​I've been writing more about what it means to be a Christian in the dirt — meaning how we live the incarnation, this mystery of glory housed in flesh and bone, embodying love and stubborn hope for new creation in the soil of our everyday lives and the places we inhabit.

Radical Hospitality as the scandalous welcome of God is central to our practices as a faith community. For the kingdom of God is like a big, long banqueting table, full of friends, strangers, neighbors, misfits, and sojourners. I love the invitation of the table. For there is something so earthy, bodily, and yet mystical that happens around the table. When we break bread together, we feel a sense of connection, delight, community, and presence.

So much of how we imagine gathering as the community of God’s people is around the table. Hospitality has been a pillar of Christianity over the millennia as Christians have cared for the sick, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. Far from the modern, Martha-Stewart-influenced notions of hospitality meant to impress, hospitality was the means of grace to care for those in need. “Welcoming the stranger… is the most often repeated commandment in the Hebrew Scriptures, with the exception of the imperative to worship the one and only God" (Theologian Orland Espín).

In the New Testament, Jesus displayed a radical inclusivity and welcome in which he modeled a spirituality that is shown to the least of these — the hungry, the needy, the prisoner, and the sick (Matt 25). Hospitality comes from two Greek words: philos which means “friend” and xenos which means “stranger.”

Hospitality is the love of strangers.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to love our neighbor and the stranger —those who are often excluded and neglected in society. And this is very challenging today. We are so fragmented in our society. We don’t know our neighbor. We have largely outsourced and institutionalized care for the stranger. We are prone to gather in our homogenous groups, and we don’t often bump up against those who are different from us. We are often isolated from the real needs and hunger of the oppressed and the poor. And we are afraid…that we’ll be overwhelmed, that we’ll be pushed to our limits, that we won’t have enough time, money, and resources…

Yet, Jesus invites us into another way — a way of abundance that combats the scarcity we feel. We are invited into radical love and generosity. Jesus modeled a scandalous and highly controversial faith that welcomed and included those in society who were outsiders. This greatly offended the Pharisees and still offends us today.

Jesus befriended those on the margins, those who were invisible, those who were oppressed, and those without power, privilege, and voice. And he was highly criticized by the religious people of the day for hanging out with the wrong people. The wrong race, the wrong religion, the wrong gender, the wrong status. But we must understand this.

This. Is. The Gospel.

Its essence is radical welcome and inclusion. We see this as Jesus welcomed women, Samaritans, crooks, adulterers, and lepers, many of who were considered to be no less than dogs. No one is outside of God’s mercy and grace. This gospel transforms communities. It breaks down all the divides. The kingdom invitation is for everyone. Slave and free. Rich and poor. Educated and uneducated. Jew & Gentile. Christian & Muslim. Indigenous and refugee. Every shade of black, brown, and white. Straight and gay. Conservative and liberal. Everyone is invited to the table of God.

Because of this, I believe that radical hospitality is central to who we are as a church. For it is the essence of the kingdom.

This is the extravagance of the feast of God.


by Jessica Ketola​

We've been talking about our value of Creative Liberation — a value at the heart of God's work on the earth. Yet, so often we have read the scriptures from a location of privilege and have failed to see that this gospel is good news to the poor. We must decolonize our faith and decenter whiteness, for the Biblical narrative is largely written from the perspective of those who are oppressed. I believe we must reclaim a faith where our conversion to God demands our conversion to our neighbor. Theologians like James Cone, Gustavo Gutiérrez, William Jennings, Miroslav Volf, Renita Weems, and many others can help us understand liberation as a central theme of the Biblical narrative. One of the gifts of graduate school is being introduced to many different perspectives, ideologies, and thought leaders, and I've been ruminating on the intersection of gospel and culture.

Does the gospel of Jesus Christ transform culture? Many Christians today believe in a gospel that transforms the soul but not society. This question then lies at the heart of a Christian’s socio-political understanding. For me, it is a resounding “yes.”

