we would've stayed home

i wonder if our parents knew who they were training us to love or what they were getting themselves into when they rounded us up for Sunday school and took us to church for lessons in morality and a weekly affirmation of God's blessing on our comfortable lives

i wonder if we would've stayed home had our parents known that one day, the Jesus we would love could be seen less in white middle-class churches and more in urban poverty, and that we would probably follow him there

i wonder if we would have continued to pray to Jesus if they knew that one day, this same man would be the reason that their sons and daughters would forsake an abundance of stuff, reevaluate priorities and bank accounts and reject it all to love orphans and care for special needs children and experience true fellowship with the body of Christ. i wonder what they would say to a pregnant girl and a blue collar boy claiming that this was the Messiah. they would turn around and walk away because it doesn't fit. it doesn't fit with goals of privilege, prestige and pleasure at our fingertips. it's a different kingdom altogether.

we would have stayed home if my parents had known that this jesus would change the direction of my dreams, make me rethink masters programs, citizenship and positions of power so that i can take home a big paycheck to buy a boat and a house and talk conservative politics all day long. those aren't my dreams anymore: somehow morality lessons evolved into thousands of miles in the air to fly to a place where we saw Jesus with the young man who was arrested on the streets and with the homeless and with the prostitute, and we realized that we want to experience that kind of closeness with jesus, too. then we learned solidarity, and solidarity asked that we reevaluate it all. jolene in jamaica and muhammed in the west bank and my cousin in the otay mesa detention facility and jesus himself asked that we reevaluate, for the sake of his gospel...to know him and love him and serve him well.

i'm sure we would've stayed home, but we didn't. so now here we are...