You get into any club you want, you have backstage passes for any concert you can think of, anywhere. You have access to everything, in the same way a toddler does. Everybody's like, 'Oh come on in!'
God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow.
Hospitality invites to prayer before it checks credentials, welcomes to the table before administering the entrance exam.
We want to assure you...that if you seek Him you will find Him. Jesus casts out none who come unto Him.
No matter how excluded you have become from Christmas, it is a genuinely inclusive matter; frankly, you are conscripted into it.
The Church is the place where the incompetent, the unfinished, and even the unhealthy are welcome. I believe Jesus agrees.
If grace isn't shocking and countercultural and scandalous and a little ridiculous, then it's not Grace.
The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded.
When you open the door and invite in all sentient beings as your guests, you have to drop your agenda.
Absolute hospitality would in no way amount to the absence of violence. To the contrary, it would enthrone violence precisely under the guise of nonviolence because it would leave the violators unchanged and the consequences of violence unremedied.
