The mission and ministry of Jesus was to reach out and embrace everyone. Although his initial outreach was to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel” – whom scholars now identify as every Jewish person, including both Israel and Judah, since they were all living at a time of confusion, struggling faith, a history of being scattered in exile, and God’s apparent dilatoriness – before long (and pointedly, with the urging of the Syrophonician woman) his net was thrown as wide as geographical and chronological constraints would allow. Given this inclusiveness, though conscious of the “preferential option for the poor,” which he identified as God’s own attentiveness (Psalm 34s “God hears the cry of the poor”), we can identify his outreach by superimposing or mapping it on to the diagram of the four quadrants. If the itinerant ministry of Jesus the stranger places him consistently along the margins that both connect and separate the insiders and outsiders – and given the palpable fact that he was considered marginal, an outsider, and even mad by his peers – we can see that his first outreach starts from the vantage point of somewhere in quadrant #4, and is directed diagonally, to the people in quadrant #2 (often called simply “the crowds” [ochloi] or “the poor” [ptochoi]).
WE ARE PILGRIMS: MISSION FROM, IN AND WITH THE MARGINS OF OUR DIVERSE WORLD
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John Dominic Crossan aptly calls them “the nobodies,” and they consist precisely of: the immature (children and infants); the deviant (crippled, sick, possessed, tax- collectors, prostitutes and sinners); and, pointedly, the largely invisible women, socially and religiously speaking. (We recall that the women and children were not counted with the 5000; that when Jesus was in conversation with the woman at the well, “the late-arriving disciples were astonished that he was talking to a woman, but nobody asked why” (Jn 4:27); and that not a single woman in the gospels is given the title of “disciple.”12) Crossan says that Jesus surrounded himself with a crowd of
nobodies – and indeed called his disciples to accept that appellation themselves. TTL paragraph 45 is good here. Having spoken in the previous paragraph of our participation in God’s mission of “deconstructing patriarchal ideologies,” it says that God’s mission “entails the restoration of right relationships between God and humanity and all of creation” by “following the way of Jesus, who came to serve, not to be served, who exalts the lowly, and whose love is characterised by mutuality, reciprocity and interdependence.” This is precisely the kenotic ministry of the outsider-participant. Jesus also has a second, simultaneous outreach, however, directed laterally or horizontally, to those who occupy quadrant #1. They are the “number ones,” or those whom Jesus sometimes refers to as “the first,” warns that they will be “the last,” and excoriates as “the haves” in Luke’s addition to the Beatitudes: “Woe to you who are rich, who have your fill, who laugh, and of whom the world speaks well” (cf Lk 6:24-26). In the diagram they are identified as those men in authority or those who wield power: teachers, police or military forces and, in Jesus’ case, civil and religious authorities. If, in approaching the “nobodies,” Jesus is attempting to restore them to society, then in approaching the “number ones” he is reproaching them insofar as they exclude and oppress the “nobodies” in the name of the emperor and even in the name of God. “Unless you turn, change, repent,” and become as little children (obvious “nobodies”), you will not enter the Kingdom of God” (Matt 18:3). TTL paragraphs 37-40 focus on this, but emphasise only the advantages of quadrant #1 (“access to systems that lead to one’s rights, freedom, and individuality being affirmed and respected”) and only the disadvantages of quadrant #2 (“exclusion from justice and dignity”). Because Jesus actually chose the margins and a marginal lifestyle, we must try to understand its own advantages or potential. TTL 38 does acknowledge some of this: “People on the margins have agency and can often see what, from the centre (quadrant #1), is out
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of view. Paragraph 37 notes that “Jesus relates to and embraces those who are most marginalised, in order to confront and transform all that denies life” (which would put the blame on those in quadrant #1), and 39 recognises that “marginalised people have God-given gifts.” Yet it is not only those marginalised by others who have gifts of their own, but those who, like Jesus, actively seek and embrace the margins and the people who live there.
Paragraph 41 boldly admits the imperialistic style of some missionary approaches, stating that “mission from the centre is motivated by an attitude of paternalism and a superiority complex”; but either this fails to acknowledge that people at the centres
are able to use their position – like St Francis – deliberately to move from the centres to the margins and become examples of real missionary discipleship, and/or it paints everyone with high social status or cachet, as incapable of personal conversion. True, there is no way for people who protect their position at the centres of power and influence to participate in the Kingdom, unless they move, from the centres they currently occupy, to the margins they currently defend and protect. But that must always remain a possibility, as paragraph 33 affirms: “The cross calls for repentance in the light of misuse of power and use of the wrong kind of power.”
We have identified two distinguishable margins: first, between quadrants #1 and #2, the participant and non-participant insiders, and then between the insiders and outsiders. The centre of mission is always at the margins, wherever they may be found, and those who refuse to move, not simply to the margins but specifically to engage with those who live there, are, says Jesus, “not worthy,” including “whoever prefers father or mother to me,” and whoever does not take their cross and follow me” (Mat 10:37-8).