Chris Scott is a pastor and Mission Network Facilitator for Emerging Faith Communities. This post was originally published September 2 on his blog, Missio Menno.
I have spent enough time around church folks to recognize the moment someone brings up justice. The room tightens. Someone mentions poverty, racism, immigration, LGBTQIA people, economic inequality, war, housing, prison reform, or the ways political power gets wrapped in Christian language — and almost on cue, a voice says, “But we need to keep the focus on Jesus.”
I find that sentence endlessly fascinating, because apparently Jesus has a hard time staying focused on Jesus.
Read the Gospels carefully and you notice something persistent: Jesus keeps wandering off
He wanders into the lives of people respectable religion has labeled inconvenient. He moves toward the poor, the sick, foreigners, marginalized women, tax collectors, sinners, and those everyone else has already written off. Jesus keeps walking toward the people standing outside the circle. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that following him means staying safely inside it.
Think of Ted Lasso. He walks into a football club (yes, Americans — soccer) with a job description, a strategy, and almost no idea what he’s doing. He is supposed to coach a team. Instead, he notices people. He notices who is hurting, who has been dismissed, and what sits underneath the anger, insecurity, arrogance, and fear. The actual work keeps becoming about people. That is probably why the show works as well as it does.
That is what following Jesus feels like to me. We want a clean spiritual life; Jesus keeps introducing us to our neighbors. We want worship; Jesus keeps talking about hungry people. We want personal salvation; Jesus keeps asking what we are doing with the person who has been excluded. We want to debate theology; Jesus keeps putting someone who is hurting directly in front of us.
Justice is not a distraction from Jesus. Justice is where Jesus keeps wandering off to. You can call that politics if you like, but Jesus makes the conversation political in the most basic sense of the word. He talks about how human beings treat one another — who has power, who gets welcomed, who gets fed, who gets protected, and who gets pushed to the edges.
This is why I grow frustrated when some Christians treat justice as a trendy political hobby that has invaded the church. Too many fight hard against even talking about it, and fight harder still when someone suggests that following Jesus might require us to do something about injustice. We have reached a strange place where people will defend the name of Jesus with fierce intensity while growing deeply uncomfortable whenever Jesus starts talking about poor people, immigrants, prisoners, racial injustice, economic exploitation, or those society has decided are expendable.
And this is where the heresy of Christian Nationalism becomes so dangerous. It attaches the name of Jesus to political power, national identity, cultural dominance, and the preservation of a particular vision of America — while the actual Jesus keeps wandering toward people who have no power at all. Christian Nationalism wants Jesus to bless the kingdom we have already built. Jesus keeps asking whether we are willing to build something different.
The prophets spoke of justice. Mary sang about it. Jesus preached it. The early church practiced it. In Matthew 25, Jesus becomes almost startlingly concrete: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned. There is nothing abstract about any of that.
Jesus does not say, “Hold the correct opinions about hungry people.” He says, “Feed them.”
That distinction matters. Christianity can become a sophisticated way of discussing compassion without ever becoming compassionate. We can host conferences, record podcasts, preach sermons, write books, and issue carefully worded statements about justice — while someone remains hungry, someone sleeps in a car, someone is told God does not love people like them, and someone is treated as disposable because their suffering is politically inconvenient.
Jesus does not merely tell us what to believe about justice. He moves toward people who are hurting — the excluded, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, the forgotten. Then he looks at us and says, “Follow me.” Following him will eventually take us toward the same people he keeps walking over to.
At some point, discipleship requires us to stop talking and start wandering. Maybe that is what it actually looks like: you have a plan for the afternoon, and then you notice someone who needs help. You have your theological categories neatly arranged, and then you meet a person whose life does not fit inside them. You have decided who deserves compassion, and Jesus keeps expanding the list.
I do not believe justice pulls us away from Jesus. I believe justice is one of the places Jesus is most likely to be found. The question is not whether justice belongs in our faith. The question is whether we are willing to follow Jesus when he wanders somewhere our faith has taught us not to go.
