Where is Jesus' heart?

I have been angry and confused since those Paris attacks on Friday.
I am angry because the world seems to be reacting the exact way ISIS wants them to react.
I am confused because many of the people who are now saying NO WAY to letting refugees in the confines of our borders are people who follow Jesus, just like me.
For me, caring for the vulnerable people of the world is one of the most important parts of following Jesus. When I hear other Christians who do not say YES to welcoming refugees, it does not compute. I wonder: are we serving the same Jesus?
The answer is yes, of course. Jesus is always good, no matter how much his followers just don't get it. He is disappointed, but not fazed, by quarreling within the ranks of his disciples.

But, if you are a Christian and still on the fence about welcoming Middle Eastern refugees, please join me. I am going to share my reading of the Scripture and my understanding of who Jesus is. It is this understanding that influences why I think helping refugees is important. What is your understanding? What is holding you back? What do you think is the proper thing to do?

Hannah's Selected Gospel Commentary (pretty sure this is going to be accepted as seminary required reading one of these days. IV Press, call me).

Jesus is born. Oooh Christmas! Wow, Herod really hates this kid. He really needs to loosen his grasp on some of that power he loves so much.
Jesus and his parents flee to Egypt. I guess that would make them refugees.
They get to go back. The king is dead, long live the King! Also, I just noticed something that probably a ton of other people have noticed before me-- but do you think Jesus returning home from Egypt would have reminded the people about the Hebrew's rescue from Egypt? God is legit the best storyteller ever. Like I love Sarah Koenig and all but GOD.
Jesus gets baptized. As if he needed to. But that is important. The Kingdom of God is near! What is the Kingdom of God, anyway? Hopefully Jesus will help clarify this.
Nope. He just tells a bunch of stories and heals people and whatnot.
Oh wait. There may be some meaning in those stories and actions.
I think Jesus needs a better HR person. OK honestly Jesus. I don't want to be mean or anything, but those disciples of yours don't seem to be the sharpest tools in the shed. And why did you bring in a tax collector? Seriously. Nobody likes tax collectors. That seems obvious.
Wait a second. I am not seeing anything in here about Jesus being white, or anything about his eye colour. Why do all the paintings show him like that? Now that I think of it, he probably looks a lot more like those people we call terrorists. I bet he'd get "randomly" selected for additional security screening at the airport.

Jesus does not seem to like the Pharisees. It's a two-way street, though. The Pharisees really don't like Jesus. It's like they are following him around, all creepy-like. He might just be mad because they are stalkers, always waiting for the next chance to trip him up. Except Jesus owns them every time. When will they learn?

I wonder why he's angry with the Pharisees. It's scary because I see myself in the Pharisees in a lot of the stories. I am a lot more eager to accuse other people than myself. The scribes and the Pharisees have a whole lot of knowledge, but they  aren't using it in the right way. They are using it to make themselves important instead of being humble and loving others. They are scared to let go of all their customs because they are afraid there will be nothing left when they do-- no real connection to God at all. And Jesus sees through this 100 percent.

The Pharisees are threatened by Jesus. They are threatened because he has all this authority-- to cast out demons, to heal, to calm the sea-- and yet is totally free of all their nonsense. He has no worries about being powerful. He is not grasping on to his own power or pride or wealth. No denarius, don't care[ius? I am so so sorry]

He deliberately makes time for the least powerful. He stops on an urgent visit to an "important" person's house to heal an "unclean" woman, a social outcast. He visits a town and invites himself over to the most unpopular person's house for dinner. A man was born blind and every assumes he or his parents did something bad to deserve it. Jesus is like "nope," but that question becomes irrelevant anyway because Jesus heals him. A prostitute washes his feet with expensive perfume and her hair and Jesus acknowledges her gift, while the Pharisees look on in horror. You just don't DO that.

Ugh. That really irks the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law. 

Not to mention those enigmatic stories he keeps on telling. When someone said "blessed is he who will eat a feast in the Kingdom of God", I bet they weren't expecting such a long reply from Jesus. I wonder if they got that the story was about them-- it seems pretty clear to me, but then again, I have the benefit of hindsight. I wonder if Jesus was trying to give them a chance, then. I wonder if he was saying "There's still a chance to receive the invitation. But these are the kinds of people you'll be dining with. You have to be OK with that." 

And the story of the lost son- did they recognize themselves as the older brother? Maybe, but maybe not. The older brother's main character trait is cluelessness. He has the opportunity to get to know the Father the whole time but never takes it. He misses the point of his Father. It's not about the farm, son. It's about me. 

When Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats- that must have really irked them. Sheep and goats are really pretty similar, when you think about it. It's not like he was comparing sheep to pythons or a Kitchenaid mixer or something. And yet the behaviour and the outcome of the sheep and the goats in Jesus' story are radically different. I think Jesus is acknowledging that it can really seem like people can know him, but they might just not get it. And the difference is in how they respond when confronted with need. 

So anyway, a few powerful people decided they wanted Jesus dead. Jesus knew this was going to happen, because being the Son of God, he had a lot of inside information. So he had a meal with his disciples. He asked them to remember him.

They did not do a very good job at remembering him. First Judas betrayed him for a couple of bucks. Typical. His priorities were not straight, at all. Then the others just kinda left. Peter even denied that he ever even knew Jesus, though he said he wouldn't do it.

Jesus died anyway. This is the part that always gets me. It must have felt, then, like nobody cared. The people who had been hanging around him for two or three years had disappeared. He had tried to teach them and he wondered if it failed. He knew he had to die because that was the plan. It would be the ultimate display of love to the world. God, as man, dying, to make right all we had done wrong. A selfless act to negate all the selfish acts. And did he still think it was worth it, when everyone he knew either hated him or left him? He had done nothing but love people and this is what they did. Love threatened their power, their comfort, and their familiar way of doing life. Nonetheless, Jesus somehow loved them all and loves me and you too, so he died. I can't even imagine how much it hurt. What great lengths he went to love us. He did not ask if we deserved it. He just did it. 

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He's alive. Did you really think that would be the end of the story? Of course not. He did not stay dead long. Jesus' authority can't be stopped by death. He eventually went up to Heaven, but gave believers the Holy Spirit so that we can carry Jesus' authority within us at all times.

Whoa. I know. A lot of times I am like the Pharisees and try to ignore it. But sometimes it just can't be ignored. The Holy Spirit, like Jesus, like God the Father (because they are all one and I don't even know how that's possible but I have given up even tying to define what is and is not possible with God), cares about the vulnerable and the outsider and the poor and and marginalized. That's where God's heart is. And because I listen to the Holy Spirit now and again, that's where my heart is moving.

That's my reading of the Gospels. This is what I think Jesus was trying to say to the Pharisees and the scribes and his disciples and the poor and the sick and the outcasts: My Kingdom is really great. You'll be missing out if you're not a part of it. But you'll have to give something up to be in it. You'll have to give up your pride and maybe your wealth and any part of you that thinks you deserve it. My goodness is so good that nobody deserves it. And when you know that nobody deserves it, you know that everyone needs it. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. So now that you're free from worrying about saving yourself, you can get busy loving others. It does not matter if they might hurt you or hate you or curse you-- because it's not about you and it's not about them. It's about Me. 


 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?