When I Survey

The Wondrous Cross

The church is a hospital for sinners you have heard it said. Not a bad metaphor. Brokenhearted emergency recovery rooms. Lives nearly destroyed by human conditions of self-absorption, crippling fears, narcissism, egos and pride off the rails, and power impulses that surge and short circuit internal spiritual workings. Church is the repair shop for your hardware, hard wiring and hardened heartedness. It's the place where you can feel secure enough to relearn tenderness.

So it is no shock or surprise that God calls people who are broken, despised and rejected just like he was, men and women of sorrows. Zechias, the short guy who evokes that funny song "short people got no reason to live" (you-tube it) and the
almost extortionate Matthew tax collector, or the fire breathing murderous zealot Saul the Persecutor turned Paul, or the woman bound by seven demons who no doubt caused her not to behave very aristocratically.

This is Jesus' despised motley crew. They all had to do one thing. They all had to give up the game and become like children. They all had to give up their self-loathing and condemnations of themselves or others, they all had to learn the
incredible mystery tour of Jesus' unconditional love for them personally. Yes, he didn't care where they came from or what they did. He cared simply that they loved him back. He just wanted to be well received.

I confess that whenever I hear the word "citizens united" I think of either a misnamed soccer/football team and imagine chants to the tune of "Manchester united" or I think of the dreadful Supreme Court case involving a film company lampooning Hillary which is considered so sacrilegious in liberal circles for its campaign finance precedent it would be a sin to see it-
But then they put out another film. And someone equally despised and rejected by the liberal establishment, because he did some scurrilous hypocritical and highly nasty vindictive things to the liberal leaders, coproduced a film with Citizens' United. I believed and republished all the worse rumors of this man's past- you know who I am talking about- and that was wrong because they are possibly not all true and none of my business anyway. But here is the deal- whatever stoning we wish to do of Gingrich's admitted adultery in the past, I have to now say it's not my job to judge him.
I was beyond shocked, and into the faintly impressed realm listening to him give his conversion Catholic testimony before the Catholic Prayer breakfast audience recently after showing clips of The Nine Days That Changed The World. Perfectly ready to categorize him as someone using religious connections for political gains (like no one else does that) I no longer doubt his sincerity in his faith walk.

This does not excuse his adultery.
This makes no less scandalous the hypocrisy of the past or the fact that the Washington Post wrote of the Shrine that it is the "church of the Nine commandments" because his wife, then his mistress, sings in the choir.

But what it does is show that Jesus loves deeply the dregs. You cannot go low enough, you cannot fall far enough, you cannot be in too much trouble, for Jesus not to love you and want to pull you back. And these are precisely the sort of people Jesus is after. He didn't come to heal the well but to heal the sick. The sickest of the sin sick souls find in Jesus a love that overcomes their self loathing.

The people Jesus can't work with are the prideful- the arrogant, those who smugly, confidently know or believe in their own righteousness. The self anointed self righteous- he can't work with that. Because those people don't know how badly they need Him. Those are the people who refuse to kneel.
I don't know whether Gingrich has any ideas that make him remotely Presidential, but one thing I do know- his past is forgiven by God so who am I or you to bind him to it?