"For the bodies of the animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." [Hebrews 13:11-14]
Here's a paradox for you: the same God who is at the center of all creation is willing to risk being elbowed aside to the periphery and to love us from there. The same Christ in whom all things hold together and from whom we have our being is willing to be dismissed with a shrug of indifference from us--and yet to still care deeply about us. The same Jesus who is the anchor point on which the salvation of the whole world hangs was willing to be hung by nails as a wicked criminal on an anonymous Roman death stake. God, in other words, is willing to bear reaching to us from the margins, even when we are the ones who have tried to banish God there.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it so well, in Jesus, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross." That is, the fact that Jesus was rejected, marginalized, and held in contempt by the crowds that crucified him is not a mistake or a random accident--it is exactly the way God operates. God's love meant that God was willing to bear being treated shamefully, even to the point of being vilified and executed as an enemy of the state and disturber of the peace, precisely in the act of saving and rescuing us.
The writer of the book we call Hebrews sees a parallel between Jesus' death outside the city gates of Jerusalem and the way sacrificial animals had their carcasses burned and disposed of outside the city as well. These animals--the lambs, goats, and bulls of the sacrificial system--were understood to be offering up their lives to address the people's sins, and yet their remains were burned up once their blood was poured out on the altar. They were essential in the ritual of sacrifice, and yet at the very same time they were treated as disposable refuse. And the writer of Hebrews says that in Jesus, God bears that same treatment as well. The author of salvation was willing to be disregarded as a forgettable nobody, and if we are followers of this same Jesus, then we'll be willing to bear being ridiculed, excluded, or marginalized. "Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured," the writer says--in other words, Christians are called to live and work from the margins rather than insisting on being the center of attention, because Jesus himself was willing to be pushed out there to the margins.
And if you think about it, that shouldn't come as much of a shock at all, for a number of reasons. For starters, Jesus' whole life and ministry was spent, not just with people at the center of respectability and influence, but with the ones on the margins: the sick and hurting, the bereaved and brokenhearted, the poor and the hungry, the outcast, the foreigner, and the sinner. If you wanted to find Jesus in the first century, you typically didn't look in the halls of power or the centers of cultural relevancy, but out on the edges. Jesus spent time with the people treated as "Nobodies" rather than clamoring to be seen with the "Somebodies." So it makes perfect sense that in the climactic act of salvation history, Jesus once again lets himself be nailed between thieves and treated with contempt out on the margins--that's where he has been all along, in some way or another.
The other reason it makes sense, in a strange and beautiful way, that Jesus lets himself be "pushed out" of the city and of the world and onto the cross, is that it fits with the nature of genuine love. Real, authentic, unconditional love is willing to risk being rejected by the beloved, and to love anyway. God's kind of love doesn't need our fawning applause in order to be given, because God doesn't only love people who realize or appreciate God's goodness. God, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, is merciful and kind even to the wicked and the ungrateful--God's love doesn't require that we realize, recognize, or reciprocate that love. God is willing to take the risk of being rejected by the very ones God loves, just like any parent loves their kids even when the kids aren't acting very loving back at the moment. Decent parents don't need to put themselves in the spotlight of the family--they know how to recede to the edges, to the margins, to let their kids shine, to priorities the children's needs, and to do what the kids most need, regardless of whether the parents are enjoying it at the moment. (Parents, for example, don't stay up all night with a sick child because it is so much fun for the parent, but because the child needs to be most important at the moment, and so the parents' interests move to the margins, precisely as an act of love.) So, again, of course, Jesus is willing to be relegated to the outskirts of importance in the act of saving us--he is like the parent giving up sleep in order to make sure the sick children are rocked back to rest and know they are in good care.
So, for us, who are daring to follow this same Jesus, what does any of this mean? Well, for one, it's a wake-up call about just how deeply God loves us. God doesn't only love or rescue us in order to "look" good or feel "important." Jesus doesn't do it for the attention or applause it will win him, but simply because he loves us. That by itself would be enough to reflect on.
But going a bit further with the writer of Hebrews and his train of thought, this also means that we as the community of Jesus don't have to try and push our way into the center of attention. We don't need to insist on being the focus of public discourse, and we don't need to demand that we hold the reins of power or wield influence in "culture wars." That's important, because to be honest, there are a lot of voices out there that seem to think Jesus is depending on us Christians to "reclaim the public square," to dominate public life, and to demand on preferential treatment and status because we are Christians. Sometimes you'll hear folks expect that Christians should have accommodations made for them (our holidays off--but not others', our practices treated as "normal" while everyone else's are treated as "strange", or our faith being assumed to be universally known and understood, and so on) and that it is the duty of Christians to dictate to everyone else how things should be done, whether or not they are also followers of Jesus. And once we believe that lie, we'll sell our souls and our integrity to anyone who promises us a seat at the table of Big Power And Influence. But the writer of Hebrews here starts out by insisting we should never take the bait in the first place, because Jesus--who is our Lord--modeled for us the path of love that goes to the margins. And as the writer of Hebrews invites us, our place is beside Jesus, "outside the camp" and "outside the city gates," or in Bonhoeffer's words, "pushed out of the world and onto the cross." In other words, the right way to bear witness to Jesus is not to try and take over the levers of power or demand to be the center of attention, but to deliberately choose a place on the outside edges, where we will be at his side and with the people he has sought out there. The God revealed in Jesus, after all, allows himself to be marginalized outside of the city walls all the way to a cross.
So if we're looking for the right ways to live out our faith today and share our hope in Jesus, it can't be from the position of assuming we should dictate the conversation with the world and drown out everyone else. It has to be from the position of humble listening, vulnerable love, and willingness not to be seen as a "big deal" in the world. Our allegiance goes to Someone Else anyway--we don't have to give it to the Big Deals in the center of town or at the public square.
Today, if it feels like the community of Jesus isn't the most overpowering voice around, that's not a flaw or a failure--that might mean we are actually following Jesus' way of loving people from the edges of things, witnessing from the wings, and recognizing the Reign of God on the margins, just like Jesus himself.
Lord Jesus, give us the courage to meet you in the places of seeming insignificance, with the people who have been ignored, and to love people vulnerably even when we feel pushed out.
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