The Forgotten Get Good News

Pastor Mike Fitzpatrick | December 8, 2025

I spent my college years bouncing around three different campuses—spreading my money thin and learning different lessons at each stop. My year at Bowling Green, though, was easily my least favorite. There were a few reasons for that, but one story in particular still sticks with me all these years later. It was a “creative date,” the kind my campus ministry—Campus Crusade for Christ, now Cru—encouraged as an alternative to one-on-one dating. The whole idea was to help students avoid the temptations that come with dating by sending groups of guys and girls out together on some kind of activity.

Well, one night I was invited to one of these creative dates. The instructions were oddly specific: wear clothes that can get dirty, wear something blue, bring a 1989 penny (you know, those little copper discs we used to pay for things with), and show up to a study room in the library at a certain time. I did exactly what they said—I wore a blue shirt, grabbed a pair of jeans I didn’t mind ruining, found myself a 1989 penny, and headed out.

When I arrived, a handful of just-as-clueless guys were already waiting. Eventually the girls appeared and took a few of us at a time into the hallway. When my turn came, they turned us around, blindfolded us, and guided us outside toward the parking lot. They loaded us into a car and started driving. Fortunately, I don’t get motion sickness or that night might’ve ended early.

After a while, the car pulled into an apartment complex and they unloaded us. I could hear voices and laughter—other guys being guided somewhere. And then I heard the door to the building shut and the laughter move upstairs. And that was it. No more footsteps. No more voices. Just me—still blindfolded—standing in a parking lot.

I waited. Someone would come get me, right?

I heard the party going on upstairs through an open window. I heard strangers walking past me into the building—probably wondering why there was a blindfolded guy lingering in the parking lot. And I kept waiting. Finally—after what felt like forever—the door opened and a girl’s voice said, “Mike! You’re still out here?”

Uh… yeah. I was still out there because they had forgotten about me.

Most of you probably haven’t been abandoned in a parking lot while blindfolded—that’s an oddly specific scenario. But I do think most of us know what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. Maybe everyone else seems to have a certain look or skin tone or background, and you don’t. Maybe you make less money than the people around you. Maybe your values look different. Maybe every other parent appears to be raising perfect kids, and you’re just thankful your children are clothed and mostly clean today. Maybe everyone else voted one way, and your ballot went another. Or maybe, especially in a church context, everyone else seems to have this “following Jesus” thing figured out, and you’re just trying to hold it together.

Whatever your version of it, you’ve experienced life on the outside. There’s a phrase for that: being on the margins.

Today I want to explore that idea—what it means to live on the margins—and why the margins matter so much in the Christmas story.

In worship, we’re in a series called Christmas Beyond Borders, looking at the borders all around us: social, relational, economic, political—borders between who’s “in” and who’s “out.” In Jesus’ day, people in the “masses” were the ones with religious, political, or financial power. Priests, Pharisees, scribes, Roman officials, wealthy families—different groups, sometimes overlapping—but all in the center of society.

Then there were the people on the margins.

Shepherds were near the bottom of that list. They had no money. They held no political power. And according to Jewish law, they were ceremonially unclean—regularly in contact with blood, dirt, predators, bodily fluids, and sheep who were not exactly known for their hygiene or brilliance. They lived outside the community compound, away from family life and communal gatherings. They weren’t invited to the festivals. They weren’t welcomed into worship. They were outsiders.

Yet Luke tells us that these were the first people God chose for the birth announcement of Jesus.

Not the religious leaders. Not the political figures. Not the wealthy families. The shepherds.

When an angel appeared to them in the field and the glory of God shone around them, they must have looked over their shoulders wondering, “Is he talking to us? People avoid us. Nobody comes out here.” But God did. God went right to where they were.

This wasn’t random. It was the beginning of a pattern.

All throughout his ministry, Jesus moved toward the margins. A Samaritan woman with a complicated past—Jesus approached her. Lepers who were unclean and untouchable—Jesus reached out and put his hands on them. Tax collectors and sinners—Jesus ate dinner with them. If you were part of the “in crowd,” you just didn’t do these things. But Jesus did. On purpose.

Rick McKinley writes, “When God came down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, the margins is where he landed. On purpose.”

Some of you know this because Jesus met you in a place where you felt unworthy, unseen, or unwanted. Maybe it was in your addiction. Or your anxiety. Or your loneliness. Or your poverty. Jesus didn’t wait for you to clean up your act or join the “masses.” He came to you.

But even if you’ve never felt like an outsider in your social life, Scripture reminds us that spiritually we’ve all been on the margins. Paul writes, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Sin pushed every one of us away from the community we were created to belong to—the family of God. And Jesus came to the margins to bring us home.

And the best part? Jesus knows exactly what it feels like. He lived on the margins. He was misunderstood, criticized, mocked, rejected, and ultimately executed as a criminal. When you tell Jesus you feel alone or overlooked, he can look right back at you and say, “Me too.”

That’s the good news of the gospel—Jesus comes to the margins to rescue us.

But it cannot end with us being rescued. Rob Bell says, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.” There are still people on the margins right now—people who feel left out, unclean, less than, unwelcome. And God’s plan for reaching them isn’t a new program or a new strategy.

It’s you. It’s me. It’s the Church.

When the shepherds saw Jesus, they didn’t return to the masses to gloat about their special moment. They went to others on the margins, telling them the good news of the Savior.

If we say we follow Jesus, then we must go where Jesus goes. And Jesus goes to the margins.

This is why our church gives generously to the Christmas Miracle Offering every year—to support people and ministries who serve those the world forgets. You may never set foot in Cuba, or walk the streets of El Salvador, or serve at New Path Ministries, but your giving allows someone else to go to the margins on your behalf.

Because God is a God who moves outward.

I think back to that night at BGSU—standing blindfolded in the cold, feeling forgotten. I never would have joined the laughter and the food and the fun upstairs if someone hadn’t come out to the margins to get me. She came outside, found me, and brought me in.

That’s what Jesus does.

And that’s what he calls us to do.

If you feel like you’re on the margins today, Jesus is already out there with you. All you have to do is say yes to him.

And if you’ve already been rescued by Jesus on the margins, he invites you to join him there again—this time on behalf of someone else.

Let’s follow Jesus.

Let’s go to the margins.