The Word That Isn't There

Matthew 21:31
Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

What radical words indeed.

Radical first because the Pharisees are not even in the kingdom yet.

These words have lost a lot of their original shock value. Back in the day... back when Jesus walked the earth... Samaritans were scum. And Pharisees were saints.

Thanks to Jesus, those two labels have swapped definitions. We forget that. Jesus had a way of changing the meaning of words, and we're living today in the 2,000 year old wake of his corrections.

The word Pharisee is nowadays so imbued with wickedness and harsh judgmentalism... we naturally don't blanch when Jesus says they do not belong to God. But at the time!

Radical words? Heck yeah. I think we too often forget just how radical they really are.

But there's more to it even than that, and this is where I think we are even more blind. Jesus' words were radical because of the missing word. If the word had been included, he would have been quoted as having said this: "Truly I tell you, the former tax collectors and the former prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you."

But that bit about former? Yeah. Not there.

Hidden in this missing word is a mystery which deserves our rapt attention.

What does it mean to say that an active prostitute is entering the kingdom of God? That an active tax collector is entering the kingdom of God?

I don't think the church today understands much of this mystery. A few simple questions. Stop me where I get off track.

If a practicing prostitute can enter the kingdom of God, can she enter my church? Is that OK with God?

If a practicing prostitute can enter the kingdom of God, can she take communion? Is that OK with God?

If a practicing prostitute can enter the kingdom of God, can she enter my home? Is that OK with God?

Can she play with my kids?

The general answer is Yes. But the church, more often than not, is living out a No.

What I see in the church and in Christian homes is not the bold advance of the powerful kingdom of God (into which prostitutes enter and – yes – eventually are indeed transformed by God's redeeming Spirit) but rather a great deal of fear about what the entrance of sinful people might do to our fragile edifices of effete holiness.

Fear and loathing.

We don't place our children in the arms of prostitutes. We only place them in the arms of former ones. We don't have room in the church and in our homes for tax collectors and prostitutes. We only have room for former ones.

But that's not what Jesus said. And it's not what he did.

But we ignore Jesus and worry more over protecting the purity of our surroundings than we do about welcoming prostitutes. And when we do so...

...we prove that Pharisees still walk the land.