“The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
Luke 7:34
God, in some profound way accommodates Himself to your ‘sickness.’ He will never turn away from you.
We discover that Jesus has a beautiful quality–He becomes quite tender and gentle around any spiritual disease. He gravitates to the broken and sinful. His love for sinners is a fact we must consider over and over. It’s absolutely critical that we recognize this.
And if we can only understand this, it’ll change us forever.
In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman’s face:
“I stand by the bed where the young woman lies. . . her face, postoperative . . . her mouth twisted in palsy . . . clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, one of the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be that way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut this little nerve.”
“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to be in a world all their own in the evening lamplight . . . isolated from me . . private.”
“Who are they? I ask myself . . .
“He and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously. The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “it’s kind of cute.”
“All at once, I know who he is.”
“I understand, and have to lower my gaze.”
“One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers. . . to show her that their kiss still works.”
This is your Savior. He has always been there for you. He is seeking a kiss of spiritual intimacy.
But if you think somehow you are getting to be a great kisser, or you think maybe you’re looking desirable, I feel sorry for you. For it’s He who wraps himself around our hurts, our brokenness, and our ugly and our ever-present sin. He loves the unlovable. He kisses those who shouldn’t be kissed.
I guess I’m starting to know who I am.
I need Jesus so much to love me like I really am: brokenness, memories, wounds, sins, addictions, lies, death, fear….all of it. (Take all it, Lord Jesus.) If I don’t present this broken, messed-up person to Jesus, my faith is dishonest, and my understanding of it will become a way of continuing the ruse and pretense of being “good.”
God truly loves the unlovely. I am learning this. Slowly. Far too slowly.
He is passionate about those who have been disfigured by sin. And for those playing “make-believe” and are trying to find some sort of ‘spiritual Botox’ are not being truthful. Only by clinging to Him can find real healing and true acceptance.
For some reason, and I don’t really understand quite why, but He delights in kissing lips that are crooked.
I’m glad because that is really who I am.
“God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.“