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Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Dirty Jesus


He has been cleaned up beyond recognition or affinity, with us.

Neat nativities.  Crisp white linens on communion tables.  How does this remember a Jesus who came to be ‘humus’ – dirt (the root word of humanity)?


No wonder the world doesn’t identify with Him. We, His followers have cleaned Him up too much in our presentations and demonstrations.  He has become unattainable and it’s not His fault.

The real Jesus was the one who defied all convention and touched the outcasts and alienated Himself from common social and religious convention.  The real Jesus brought prostitutes, thieves and marginalized people into His regular circle of friends and followers.  He was truly dirty to the institutionalized religious establishment of the day.  He redefined how the dirty could access the divine.  Holy shit.

This is actually the Advent story.  Immanuel – God not only WITH us, but ONE of us.  Dirty humanity.

So stop purifying His image.  Put Him back where He belongs.  And if you are His follower, get out of your pious pew, your sanctuary of the sanctified and your cloister of institutional Christianity.  If the power of Christ is to make us clean, a church and a follower of Christ where no dirt is allowed is powerless.

For the love of the real God, get dirty with your fellow humans.  

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