Red Letters – The Sinner and the Savior – April 30

RED LETTERS
April 30, 2021

The Sinner and the Savior

Luke 6:35-38, ‘”I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You’ll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we are at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind. Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”’ (MSG)

Chills travel the length of my spine when I think of what it would have been like to have walked and talked with Jesus. To have had the honor of being a disciple of His is a heady thought. But as I have traveled through the Gospels this month, pausing to wander through temples and standing beneath the shade of a sycamore tree and slinking in to crash a five-course dinner affair, I have visited men and women just like you and me. I taste the dried saltiness from sweat and tears as I baked in the sun beneath the cross where I watched Him die and I walked a dusty road and chewed on the dirt that blew in my face as I listened to the Scriptures told me by a stranger I didn’t recognize either.
We all know a Peter, right? Loud and outspoken, surly and loyal. And everyone has a John we love and protect; we pat him gently as he lays his head on our chests and mourns who he lost. I bet a Judas in your life sold you out for a kiss and a shekel. Did you turn and walk away, dropping the stone to the ground when you were challenged, or did you throw it anyway? ‘How dare that woman?!’ escaping your clenched lips. Perhaps you sold the bottle of pure Nard to the harlot, never imagining in a million years she’d waste it on the dirty feet of some man. Maybe there’s a Mary inside of you that you hide as you scurry around the table like Martha waiting on everyone’s needs because you are too embarrassed to sit at His feet where everyone can see.
I have dined where broken people brought their dying dreams to Jesus to be raised to life again. I stood in crowds and watched the chains fall free from captives and saw demons flee. I watched crumbs fall to the ground as He broke a little boy’s lunch into pieces and ate my fill of a Captain D’s banquet. I smelled coffee perked over a campfire and watched hypnotic waves dance with the shore. I held my breath as Peter began to sink after he waltzed across the water and I helped gut more fish than I could count. I have sat in awe this past month and rocked myself to sleep with the comfort of His presence that has visited me like a long lost friend on a journey from the Gospels to my modern-day home.
I am astounded by the humanity of this Jesus Who is one and the same with the Father. He wore sandals on His feet and cried tears made of pain and felt the loneliness of places and the betrayal of friends. But He also died the death of a wretched criminal for me. He held my heart in His hands and bore my sin on His shoulders and wrote my forgiveness in His blood and made me a forever promise.
This Jesus didn’t leave His throne and come to the world to hobnob with the cynics and dine with the wealthy and play golf with the critics and buy clout from the clergy. Instead, we find in story after story, He came for the lowly, the marginalized, the broken, busted people of society; the ones who limped on the outskirts of life, hid in the smudges of other people’s opinions of them, had little to offer and everything to gain. I found, while reading all His Red Letters, that He came for someone like me, a sinner, a liar, a cheater, a thief, that woman they all whispered about. He came to rewrite my story—and yours— to give us a headline and a happy ending someday with Him: ‘The Sinner and the Savior’.
I cannot live without Him. I cannot breathe without Him. I can do no thing apart from Him. This Jesus is everything to me.

I’ve been reading RED LETTERS all my life, but never with my heart.
During the month of April, let’s JOURNEY where JESUS journeyed,
and listen with our hearts to all He came to proclaim.