church. Paul did not do this, but the Bible teacher in Detroit did. Who was correct on the topic?

Most of the church in Thessaloniki were converted Gentiles. Paul even said that they had turned from idols to serve the living and true God (1:9). The levitical sexual purity laws given to Israel would have meant nothing to them. So, Paul gives directions for them to learn to be sexually holy and reminds them that holiness is best learned from, get this, the Holy Spirit. Paul could rest in the reality of the living presence of the Spirit in that young church Who would guide them into a practice of sexual purity. The new believers would learn to discern. They did not need a code of conduct. They needed only to attend to the Holy Counselor.

What a challenge discernment is! Do we have that kind of trust in the Spirit’s ability? Do we have that kind of trust in believers’ ability to develop Spirit-empowered discernment? Do we have the courage to tear up all the fine-tuned directions we want to lay on people so they will be sure to live holy lives?

By the way, that little church learning to discern sexual holiness spread the Gospel all over Asia Minor…without any training from Campus Crusade or InterVarsity or Evangelism Explosion. How can this be? Living with a discernment mind-set casts the community totally upon the Holy Spirit. Another spin-off of this joyful reliance on the Holy Spirit was a missional passion that almost left Paul speechless (see 1:7-9).

We must shift from giving directions to providing a challenge to learn to discern. Risky? Sure. But the consequences are staggering.

Jesus was not a direction-giver. He was a discernment artist. Jesus trusted people’s ability to hear his stories and reach some startling conclusions about the kingdom of God. Some individuals wanted Jesus’ ready-made answers to their dilemmas. Jesus most often refused. (“John, why don’t you tell us where these texts are?” Uh, no. Discern, my friend.)

Jesus believed that farmers and housewives and tax-collectors and lepers could imagine, think, and reach conclusions. He believed in the human ability to discern. Jesus knew that developing discernment in others was far superior than giving them point-blank directions. I am bothered that so many pastors and teachers don’t follow Jesus in this regard. Do leaders mistrust people? Do current leaders foster an informed, elite attitude over “the people of the land” as the religious leaders did in Jesus’ day? For all our teaching about the accessibility of the Bible to the “common person” and the compassionate illuminating ministry of the Spirit to light Scripture up for ordinary folk, leaders still seem bent on spelling it all out, making it clear, answering the burning questions, fostering a codependency in biblical/theological/spiritual issues.  To be proficient at giving biblical directions is no gift to people. Directions require no thinking, just compliance.

Now I know that this codependency relationship between leaders and people is fed also by people who cry, “Feed me. Feed me, pastor. Think for me. Tell me what to do. Feed me.” This lamentable mutation of so-called ‘pastoral ministry’ stunts thinking and erodes all possibility of the emergence of discernment.

I think leaders and people prefer direction-giving because it eliminates fear and offers the illusion of control. Discernment, according to my friend, Scot McKnight, requires both courage and careful thought. Why courage? Because discernment allows us to explore unknown territories of the soul and life, i.e., all those sometimes frightening areas not ‘mapped out’ by the professional direction-givers. Direction-giving tempts to a dangerous spiritual condition: pride. We know exactly what to do and we go do it.  Developing discernment is a companion of humility because we feel awkwardly suspended in mid-air and our only hope is the Spirit and other discernment-oriented friends. Discernment is a community quest while I can follow directions all day long all by myself. Discernment is genuinely creative while following directions tends toward boredom.

Jesus was a superb discernment artist. He provoked thought and he elicited unparalleled commitment in others.

We think we are so smart. The disciples are at their wits’ end in the boat on the hurricane-angered Sea of Galilee. Having awakened a sleeping Jesus, Jesus speaks, things change and Jesus asks, “Why are you so afraid?” We think, “Well, duh? Jesus. They thought they were going to die!” Aren’t we smart?

Imagining that merely possessing and studying the Scriptures, the Pharisees believed they had life. Life with God in God’s kingdom. They were Book-obsessed. Book worms.  Jot and tittle types that boasted in owning “the oracles of God.”  When “the Word made flesh” stands before them, opposes them, warns them, the Book-centered folks dismiss him as an alien, as a life-destroyer, not the life-bringer.

