Jesus Walks into Your Church

I don't know if there's as popular a hypothetical in the church as this one:

"What would Jesus say if he were here?"

It's effective. Pastors have posited the scenario to cause their congregations to contemplate. It's good for reflection. It forces us to examine our world – the spaces we've created – from a higher level and for at least a fleeting moment overlook biases and prejudices that keep us from truth.

I'm glad we're asking the question. I suppose half the battle of following Jesus is simply hearing his voice. And I think it's fair to say that the voices of American Christianity (the tribe of my upbringing) have sincerely done their best to answer the question.

Popular writer Lysa Terkeurst writes that it would be a happy day if Jesus walked into her church. She states that it is her deep longing to see him enter in grandeur:

"People would grab their friends with diseases and run toward Him. Parents would carry their hurting children to Him. Those with addictions, emotional hurts and illnesses would stretch out their hands just to touch Him. Others would drop to their knees in adoration."

Evangelical pastor Jim Martin imagines the same excitement of the first crowd that flocked to Jesus of Nazareth:

"Oh I would like to say that it would be a wonderful day. I suspect our numbers would go up. Adult children would call their parents to come visit. Children of our members would drive in from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to hear Jesus speak and then have lunch together afterward. I suspect our members would be a bit more eager to invite friends in our community."

Most Christians similarly long to see Jesus in person and encounter the subject of their faith, although not without a sense of sobriety. Terkeurst and Martin correct their own imaginations. Terkeurst concludes by saying that – spoiler alert – Jesus is actually already in your church according to Matthew 18 ("Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.")

Martin expresses apprehension he would have if Jesus appeared: "You've read the Gospels. You know how he could be very candid with religious leaders." But he adds that Jesus would bring an important third-party perspective and say,"You do not evaluate your lives the way I do." Jesus would teach the congregation with impartiality, according to Martin.

Pastor Dan Delzell applies a sterner warning to his church, referencing the seven confrontational letters of John's Revelation as an example. That is to say, Jesus would warn the people of their lax lifestyle and compromising sexuality and offer the reward for perseverance if he stepped into Delzell's church.

For Delzell, Jesus would come to give pronouncements. For Martin, Jesus would come to give us perspective. For Terkeurst, Jesus would come as something of an inspirer-in-chief.

They're not wrong per se. As I said above, I'm glad they're asking the question. I'm glad we are posing the hypothetical.

But the more important question here is the most troubling question for me and the question we don't want to ask ourselves.

Why do we think this is a hypothetical? Because it is not a matter of if Jesus walked into your church, but when he walked into your church. He has already entered our midst, even if we didn't notice.

Terkeurst gets a portion of this maxim correct when she describes the unseen presence of God within the congregation. This is a step in the right direction to acknowledge that Jesus is already present in the congregation, but she assumes too much: namely that Jesus being present means that we recognize him in our midst and truly encounter him. I submit that Jesus in many cases has slipped under the radar in our churches. We have not seen him in many, or even most, cases

"But Lord, when did we see you attending our church and not encounter you?"

If you have your Bibles with you, please flip to Matthew 25, where we see Jesus tell his disciples the uncomfortable truth about those who truly have experienced his presence and come to know him:

"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’"

Jesus was present, and we overlooked him. And it's not so much about Jesus being invisible as it is about Jesus being present in the lonely. In the least of these.

It's clear from Matthew 25 and James 2 (and perhaps even the horrifying imagery of the rich man burning in Luke 16) that Jesus explicitly elevates treatment of the poor as the defining requirement for his followers and the ultimate criteria on judgement day. It's only logical if you follow the two premises. If the first commandment of the Christian is to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your mind," and God is present in the poor and lowly, we must then love the poor and lowly. God in the person of Jesus attaches himself to the victimized and the helpless and offers us a package deal. God has so intimately connected himself to the disenfranchised that it is impossible to decouple them. If you don't accept them, you don't accept him (and those are Jesus' words, not mine).

Now, love might sound like a vague term, right? And it's not like Christians are trying to shut down soup kitchens. It's not like there aren't prison ministries. It's not like we don't donate our clothes to Goodwill. So what do we lack? After all, we don't hate poor people.

In all of my life, I've heard only two sermons on James 2:1-13, one from an influential mentor and another from a dear partner in ministry. They stick with me. I've heard no shortage of pastors trying to explain the "faith without works is dead" passage in the latter half of James 2. People flip when they read that James views works as equal to faith with regard to salvation.

It has to be that James meant something else, right? He can't seriously mean that people will ultimately be defined not what they believe, but by what they do. If you grew up Reformed, the little voice inside your head is screaming "Legalism!"

Could Batman really be right?

Well he is, but not as you might think. Because the "works" James discusses are not a puritanical list of moral achievements or a record streak for how many times you didn't masturbate. That misses the point.

You have to actually read the rest of the letter for it to make sense. Then you see what these critical works really are.

You must remember the admonition of James 1:27:

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

These are the works. This is the faith working through love that Paul so passionately proclaimed in Galatians 5:6 as superior to the empty rituals of tribal religion. Combine those passages with what we know about "the least of these" in Matthew 25, and we're starting to get somewhere. Gone now is the the legalism that frightens us so much, because to describe it in terms of legal requirements is to miss the heart of God. What makes the New Testament such an oddity is not just the radical life it prescribes for its adherents, but its call for love – not fear of punishment or the sycophantic pursuit of rewards – to motivate self-sacrifice and self-effacement. It's nonsensical, but the best kind of nonsensical.

