… said the man wearing a diamond-bedecked, gold-infused smock. You’ve got to be kidding me! What do you have to say about this mess, Shane?

“I have a friend in the UK who talks about ‘dirty theology’ — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man’s eyes to heal him … In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay ‘out there’, but who rather moves right into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, ‘Nothing good could come.’ And it is THIS Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard for hanging out with all of society’s rejects, and it is THIS Jesus who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for political rabble-rousers and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and everything ugly we do to others. For it is the final promise that Love wins. Indeed, it is THIS Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. And THIS is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary; the God who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, both the oppressed and their oppressors … a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and others from the ghettos of wealth.” ~ Shane Claiborne

P.S. And let it not be said that I only pick on Catholics …

Filed under: A few favorite Religionators by Scaughdt