The Pharisee syndrome is still alive and well in USAmerican Christianity. Many Christians are much more at ease with studying the Bible than coming to Jesus. Reading a Book is safer, more comfortable than relating to a Person, especially an enigmatic Person like Jesus.  An insidious pride lurks in the heart when one presumes to know the Book, to possess it and revere it and use it to fence off undesirable types of people from our tidy lives. People, well-intentioned, begin to substitute finding something new and refreshing in the Bible with relating to a holy, very present God.

As a pastor I’ve observed how the Bible is used to distance a person from God the Spirit. If I view the Bible as a box of matches from which I can draw one match and light it and see the flame and feel the fleeting warmth and call that a devotional life, then I am happy. To walk into the flame-thrower named Jesus the Christ is a different story. I don’t want to be burned up in the fiery passion and mission of God–that’s too extreme.  I’m happy with “this little light of mine…”.  Living as a whole burnt offering is too…what shall I say? Indelicate. I want to stay in charge of my commitment and piece-meal it out at my discretion. Dying to self is a nice metaphor after all.

Imagine a newly married couple reading to each other each night from a Christian book on the sexual life in marriage. They  even memorize  sentences or paragraphs of it. They write songs about love and intimacy. They arrange sexual topics into a nice groupings of thought and make charts and graphs. They study all sorts of other books to understand what is in their manual…medical and anatomical definitions, history, and issues. After years of this they wonder why they are still childless. They know the book backwards and forwards. They diligently study the book, but have not come intimately to each other as persons.

You diligently study the Scriptures…you refuse to come to me. Saints and scholars have not been reluctant to make daring parallels between the sexual life of a man and woman and life with God. The Song of Songs is notoriously used to make those parallels. Eugene H. Peterson as a pastor strongly suggests that a person’s prayer life is a mirror of their sexual life (in Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work on the “Song of Songs”). It is entirely possible to use the Bible as a book about intimacy with God and actually be very far from God. Jesus confronts folks who thought they were intimate with him and passionate for him, but were in fact “evil-doers” (see Matthew 7:21-23).

A common objection I hear to this is, “The only way I can know God is through the Bible. The Bible has to be first, God second. If I don’t go to the Bible first, then I may concoct crazy things about ‘God’.” This sounds noble and right, but is in fact a lie. God has not locked the awesome Trinitarian reality of Being in a book with a cover and pages with ink. Jesus had to bluntly make this plain to Nicodemas in a night conversation. My intimate life with Julie and the fact of the existence of my four lovely daughters never were locked in a sexual informational guide. Never. Adam and Eve were procreating the race long before the printing press gave us sex manuals. The living God-head Three in One has been and is and forever will be independent of the Bible. God is totally able and free to introduce God-reality to anyone, anytime, anywhere. The humbling strategy that the living God has chosen is for those who intimately know God to go and bear witness to God’s loving, present, gracious, saving Trinitarian Being. We aren’t commissioned to go read a manual to people, but to bear fruit as we abide (stay in union with) Jesus.

Behind the insidious insistence upon the Bible first and God second is the fear that God cannot make himself truly known without our help, you know, those of us who “know the Bible.” The Bible becomes our precarious and presumptuous replacement of the Spirit poured out on the planet at Pentecost.  Again, we would rather have a nice, controlled “lamp to my feet” than a fire-breathing, untameable Spirit to contend with.

Please, please don’t misunderstand me. I am not belittling or ignoring or demeaning the Holy Scriptures. My passion is that the Bible find its rightful place in our lives. The Pharisees no doubt loved God and they made a fatal mistake of placing holy writings between them and Jesus. Why do we think we cannot make the same grievous mistake? I am afraid many have…yes, even pastors.

