The gospel for nice people

“Later Jesus and his disciples were at home having supper with a collection of disreputable guests. Unlikely as it seems, more than a few of them had become followers. The religion scholars and Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company and lit into his disciples: “What kind of example is this, acting cozy with the riffraff?”

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.” Mark 2:15-17, The Message

Since 2004, I have been a volunteer chaplain at the Barron County Justice Center. What that means is that for the past decade I have ministered at “the JC” most fourth Sundays of every month in the weekly worship services provided to the inmates there and then met with dozens of them in one-on-ones during the week. For the past year and a half, I have led a six-week study for men entitled “Courageous Living” (based on the movie Courageous) every quarter there as well. I've been to court numerous times on behalf of several inmates and met and prayed with some of the important people in their life.

I've spent a lot of time here

I got into it very simply: I volunteered. Late in 2003 as construction-phase of the new $22-million dollar Justice Center was nearing its completion then Director of Inmate Services, Sheree Carr was making the rounds to local ministerials essentially asking if anyone wanted to help provide for the spiritual care of the inmates once the place was up and running. Without even thinking about it, I said, “Sure.” Sheree took my contact info and sometime in 2004 when the church services began at the JC, I was assigned the fourth Sunday. It's been “our” day ever since.

Recently, a pastor-friend from Africa who was visiting us asked me, “And what has the fruit been?” It's a fair question to ask given that between weekly trips to the JC to either meet with inmates or lead a class, I've spent significant time there over the past decade. I wish I could have told him that “many” had been converted and “many more” had repented but frankly, I'm not good at lying. Ten years later I don't know how best to answer that.

I've met and prayed with dozens of inmates during the last ten years. I've shared the Scriptures, preached the Word, challenged, exhorted, and offered my handkerchief not a few times. Every time I lead a service (there used to be two large services, now there are three smaller ones) I give this standard invitation: “When you get out of here and if you're local, if you don't have a fellowship that you are already apart of, I invite you to check us out. We may not be your cup of tea but you're going to need people and its a place to start.” Over the years, some have taken up our offer and tried a Sunday or two but most do not stay for long. Except Scott, who was a part of us for maybe two years, but has since given up on “organized religion.” And Sean, who is now incarcerated again. And Troy.

His story has been a blessing to be a part of

I've written lots of posts about Troy. Over twenty years he was locked up in jail or in prison twenty times. And then there came that Sunday when his cell mate encouraged him to sign-up for church because it beat just laying on his bunk. I felt compelled to share my story that day and the result was that for the next three months, Troy and I had weekly conversations about spiritual matters. When he was released at the end of May, he was at Refuge the following Sunday and has pretty much been there ever since. Over the past three years, he made a public confession of Christ, got baptized, renewed his wedding vows with his wife, dedicated his grandson to the Lord, and has essentially become my right-hand guy in the ministry at the Justice Center. As the current Director of Inmate Services, Sandi Kodesh, a veteran correctional officer herself for 17 years told me just last week, “I would have never seen that coming.” Why, of course, because Troy's story is really a God-story.

So, I told my African brother, “Well, I've preached the Word, prayed with many, visited them while they were incarcerated and invited all of them to our weekly worship gathering.” “So, you are planting seeds,” was his reply. Yes – lots of them. Admittedly, I wish I could point to more fruit after ten years of sowing and watering.

Jesus came to set captives free. How can we do any less?

Sean is a guy who I met inside. Like Troy before him, we began a conversation during his last stint in the county jail. Unlike Troy, he had made a profession of faith years ago but had fallen off the wagon and returned to a life of abuse. After his release in May in 2013, he too began worshiping with us regularly. But everyone's journey is unique and his has been characterized by a lot more ups and downs. A year ago in January, I asked him to share his faith-story on Sunday morning. It was well-told and well-received and gave credit to where it belonged. But within the month, some things in his personal life surfaced and all this past winter and into spring he vacillated between faith and unbelief. Things were looking up for him in the summer but then he began to use again. By August he was picked up not only for using but with the intent of moving the stuff. I want to believe that real repentance is going on within him right now but truthfully, I just don't know. But God knows and he's still part of us so I see him regularly during which times we pray and read the Word together.

