Scandalous--October 15, 2024

Scandalous--October 15, 2024

"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them'." [Luke 15:1-2]

Nothing upsets the self-deputized Guardians of Respectable Religion more than someone who dares to suggest God's love is wider and more reckless than they would approve of.

And therefore nothing upsets a group of first century Respectable Religious Leaders like these Pharisees and scribes more than Jesus--noted rabbi who claims to speak for God--deliberately opening his table and his arms to the publicly known "sinners" and the sellout tax collectors without conditions or condemnation.  But that's Jesus for you: he's always willing to take a hit to his reputation and to make enemies scandalizing the scowling scribes for the sake of loving the unloved.

That's what I want us to notice here in this scene from Luke's gospel, which is the set-up for a series of parables Jesus tells about the reclaiming of lost things (a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son).  It's that Jesus knows full well how scandalous it is for him as a public spokesperson for God to accept the people viewed as egregious sinners at his table and into his life, without insisting on some kind of moral improvement or changes of lifestyle first at least!  And yet he is fully prepared to take the heat and absorb the criticism from these religious critics rather than throw the so-called sinners under the bus or all of a sudden turn them away.

That had to have been an option for Jesus, you know.  Once he started getting heat from the Spiritual So-and-Sos for loving people without strings, it surely must have been tempting for Jesus to change course, institute a policy of no longer being associated with the riff-raff, and start preaching hellfire aimed at the people it was fashionable to condemn.  Or, if Jesus had been already in the habit of demanding sufficient life-change or shows of repentance first as a condition for receiving his acceptance, this would have been the time for Jesus to vindicate himself and say back to the Pharisees and scribes, "Don't you worry--I'm not letting THOSE people at MY table until they get their acts together and start measuring up to higher standards!"  This would have been the time to say, "Oh, I didn't realize that I gave the impression of being too soft on sinners, crooks, and screw-ups, so I'm going to take a hard line from now on in order to do a better job of public relations with the pious crowds!"  Any of those strategies would have helped Jesus to save face and maintain his respectability with the rest of Religious Leaders.  Jesus, notably, does none of these.

Why do you suppose that is?  Why doesn't he backpedal or flip-flop about unconditional love for the outcast crowd?  Why doesn't he sweep his reputation for welcoming sinners under the rug or spin-doctor this situation to make himself look like he's going to get "tough" on sin and start turning away anybody who doesn't look sufficiently sorrowful and sad?  I don't think it's that Jesus hasn't thought of it.  I don't think it's that he's not intelligent enough.  I think it's that Jesus isn't ashamed of the people he has welcomed.  He is not embarrassed to love the people others regard as unworthy of love.  He is not afraid of becoming notorious for accepting the unacceptable and loving the unlovely.  All of this is to say that Jesus, as always, knows exactly what he is doing and whom he is provoking when he publicly shares fellowship with the crooks and the commandment-breakers.  He is just more interested in making sure the "sinners" know they are loved before anything else than in losing points or credibility in the eyes of the self-righteous.

Jesus' love, then, isn't sloppy, but it scandalous. It is, without question, audacious.  It isn't that Jesus doesn't care about how we treat people, but that he cares most that the people who have been told too many times before that they are unacceptable hear a different word and receive genuine love without strings.  That means Jesus' kind of love is always courageous--willing to be called a sinner himself, willing to have the Pharisees walk away from him shaking their heads and looking for a new rabbit to listen to, and willing to risk looking weak or foolish for the sake of unconditional love.

If we want to be people who are filled with Jesus' kind of love, we should be prepared, then, for him to lead us to a scandalous welcome of the people shunned by the Respectable Religious Crowd.  We should be prepared to be told that such love is "too much," "too big," "too wide," or "too reckless."  And we should be prepared, like Jesus, to face down the temptation to backpedal into a lesser, watered-down kind of grace, and to say "No" to that cop-out.  We should be prepared, in other words, to be known, like Jesus, for welcoming sinners and loving the unlovely.  

What a reputation to get.  May we be known as people who love, as Jesus does, scandalously.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to love as unconditionally and audaciously as you do.