Jesus comes preaching the good news, or "blessedness", that comes from the opposite direction than most of us naturally assume it comes from. We are naturally inclined to seek the blessed life in: success, wealth, fame (or at least recognition), intelligence, long life, victory in competition, etc.
Jesus says, "no, look to the other end of the spectrum, I’m preaching good news to the humble, the poor in spirit, the mourners, the peacemakers, the spiritually-bankrupt."
It's these people who have an insight into the way things really are and the way things will be.
In fact they have an understanding of what it means to be fully, truly human that people on the winning end of the bell curve normally do not.
The rich, the powerful, the satisfied, the comfortable - the kind of people we normally long to be, are the people who miss it, who can’t see it, but: the meek, the spiritually-poor, the mourners, the hungry for righteousness, they’re the people who “see.”
These first four Beatitudes which Jesus tells us about in the Sermon on the Mount are not the behavioral qualifications of seeing the kingdom, they’re not the ethical qualities of the right kind of person, in fact they’re not really about possessing at all, these people LACK something.
They have what we might call the "gift of imperfection."
The gift of imperfection means that the way UP is the way down, or as Parker Palmer says, “holiness means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.”
The gift of imperfection, if we will embrace it, allows us to meet Jesus because his grace flows down hill, his mercy pools at the bottom of the bell curve.
When we say that we are a "Community SEEKING to embody the historic Christian gospel in the City of Portland" we mean that while we believe that we have in fact found the source of life and blessing, we are still SEEKING to embody it. We are people in process.
Therefore there is a safe seat at Intown for failures, for broken people, for those who don't have it all figured out. In fact, these are the only kind of people who show up at Intown on any given Sunday.
So, join us.