Is the church healthy?

This is the provocative question on the poster for this semester's AMCF rally. Catchy, huh?  But instead of focusing on a complicated and potentially divisive issue like whether or not the global Church is doing a good job, the real crux of what we'll be talking about is found in the brackets below it:

 "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the lost." (Jesus)

I have to be honest; when I first read the verse in brackets, I felt a little let-down. A good discussion about whether the church was healthy or not could be interesting! I was already hoping that they would make a good defense to show that for all its little foibles, Protestant Christianity was doing ok, on the whole.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that the point is not to prove that we are ok, but to admit that we are not.

There were plenty of "good", religious people in Jesus' day.  They knew the law backwards and forwards, and they followed it as well as the next guy--or better. One night, a lot of them went to a dinner party with this new teacher named Jesus.  The religious man who hosted the party might have felt proud to have such a famous person at his house. I can also guess that he may have been hoping for some kind of blessing, or some kind of recognition for being such a decent guy.  I don't know, but I can surmise.
But I don't have to guess what his reaction was when she showed up. Who let her in? Such an immoral woman--in my house!  He was disgusted, outraged, and apalled. And then, horrified, he saw that she was going strait for the guest of honor, kneeling down, and making a scene with a showy bottle of perfume and her hair all over his feet. Ugh.

Jesus, however, saw her heart. He saw that she, out of all the people in that self-righteous gathering, was the only one who knew she was sick, in need of a Savior, a Healer.