Quotes From "Accidental Saints: Finding God In All The Wrong People" By Nadia BolzWeber

I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors.. Jesus could have hung out in the high-end religious scene of his day, but instead he scoffed at all that, choosing instead to laugh at the powerful, befriend whores, kiss sinners, and eat with all the wrong people. He spent his time with people for whom life was not easy. And there, amid those who were suffering, he was the embodiment of perfect love. . Nadia BolzWeber

That's the crazy thing about Christianityâ€â€°–â€â€°the idea that the finite can contain the infinite. After all, what is the incarnation if not that? So there's an incredible physicality to the spiritual within the Christian story. There's not this weird sort of â€â€°Greek separation, where there's a higher spiritual world and a corrupted, bad world of â€â€°flesh. It's all one. Because if God chose to have a body, there's a way in which spiritual things are revealed in the physical things that are all around usâ€â€°–â€â€°bread, wine, people, tears, laughter. Nadia BolzWeber

So often in the church, being a pastor or a "spiritual leader" means being the example of â€â€°"godly living." A pastor is supposed to be the person who is really good at this Christianity stuffâ€â€°–â€â€°the person others can look to as an example of righteousness. But as much as being the person who is the best Christian, who "follows Jesus" the most closely can feel a little seductive, it's simply never been who I am or who my parishioners need me to be. I'm not running after Jesus. Jesus is running my ass down. Yeah, I am a leader, but I'm leading them onto the street to get hit by the speeding bus of confession and absolution, sin and sainthood, death and resurrectionâ€â€°–â€â€°that is, the gospel of â€â€°Jesus Christ. I'm a leader, but only by saying, "Oh, screw it. I'll go first. . Nadia BolzWeber

God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of â€â€°Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and disturbing world. Nadia BolzWeber

There is a reason Mary is everywhere. I've seen her image all over the world, in cafés in Istanbul, on students' backpacks in Scotland, in a market stall in Jakarta, but I don't think her image is everywhere because she is a reminder to be obedient, and I don't think it has to do with social revolution. Images of â€â€°Mary remind us of â€â€°God's favor. Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are. . Nadia BolzWeber

I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Beliefâ€â€°is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm responsible for what they hearâ€â€°–â€â€°and hearing the gospel, the good news about who God is, slowly forms us over time. Nadia BolzWeber

We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning. Nadia BolzWeber

When all of â€â€°it is given meaning in the larger story of â€â€°Jesus Christ, it destroys us, then pours our melted selves back into another form that still bears the marks of â€â€°how we got there. Then we become something that can bear light, the brightness of which is not diminished, even when divided and borrowed. Nadia BolzWeber

So are demons forces that are totally external to us who seek to defy God? Are they just the shadow side of our own souls? Are they social constructions from a premodern era? Bottom line: Who cares? I don’t think demons are something human reason can put its finger on. Or that human faith can resolve. I just know that demons, whether they be addictions or actual evil spirits, are not what Jesus wants for us, since basically every time he encounters them he tells them to piss off. Nadia BolzWeber

Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as "the blessing"â€â€°–â€â€°like so many mission trips to help "those less fortunate than ourselves"â€â€°–â€â€°can easily descend into a blend of â€â€°benevolence and paternalism. We can start to see the "poor" as supporting characters in a big story about how noble, selfless, and helpful we are. Nadia BolzWeber

And the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because ifâ€â€°it's real it means we don't "deserve" it.... And receiving grace is basically the best shitty feeling in the world. Nadia BolzWeber

I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins. Nadia BolzWeber

While we as people of â€â€°God are certainly called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that whole "we're blessed to be a blessing" thing can still be kind of dangerous. It can be dangerous when we self-importantly place ourselves above the world, waiting to descend on those below so we can be the "blessing" they've been waiting for, like it or not. Nadia BolzWeber

I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if â€â€°Jesus said "I was hungry and you fed me, " then Christ's presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but Christ's presence is in the hungry being fed. Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisoned but in the imprisoned being cared for. And to be clear, Christ does not come to us as the poor and hungry. Because, as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh-and-blood people knows, the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of â€â€°Christlike people. And those who meet their needs are not a romantic special class of â€â€°Christlike people. We all are equally as sinful and saintly as the other. No, Christ comes to us in the needs of the poor and hungry, needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of â€â€°God might be known.. No one gets to play Jesus. But we do get to experience Jesus in that holy place where we meet others' needs and have our own needs met. Nadia BolzWeber

I often think that the effort we put into trying to pretend something about us is trueâ€â€°–â€â€°that we are less than we are or more than we are or that one aspect of ourselves is the whole storyâ€â€°–â€â€°is based in a fear of â€â€°being really known, of â€â€°being truly seen, as we actually are. Perhaps we each have a wound, a vulnerable place that we have to protect in order to survive. And yet sometimes we overcompensate so much for the things we are trying to hide that no one ever suspects the truth…and then we are left in the true aloneness of never really being known. Nadia BolzWeber