This sermon by Mark Driscoll put me under a high beam. In Luke 5:27-32, Jesus pursues Levi - a guy despised in his day. Driscoll describes Jesus as a missionary coming into human history and culture and loving sinners and bringing them to God.
Mission is Jesus coming to sinners and mission is exactly what we are called to, exactly where we are. Consequently hospitality is a fundamental part of Christianity: Jesus comes to hang out with sinners like us.
Do we welcome the people that Jesus welcomes? Are we a church that will always have doors and arms right open to anyone and everyone? The challenge is that our homes would be open, that our lives would be open, that our schedules and budgets would be open, that we would welcome sinners and that we also would be changed so that by being in community with them we might be saved from our own proclivity toward religiosity.
Driscoll ends with these words:
Mission is Jesus coming to sinners and mission is exactly what we are called to, exactly where we are. Consequently hospitality is a fundamental part of Christianity: Jesus comes to hang out with sinners like us.
Do we welcome the people that Jesus welcomes? Are we a church that will always have doors and arms right open to anyone and everyone? The challenge is that our homes would be open, that our lives would be open, that our schedules and budgets would be open, that we would welcome sinners and that we also would be changed so that by being in community with them we might be saved from our own proclivity toward religiosity.
Driscoll ends with these words:
"... To the drunks, the addicts, the perverts, the victims, the porn stars, the prostitutes, the adulterers, theives, the obese gluttons who think a waste is a terrible thing to mind, the twilight fans, the murderers, the mommy's boys, the losers, the freaks, the geeks, people who think wrestling is real, red knecks, guys who own action figures, chain smokers, everyone who does not use a turn signal while texting and talking on the phone in their car, men who live with their mothers, women who get paid in dollar bills, dudes in dresses (seen it at Mars Hill), democrats, republicans, the guys at the gym who walk around the locker room naked singing Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer, mormons and anyone else who wears sacred under breeches, whoever is responsible for the creation and ongoing sale of men's Lycra biking shorts... yoga instructors, witches, pot heads, meat heads, crack heads, dead heads and meth heads... people who don't recycle, the rainbow-loving tree-hugging ... lefters, and religious people who do not know what I am talking about because these subjects were not on The Little House on the Prairie or covered in their Home School co-op,
-- I have good news for you: You are welcome at Mars Hill. Jesus loves you. You'll fit right in. And because He died for your sins, you get to repent."
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