Refugee

Inclusive

Women

Relationships

Judgment

AboutUs

Hope

Justice

Struggle

Activist

RealLife

Jesus was wrongly judged

T-Shirt

Jesús era un inmigrante

Jesus was a refugee

Sticker

Most everyone knows the Christmas story. The star. The shepherds. The manger. The wise men. But one chapter in the story of Jesus’ birth is often neglected. Quite possibly because of its horrific nature. After the Magi from the East visited Mary and Joseph, King Herod requested they disclose where young Jesus resided. But being warned in a dream, the wise men departed a different way without telling the king of Jesus’ whereabouts. Enraged and threatened by a new potential ruler, Herod ordered all males 2 years old or younger to be killed.
With Herod’s henchmen bearing down on Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary fled with their young child to Egypt. Imagine the circumstances. Two young parents grab their toddler and whatever they can carry on their backs and flee the country. There was no safety for them in their homeland, so the only option was to seek foreign soil.
We don’t know much about their time in Egypt, but one can only imagine that they probably ran from their home and tried to stay hidden as long as possible. Being young, poor, and Jewish, it’s unlikely Mary or Joseph spoke Egyptian. It’s possible the young family sought shelter and help from other Jewish communities scattered throughout Egypt. They might have even found and stayed in one of the synagogues that we know were in Egypt at the time.
After King Herod’s death, Joseph and Mary returned to Israel. But the impact of being displaced always stuck with Jesus. We can see it in his compassion toward others who were labeled outsiders — the Samaritans, the lepers, the tax collectors, and the sinners.
Scripture Reference: Matthew 2:13-15b

Jesus was a refugee.

Family life is complex, and everyone’s experience is personal and unique. But, there is one universal thing we all share when it comes to our families: a deep-seated desire to find love there. Sometimes we get what we’re looking for, but other times we’re met with our family’s (or our own) shortcomings. Flaws are hard to hide in close quarters, and when left unattended can often lead to hurt, resentment, or the words “We’re not on speaking terms.”
Add to that the world we live in, with its many distractions, and the divide can widen. There is constant noise coming from our phones and televisions demanding our time, money, and allegiances. It’s no wonder why we find our nearest are not always our dearest. We are being pulled in a lot of directions.
It may be hard to imagine, but Jesus had to contend with a complex family life too, and he lived during a time with similar noise and distractions. Sure, there weren’t televisions, but there were still pundits. He may not have had constant phone notifications, but the crowds certainly wouldn’t leave him alone. And these crowds were part of his problem. His extended family struggled with his sudden popularity and his lack of convention. Many thought he’d lost his mind. Some, in their frustration, tried to forcibly take custody of him. What a scene that must’ve been.
Yet, in no uncertain terms, Jesus made sure they knew his door would always be open to them. For him, blood was not thicker than water. Love was thicker than water. He made this point when his mother brought concerned relatives to see him, and he continued to make it throughout his ministry. He saw the many members of his family, related or not, as irreplaceable parts of one body. When one part was missing, the whole suffered. Likewise, when one part was honored, the whole celebrated.
To exemplify this, he once told a story of a father and his two sons. The younger son asked for his share of their inheritance early so he could make a life for himself, but in time he squandered the funds and became homeless. On the other hand, the older son stayed by his father’s side, dutifully working. There was jealousy in the tale, disappointment, estrangement—the whole family suffered—but at the end of the day Jesus spoke of a father forgiving enough to keep his door open, a wayward son humble enough to come home, and a brother who had to set his own ego aside to celebrate his family’s reunion.
Suffice to say, the reunion did not happen without a lot of work on all sides, and it might seem in your own unique story like an impossible outcome. But just remember…it began simply with an open door, a single step, and a deep breath. Beyond that, we can always improve our chances by setting the noisy world aside for a moment. Jesus encouraged many to do this very thing so that the noise would not become the only thing they heard. In the quiet, we can remind ourselves that our desire for love is shared. And if we lean into that, we might just discover what love can overcome, including the words “We’re not on speaking terms.”
Scripture references: Mark 3, Luke 15:11-32, 1 Corinthians 12:12-26, Colossians 3:12-15

Was Jesus’ family perfect?

