"He found his friend among the fishermen of Sea of Galilee, among the despised tax collectors who worked for the Romans, indeed among the prostitutes of the sea cities. One cannot reach lover down the social scale in the choice of one’s associates than Jesus did. To him there was no one underneath who was too low or too bad. And I repeat: That this was not a cheap pity from above to below, but the eruption of a volcano from below to above. It is not the poor who need pity, but the rich; not the so-called godless, but the pious."
Karl Barth, Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice, in Karl Barth and Radical Politics
