From my journal: Bill Donahue has written a wonderful book, In the Company of Jesus (InterVarsity Press, 2005), which does a great job of reminding the reader that, in all of our busyness in doing good stuff, Jesus (his mission and character) is still the front-and-center issue. Early in the book he quotes novelist Andrew Greeley: "Much of the history of Christianity has been devoted to domesticating Jesus, to reducing that elusive, enigmatic, paradoxical person to dimensions we can comprehend, understand and convert to our own purposes. So far it hasn't worked."

Well, that comment certainly stopped me in my tracks. I said "Whoa!" (my new expletive) when I read it. Immediately, I smelled an idea for a sermon and began to think of all the people in the Gospels who tried to maneuver Jesus on to their agenda: the crowd, for example, that wanted to make him an instant king; Simon Peter who offered "better" ideas about how he could achieve his redemptive mission; his own flesh-and-blood family ...