Where would/did Jesus stand?

I've just finished reading Fr. Greg Boyle's Tattoos on the Heart. It's a powerful book, and, once started, very hard to put down. Here is a man who has put his life -- humbly, firmly, and imperfectly -- where his mouth is.

"Mouth" calls to mind the great, divisive polarization that has so gripped our country, our Church, and our world. I don't believe that God's going to punish the world because of pro-choice abortion policies nor for racist anti-immigrant attitudes and policies, both of which are morally reprehensible if we take Jesus' teachings seriously. God's going to punish us by simply letting our own unwillingness to find common ground with those we disagree with to reach its logical and inevitable conclusion: self-destructive polarization. Armed camps bent on mutual destruction.

I like Greg Boyle's take on this. He doesn't try to "philosophize" as much as I do, and so his straightforward simplicity is very appealing. I'm going to quote at length, hoping I'll be forgiven a potential copyright transgression by promoting sale of a few copies. (Check it out on Amazon.com, and be sure to watch the video on that page.)

Success and failure, ultimately, have little to do with living the gospel. Jesus just stood with outcasts until they were welcomed or until he was crucified--whichever came first.

The American poet Jack Gilbert writes, "The pregnant heart is driven in hopes that are the wrong size for this world." The strategy and stance of Jesus was consistent in that it was always out of step with the world. Jesus defied all the categories upon which the world insisted: good-evil, success-failure, pure-impure. Surely, He was an equal-opportunity "pisser-offer" in this regard. The right wing would stare at Him and question where He chose to stand. They hated that He aligned Himself with the unclean, those outside--those folks you ought neither to touch nor be near. He hobnobbed with the leper, shared table fellowship with the sinner, and rendered Himself ritually impure in the process. They found it offensive that, to boot, Jesus had no regard for their wedge issues, their constitutional amendments or their culture wars.

The Left was equally annoyed. they wanted to see the ten-point plan, the revolution in high gear, the toppling of sinful social structures. They were impatient with His brand of solidarity. They wanted to see Him taking the right stand on issues, not just standing in the right place.

But Jesus just stood with the outcast. The Left screamed: "Don't just stand there, do something." And the Right maintained: "Don't stand with those folks at all." Both sides, seeing Jesus as the wrong size for this world, came to their own reasons for wanting Him dead. (pp. 172-173)

For my part, I know I have to keep calling myself back to the understanding, which I preach so often, that God doesn't want our success, God wants our fidelity. God grants success in God's own way, not as we humans like to measure it.

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