There he sat on the ground next to a man with shabby clothes that reeked of alcohol. My friend Tyson, who himself wore street clothes and had large gauge earrings in his ears, was spending his Saturday in the French Quarter of New Orleans, sharing the gospel of Jesus with people he met on the street. He was in the middle of telling this homeless man about the hope Jesus offered to broken people like himself when a group of nicely dressed college students walked up and stopped before the two men. The students stood over the men condescendingly, pointing their fingers at them and furrowing their brows. They proceeded to yell at the two men, calling them drunks and condemning them to Hell. When Tyson asked where these students were from, they smugly replied that they were an evangelism team from a local Bible college. What they didn’t realize was that Tyson himself was a student at New Orleans Baptist Seminary and even worked in the seminary’s admissions department. He informed this group of “evangelists” that he was in the middle of sharing the gospel with this man. A look of shock came over their faces, and the students eventually walked away, leaving Tyson to apologize for the undignified way these other professing Christians had treated the man.
In this week’s passage, we encounter Jesus receiving similar treatment from the Pharisees, and these critical encounters force us to do some introspection. Is your religion more rigid than the way of Jesus? Does it put a heavier burden on vulnerable people, or does it provide the relief and rest Jesus promised to all the weary pilgrims who come to Him?
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Mike