We were thinking about what Jesus’ relationships with friends and family might have looked like and were surprised by what we found. Pastel paintings and imagery of Jesus so often depict him having a peaceful, wonderful time with his loved ones, but a closer look at the text paints a more complex picture.
Shortly after beginning his public ministry, Jesus went back to his hometown to share his message. A whole crowd gathered to hear him speak. By the time he was done speaking, they were calling to have him killed. They even tried to take matters into their own hands and throw him off a cliff. If we read this story too quickly, we might miss the fact that the very people trying to kill him grew up with him. They would have been friends and neighbors that knew Jesus when he was a boy. And that’s not the only example of good relationships gone sour. One of Jesus’ closest friends gave him up to the authorities in exchange for money, and another denied ever knowing him while he was being arrested. His family doubted him, and his own mother likely felt the relational strains that came part and parcel of a full-time traveling ministry.
The point is, Jesus’ relationships were far from perfect. Betrayal, doubt, insecurity, disagreement and distance muddied the waters even for Jesus. He couldn’t avoid relational stresses, but he did give us a model for how to respond to them and work towards restoration. His model? Radical patience and forgiveness.
It might have been best illustrated in a story he told about a father and son. The son asked for his inheritance while the Father was still alive—he valued the money more than the relationship. The father obliged, gave the money, and the son went off and spent it until he found himself completely destitute with nothing left. He resolved to return home to his father to humbly ask for a job—not to reclaim his spot as son, but as one of many hired hands. As he was walking up to the house, the father saw him from afar and ran out to embrace him. To forgive him. To welcome him home as a son.
Repairing broken relationships is incredibly difficult, and the forgiveness Jesus both talked about and displayed is often messy and complicated. But know if you feel the pang of hurt in your relationships, Jesus did too, and take encouragement in his resolve to repair what was broken.
**If you are in an abusive relationship, please seek help. Jesus’ call to forgive should not be wrongly used to manipulate people into staying in abusive relationships. Seek out safety first.
Scripture References: Luke 4:14-30, Luke 22:1-6, Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 3:21, Luke 15:11-32

Jesus had strained relationships, too.

Is it really possible to invite everyone to a party? Space and finances aside, it seems like a tall order — especially since it can be hard to include your own family during preordained holidays. Family dynamics are a real thing. For some, it can mean playing a competitive football game in the yard after Thanksgiving dinner. For others, it means suffering through the quiet (or loud) tension stretching across the table or mourning estrangement and loss that has resulted in empty seats.
It may be hard to imagine Jesus struggling through such things, especially since he was known for his welcoming message. He told stories of huge banquets to which, yes, everyone was invited (though not everyone attended). He encouraged anyone who heard his teachings to take a break with him, to walk beside him, and to find security with him during hard times. He was a man on a mission to have everyone join him in whatever he was doing … including dinner.
This brings us to the dinner events that Jesus attended, many of which should sound familiar. Like us, his family and friends were drawn together by food and yearly celebrations. There were times when they reclined at the table to enjoy each other’s company. And there were times when the meal was not enough to bridge the divide. Like us, Jesus had to contend with difficult personal relationships, political and religious beefs, and even lesser things like bickering over who was doing all the work for the day’s festivities.
It would seem Jesus experienced it all. He dined with those who openly challenged him while they ate. He broke bread with a man he knew would betray him. He invited himself over to eat, much to people’s dismay. He attended a party with the upper crust and watched as they jockeyed for the best seat. He even tried to celebrate a holiday with friends, only to have his family crash the event and disrupt it because they wanted him to tone his mission down … it was drawing way too much attention for their tastes.
Yet, Jesus was not deterred. He was intent on bringing people together for an enormous feast — which meant during the smaller ones, he was careful and purposeful with his words. He refrained from arguing, instead discussing differences with patience, understanding, and genuine curiosity. And he rarely declined an invitation. In the end, there was always someone who left changed because Jesus went beyond simply eating beside them. He broke bread with them, knowing that was the key.
During one of Jesus’s final meals here on Earth, he journeyed with a man named Cleopas, whose politics kept them from completely understanding each other, even after spending the entire trip discussing things. After a full day of traveling, they still had not made many inroads with each other — not until they sat down to share a meal. It was then, in the breaking of bread, that they came to really know the other. There was something special in that shared meal … and perhaps we can all draw from it.
During the many seasons of the year, from New Year’s Day to Christmas, there’s an opportunity to embrace more guests at our tables, to rebuild relationships, and to share something beyond the food. With family and friend dynamics, it takes work to make it work, but if we’re willing to wade into dinner parties as Jesus did, we may find that a meal can feed the soul — and in turn, make us want to invite everyone to the party. Truly.
Great Feast Parable during dinner with Pharisees: Luke 14:1-24 
The last supper: Luke 22:14-38 
Road to Eumaeus: Luke 24:13-35

