We just spent the last week or more looking at the first two chapters of Mark, and what strikes me, along with many things, is that Jesus deliberately reaches out to and interacts with sinners. This is clearly the Jesus Mark wants to show us. Christianity is not a religion that is the result of the human search for God, but Christianity presents itself as God’s search for humans. And that search includes even the worst sinners among us. Jesus hangs with tax collectors and sinners like lepers and the paralytic man. People were shocked that Jesus called Levi to follow Him.
What I struggle with is the persistent tendency among God’s people in our history to exclude and write off others we deem to be unworthy of the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. I look in the mirror every day and see someone who is irredeemable. Who do you see when you look in the mirror. Don’t you see the same?
My experience as a human being and as a pastor is that most of us Christians today do not recognize that we harbor the same attitudes of the first century Pharisees. We love to sing “Amazing Grace…that saved a wretch like me,” but we have in mind only the wretches we deem are redeemable. The younger generations and outsiders are quick to recognize this in our churches.
I was once a pastor of a church with many African Americans and gay people, some of whom would come to church as a man, and the following Sunday come as a woman. I was asked to leave because, as one our leaders told me, “You can’t build churches with people like these!”
Dear friends, I am so unworthy to be a pastor, but I know my Redeemer Lives and Loves me and forgives me. That’s all I have to rely on. But that’s all I need. Please take time today and repent and ask God to bring you back to His heart. Pray for peace in our world, and pray for our leaders in Washington. I just read that the lunch room in the nation’s Capitol is segregated out of hatred: The Democrats eat together in a separate room, and the Republicans eat in their own separate dining room. They can’t even have a hotdog together.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“34 Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’”
Luke 23:34.
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