Repulsive

As a followup to my last post, here is another song that deals with the example of Jesus to love the unloved (and sometimes unloveable). Rachel Scott usually introduces this song in concert by telling a story about Mother Teresa of India. She once encountered a man who was deformed by disease. She didn’t just pat him on the hand and say, “bless you”. She didn’t hold her hands over him and pray for him. She offered the kind of human contact that many lose with their own mothers: She kissed him.

You could argue that the man needed medical attention (he probably did). You could say that he needed money, clothing, food, and water (again, most likey true). If you want to get to spiritual matters, you might say that he needed salvation from Jesus (which is true of each one of us). What he got, in this story, is a kiss. And that might have reached more deeply into his scarred and wounded heart than any other kind of help that could have been offered. It was the least deserved and least expected help that he ever could have hoped for. And he was given it.

Obviously, the take-home message from this is not to go out and start kissing people on the street. It does mean that we are called to love others and meet their needs as we are able. The goal of meeting those needs is to let them know that another person in the world loves them, and make it possible for them to see that there is a Father in heaven who loves them even more. All of those ministry outreaches that were mentioned in the last post are ways in which this might be accomplished. Can we learn to see Christ in these people, to love and serve them as we would if it were Jesus Himself we were facing?

From her 2008 album, Resolution, Rachel Scott sings about this in her song The Least Of These.

What kind of logic is this
The repulsive one is the face you kiss
There must be something in this
Can you explain how you love like this?

Is it Christ you see in the least of these
Maybe that’s what is intriguing to me
And I want it to change me
I need it to change me

It’s easy to say “I believe”
But what matters most is how I receive
The hungry
The thirsty
The stranger in need

Is it Christ you see in the least of these
Maybe that’s what is intriguing to me
And I want it to change me
I need it to change me

Is it Christ you see in the least of these
Maybe that’s what is intriguing to me
And I want it to change me
I need it to change me

Change the way I see
The hungry, the thirsty
The stranger in need
The naked, pris’ner
The ones who are weak

The hungry, the thirsty
The stranger in need
The naked, pris’ner
The ones who are weak

The boy who is praying for food on his knees
The woman who is selling himself on the street
The hungry, thirsty
The stranger in need
The nations held captives and long to be freee

Is it Christ you see in the least of these
Maybe that’s what is intriguing to me
And I want it to change me
I need it to change me

Change the way I see…

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