Ah, Yes, Reform

Just read this Robert Farrar Capon quote yesterday:

"Jesus didn't shy away from sinners, so why should the church?  And don't tell me the church welcomes sinners.  I know better. It welcomes only sinners who repent and then never seriously need forgiveness again.  It can reclasp to its bosom members who gossip or lose their tempers (little-bitty sins, apparently -- though where that qualification came from is not clear); but God help those who fornicate or lose their will to stay married.  And it has the gall to make such invidious distinctions in the name of a Lord who unqualifiedly told Peter, the Chief Fisherman, to forgive his sinful brother 70 x 7 times."

Capon goes on from there for awhile, as he's prone to do. And then concludes:

"Do you see?  If even the divine jawboning on Mount Sinai couldn't reform the world, why should we think that our two-bit tirades against sin will do any better?  So once again: sure, there's reform; and it is even an important subject.  But like everything else about the kingdom, it [reform] works in a mystery: it comes not when we decide to enforce it but only when God, by his paradoxical power, brings it about in his own implausibly good time.  If he is willing to wait for it, why should the church be in such a rush?  After all, it is his fish business we are supposed to be in."