Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

These were the people who wore their brokenness on the outside, people whose indiscretions were so other, so uncommon, their entire personhood was relegated to the category of sinner. They were the people the religious loved to hate, for they provided a convenient sorting mechanism for externalizing sin as something that exists out there, among other people with other problems making other mistakes. It’s the oldest religious shortcut in the book: the easiest way to make oneself righteous is to make someone else a sinner. Jesus knew all about this sin-sorting system, so when the religious leaders challenged him about the company he kept, he replied, “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). This momentarily assuaged the religious leaders, who, of course, counted themselves among the healthy.