Open, Affirming and Following

One of the things that I appreciate about the Mainline Protestant/ Progressive Christian family that I’ve been a part of for lo these thirty years is the emphasis on Jesus reaching out to those on the margins of society. Growing up in evangelical culture, it was easy to focus on Jesus as the Savior and all the miracles, but little attention on the people Jesus encountered like the Woman at the Well in John 4.

None of that means that the focus on Jesus as our Savior doesn’t matter, though. It really matters that Jesus is the savior of the world that came to redeem a wayward creation. But it also matters that Jesus reached out to those whom society tended to forget.

When I think about who Jesus is, I see the Jesus that sought to affirm those who were on the outside.