Theresa Ta

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Jesus at the Margins

Theresa Ta

Day 1 of 3: An Accessible God

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
-Matthew 5:3-12 (NRSV)

“Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.”
-Luke 5:1-3 (NRSV)

I never cared much about Jesus’s beatitudes until a few years ago. Up until then they were just another thing I had once memorized for a test, then immediately purged to make space for the next Very Important Thing I needed to memorize for no clear reason. (I do have many positive experiences from my lifelong Catholic education, but all the rote memorization just isn't one of them.)

One thing that made these Beatitudes become more relevant to me is some incredible geographical context I learned about the beginning of Luke 5.

But first, allow me to digress a little.

One of my biggest pet peeves is explaining how to play a game to a group of people. Why? Well, have you met humans?

I have never successfully explained a new game to a group of people without being bombarded with questions I either just answered or was about to answer. There's always a person who doesn’t listen for the first minute and a half, two people having a side conversation that just can’t wait, and then everybody else who had a hard time hearing because of the first few folks.

All this to say: speaking collectively to any size group of people tends to be... painfully difficult. (If you’re a teacher reading this, did you totally just roll your eyes or what?)

So, how did Jesus effectively preach to crowds of thousands of people? People who were all cramming to get close to him in wide outdoor spaces, buzzing about like bees passing communication throughout a hive? How did Jesus become so accessible?

There’s a little known place in Galilee called the “Bay of Parables.” This place is allegedly where Jesus sat preaching from a boat in the above-mentioned passage from Luke 5. Years ago, I read about it in James Martin’s book Jesus: A Pilgrimage. He explains that this bay is a naturally occurring amphitheater, as sound travels very effectively over water and is then amplified by the naturally sloping hills of the shore — reaching every listener, whether they stood at the edge of the water or higher up on the hills at the outskirts of the crowd. (You should look up the science behind this; it’s pretty cool!)

Reading about this, I gained new imagery for a Jesus who ‘meets people where they are,’ who cares about accessibility, who reaches out to include those at the margins of society. Jesus made sure his ministry was accessible to the marginalized. He wanted everyone to pick up what he was saying — not just those standing closest to him.

Keep reading Luke 5 and you will see Jesus calling forgotten fishermen to join him, ministering to outcasted lepers and a despairing paralytic man, and celebrating at the home of a hated tax collector.

The Kingdom of God is for all people. But we don’t see Jesus working to promote this inclusion in his ministry by emphasizing “all people” and “everybody.” Instead, we see him prioritizing those who weren’t actually included in society’s version of “all people.”


Theresa Ta (she/her)

Theresa Ta (she/her)

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