Following Jesus to the Margins

When Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me," He was not offering a self-help program. He was issuing an invitation to walk toward the people and places that comfortable religion avoids. Rachel Held Evans once wrote about how following Jesus kept dragging her to tables she never expected to sit at — tables with doubters, outcasts, and people the church had wounded.…