I was meditating on yesterday’s blog: Jesus wants the rose! If you missed it, it’s worth checking out and listening to the short video. I was thinking about the way I was raised – in a conservative, let’s do all the right things and avoid all the wrong things environment – and wondering how we missed Jesus.

How can we be a student of the gospels and miss Jesus? I’m not sure, but take a close look at the Gospel of John:

• Chapter 2: Jesus provides wine at a wedding. We would NEVER have done that!
• Chapter 4: Jesus engages with a woman of ill-repute, who is also a member of a hated racial group. We wouldn’t have done that either. And Jesus not only engages with her, he reveals himself to her (John 4.26), and she becomes the instrument by which he reaches an entire village (John 4.28, 29).
• Chapter 8: Jesus rescues a woman taken in adultery. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” (John 8.11) Really? Not condemn an adulteress?
• Chapter 9: Jesus reveals himself to a blind beggar. “I who speak to you am the Messiah.” (John 9.35, 36)

Which Jesus are we following? The one who takes care of the “in-crowd”? Or the one who reaches out to the outcasts? The one who wants the beat-up rose?

Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riff-raff?” Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” (Matthew 9.10 – 13, MSG)