Jesus walks into a tattoo parlor...

So, don't ask me why, but I found myself in a tattoo parlor recently. And it was a little bit of an eye opening experience. I just don't get to hear that kind of language very often in the church office. I mean, did you realize that you can use the F-bomb as a noun, an adjective, and adverb, and a verb, all in the SAME SENTENCE???? I'm sitting there listening to these rather graphic conversations about casual sex, and heavy drug use and I'm just praying that nobody asks me what I do for a living.

Then I have this picture pop in my head of Jesus hanging out in that tattoo parlor. And I realize that it's exactly the kind of place Jesus would want to be. Those are Jesus' kind of people.

That's exactly what made the religious folks so mad about Jesus. He actually ate meals with "those kind of people". He went to their homes. That's what the whole God-in-the-flesh thing was all about: God becoming one of us, God moving into the neighborhood, God living right smack dab in the middle of our ugly, broken, warped lives.

So I'm watching this guy get a tattoo - its a huge cross that covers most of his forearm. And the thought occurs to me: what would these guys think if they came and watched ME at MY work? What would they think of my world? What would they think of my life? What would they think of my faith? What would they think of MY Jesus? (And I'm intentionally saying MY Jesus because my life and work and faith and words and choices all play a part in the way I communicate Jesus).

Here's a quote that I've used before that says what I'm trying to say much better than I can say it:

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.

That's from Tim Keller's "The Prodigal God".

All of this got me re-thinking some things.

I found myself hoping that one of those guys might actually ask me what I do for a living. Maybe they will next time.