Can Jesus Help?

Right now, according to the reports I hear, Christians all across the political spectrum are re-evaluating their orientations towards "the Bible" (the liberals) and "the poor" (the conservatives). It is always good I suppose to evaluate one's relationships to the two great commandments (to love God and love your neighbor.)
One of the things we've discovered at Prairie Table is that community takes time, and most often involves someone sacrificing their self-dignity in order to get the conversation rolling. But notice what happens if you make the commitment to this: you are going to get uncomfortable at some point. Someone at the table will not agree with you, and now what are going to do? Translate that experience out over a week, month, year, and soon you discover that disagreements are pretty much all we have in common. So whether liberals at Riverside in Manhattan wonder about how much Bible you need or conservatives in Orange County about how to engage the poor everyone of them will be uncomfortable at some point, if not all the time if our experience is paradigmatic...
For us the discomfort we experience is only understood and lived through because we trust our neighbors and take heart from a God who once wandered around in the same spot: Jesus. When we read stories about Jesus we find that he was probably always talking to someone who made him uncomfortable...always talking with a God who couldn't be pinned down...always trying to make community.