God Among

One of the things that pulls me to Jesus is the magnetic draw he had on people who had been otherwise repelled by religion. In him they were quick to recognize a power greater than their suffering, sorrow, emptiness, addiction or sin. By him they were touched, embraced, and restored. Through him they knew that God was not beyond them; God was among them.

It’s interesting to me that Jesus chose to be among those repelled by normal religion. Could he have chosen to do the Father’s kingdom work without ever rubbing shoulders with the neglected and rejected? I guess so, but, as one theologian has said, the true nature of love is seen its response to the unattractive. It was the compassionate love of Jesus, full of grace and mercy, which compelled him to enter the personal spaces and the suffering places where normal religion dared not go. Jesus does not decontaminate the environment before going into it. He just walks in. I wonder if God’s rescue and restoration operation works best in non-sterilized situations (look at the leper in Luke 5 as an example).

Following Jesus’ example, we shouldn’t think of ourselves as part of normal religion. Following Jesus is about outward movement toward people who wonder if they’ve broken their lives beyond repair, who lay in bed at night asking if God really cares, who go through each day hoping someone will notice their existence, or who feel they can’t get through another day without popping some pills or taking another drink.

Our Life Communities have the potential to be this kind of mission outposts for God’s restoration, authentic Christian communities sprouting up in dorms, Greek houses, apartment complexes, and cafes—communities in which people know that God is among them.