One night, Mark Ralls, a minister in North Carolina, was leaving his church at the same time a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was adjourning. He found himself in conversation with a man standing next to his rusty, worn-out Ford, and introduced himself as one of the pastors of the church that had hosted his group. The man sighed and told Mark how long he had intended to "get back to church." So Mark invited him to worship. Immediately, the man launched into a story of his life.

It was, as Mark puts it, "the familiar string of regrets and loss that accompany addiction." Mark prayed with him, and they parted ways.

As he walked to his car, the man called after him with a sense of urgency. "Did you mean what you said?" "About what?" "Did you mean that I could come to this church?"

Mark says that as he drove home he realized the man had told his life story as a way of explaining why he couldn't come to church. He felt he wasn't "clean enough" to be included in that kind of congregation.

How clean does someone have to be before he or she is accepted by Jesus? How clean before someone is accepted by you and me?

In this inhospitable world of ours, Jesus would have us – I think Jesus would have us – throw caution to the wind. You can't do that without opening the door. And when you do, you might just find Jesus standing there disguised as a stranger.