So, I did something this past week that I, fairly religiously, try to avoid doing. In preparation for an interview I did on Wednesday, I re-read a couple of Huffington Post articles I’d written some years ago.

I still really like the articles. But then I started remembering all the wonderfully insightful things people had written about me in the comments. Pro tip: Don’t read the comment threads.

Usually, I try to abide by the anonymous wisdom that what others think of me is none of my business. But every once in a while, curiosity wins out and I dip into that manifestation of the human Id, that seething cauldron of unfettered opinion that makes up most comment threads.

In thinking about all those things people felt compelled to share with me online over the years, one common theme that emerged shouldn’t surprise you, though. There were folks excited to point out to me just how much I have no idea what I’m talking about.

They write these hateful things, I think, with the belief that it will be a newsflash to me. I want to respond, “Look, I’ve been called an idiot by a better class of people than you. So, don’t get smug.”

What, you may wonder, do my critics believe I remain so criminally clueless about?

Christianity. The church. Jesus. The existence of God.

My detractors are quick to point out that they’re just fine, thank you very much, without me trying to pawn off my version of Jesus. Most of my most loyal critics are convinced that I am a liberal huckster who’s main purpose in life is to ruin the church and blaspheme against God. What the world needs—according to these overenthusiastic sunbeams—is more Franklin Graham and less of me.

But many other commenters think the whole religion thing in general (and the church, in particular) is a mess ... and my attempts to pretty it up a little are in no way persuasive to them. What the world needs—these cultured despisers believe—isn’t more and better Christians, but more and better people who know how to shut up about their faith.

Christianity is dead, they say.

I’m not sure Christianity is, in fact, dead—that would be a terrible blow to my vocational aspirations—but it’s certainly an increasingly odd and seemingly irrelevant enterprise to which to commit oneself. If I’m not entirely tone-deaf, I can say with some certainty that Christianity centered on the actual Jesus found in the Gospels isn’t something the cool kids are doing these days.

Whatever the case, it’s tempting to see our lives as though our faith is one more box to check on the census and that what happens here on Sunday mornings doesn’t matter much.

It’s easy to think that the world we return to when we leave this place is pretty much the same one we left, tempting to believe that nothing of real significance happens here. The extent to which Christianity does provide a presence in the world worth remarking on, it is, for the most part, negative—judgmental, ignorant, hypocrites. That’s the rap on Christianity, right?

And Lord knows, Christianity has too often earned the scorn reserved for it. You don’t have to see too many pastors pleading for private jets, too many preachers preaching hate against LGBTQ folks, too many Christian politicians trying to whip up fear and legislate exclusion against people they deem not “American” enough to understand that the church has too often deserved its poor reputation.

And the church, when it’s not offensive, seems largely irrelevant. The real juice is in Washington, or Hollywood, Wall Street, or Madison Avenue.  The stuff that makes the world go round happens outside these four walls.

People have such low expectations about what goes on here. The words we speak in worship sometimes feel like they bounce around pointlessly, dying silent, lonely deaths once we leave the sanctuary.

I mean, come on, it’s only church, right? There’s a lot more interesting stuff we could be doing on a Sunday morning. At least that seems to be the word on the street.

But what about us? When we read our Gospel for this morning, does society’s generally low opinion of the church influence our reading of the launch of Jesus’ ministry?

As we pick up our story in Luke, Jesus has just returned to Galilee from his cage match with Satan in the wilderness. Having spent forty days fasting and facing the caterwauling and wiles of the Tempter, Jesus returns to civilization “filled with the power of the Spirit.”

Upon arriving in Nazareth, what’s the first thing Luke has Jesus do? Where does Jesus go after facing down ‘Ol Scratch in the wilderness?