Jesus loved everyone with whom He came into contact.  In today’s passage, Jesus is face to face with a very motley crew, and yet He loves every one in a tangible way.

First, it’s the leper.  Leprosy was a contagious disease that killed off the nerve endings in your body, leaving you without feeling.  And without feeling, you never knew if you had hurt yourself.  That means that the smallest cut or turn of the ankle would be left untreated and fester.  Often lepers were known for missing the tips of their extremities from these unnoticed infections.  Given the contagious nature of the disease as well as the Old Testament laws against interacting with them, people avoided lepers.  Pharisees, who prided themselves on their obedience to the Law, wouldn’t even allow their shadow to fall on them or anything unclean.  But not only did Jesus interact with this man with leprosy, he “reached out His hand and touched the man.”  And in so doing, Jesus proved that it was His cleanness that was contagious, not the disease, and so the man was healed AND made clean.

Next, it’s the centurion.  A Roman soldier in charge of 100 men, this was one of the oppressors of Jesus’ people and a gentile.  Given the natural anger and fear one feels toward one in an oppressive class as well as the Old Testament laws against interacting with unclean gentiles, people avoided centurions.  But not only did Jesus interact with this man, but He offered to go into the man’s house.  The man showed his faith by announcing his unworthiness to have Jesus come to him like so many others had to – he was, after all, a man with soldiers under his authority – but also that a simple announcement that his servant was healed was all it took.  And so Jesus healed his servant and proclaimed this centurion an example of faith.

Then came Peter’s mother-in-law, many who were demon-possessed, and others who were sick.  Not one was a Pharisee, or a disciple, or an Apostle.  There seems to be nobody with whom Jesus would not interact, nobody He wouldn’t heal, nobody He wouldn’t love.  Would that we could be as open to those “unclean” in our society.

Once, the most popular and well-known verse in scripture was John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”  It was a message of love and hope, the gospel in a verse.  Studies have shown that today, the most popular and well-known verse in scripture is instead Matt. 7:1, “Judge not or you too will be judged.”  It is a message of warning and says nothing of the gospel.  This change perfectly captures the change in our society and its view of the church and our message.

Taken alone, as it far too often is, this passage essentially says “mind your own business”.  From “judging not” to specks and planks, when this is all you read of the Sermon on the Mount, let alone of Jesus’ full message captured in 4 gospels, you get a terribly telescoped view of Christianity.  Society reads this and says, “Everything we do is fine, and if you tell us it’s not then you’re breaking Jesus’ rule of not judging.”  I’ve heard this in varying degrees for my entire 22 years of ministry, and too often from within the church itself.  But this is not the whole of Jesus’ message to us.

Living in community, we are called to love one another, and that love requires that we hold each other accountable for our behavior.  However, this only works if we are willing to submit ourselves to the care and council of the community.  If we are not, then their corrections will go unheeded and present themselves as “judging”.  This is the difficulty of the church in today’s individualistic culture.  We listen to corrective and decide whether we want to to do it.  If not, we claim them to be “too judgy” and leave.  Without submission to one another out of respect for Jesus Christ, there can be no mutual correcting.  And so our society, in which submission is unknown, can only see loving correction as “judging”.

We are called as the church to a better way, to be the community that loves enough to correct, and enough to submit to correction.