David is a guy I met inside as well. We met weekly for months on end and then he signed up for Courageous Living. Of his own accord, he stood to take “the Resolution” which the movie made famous (in evangelical circles, at least), he was made a trustee at the jail (basically the highest level of trust you can enjoy at the JC) and then, at long last, was granted Huber privileges. He got out on a Saturday. He visited us that Sunday but I was on vacation. He decided then he would skip church but one of the guys from Refuge encouraged him to stop in the next day as I would be back in the office. Within the next 24 hours he got himself high, stole a vehicle, led police on a chase and resisted arrest. The judge threw the book at him and he is currently serving eight years down state.

When I had returned from my vacation and heard that David had paid me a visit, I went up to the JC to get his forwarding address. That's when Sandi informed me what had happened. He had been out a little more than a day and managed to pretty much flush everything he had accomplished over the past eight months. As I walked back to my car, there is no other way to say it – I was pissed off. All that time visiting and praying with him had come to naught. Nada. Zilch. And in my heart I asked God, “Is the gospel only for nice people?” When I think of the make-up of Refuge, almost all of us (with the exception of Troy) are ex-something – ex-Catholics, ex-Lutherans (a lot of them), a few ex-Baptists, even. Our stories are similar: We were raised in a traditional setting, went to Sunday School, got confirmed but our hearts were stone cold. And then we met Jesus and were filled with his Spirit and nothing in the world could compel us to go back to the deadness we escaped from.

I do not mean to imply that everyone who chooses to worship in a traditional or liturgical fellowship is by definition “dead”; certainly there are a plethora of “dead” Pentecostals to be found scattered here and there among us. I just want to make a point that the majority of Refuge is made up of people who, before Jesus, didn't have the kind of bad habits that land you in the pokey. It's not that we didn't need saving – oh, we certainly did – it's just that the raw material the Lord had to work with had not already been corrupted by the kind of damage drugs and alcohol will do to the human soul. That brings me back to my lament in the parking lot of the JC - “Is the gospel, after all, only for nice people who just need a little cleaning up? Or is it, as Paul boasted it was, “God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him” (Rom 1:16, Msg)?

But the first question of healing is "do you want to get well?"

At Levi's “going-out-of-business” banquet, Jesus serves as host entertaining Levi and a lot of the disreputable characters who were in his circle. Wining (yes, Jesus did drink wine as did pretty much everyone else in that neck of the woods at that time) and dining with this bunch created quite a buzz in Capernaum. A rabbi who was making headlines everywhere now suddenly is creating controversy by having dinner with the riffraff or so the local Pharisaic contingent claimed. In response, Jesus zings them with a truism he lifted right out of rabbinic teaching - “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17, NIV).

“I have terrible news, Mr. Larson. You have cancer and you have Alzheimer's.”

“Well, Doctor, at least I don't have cancer.”

I got that out of Garrison Keillor's Pretty Good Joke Book and while it may be in bad taste I think it applies to this story aptly because who are the truly sick people in this story? Is it, as we usually think, the “sinners”, those not fully accepted by the religious folks of Capernaum or is it the “back-to-the-Bible” crowd whose scruples have been offended by Jesus for befriending such spiritual losers? Whatever else Jesus is implying it is definitely not that the Pharisees do not need “healing” because they are whole already. They, in fact, are the sickest people in town for not recognizing their condition. Augustine, in a letter to a fellow-bishop in the Fourth Century, refers to these particular Pharisees as suffering, in effect, from delirium, crazy with pride (Letter 157 to Hilarius), and totally unable to discern that their spiritual condition was direly terminal.

Of course the gospel works. What the guys in A.A. say about the program, I say about the gospel: it works if you work it. But the problem is too many of us are suffering from a spiritual dementia that keeps us from grasping how needy we really are, nice people sore in need of the grace of God to save us from the cancer in our soul.