It seemed that Jesus always attracted a crowd. It also seemed that the makeup of that crowd was always a messy mixture of people that really believed in Him and also people who you would not expect to find hanging around a religious guru: prostitutes, outcast, and “sinners”. This did not set well with the other religious people of course and it ended up alienating them to the point of having to do away with him. The religious people had chosen a nice, moralistic, ethical, and predictable system long before Jesus came along. Jesus on the other hand came with a messy, unpredictable, fierce and loving supernaturalism. What interests me is why the crowds followed him? Why did they long to talk to him? Why were they attracted to him? If we can get at this we can get at what is behind some of our boredom and begin living the adventure in which Jesus invites us to participate.

Why did the crowds follow Jesus? If you look at the gospels you will not have to look for hidden plots or have Gnostic insights to figure it out. It is really very simple. Jesus loves sinners. That alone suggests more to figuring out why Jesus towers above all other religious figures in history. Jesus loves sinners. It is evident all over the New Testament. The thing that attracted people then and now to Jesus is that he loves sinners. I suppose that is why the church always was and always will be a messy place. It is a gathering of sinners. I want to analyze this for a moment, because most of us would agree with that in principle but become bewildered when it comes to practice. The irony is that this is why we all came to Jesus in the first place, but then becomes the thing you resent after you have been around him for so long. His love is so much more embracing than we like. Like Jonah we expect Jesus to be loving, accepting, forgiving and patient with us, but not to the dirty pagans out there who are committed to wickedness and violence. If this is happening to you, I assure you, you are either bitter or bored.

Why does Jesus love people who are committed to wickedness and violence? Why does he eat with them, associate with them, go to their parties, touch them, socialize with them and answer their questions? The answer is what is in him, not what is in them. I would guess that the reason for most of our harshness and rigidness toward others has to do with our own lack of love and deep sense of moral superiority. Whether we will admit it or not, this has to be it, a lack of charity in our own soul. We are much too full of ourselves and our own glory to bother with a real interest in others. At least not in the radical way Jesus deals with us.

I was reading a book and was stunned by a passage. It was a book on beauty. The writer gives us a test that absolutely shows this to be the case. He suggests the inability for us to perceive the worth and beauty in others is our own selfishness and egocentricity. The writer asks the question: “Who in this world understands you the best?” Most of us would obviously answer, “It is the person who loves us the most.” Authentic love appreciates the object of its affection more than anyone else. Obviously that is true. I have heard people talk of their wife or beloved in such glowing terms that I could not wait to see them. Often I am disappointed. Why? They see through eyes of love. The reason most of us do not see the beauty in others or anything for that matter is we are too full of ourselves.

Charles Williams, a friend of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien writes in all of his books on the power of true charity to transform the soul from boredom to wonder. I only wish that what Thomas Howard wrote about him could be said of me:

The eye with which he looked at ordinary things was like the eye of a lover looking at his lady. The lover sees this plain woman crowned with the light of heaven. She walks in beauty. Her eyes are windows of Paradise to him. Her body, every inch of it, is an incarnation and epiphany of celestial grace. The ecstatic vision of beauty thus vouchsafed to that love is true, not false. The lady is as glorious as he sees her to be. It has been given to him who loves her to see the truth about her. The rest of us bystanders, mercifully, have not had our eyes thus opened, else we would all go mad. It would be an intolerable burden of glory if we all saw unveiled, the splendor of all other creatures, all the time

When the writers of the gospels would repeatedly say, “Jesus loves sinners,” this is how. As pure, holy and undefiled as he was when he looked at sinners, he was moved. He had an atheistic experience. He saw through the sin to what his love would make of them. He actually never thought of himself, his whole life was not about his purpose, security, status or glory; it was totally given to saving sinners. Therefore he could look at the worst sampling of humanity and not be morally revolted. He loved.

We have just come through the season of Advent. If you really want to be gripped, awed, amazed, melted, changed and moved you must begin in the manger. Up until this time God had always been known in fire, wind and earthquake, here he is close enough to hold in your arms. This is the creative power of love, which will stop at nothing to reconcile sinners. This is the holy touching the profane. This is love that if it rests on you, you will never be bored again.