Inclusivity
Jesus was exclusively inclusive. He invited all sorts of people to his table. He broke down barriers of race, gender, and stigma. He hung around the people everyone else avoided. There’s a lot we can learn from his open invite.
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Jesus and the Woman at the Well
To her, Jesus was a man who was breaking all sorts of boundaries to talk to her. To him, it seems she was worthy of so much more respect and kindness than anyone ever showed her. It might not seem like much, but this unlikely conversation set the stage for Jesus to live out and share his message of radical love and selflessness and to invite the most unlikely of people to play a part in it all.
Dinner Party
Jesus was radically inclusive. His love movement ran counter to cultural norms and religious expectations of the day. He went out of his way to care for people whom society had rejected – from disabled people, to conquering military oppressors, to prostitutes. He befriended corrupt tax collectors and violent nationalists. He treated women as equals at a time when such behavior was unheard of, and he embraced people in historically oppressed races and ethnic communities. Many times his love was so radical that it even violated the law. Jesus invited all to participate in the love, but not everyone was interested. The powerful and the wealthy were often threatened by Jesus’ movement, because it always resisted systems of oppression. After all, many benefited from oppressing the poor, the sick, women, and even certain races that Jesus embraced throughout his activism. So, they didn’t just reject his invitation, they killed him for it. But in spite of their best efforts to silence the movement, Jesus’s message still resonates today. And its still radically inclusive. We’re all invited.