A sticking point in today’s emergent conversations is the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as both the only authentic revelation of the true God and the only access point to that God. Brian McLaren rightly questions the haranguing snootyness of some factions in Christianity who harp on “who’s in” and “who’s out” of authentic faith. What I think Brian misses, however, is that it is one thing to question the way Christ’s exclusivity is presented to a wrecked world, but it is a whole other thing to make Jesus just one of the many nice (and religious) ways to get to God. Christ’s exclusivity seems to bother McLaren and others a lot; it seems too intolerant; it seems religiously bigoted; it can be infuriating.

Here’s the skinny. Jesus Christ is an infuriating person. He was in his own day and he is in our day as well. Many are aware of the lexical slight of hand that McLaren uses in his interpretation of John 14:6. He seems to not like that verse, and he certainly doesn’t like the way that verse is used by some. On the second concern–the way the verse is used by some, McLaren has a valid point. To use the verse obnoxiously and intolerantly is way out of line. I don’t think Jesus spoke it as a blunt weapon to be put into our “witnessing kit.” Context is vital.

Yet, the statement is there: “…no one comes to the Father except through me.” That is exclusive on the face of it. Jesus spoke it to the Eleven in the Upper Room conversation. Yet, we must go deeper into this idea of exclusivity. Thankfully, again, Jesus helps us…this time in his prayer recorded in John 17.

Take off your shoes because we are on holy ground. The Son is addressing the Father in his last extended session of prayer with his friends. After this prayer, the dominoes tip quickly, tumbling toward the cross.  In this prayer Jesus says this, “I revealed you those you gave me…” (v. 6). There seems to be an echo to John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” Exactly who did Jesus make known and/or reveal? In John 17:3 we hear Jesus praying this: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (emphasis added).

We know that Jesus’ exclusive claim to make Israel’s exclusive God known infuriated the Pharisees and entertained the Sadducees. We know that Rome winked at this strange Jewish religion and gave Israel special permission to maintain their exclusive religious beliefs. Yet, when the early church began, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to spread into the religiously pluralistic world of the Roman Empire, the exclusive declaration “Jesus is Lord” (and Caesar is not) became dangerous to your Christ-following health. “Jesus is Lord” infuriated Rome.  As N. T. Wright has pointed out: the most advanced religion in the world and the most advanced political system in the world conspired together to stamp out the exclusivity of Jesus the Christ.

There is only one authentic God. Only Jesus has revealed that one authentic God. Only in relationship with Jesus Christ is that one true God known (experienced).  In fact, Jesus even explains that “eternal life” is only in that relationship. It is in no other relationship or religion.

There is no grand cosmic unity beneath the surface of all world religions including Christianity-viewed-as-a-religion. Both Old Testament and New Testament concur that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of the Lord Jesus Christ sits in judgment upon the religions of the world. I know this is hard to acknowledge. It’s more palatable to muddle. Muddling defuses the exclusivity and we can all be very nice, imagining the great vast unity just below this world’s volatile religious surface. But that fantasy just won’t work in the real world of the Jesus Way.

Jesus is here contrasting his kingdom of God method to his cousin’s John the Baptist’s way.

“The Son of Man came exegeting Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and correcting the doctrinal errors of the Pharisees, and all the other factions in Israel.”

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s the USAmerican evangelical approach to social change. “Preach the Word!” It’s too bad our Supreme Example didn’t use that approach.

Daily meals became Jesus’ “dangerous” method. He welcomed marginalized people to eat with him. They gladly did so at the cafe table called The Kingdom of God. They laughed and swapped stories and had a rousing good time. Jesus’ disciples had numerous side conversations with the cultural-culinary-religious police about “Why does your master welcome and eat with these kind of people?” Talk about meal-time excitement!

Whoever thought that bread could be a weapon for change? Can’t you just imagine Jesus with squinted eyes staring down an upstart Pharisee and in a Clint Eastwood-like, raspy voice saying, “This here is a Zebulun 6″ diameter loaf of fresh-baked, butter-topped, .45 caliber wheat grain bread…and I don’t know how many bites are left. Feeling lucky, punk?”

