A complaint I hear frequently nowadays is that criminals have more rights than decent people. Many citizens express concern about the victimization of society by dangerous people.
The "rights" vocabulary wasn't in vogue in Jesus' time, but it seems as if the way that the New Testament writes his stance toward dangerous people might be worth pondering in our world of padlocks, burglar alarms, security guards, muggings, and rumors of muggings.
Remember the 10 lepers? One biblical commentary I studied points out that the word translated as leprosy doesn't strictly mean Hansen's Disease, but a whole group of conditions which society considered dangerous. People with these conditions were treated as outlaws. Others avoided them. No one wanted to meet them on the road, and society employed maximum security methods to isolate them from "clean" people. The stories of the early church portray Jesus, not only as one who met the lepers and talked to them, but as one who even may have touched them.
I don't know what you would do, but if 10 drug addicts approached me on a city street, even in broad daylight, I, a professed follower of Jesus, would probably faint dead away from sheer fright.
Remember Simon the Zealot, a member of the local Palestine liberation movement of those days? Jesus chose him as one of the twelve. With our ways of obtaining safe streets and world peace, I wonder if Simon could get security clearance to enter the country, let alone be chosen for a parish council.
Remember how the Roman IRS had trouble getting the coin of tribute from Peter? What kind of people did the New Testament writers think Jesus hung out with? Remember the ears of corn his friends got caught with, not to mention who drank all the wine at Cana?
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