If Jesus was a prize fighter, his best punch would be the jab.
Over the last few days we have been reading about Jesus confronting the scribes and pharisees. He has saying, "woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites," then he jabs them right in the nose...
The beauty of the jab is that it isn't meant to knock someone out; the jab is a set up punch. It is a punch that gets the opponents attention and it will also sting a bit. The jab sets up the knock out blow.
Jesus throughout his ministry jabs with the left and right setting people up for the blow. Today Jesus jabs pulling the scribes and pharisees from their own hypocrisy. He does this to only later hit them with the knock out punch that shows them exactly what one looks like who isn't a hypocrite.
The cross is the knock out punch that floors us all. There we see what it looks like to be a person of integrity, to actually live what you profess.
Sometimes we got to let Jesus jab us in the nose to pulls us out of our own hypocrisy so that our witness to truth and goodness and life and love might be more vibrant and more authentic. The better our witness the more joy we will have in Christ.
Recently, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house and proclaimed Catholic had an interview on Meet the Press. She insists that she is an ardent Catholic yet she continues to vote for partial birth abortion and the women's right to choose. Yet, to vote to kill a baby is completely against the catholic Faith because it is completely against God who chooses life for all.
She and many others like her who claim to be Christian yet discount their own testimony by witnessing to that which is against Christianity are like the scribes and pharisees, they strain the gnat and swallow the camel.
Abortion is quite a camel to swallow that destroys the witness of the Christian.
Below is a link to Archbishop Chaput's response to Nancy Pelosi's interview. It is definitely worth the read:
Be careful not to swallow the camel when keeping an eye out for the gnat; for a mouth full of camel leaves little room for the Word of God to enter in and is far less appealing than a mouth full of gnats.
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