notorious

1 Thessalonians 5 

1 Tax collectors 

and other notorious sinners 

often came to listen to Jesus teach. 

2 This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain 

that he was associating with such despicable sinful people...

even eating with them!

Okay... think about these different things...

tax collectors were the BIG social pariahs of that day - they collaborated with the Romans (thought of as big time heathens & conquerors) & grew rich from overcharging the Jews.

I don't know what exactly the identity of "other notorious sinners" might have been, but we can use our imaginations...

These people usually had nothing to do with the religion or religious leaders of the time - all they got from them was vilifying condemnation.

So, these "despicable" people often came to hear Jesus speak.

I wonder what it was about Jesus that made these jaded sinful people WANT to hear what Jesus said?

And another thing... Jesus clearly wanted to be around these outcasts, because He hung out with them with such familiarity that He even ate with them - which drew a lot of emotional criticism from Jewish religious bigwigs.

And Jesus obviously did not care what the religious leaders thought or felt.

So, here's the obvious upshot from all this...

We claim to be followers of Jesus - does He so inhabit who we are that "notorious sinners" want to be around us?

And...

Has the Spirit that is Jesus become so much a part of the DNA of our personality that we WANT to be around these "despicable" folks?

If the truth be told, we're probably thinking that we're too holy to hang with sinful people like that.

And we want to keep our "witness" untarnished - people will think "birds of a feather..." kind of things about us.

Which begs the question that maybe we're more concerned about what our uber-holy friends might think if we're seen hanging with people of dubious character?

Yeah... think about all that...

Here's a moment of transparency...

A lot of the time, I'd prefer to hang out with "notorious sinners" than people who are so holy - the holy ones are usually just so cranky & no fun to be around...