Friend of Sinners

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. (Matthew 11:19, ESV)

I think it's easy for us to forget that Jesus was a radical. For so long now we have had the image of Jesus as the kindly shepherd with little lambs in tow. As the gentle bearded white man with golden curling locks of hair who takes the children in his lap and teaches them Sunday School lessons. As the humble outsider gently knocking on the door in the hopes that we will answer and let him into our lives. These images are so pervasive, so accepted and so subtly soothing that the concept of a Jesus who is a populist radical overthrowing the dogma of orthodoxy is unsettling and unbelievable.

It's easy for us to forget just who Jesus was and what he did. Here was a man with the wrong background for life as a spiritual leader. Not only did he come from a region held in disdain by many in the area, but it was probably known by many that his mother had been pregnant before she was married - no doubt a deeply shameful thing for a Jewish family in that day and in that region. So he began his ministry as a kind of outcast, at least in the sense that he was not an especially honored or sought after teacher.

But as he went along the people followed him. Twelve men in particular dropped everything - work, family, their daily livelihoods - and became is acolytes, his disciples. And you can be sure that these men were not the very best that Palestine had to offer. Two of them stand out as particularly poor choices for a rabbi to select. First there is Matthew, who was a tax collector, a position that was generally despised because of the graft and thievery of these officials. In several verses of the Bible the phrase "tax collectors and sinners" indicates in what low esteem Matthew and his ilk were held. The second poor choice was the man who betrayed Jesus, greedy Judas Iscariot the betrayer. Here was a man that Jesus knew would betray him, and yet Jesus invited him to become a disciple anyway.

It's easy for us to forget that Jesus was a friend of sinners. And not just sinners, but truly despised and disdained people. And not just a friend either, but a loving and dedicated friend. The kind of friend who would come over and eat at your table. An intimate friend not concerned with protecting his reputation. The kind of friend who would weep over your losses, bless your family, speak truth into your life even if it hurt your feelings. Jesus was radical not because he called the sinners out in the public square, not because he drew attention to his own righteousness by comparing it their lack, not because he worked tirelessly to turn the tide of culture toward the moral rules of the kingdom of God. No, Jesus was radical because he was a friend of sinners. He was radical because he was a powerful spiritual leader who had little room for religious orthodoxy because he had ample room for love. He was radical because he cared less about his reputation than he did about the broken men and women around him, and he cared less about their reputations than even they did.

How radical his love was. How radical it still is. And yet we don't seem to have a stomach for it. We have twisted the love of Jesus Christ into a kind of invisible assumption of motivation for our moralizing judgments of our neighbors. We've made hatefulness out to be a necessity of righteousness. We have elevated the throwing of stones to a place well above the offering of a cup of water. How radical is the love of Jesus especially when you compare it to our narrow, scared, feeble and fragile attempts to show that we care about anyone who does not precisely measure up to our idea of worthiness. How radical is the love of Jesus and how miserably unappealing is our love.

It's easy for us to forget what love looks like. It's easy to forget that the pinnacle of love was and is Jesus. We often forget that Jesus loves us not because we're especially lovable, but because his way of loving is so radical that it doesn't depend on our loveliness. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He didn't wait for us to clean up our act before he gave everything up for us, so why are we waiting for our neighbors to clean themselves up before we give our love to them? This is what love looks like, surely - to give something up for the sake of our neighbor no matter whether they measure up to our sense of righteousness and morality. We believers should be called friends of sinners, and we should proudly nod in agreement when it's said of us. We should be so fortunate that it would be said of us, just as it was said of Jesus.