Whoever thought an ordinary table of people could be the place where heaven and earth meet?

Whoever thought that eating together with the most unsavory of friends would reshape a nation’s vision of holiness?

I marvel at the Jesus Way: creating a national storm with bread, fish and wine, not with swords, F-16’s and bunker-busters.

“As oft’ as you quote this verse and preach this Bible text and argue stringently for justification by faith alone, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” How does that verse go again?

We have changed from the Jesus Way.

People at the margins might not be able to follow our fine, finessed, exegetically precise, “inner logic” trails to getting right with God, but they sure do know how to eat. And they’ll eat with Jesus when he invites them. It was the spiffy, religious know-it-alls who were “too good” to mix with the dusty riff-raff. “Why do you eat food with unclean hands? Why do you eat food with homosexuals, terrorists, racy women and social rejects? God just wouldn’t eat with people like that.”

Jesus of Nazareth, gritty as he was, was and is and will forever be God.

Here’s the clincher. Some of you will have to bite your tongue. There’s no record that they had “to repent” to eat at Jesus’ table. The fact that they came–tax-collectors, prostitutes, lame, blind, diseased–and ate and enjoyed Jesus’ welcome was repentance enough.

Now, I didn’t say that they didn’t ever change, did I? I said there’s no evidence that they had to change before they came to the table. There’s a word that is really loved and lived by those in the margins. It’s the word grace. Grace. Embracing Grace.

With his meal-time habits, Jesus was speaking a new language and introducing a new world.

USAmerican culture has gutted the social significance of daily meals. With the TV dinner and the fast food chains, we eat like we live…with a sound and fury signifying nothing. Once in a while we arrive at a table with 3 forks, 3 glasses, two spoons and two knives and we freeze up. This is no ordinary meal. Which fork do we use first? A china plate with 3 long green beans with a “glaze” on them and a piece of meat the size of a postage stamp with a purple flower next to it shows up. “Who needs 3 forks for this?” We begin to fantasize about a “Big Mac.”

In Jesus’ day a meal was a controlling cultural map. Who was eating with whom? Where? and What? And who was in charge? –all said something significant about social relationships. Powerful social code was telegraphed. It was what anthropologists call “the language of meals.”

Are you one of us or one of them? Every meal in Jesus’ day was an answer to that question. Meals portrayed legitimate and illegitimate social relationships. “This man (read “scum bag”) welcomes ’sinners’ and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). Who was clean and unclean? Who was pure and who was polluted? Meals answered these questions.

Add to this Israel’s history with God around meals—complaining about water and quails—eating and drinking at the golden calf—picking manna up daily—the periodic holy feast days—staying pure in Babylon (Daniel and his friends)—you get the picture. In Israel your meal-time habits showed whether you were close to or far from God. The “Lord’s Table” was every meal you ate…or it was not His table.

Meals kept tribes together, clans united, families close, a nation identified. Meals were an expression of law-keeping or law-breaking. Eatingness was close to godliness.

Enter radical pastor Jesus and his new code. His meal-time good news message. He was subversively, non-violently redrawing Israel’s cultural-spiritual map. He offered new, happy redefinitions of who’s pure and who’s polluted. He didn’t have to say a lot. All he had to do was host a meal and break the bread and pour the wine. By these actions Jesus literally broke Jewish society apart, even family members had to chose (or not) to be in the new social structure Jesus was creating (see Matthew 10:34-39).

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Jesus said, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west [despised Gentiles], and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Jesus said, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.” ‘

Jesus, then, by his meal-time associations reconfigured the kingdom of God for all to see. He was amazingly courageous and intensely controversial. I wonder if most of his followers developed ulcers. “Can you believe what he is doing?” I hear Peter saying to John. “We are all going to die.”

Every meal Jesus ate in his ministry was a transformative expression, a here and now enactment of the presence of the kingdom of God.

Grace…amazing, gutsy, pass-the-potatoes grace.

The proverb is not about food. It’s about ideas, concepts, principles. If an idea is “edible” that means it is practical, it becomes part of life. It’s not theory; it’s concrete here and now.

