Passwords
The “in” labels that we make sure can be seen when we drape our faith over the back of a pew, vary from time to time, from church to church, from group to group …
There are words I go to any length to avoid, not because they are meaningless but because I refuse to be coerced into giving passwords in order to gain admittance to something. I would rather stay in God’s outdoors, where the best response one can make sometimes is a heart-brimming and soul-shaking silence, an inarticulate groan of spirit, a humbling bafflement of mind, even a shattering but strangely liberating doubt. There is so little one can say in a password; to use one always requires paring down one’s own spirit so that it may fit precisely against some other’s. To demand one means that the demander cares only secondarily about what a person is, primarily, about what he says.
Time and again, Jesus deflated “seeming” as against “being.” … When an adulteress caught in the act was brought to Him for judgment, his accusers saw a broken law. He saw a broken woman.
When he went to dinner with the wrong people, the self-righteous rulebook-quoting, password-demanding, label-reading religious leaders saw winebibbers and sinners. Jesus knew what His hosts were, but evidently He preferred generous, honest sinners who enjoyed living life to penny-pinching, hypocritical sinners who did not. Besides, there is no evidence in the record that those who criticized the tablemates of Jesus ever themselves invited Him home to dinner or even to lunch.
Kenneth L. Wilson (1916-?)
Editor of The Christian Herald)
Have Faith Without Fear (1970), pages 34-36
