We are drawn to those we find lovely and likable. Yet those Jesus spent his time among—and those most drawn to Jesus—were the odd, the disheveled, and the outcast. Those who were winning at life saw no need for this life-disrupting Savior. The people of God are the losers, misfits, and broken. This is good news—and humiliating. God loves and delights in the people in the pews around me and dares me to find beauty in them. To love his people on earth is to see Christ in them, to live among them, to receive together Word and sacrament. I
