Introducing The Real Jesus

Do you know the real Jesus? The reason I ask is because just when you think you have got him figure out he blows the lid off predictability.

The real Jesus was simply impossible to control! He breaks all social etiquette in relating to people. He acknowledges no barriers or human divisions. There is no category of sinners he isolates himself from. Simply stated, Jesus is a miserable failure at meeting religious people's expectations of him. He connects with the kinds of people he should disregard. He attends the wrong dinner parties. He is rude to respected religious leaders and polite to hookers. He reprimands his own followers but praises outsiders and riffraff. All in all, this isn't a man you would recruit to teach a children’s Sunday school class even though he’s crazy about kids.

All of this has lead me to wonder. Today we are a part of what would be called the religious establishment of our day. Would Jesus be critical of us as he was of the religious establishment in his day? Would Jesus fit into your church? It’s a simple question but maybe not as easy to answer.

Jesus' invitation to follow him and live in union with him requires much more than easy or glib answers. We have to dig deeper and listen harder. We have to ask what Jesus meant by his strange words and actions. What we will find is that what he meant is always more challenging than we can predict, more outrageous than we would expect and more demanding than we had ever imagined.

That's why to ask if Jesus would fit into your church is a needed and important question. Join us as we dig into this over the next several weeks.