Jesus Wants the Rose

Christians have often been accused of being angry. High atop our ivory towers, we look down on a wicked world and loudly proclaim their condemnation from above. This accusation has been a grievously common summation of how the rest of the world perceives followers of Christ like me.

And, in an honest confession, I’ll admit that I am angry. I am angry at the individuals who look at my friends and neighbors in disgust and who do so in the name of Christ. Like Chandler, I am angry at the people who would plug their nose and declare to the person living in the slums, “You’re filthy” and then turn on their heels and walk away. Christ spent his life living amongst the “un-desirables” of his culture, inviting crude, unkempt shepherds to cuddle him at his birth, befriending prostitutes and corrupt city officials and uneducated fishermen, and even welcoming a bloody criminal to join him in paradise as he hung naked on a cross. Who would’ve wanted a relationship with these people? Jesus did. That’s the point of the Gospel. Jesus said it best, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick”. The problem is that all of us were broken and dirty and barely getting by in the slums, and Christ came to bear the punishment for our misdeeds so that we could have a relationship with God. He saw us in the mess we were in, and because he loved us, he climbed into our messed up world and died for us, while we were still sinners.

I was the battered, broken, worthless rose. I had nothing to offer. But Christ wanted me anyway. And truth be told, we were all in that very same condition. And, yeah, I get angry sometimes. I get angry whenever someone bearing the title “Christian” takes a broken, tattered, wasted life and says, “Who would want this?” The Christian should know best – Jesus does. And, in my moments of heated, righteous anger, I look at those poisonous hypocrites who misrepresent the Christ that I love and I turn to Jesus in disgust and demand, “Who would love these people?” And Jesus simply responds, I do.