The Jesus I Never Knew

impossible ideals

despoil

often “moved by compassion,” and in New Testament times that very word was used maternally to express what a mother feels for her child in her womb. Jesus went out of his way to embrace the unloved and unworthy, the folks who matter not at all to the rest of society—they embarrass us, we wish they'd go away—to prove that even “nobodies” matter infi

Without question, I would rather spend time among the servants than among the stars: they possess qualities of depth and richness and even joy that I have not found elsewhere. Servants work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, “wasting” their talents and skills among the poor and uneducated. Somehow, though, in the process of losing their live

people clamored around Jesus. “He had compassion on them,” says Mark, “because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Instead of spending the day renewing his spirit, Jesus spent

Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepe

As Pascal22 said, “The Church has had as much difficulty in showing that Jesus Christ was man, against those who denied it, as in showing that he was God; and the probabilities were equally great.

when I find myself wondering what Jesus was like as a teenager, I think of Jewish boys I know in Chicago. And when the thought jars me, I remember that in his own day Jesus got the opposite reaction. A Jewish teenager, surely—but the Son of God?

Jesus' offer to forgive a person's sin seemed to them as bizarrely inappropriate as a private individual today offering to issue someone a passport or a building permit.