Jesus was no stranger to difficult dinner conversations.

We’ve created a lot of ads and messages about Jesus and women’s equality. Mostly because research has uncovered a lot of misconceptions out there regarding Jesus and how he thought about and treated women. It seems some cultural and religious traditions and norms have been conflated with the actual story of Jesus from the Bible (the most comprehensive record of Jesus’ life we have). So let’s explore four ways Jesus promoted women’s equality.
1.) GENEALOGY. Before he was even born. 
The Gospels are four different accounts of Jesus’ life written by four of his followers. The first one that appears in most Bibles is written by Matthew. He starts his story the same way many biographical books began back then — by tracing Jesus’ genealogy.
If you’ve ever read the Bible or other ancient Near Eastern texts, you’ll see this pattern of tracing family trees: “so-and-so begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so, etc.” We often skip these dry and boring sections of the text. But the genealogies in the Bible and similar ancient texts were less about historical records and more about proving a point about a person’s heritage or their claims to royalty or fortune.
Matthew includes a few clues in the genealogy that help us understand how Jesus thought about gender equality. He includes five women. That would have been very strange for the time. Stranger still are the women he chose to include as Jesus’ ancestors.
Tamar: A woman who pretended to be a sex worker to trick her father-in-law into getting her pregnant so she could keep her place in the family after her husband died. We know, it’s a crazy story. But it was really important in their culture at the time that she received justice according to their law. And justice for her was to have a family if she so desired. In fact, her father-in-law, upon realizing what happened, called her “more righteous than I.”
Rahab: A sex worker/brothel owner who hid spies from Israel and helped them gather intelligence on the defenses of her city, so they could be successful in conquering it.
Ruth: A widow whose love and loyalty were so confounding, she chose not to pursue the certainty of well-being she could have had by going back to her childhood family home after the death of her husband. Instead, she followed her mother-in-law to a strange land and married a close relative of her husband’s family to secure their welfare (again, it was culturally necessary at the time to ensure survival).
Bathsheba: A woman who was raped by the king. He saw her bathing and decided he wanted her. So he sent her husband to the front of a bloody war where he was all but guaranteed to die (he did), so he could rationalize his forcing himself on her. She became the king’s wife and experienced the loss of an infant child.
Mary: An unwed teen mom who, according to the law at the time, could have been stoned to death in the streets. She would no doubt have been gossiped about and ridiculed.
Of the dozens of women mentioned in Hebrew Scriptures, why were these five women chosen? Is it because they had to do desperate things to survive? Is it because each of them demonstrates different aspects of the plight of gender inequality in most cultures? Is it because they persevered in spite of seemingly impossible circumstances? We don’t know. But the story is certainly trying to tell us something about how we think about and judge women and the role they played in shaping Jesus’ identity.
2.) TALKING. Talking to women you didn’t know was a no-no.
He didn’t care. Jesus addressed women directly and publicly, something that was culturally confounding at the time. It even confused his own followers and closest friends. And he seemed to do it all the time with all kinds of women. Foreigners, enemies, widows, and sex workers, and in every recorded case, he connected with them personally with kindness and grace. In one often-cited case, he spoke to (1.) a Samaritan who was (2.) a woman and who was (3.) collecting water at a well in the heat of the day. Those three details tell us how culturally inappropriate it would have been for him to initiate a conversation. Samaritans were considered almost subhuman by most Jewish people at the time because of their racial impurity. Unknown women were never spoken to because they were traditionally considered property to the men in their lives. And if she’s collecting water by herself in the middle of the day, it likely means she was an outcast even among her own people, as women would generally collect water in the morning to stay cool and together to stay safe. We find out later she was likely an outcast because she’d been with so many men. But Jesus didn’t just speak to her; he asked her for a drink of water! To take water from her, from a vessel that she touched, and to drink it would have been unthinkable. But it demonstrated to his followers and all who heard the story that his movement would require people to think differently.
3.) EQUALITY. Jesus didn’t tolerate double standards.
During his ministry, some men brought a woman before Jesus. They accused her of adultery and then quoted the laws that said she should be killed. He successfully defended a woman from being executed publicly for committing adultery. They were looking for Jesus to condemn her as well. But he didn’t. You see, adultery is one of those things that requires two participants. But they didn’t bring the man caught in adultery before Jesus, just the woman. The whole situation reeked of hypocrisy, and Jesus had very little patience for hypocritical men when it came to sexual infractions of his day. So, he stepped in and protected the woman. He wouldn’t stand for the double standards.
4.) FOLLOWERS. Some of his first and most important followers were women.
Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the stories of Jesus more often than just about any other follower, including the other men in his inner circle known as the apostles. She is a central figure in just about every significant moment in his story.
Mary the sister of Martha (a different Mary than Mary Magdalene) is depicted sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to his teachings. While that might seem very insignificant, that posture is reserved for disciples listening to their Rabbis. In that time, Rabbis didn’t take on women as disciples. It just didn’t happen. Jesus didn’t just allow it, he encouraged it.
Joanna was another loyal follower. She was married to a wealthy official named Chuza, whom the Bible identifies as a critical member of the government that would eventually have Jesus delivered to the occupying Roman forces for execution. Joanna and other wealthy women bankrolled Jesus’ mission. That’s right. Jesus’ love movement was funded by women.
Though some have tried to minimize their critical role in the creation of Jesus’ radical love movement, there’s no question women were essential.
Genealogy: Matthew 1:1-17
Talking: John 4:1-29
Equality: John 8:1-11
Followers: Matthew 27:56 (Mary Magdalene); Luke 8:1-3 (Mary Magdalene and Joanna); Luke 10:38-42 (Mary sister of Martha)

