Frederick Buechner writing about the Gospel of Luke:
“…there’s the parable of the Prodigal Son, the account of the whore who washed Jesus’s feet and dried them with her hair, and the scrap of conversation Jesus had with one of the two crooks who was crucified with him. Smelling of pig and cheap gin, the prodigal comes home bleary-eyed and dead broke, but his father’s so glad to see him anyway that he almost falls on his face. Jesus tells Simon the blue-nosed Pharisee that the whore’s sins are forgiven her because even painted up… and smelling like the perfume counter at the five and dime, she’s got more in her of what the gospel of love is all about than the whole Ladies’ Missionary Society laid end to end. The thief Jesus talked to on the cross may have been a purse-snatcher and second-story man from way back, but when he asked Jesus to remember him when he made it to where he was going Jesus told him he’d make sure they got rooms on the same floor. Different as they all are in some ways, it’s not hard to see that they all make the same general point, which is that though he could give them Hell when he felt like it, Jesus had such a soft spot in his heart for the scum of the earth that you would have almost thought he considered them the salt of the earth the way he sometime treated them.”
from Peculiar Treasures, A Biblical Who’s Who (pp 106-107)
How does this description of Jesus shape the way you might follow him today?
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