Except Jesus did. This man Matthew, who was basically what we would have today if someone who sympathized with ISIS went to work for the IRS, overcharged everyone he could and funneled funds to those who wish to destroy us, was loved by the only man in the area who actually wasn't a sinner. Jesus hung out with him. Jesus not only ate with him, but He ate with all of Matthews friends too. They had to be as big of losers as Matthew was, or they themselves wouldn't have been friends with him. I can tell you from experience, we losers stick together. And Jesus was comfortable with them.
Yes, you read that right. Jesus was comfortable hanging out with sinners and traitors, the worst society had to offer, the ones all the religious people slammed in the social network, shunned and refused to touch....literally. How do we know Jesus was comfortable and not just spiritually creepy crawling His way through His duty to preach to the broken? Well, mainly because Matthew was comfortable with Him. If Jesus had gone in there with an attitude like He was holding His spiritual noise form the stench and these losers should repent and get right before they get left, Matthew wouldn't have become a disciple. If that were the case, the self righteous attitudes and condemnation of the Pharisees would have brought him to repentance long before Jesus showed up.
Jesus didn't participate in sin. Jesus never said sin was OK. But Jesus didn't try to shame the sinner into repentance either. Jesus never acted condescending toward anyone, even though He and He alone had actually lowered Himself from heavenly heights to walk around with lowly sinners. His love for them, for us, made Him feel perfectly relaxed and at home by our side, at our tables and on our Facebook pages with our offensive sin in plain sight. And being comfortable with sinners drew the sinners to Him.
And how many sinners, once drawn to Him, left their tables and followed Him? I did. Matthew did. Do you want to be like Jesus? It's not found in acting better than anyone else or rejecting those who are just too stupid to understand how their sin is ruining everything. It's found in being comfortable enough in who we are in Him to forgive the affront and love the loser, the traitor and the enemy. It doesn't mean being comfortable with the sin, but it does mean we don't act with condescension, like we're doing them a favor or being righteous for allowing ourselves to be seen with them, It does mean understanding that without the deodorant of grace that we would stink just as bad, even if it is a different stench. Remember that, unlike Jesus, we are not perfect and didn't come from heaven. The difference between the glass houses of the self righteous Pharisee and the lowly sinner wasn't much to be descended from in the eyes of God.
Oh and since I know many of us in the recovery world who have been in the gutter and been the lowest of the low have no problems climbing back in the sewer to reach out to others like we once were, remember that on the Sabbath Jesus went and taught in the temple. He was as comfortable there, surrounded by the self righteous religious hypocrites as He was in Matthew's house. There is a reverse snobbery among those of us who have always been labeled the freak and the loser. We must be as quick to love and be comfortable with the self righteous as we are the self condemned if we want to be like Jesus. Because they need grace and love and God as much as we did, and may even have a more difficult time seeing it.
Lord, let us learn to be comfortable with the sinners and the saints without losing sight of the grace that set us free and who we are in you. Let us be beacons of a better way, of love. Let us remember that you love us, all of us, as we are and not as we should be.
Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
April 23, 2016.
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