Four ways Jesus supported women’s equality.

Did Jesus have fun?

Jesus was no stranger to joy. He went to weddings. He shared lively meals with his friends. He drank with them. He had so much fun and acted so freely around the dinner table, the uptight religious leaders called him a glutton and a drunkard. 

Did Jesus face criticism? 

Jesus had a following, to say the least. People came to him from every quarter to hear about his extreme views on love. Many because they found hope in his words. But some felt threatened by those words. They wanted him canceled. 

Jesus invited everyone to sit at his table

Jesus spent a lot of time around the dinner table. Many of his most frequently quoted messages and standout stories happened while sharing a meal with others. And the company around the table was a remarkably diverse cast. Why?

Was Jesus ever lonely?

As a man who traveled the world gathering fame and followers, Jesus knew how it felt to be surrounded by loving company. But like us, he knew how it felt to lose that love without warning. 

How did Jesus deal with injustice?

Jesus faced insurmountable controversy. So often, he was the target of unjustified hate or saw others being mistreated. How did he stifle his outrage? Sometimes, he didn’t. 

Was Jesus ever stressed? 

One night, he became particularly worried because he knew his adversaries were coming for him. He’d soon face arrest, torture, and even execution. It created an unimaginable weight. A weight so heavy he began sweating blood. 

Did Jesus ever get angry?

Jesus was not a robot. He felt things like anyone else would — including anger. But he also understood that anger can turn to hate if left unchecked, so he had notable ways of dealing with it.

Did Jesus really struggle as I do?

I’m not a religious person, but “The Struggle” struck a chord with me.

Jesus did not live in a perfect world, nor did he have a picture-perfect family. But he wasn’t one to cut ties. Instead, he did something even more dramatic.

As a child, Jesus lived as a refugee in Egypt to escape physical and political persecution.

Jesus gets our lives, because he was human too.