"Blessed are the poor in spirit," proclaims Jesus and with these opening words comes an evocation of something new and wonderful and very troubling.

It is a different way of looking at our spirituality...not with smugness and self-satisfaction but out of poverty. It is only when we know how desperate we are that we can welcome God into our lives. It is only when we stop thinking that we’ve got it all together that we make room for God. It is only when we start identifying with those who are on the outside of our religious boundaries that we understand the lack of boundaries around God’s love.

Here is the essence of the holy paradox of Christianity. It is a paradox that disturbs some and angers many. This is why Jesus died. He didn’t anger the political authorities or the folk in charge of keeping the laws, nothing like that. Jesus died because the religious people, the people who went to church every week, the people who served on the church council and evangelism committee, the people who sang in the choir, "We people", we killed him because we couldn’t stand the paradox. We didn’t want him saying that we were poor when we knew how rich we were. We didn’t want him reaching out to others when there were more than enough of us here on the inside for him to take care of. We didn’t want a God who loved unconditionally but one who loved only on our conditions.

So we killed him.