Jesus was edible. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood… .” And, “This is my body given for you.”

Jesus didn’t change the margins with ideas. He changed the margins with concrete actions. His meal-time practices were “provocative theatre.” You could see the people, smell the food, hear the laughter, dip into the same dish with Jesus. You could actually live in the kingdom of God with Jesus. The last first, the least the greatest, the child the proto-type disciple. You could breathe deeply the grace of God and see shame flee away forever.

Following Jesus was, by his culture’s standards, an R-rated action movie, not a purpose-driven Bible study.

We don’t read about Jesus critics saying, “This man welcomes sinners and gives them new ideas.” We read, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

With a kazillion “kingdom of God” ideas and concepts percolating on the world wide web, the church won’t see one person converted. Are the ideas edible?

Jesus did things. He broke bread with a violent fanatic and invited him to be a team member (a zealot); he called a tax-collector to be his follower and then ate with that tax-collector and all his traitorous friends. He allowed a known prostitute to touch him at an important and very public social gathering. He touched lepers and dead people. He spit in dust and made mud. He whipped animals out of the Temple. He ate lots of meals with marginalized people.

American Christians want an inedible version of the kingdom of God. We want nice ideas to prop up our materialistically smothered lifestyle. A nice, santitized idea of the kingdom that won’t get dirt under our fingernails or snot on our clothes or blood on our hands.

We’d rather “believe” in Jesus than eat and drink him. That “meal” creates, just as it did when Jesus first offered it, a response of “this saying is too hard for us.” Why?

It’s concrete, not conceptual. It’s strangers at our Martha Stewart tables. It’s sick people sleeping between our Downy softened sheets. It’s being in very hot places without air-conditioning. It’s eating with people who don’t know the Bible or Jesus or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa.

Jesus was edible. More Chinese than American.

Jesus made being marginal central.

He did it primarily by his meal-time practices.

In Jesus’ day the Jewish culture operated on the power of shame. Social relationships were arranged hierarcially with those closest to God–the High Priest–then priests, Levites, obedient Jews on down to those most removed from God–Gentiles, shepherds, tax-collectors, prostitutes and generally the am ha ‘aretz, the “people of the land,” the illiterate human trash. You were kept in your place by stringent social shaming.

For example, Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus into his home and then immediately proceeded to exert the power of social shame (see Luke 7: 36-50). By deliberately humiliating Jesus before all his guests, Simon sought to put this upstart “prophet” from Hicksville, Galilee in his proper place.

Oops. Shame does not work on Jesus. Rolling with Simon’s shame punch, Jesus proceeds to interpret a redeemed prostitute’s actions for Simon and the guests. All the shame meant to slime Jesus boomeranged onto Simon. At a meal.

To be marginalized in Jesus’ day meant to be shamed. Publicly humiliated and socially ostracized and spiritually scorned. You were considered, not just someone who did bad things, you were a bad, unclean person. To up the ante, the social shame declared that you were cut off from God. You had no place at the holy table. You were an outsider. You were gutter trash. You had no identity other than to be the foil for “the righteous ones” who said things like, “God, I am so glad I’m not like that tax-collector/same sex-oriented person/abortion-minded woman/alcoholic/Hezbollah terrorist over there.”

Jesus prepares his table. The thing you never felt in his presence was shame. You felt welcomed. You felt honored. You felt joy. You felt included. You felt valued. You felt family. You heard “my friend” and looked up and saw that Jesus meant you.

“But I, I am…a very rich tax-collector.”
“I am a…furious zealot with blood on my hands.”
“I am…am an unclean woman with an issue of blood.”
“I am a smelly shepherd.”
“I am a desperate prostitute.”
“I am a lonely leper.”
“I am a hated Roman centurion.”
“I am a despised Samaritan and immoral woman.”
“I am am ha ‘aretz.”

Jesus looks at us and smiles. He raises his hands and blesses the bread from the earth and the wine from the grape. He blesses as only a Good Host can bless. By the time he stops, we really don’t care what we are, but who he is. And one thing he is, he’s for us, not against us.

