Jesus Loves an Outlaw

Christianity has become a bit stodgy, don’t you think? Or at least some modern American christianities. I’m explicit about there being multiple christianities because the spiritual teachings of first century Jesus are a far cry from Focus on the Family (no, I’m definitely not going to hyperlink that shit), and bathroom police, and obsessions with purity and virginity, and all the rest of the nonsense some folks claim as ‘christian.’ In fact, Jesus was very much against purity codes in both word and deed. But that’s a sermon for another time.

You see, the historical Jesus was something of an outlaw. I always say that if Jesus came today she would be am undocumented trans migrant strawberry picker from a small Central American country organizing day laborers to take over the California central valley. Or an indigenous woman taking land back. Or a black woman performing music about black motherhood and black love and black beauty and New Orleans Police cars sinking in the water from the broken levees. Oh wait, that’s Beyonce. But still…. all her friends would be something like that, because Jesus then and now loves an outlaw.

When I say outlaw, I mean someone who doesn’t agree with the way things are, someone who doesn’t agree with insane wealth gaps, borders at cages, punishing religious codes (ahem, corporate heath insurance) that separate the sick from the well, or the denigration of women in any way whatsoever. Or as John Fugelsang says,

“Jesus was a radical, non-violent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers and crooks, wasn’t American and never spoke English, was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer, but was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor ‘lazy’, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a co-pay, and was a long-haired, brown-skinned, homeless, community-organizing, anti-slut-shaming, Middle Eastern Jew.”

Now that’s a Jesus I can get behind. And it’s just so much fun that it’s called ‘Christianity.’ Christ comes from the greek kristos with simply means anointed, as in christening. Jesus, the Anointed One in other words. Anointed to do what? To be a goshdanged outlaw.

To me this means that anyone can be anointed to do the work of outlaws. That’s actually what Jesus wanted us to do; not worship him but to do as he did. He taught us through his healing and inclusion of the marginalized - women, terminally ill, undocumented day laborers, sex workers, and more - how to bring about the Kin-dom of Heaven. After showing us these things he said, roughly, “All these things you will do, and more.” I.e. the outlaw things that bring about the realm of Spirit and the Kin-dom of God.

So how does one be an outlaw in this modern day and age? Well for a nerd like me, it means I make my own theology direct from the scripture. Very Lutheran, as some may recognize, though it’s a much longer tradition of outlaws that I follow. I’m talking about the Desert Mothers who left society and went into the desert in the first few centuries to wrestle directly with scripture, and demons, and students, and God.