For if the arc of scripture begins with the goodness and shalom of Creation and ends with its restoration in New Creation, then it follows that we are to be participants in this work of transformation. “Can the conclusion be avoided that not only is shalom God’s cause in the world but that all who believe in Jesus will, along with him, engage in the works of shalom? Shalom is both God’s cause in the world and our human calling.”[1] Shalom is the underpinning for a socio-political understanding that seeks human flourishing, justice, and right relationships with God, self, neighbor, and creation. This vision of human happiness and wholeness found in the inseparable love of God and neighbor informs my belief in a Christ who transforms culture.

Ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr’s models for Christ and Culture prove helpful here. [2] Two of the most predominant approaches today hold moral weight, Christ Against Culture and Christ Of Culture. The former offers a faith deeply committed to preserving holiness and a counter-cultural life. The latter offers an engagement with culture and an ability to contextualize faith in the language and forms of the day. Yet, one without the other offers a misshapen gospel. I believe that Christ Transforming Culture demonstrates an incarnational model that holds these two together — in love of God and neighbor, piety and justice, love incarnate in the neighborhood for the flourishing of all. We need a "radical evangelicalism [that] offers a tradition and a trajectory that is biblically based, Christ-centered, and socially involved—a gospel that embraces forgiveness and holiness for individuals and redemption and wholeness for the world." [3]

It is a travesty that piety has been separated from justice in the sociopolitical sphere. For politics is nothing more than the interrelationships between people and how power is shared, a realm ripe for the preservation of salt, liberation from oppression, and restoration of communities.[4] This kingdom liberation does not locate itself in the kingdoms and empires of this world – either in confusing God’s kingdom with a political agenda or in hopes of gaining worldly power or dominion. Rather, it is located once again in the justice and shalom of “right relationship” or “righteousness.” It is in the explicit call of scripture to care for the most vulnerable and needy in our communities, “not in rights asserted against one another” [5] but in responsibilities of humanity’s covenantal bond and “inescapable mutuality.”[6] Faith without works is dead, and a religion that has largely failed to address the injustices of our times is an impotent one. “Christians have not done enough in this area of conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history. They have not perceived clearly enough yet that to know God is to do justice.” [7]

2020 was an apocalyptic year, a year of revelation. Amidst pandemic and protest, the deep seeds of racism and white supremacy were exposed in ways that captured our attention. The brutal violence white people’s privilege had distanced them from now played over and over on screens. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder that catalyzed demonstrations all across our nation, it was increasingly difficult to believe that racism was a part of our ugly past.[8] Though this was nothing new for black, latinx, or asian american communities, many white folks awakened to the systemic and persistent evil of white supremacy. This was a time of grief, outrage, and protest amidst the tide of police brutality against black and brown bodies. The prophets cried out, “I can’t breathe.” [9]

You can be sure that God heard their cries. For our God is a God on the side of the oppressed — those who are crushed, degraded, humiliated, exploited, impoverished, defrauded, and enslaved. Yet what was the response of God’s people? Did the Church hear their cries?

Many did not. Many chose to stay clear of the “politics” of the day in a Christ Against Culture stance. Others became even more entrenched in the particular ideology of their political party both right and left, unwilling to converse with the “other” in a Christ Of Culture approach. The polarizing divides were profound — splitting apart families, friends, and churches.

Similar to previous times of civil unrest, there was “the appalling silence of the good people” within the white church, who professed their love for all lives, denied their culpability, and proved to be a “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom.” [10] There was a refusal to see, let alone address, the systemic nature of racism, resorting once again to a gospel that sanctions the personal over the social. The roots of this bifurcation go back to our country’s inception in the doctrine of the "spirituality of the church." This spirituality attempted to extricate the church from addressing the social evils of slavery, promoting a “Christianity [that] could save one’s soul but not break one’s chains.” [11] Yet, this hideous distortion of the gospel repeats in response to the outcries to value black lives. “Where were the saints trying to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves [oppressed communities], but to do away with slavery [the systems that brutalize and oppress communities]?” [12] Who was listening to the black and brown prophets of the day?

