Unsavory Characters

As a disclaimer, I am not too sure of the protocol to quote someone from a book. Let alone quoting someone from a book quoting someone from a book, but here goes...

I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What. A great read, and as is typical to Miller, humorous, thought provoking and candid. Within this chapter, he is examining Jesus. Not in the global Savior sense, but a grass roots sense. Miller is looking at Jesus as how he was with people. How he loved them. How he treated them. He references a passage in a book from Phillip Yancey (here goes the quoting a book quoting a book thing). Yancey writes in his book The Jesus I Never New (and I try to correctly quote):

"The more unsavory the characters, the more at ease they seemed to feel around Jesus. People like theses found Jesus appealing: a Samaritan social outcast, a Military officer of the tyrant Herod, a quisling tax collector...In contrast, Jesus got a chilly response from the more respectable types. Pious Pharisees, a rich young ruler walks away shaking his head, Nicodemus sought a meeting under the cover of darkness.

I [Yancey] remarked to a class how strange this pattern seemed, since the Christian church now attracts respectable types who closely resemble the people most suspicious of Jesus on earth. What has happened to reverse the pattern of Jesus' day? Why don't sinners like being around us?"

Wow. Heavy stuff. I look at myself and see a heart for those "unsavory characters", but wonder if I am as excepting as I ought to be. I know that I fall short on my love and acceptance of the "unsavory" at times. Sometimes I believe I don't. I do however see the visual image of the church parishioner—at least in my general zip code, and consider Yancey's remarks valid. I don't want to pass judgment my local churchgoers, but I get his point. I'd read another Yancey book entitled What's So Amazing About Grace, which drove this point as well. In Grace, he writes of a former prostitute who states something like "Why would I go to church? Those people won't except me".

Let me—let us all—see through the lens of Jesus. It's a shame we can be nonattracting to those whom Jesus found most attractive.