This is the third post in a 3-part series. Please click on the links below for Parts 1 and 2.

We are the Christmas dropouts
Jesus is about calling the dropouts!  The people who can’t really cut it.  Think about that for a moment.  He chose to have the angels reveal himself to the lowly shepherds. He chose five of his disciples from a nobody kind of town. He chose those men who couldn’t cut it in the traditional discipleship model of his day. He allowed women who couldn’t go to school past the age of 12 to follow and learn from him. Jesus himself wasn’t raised in the best of towns, and the whole nation of Israel descended from a guy who deceived his father to steal his brother’s birthright (Jacob, in the Old Testament, as we saw last week).  And if that weren’t enough to convince us, unlike his Rabbi counterparts, Jesus called his disciples to follow him when they where mere dropouts. 

Jesus invites us, he calls us to follow him and it doesn’t matter what our story is.  We could have spent half our life in prison.  We could have been addicted to drugs and alcohol.  We can be a person struggling to keep down a job. Our fathers could have told us all our lives that we were no good. We could have been responsible for breaking up a marriage. We could have flunked out of college.  Perhaps when you look at yourself in the mirror, you are hard pressed to think of anything good.  It is those of us who were picked last on the ball team, who stood alone in the playground. It is the person who never got picked for homecoming queen or voted most popular.  You are the ones Jesus is calling.  It is you whom the very Son of God, the Rabbi, has called and says, “Follow me, become my disciple.”  Maybe you are reading this today and thinking, “Man I got A’s, have my graduate degree, never got into trouble with the law, always got picked first for the ball team and look like a model for GQ.  What is Jesus going to do with me?”  That is the most amazing part about this Jesus, this teacher.  From the perspective of God, we are all dropouts; we are all in a desperate, needy state. 

Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

The question for those that have had great earthly success and limited pain in life is, how do you see yourself?  Do you see yourself as a constant sinner in need of a Jesus who is attracted to sinners, to the hurting, to the dropouts?  Do you see yourself as a dropout compared to the awesome capacity of our Creator God? If you do, then you are also invited to join that ragamuffin group called the disciples, to follow Jesus.  This is the story of Christmas, the story of Christmas dropouts.  And this is the amazing part, no matter our past nor our present. Jesus calls us to follow Him. 

John 15:15-16
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”

God chose you. God chose you!  And he calls you “friend.”  You are a friend of God if you follow in obedience the Rabbi, the master.  Jesus is saying, “I believe in you!  I am choosing you to be like me.”  Maybe nobody has believed in you.  Maybe you don’t even think you are good enough to follow the Rabbi, to follow Jesus.  But Jesus knows you and believes that you can follow him.  He calls you by name and calls you friend.  This Christmas, are you following the Jesus who calls dropouts to himself, the Jesus who calls us friend? 

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Jason Esposito
Lead Pastor