When i got to church last Sunday, and the usher led me to a section i have actually never sat in, i went ahead and took the offered seat. New year, new things! And as soon as i sat, i was hit by the really unpleasant smell of smelly socks and some serious stale alcohol smell. Someone clearly had stumbled out of a pub and straight into a seat right next to me in church! And beloveds, i could feel myself getting all judgmental and pissed when it hit me, this is exactly where Jesus would choose to sit.
Jesus had a habit of loving the unlovable and hanging out with the despicable. It’s almost as though He specifically picked out the people who would be most looked down upon and lifted them up. Woman with like 5 hubbys? Yes! Prostitute? Yes! Tax-freaking-collector? Yes! Sinner? Yes! As Juliani asks on his song Friend Request, if Jesus was on facebook…whose friend requests would He accept? Amongst those would be from prostitutes, thugs, gangsters… (clearly, Juliani didn’t say it like that but he did say something like that :- )
I felt kinda embarrassed at catching myself behaving like a freaking Pharisee and immediately, it humbled me. Here’s the thing beloveds, this year, i want to learn to put away my judgements, to be faster to see the log in my own eye than the speck in my brother’s, to love more and leave the judgement business to God who pours His rain on the just and unjust alike.
So yes, church is the perfect place for a man who stumbled out of a pub to stumble into on a Sunday morning. Church needs to be the one place where this man, and me, can run to, no matter our state…
Love, love, m
And here is the song from Juliani. His lyrics are absolutely clever. Gifted!