Jesus, as host, says, “Hey, Deborah and Matthew, separate a little bit. We’ve got to make room for father Abraham when he shows up. Good. You guys, there, make a place for Isaac. Alright. Let’s eat.”

Dark shame flees into the night in the presence of Light. Sadly the fleeing shame seeps into the crevases of graceless hearts turns into homicidal hatred. Shame hates being shamed.

“This is my body given for you” …and they felt no shame.

I’ve been ruminating again about Jesus’ life with the marginalized of 1st century Judaism. I’m going to ponder in print some of my thoughts.

We often think that Jesus left his surburban bungalow on the green hillside of Galilee and went into the big city and sought out the disadvantaged. How good of Jesus to condescend and go to the marginalized, the outcasts, the rejects, the down-trodden. What a model of servant-leadership. I wonder if my shiny Hummer can navigate the narrow inner city streets?

Wait a minute. Jesus, himself, was born into and lived in the margins of his society. He was the ultimate outcast, the “sinner,” the man with disreputable beginnings and unholy (read illegal) practices.

Good news. Jesus changed the margins. He dared to draw new lines of acceptance with God the Father. Jesus paradoxically made being marginal central.

Imagine that I announce to my Northview neighborhood that teenagers on the verge of getting their driver’s licenses can meet me in a local school parking lot at a certain time. I will train them for free how to start a car, drive and park a car, learn to operate a manual shift, change a flat tire, check the oil, etc. I get approval from every authority interested and the area folk think, “How nice. That old, grey-bearded guy is helping our kids prepare to drive. And he’s doing it for free.”

One day, however, the teens come home, jumping for joy.

“Mom, Dad, I got my driver’s license today!”

“You what? Let me see that.”

“Yeah, the old guy who’s been training us issued our licenses today. Isn’t that wicked?!”

“Hey, settle down. This 3 X 5 card with a polaroid picture taped to it isn’t exactly a driver’s license.”

Word gets out and soon the Michigan Secretary of State sends some authorities to check out this unusual and illegal behavior. Teens are being arrested for driving with a lumpy 3 X 5 card as a valid license.

“Uh, Reverend Frye, you can’t just issue driver’s licenses like this. We appreciate your help getting the teens road ready and all that, but you can’t issue a license to any of them. That is the job of the State of Michigan.”

Jesus is famous for his meal-time habits. His eating habits are one of the most reliable and uncontested features of his life. Jesus ate with people in the margins. For a God-fearing Jew, he ate with the wrong people. But that in itself could be tolerated. “Birds of a feather flock together. He eats with ’sinners’ because he’s a ’sinner.’ “

What got Jesus in trouble was issuing licenses, so to speak. He said, “At my table, you are sitting right in the middle of the Kingdom of God. Eat up. Drink. Laugh. The kingdom is for you!!”

“Uh, Rabbi Jesus, we’re from the Temple…you know, the big one in Jerusalem. You just can’t go around telling people, especially these people, that they are in the kingdom of God. That’s the priests’ job.”

Jesus with a furious twinkle in his eye says, “Oh, no, my Temple friends, you’ve got it all wrong. It IS my job. And I’m doing it.”

At Jesus’ table Deborah, the prostitute, passes a bunch of grapes to Matthew, a tax-collector, and the cups of wine spark laughter (for Anne Lamott laughter is “carbonated holiness”). Deborah and Matthew wonder aloud what they will ask Abraham when they sit at the table with him. Jesus had said that they would eat with their ancestors in the faith.

“I never knew there was a place at this table for me,” Deborah says quietly. “I don’t look like a Pharisee. I don’t talk like one and I, for sure, don’t act like one. I never did learn to talk ‘Pharisee.’ “

“Nor I, ” says Matthew, “but here we are! In the middle of the Kingdom of God.”

Bread, fruit, lamb and wine. Laughter. Heaven and earth meet at the table.

Who’s marginalized?