Attracting Sinners, Smelling Like Sheep

One of my spiritual disciplines is reading the Bible everyday. Part of that practice is reading through the New Testament over the over throughout the year.[1] Each morning I’ll pick up where I left off, read the text prayerfully (in the spirit of lectio divina) until the Spirit prompts me to stop and reflect on a given passage, insight or idea. Sometimes I’ll read several chapters or pericopes, other times just a few verses.

This morning I was stopped dead in my tracks with a single verse:

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.[2]

I couldn’t read on. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I just hung there, suspended in time with this single idea. Notorious sinners often came to hear Jesus teach.

For some reason it hit me like a ton of bricks. The biggest sinners in town were drawn to Jesus. They were attracted to him. They couldn’t stay away from him. The very people who were shunned, shamed and ridiculed by the religious establishment, the people who were not welcomed in religious circles, those sinful people who didn’t “fit in” with the religious insiders – these were the people who couldn’t get enough of Jesus.

And Scripture paints a picture as clear as day, Jesus intentionally sought these people out. These were the folks he actually preferred to hang out with. We could even go so far as to say that these were exactly the type of people that he came for. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” Jesus said. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”[3]

Cyril of Alexandria, early church father who strongly influenced the Christological foundations of the faith in the 5^th century asked, “Tell me, O Pharisee, why do you grumble because Christ did not scorn to be with publicans and sinners, but purposely provided for them this means of salvation?”[4] Jesus purposely sought the sinner, the lost, the reject, the rowdy, the unruly, the unchurched so that he could intentionally show them “the way.” This was his audience. These were his people. And they could sense it. That’s why they couldn’t resist him.

Can we say that about the Church today? Can we honestly say that about ourselves? Do we find ourselves surrounded by “sinners”[5] or are we enjoying the company of our little holy huddle? Do we wake up in the morning propelled out of bed by the idea of reaching out to help, to serve, to save the lost? Or are we happy maintaining the institution - building buildings, sitting on committees and keeping “our own” satisfied?

Pope Francis challenges us all in his recent exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel):

The Church which ‘goes forth’ is a community of missionary disciples who take the first step. . . An evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives; it bridges distances, it is willing to abase itself if necessary, and it embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in others. Evangelizers thus take on the ‘smell of the sheep’ and the sheep are willing to hear their voice.[6]

Let this idea stop us all dead in our tracks.

Are we truly following Jesus? How do we even know? A simply answer is, we’ll be doing what Jesus did – loving the sinner, going after him, being with her, getting out of the comfortable confines of the “acceptable” and reaching out and touching the wounds of the reject, sharing in both the joys and the suffering of the lost. We’ll know that we’re following Jesus when we, to borrow Pope Francis’ words, “smell like the sheep,” and like Jesus, find the sheep willing to hear our voice.

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[1] I typically delve into the Psalms everyday as well, in addition to daily readings in the New Testament and supplemental spiritual texts. And yes, of course, I read the rest of the Bible too but I’m just being transparent about my daily staples.

[2] Lk 15:1 (NLT).

[3] Lk 5:31.

[4] Cyril of Alexandria, “Commentarii in Lucam,” Opera Omnia, 72.

[5] Of course we all are sinners but you know what I mean.

[6] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 24.