Seen any prostitutes lately?

I heard a neat story in church the other day about two guys who were discussing Jesus. One person maintained that Jesus had never spoken directly to a prostitute anywhere in the Bible. The other man told him that he was mistaken and that even someone who had lightly skimmed the Bible was aware that Jesus had indeed talked directly to a prostitute. He was preparing to quote the exact Scripture where this event was duly recorded in the Bible to prove his point to his friend when the other man stopped him and said, Jesus never spoke to a prostitute because He never looked upon anyone as a prostitute.

I thought that was pretty clever and so true of how Christ views us. Our preacher elaborated on this concept in his sermon and mentioned that Jesus conversed and had dinner with all sorts of people that were considered to be the vilest of people of his day. The list included despised tax collectors, rip-off artists, lepers, drunks, and sinners of every description. The Pharisees who were the religious leaders of the day criticized Jesus mightily and constantly for this consorting with the rabble and sinners of the day. Jesus just laughed off their criticism and reminded them that a physician must see the sick in order to heal them.

Before you put on your most pious smugness towards the Pharisees for doing this, consider how you might feel if a homeless person, or a drunk, or a prostitute would attend your church service next Sunday and perhaps even sit directly next to you, or sit next to you in a restaurant, or in a theater. Hmmm Would you look on them as a homeless person, drunk and prostitute and want to move? Would you judge them and convict them of being a scumbag right on the spot? Would you have compassion for them and love them and want to help them any way that you can?

We all need to grow in this area. Our church is conducting a before and after, show and tell, next Sunday. Members are encouraged to write on a piece of cardboard what they were before they met Christ and afterwards. A short video was shown of a church that conducted a similar event and people would go before the church carrying their cardboard signs and have things such as, “Lost” written in big letters on one side and “Found” on the other, or God robber/God led Giver, or Meth addict/Addicted to Jesus, Addicted to pornography/Free at Last, and so forth. The object of course is to be a witness to others as to how God has transformed your life.

I’m sitting there thinking that I would have to enlist half the people in the Keys to carry enough cardboard signs to tell what I was before Christ came into my life and then what He did in my life after I became a Christian. Our pastor, who is familiar with my sordid past, must be clairvoyant because after the service he pulled me aside and told me that he realized that the cardboard thing would be entirely inadequate for my particular situation. To even lightly describe the miraculous transformation that Christ has performed in my life would require that an entire forest of trees be killed in order to fabricate enough cardboard to write about it. He asked me that instead of tying up the service for hours showing my before and after signs, if I would be willing to close the service with a ten or fifteen minute verbal recap of my testimony. Hmmm Fifteen or twenty minutes? My editor has indicated that my book should be close to 250,000 words. Oh well I can give the highlights and lowlights in fifteen or twenty minutes I suppose. I told him that I would be happy to do so.

Then he told me that I had to do both services. Now wait a minute. He knows that when the first service ends that I am “shot out of a cannon” and do not like to stay one minute longer, but I finally agreed. Now his wife who is the choir director mentioned, “Oh yeah and if you have time you can play your guitar and sing a song”. She should just calm down, and although it will be difficult, she should try her best not to exhibit that she is delusional. That ain’t gonna happen. We are done here.

I don’t know what the participation will be like Sunday, but I feel sure that many folks will be willing to witness as to what Christ has done in their life with their cardboard signs. I don’t know why anyone might be nervous because that is all ancient history now and they are a new person today. The congregation will be looking upon them as they are today and when they see how they were before they met Christ, they will be happy for them and give glory to God for changing them. We should all view witnessing for Christ in such a spirit.

Isn’t it wonderful to know that Christ looked upon us with the same love and compassion even “before” we changed for the better? He looked past my being penniless and homeless, addicted to drugs and alcohol, my criminal past, and all of the rest and He knew what I could be and would be when I turned from my sin and I allowed Him into my heart. He was willing to forgive all of my sins and shortcomings. It is the core of His loving grace and if we are to be imitators of God we need that same compassion and love.

When I lived on the mean streets as a street person, I had people look at my appearance with disgust and glare at me and stare at me with blazing eyes of hatred. It happened in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, Greenwich Village New York City, and in the French Quarter in New Orleans and all points in-between. When I hitch-hiked through Texas with my long hair blowing in the wind, cowboys would throw beer bottles at me on the side of the road when they passed me by. Today those same folks would smile and nod and think to themselves how successful that I must be as I pass them by in my $2000 custom made Italian suit and neatly combed hair. Isn’t that weird? Hmmm I am glad that Jesus Christ the designated judge of all of mankind is not so judgmental.

I have mentioned this before but it bears repeating. In Calcutta India when Mother Teresa was caring for the lepers and the poorest of the poor who were suffering as much as any humans have suffered this side of Job, she was asked how she could bear to look upon the people. At the time she was holding a person who was diseased, emaciated, and dying in her arms. The eyes of this person, a leper, were tortured and it was extremely difficult to even look upon this person, much less lovingly cradle them in her little arms compassionately watching life escape their being.

She said that when she looks into their faces, she sees the face of Jesus.

A popular song had some lyrics that should live in our minds daily, “What the world needs now is love sweet love, it’s the only thing that there is just too little of” Do your part today to change the world won’t you?

John 3:17
For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him
might be saved.