James 2:1-13 challenges us to tangibly practice faith working through love. Don't just talk about it; do it. The writer presents a scenario (a hypothetical if you will) for his readers to see if they have actually practice his teaching.

"My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, 'You sit here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there,' or, 'Sit down at my feet,' have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?"

As my friend declared about this passage, how you view God is inextricably linked with how you view the poor. And to deny the poor a spot at the table is to deny the redemption story God is weaving.

We want to know what would happen if Jesus walked into our church, but we ask the wrong question.

Jesus wants to know what happens when the poor walk into our church.

Honestly consider the scenario. Have you ever seen a hobo sitting in the front pew? Have you shaken hands with an raggedy, alchohol-breathing vagrant during the seven-minute break? Do you greet the drug-addicted woman whose midriff might cause someone "to stumble." Do you sit alongside transgender woman whose parents booted her into the street, or are you afraid of "endorsing" her with your hospitality?

James had harsh words for his audience, but you have to give him credit. At least the poor were staying for the entirety of church service. Where I come from, they rarely make it into the sanctuary.  I live one of the most unabashedly gentrified communities in Arizona. The middle class flocks here for its promise of safe confines to raise a family.

And safe works for them. But I don't want safe. I'm not a masochist, and I also know that I'm not practical.

I don't think following Jesus is practical.

I don't think the Sermon on the Mount offers a pragmatic approach to life.

Its very thrust is to imitate the teacher who voluntarily suffered injustice and abuse at the hands of a corrupt power structure. Understand that while Jesus' driving mission was in part to offer forgiveness, the overarching purpose was to identify with humanity's weakness. He in turn invites his follower to do likewise for the least of these.

If for us the Christian faith props up a life that is devoted to the pursuit of comfort and safety, then Dan Delzell is absolutely right: Jesus would take us to task if he stood up to give the homily on Sunday morning. But better now than later, as the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus would suggest.

The Evangelical church's recent embrace of "Biblical Justice" takes a hopeful but often misguided step. In our love of laws and technicalities, we have defined justice as even-handedness: the letter of the law balancing perfectly. That's correct to a limited point. Yes, Israel's prophets exhorted the people to renounce "dishonest scales," but the New Testament advocates a deeper, more extreme and profoundly uneven view. This is the view that God's heart is intertwined with and aches for the plight of the oppressed.

For that reason, Jesus far more frequently commands mercy than he commands justice. They are not opposed to each other, but the merciful understands the deeper meaning of justice. 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'  is the refrain of Jesus and prophets, and it deserves our contemplation. We have ignored mercy at our peril. If we ponder mercy, it is only the mercy God gives to believers, and not the mercy they extend to their neighbor.

I blame this lack of vision for American Christianity's longstanding pattern of propagating culture wars and crusading against intellectual dissenters. Read just a few writings of the Moral Majority's leading figures, and you'll see that the phrase "law of God" is a consistent theme. Ever wondered why we want Exodus 20 inscribed on our courthouses and not Mark 12?

Gospel of Luke is not concerned with law but rather liberation. Jesus begins his ministry with the proclamation that he came to bring good news to poor people, release captives, make blind people see and set oppressed people free. This is not just a liberation of the spirit. It has a body. It operates in the real world.

Mary's Magnificat celebrates God for how he has"put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly," satisfied the hungry and banished the rich. If we are to take seriously the heart of God that is expressed in the Bible, everything is going to change.

The life-transforming message befell Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called the first Advent hymn:

"...the most passionate, most vehement, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here. None of the sweet, sugary, or childish tones that we find so often in our Christmas hymns, but a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of this world, of God's power and of the powerlessness of men."

There's a reason imperial Britain banned the reading of the Magnificat in India and authoritarian governments in South American forbade the passage.

It's subversive. It's revolutionary. And if the followers of Jesus understand that it reflects the beating, bleeding heart of God, everything is going to change.

Everything is going to change. Everything must change.

Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people, meaning that religion's purpose is to dull the pain of society's woes and subdue the people in order to maintain the present state of affairs. And sadly Christendom has largely agreed with him over the course of history. We have sacrificed mercy for comfort, and the consequence is an outpouring of hypocrisy and a functional denial of the Christ's teachings.

Our love of comfort has not ignored the cries of the hurting but trampled upon them. We've sacrificed so many people on the altar of our self-protectionism. I've spent time working with high schoolers and young adults who grew up in the Church, and I'm telling you – we have done deep harm to a generation of church kids. In many cases the harm is irreparable. How could I expect them to return as prodigals when it is we church-folk who must humble ourselves before them.

Hope remains. Jesus lives, and his resurrection rallies us. He calls us to touch our respective spheres with his merciful, self-sacrificial love. It's not loving simply because your God tells you to love, but loving because your God has taught you love.

Jesus did walk into our church. He's there. He stands at the door. And he bears the wounds and cries the tears of the destitute. He mourns with them. He sits with them. Will we join him?

May our eyes be open to all that he is and all that we are meant to be.