The Unlovable

A warm puppy, snuggling up on your lap. The rich aroma of bacon frying in the morning. The warm embrace of an old friend. The cool crispness of an autumn morning, with the trees brilliantly colored in reds and oranges. Things that we love. It’s easy to love some things, some people. There are individuals in our lives that we readily say we’d "do anything in the world" for. But then there are just the opposite - the unlovable. Those folks that seem to have a natural ability to rub us the wrong way. That person whose very presence elevates your blood pressure. The guy at work that no one can get along with. The neighbor who you’d swear has his picture next to "jerk" in the dictionary. How do they fit into our Christian walk? More often than not, they don’t at all.

Jesus seemed to seek out the unlovable, the despised. Levy was a tax collector, a Jew who worked for the Roman government by cheating his fellow Jews out of their money under the guise of collecting taxes. A traitor to his own people. But Jesus saw him as disciple material, one worthy of being loved. We know him as Matthew, the author of the first book of the New Testament. Jesus sat down in the heat of the day once with a woman who apparently was so despised by the Samaritan public that she had to come to the community well to draw her water during the heat of the day, when no one else was present. She’d been married and divorced five times and was living in sin with the current man in her life. Samaritans were alienated people to begin with and she was despised among the despicable. But Jesus showed her compassion and shared with her the Truth of who He was. He saw something in her the world had not seen - worth. Scripture tells: "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony" (John 4:39). Not bad for a woman no one wanted anything to do with, huh. Time after time, the Gospels tell of Jesus encountering those that others shunned. Lepers, the blind, a woman caught in adultery, the demon possessed. The outcasts of society in the world’s view, but treated with love and respect by our Lord. We need to take note.

It’s hard to show love to some. They just don’t make themselves receptive to it. So we narrow our field of vision to not include them. They just don’t count in our world. We’ve deemed them undeserving of our love. But scripture tells us we are to be Christ-like, sanctified. In Romans 8:29 we read that God has "predestined [His people] to be conformed to the image of his Son." Jesus is the example, the pattern we are to follow. How He treated the unloved is how we are to treat them. I know I often fall short in this area...how about you?

One last thought on the subject comes from the Last Supper. Jesus, in the role of a servant, washes the disciples feet. John 13 records:

"2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him...12 when he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place."

In one last example of loving others as you love yourself, Jesus assumed the role of servant and washed the feet of His disciples. He washed the feet of Peter, of John, of Matthew. He washed Andrew’s feet, the feet of Simon the Zealot and all the rest of the disciples...including the feet of the man He knew would betray him, Judas Iscariot. A man whose very name has become synonymous with treachery. In one of his last acts on earth, Jesus showed love to the unlovable, washing the feet of Judas. But come to think of it, in His very last act, he did it again, by dying on the cross for the unlovable - us.