Fortunately, there is a remnant of Christians who believe that Christ Transforms Culture in the sociopolitical sphere. Those who were willing to repent of America’s greatest sin, white supremacy, offering more than “thoughts and prayers.” They listened deeply to a perspective that contradicted their own. They learned a hard and grievous history. They stood in solidarity with the oppressed in protests and vigils. They followed the prophetic witness of African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latinx theologians and church leaders, engaging in civil action. They spoke out against white supremacy in their pulpits and among their peers not without cost, insisting that all created in the divine image share in equity and justice. They wrestled profoundly and lamented their complicity, beginning to find ways to take up the cause of the oppressed, amplify marginalized voices, and elevate black lives.

Yet Christians today must commit to the long, hard road of a lived repentance, “for our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to our neighbor” — a radical transformation where we come to know “Christ present in exploited and oppressed persons.” [13] “We are not to stand around, hands folded, waiting for shalom to arrive. We are workers in God’s cause,” [14] joining the Spirit’s work of peace-making, justice, and liberation on the earth.


by Jessica Ketola


[1] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “For Justice with Shalom”, in Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 72.
[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, “Types of Christian Ethics,” In Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture, Glen H. Stassen, Diane M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 15-29.
[3] Donald W. Dayton, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 200.
[4] Matthew 5:13, Isaiah 58: 6-7, 12
[5] Karen Lebacqz, “Implications for a Theory of Justice,” in From Christ to the World: Readings in Christian Ethics, eds. Wayne Boulton, Thomas Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 257.
[6] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr, 1963, 1.
[7] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” in Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 49.
[8] “‘I Can’t Breathe’: The Refrain That Reignited a Movement,” Amnesty International, June 30, 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/i-cant-breathe-refrain-reignited-movement.
[9] Jessica Ketola, “A Time of Reckoning, Revelation, Repentance, and Reformation: The Epiphany of America’s Greatest Sin,” Medium, January 12, 2021, https://medium.com/interfaith-now/a-time-of-reckoning-revelation-repentance-and-reformation-7003c588875b.
[10] King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 4.
[11] Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 38.
[12] Kathleen Jorden, “The Nonviolence of Dorothy Day,” in From Christ to the World: Readings in Christian Ethics, eds. Wayne Boulton, Thomas Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 443.
[13] Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” 48.
[14] Wolterstorff, “For Justice with Shalom,” 72.

Photo: Touching Strangers Series by Richard Renaldi

As a community, we are shaped by our shared values —those things that we fiercely love and hold dear, our "non-negotiables"  — one of which is  is Deep Listening.

DEEP LISTENING
We listen deeply to the Spirit at work within our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place until we become fully immersed in the mystery of God’s Story of love that heals us and heals the world.

This posture of Deep Listening locates us well in the humility and self-giving love of Christ's example. Jesus Christ, who spoke Creation into existence, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself of all privilege and power to take on our humanity and enter our world, laying down his life for love (Philippians 2). The scandal of the incarnation is profound.

We also are invited into this cruciform practice to enter the world of others for the sake of love. Yet often, we are caught up in our own worlds, occupied with our own self-interests and the demands of our lives. How do we repent, shift, and orient our lives differently in order to live lives of love?

How do we enter the worlds of others?

​How do we give up our privilege, our biases, our comfort, and our preconceived ideas to truly listen — deeply and thoughtfully? How do we pause before rushing in with our own experiences and worldviews? How do we slow down to listen well and let our hearts be impacted by the stories of our neighbors?

This is vital as we seek to incarnate love in our everyday lives. History is full of the atrocities of imperialism, colonization, racism, and gentrification. Often we fail to enter the world of the other, to esteem their interests higher than ourselves, to truly listen and honor the wisdom of their stories. “For our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to our neighbor” — a radical transformation where we come to know “Christ present in exploited and oppressed persons.”[1] We are called to listen deeply to the stories that contradict our own, allowing them to affect us, shape us, and form us in the radical love of Christ.


[1] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” in Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 49.

by Jessica Ketola
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