Everywhere you look in the gospels, Jesus is doing things that upset and angered the religious leaders of His day. He didn't do it just to make them mad. He was revealing the places where they were missing the point.
Somewhere along the way, the religious leaders had gotten more caught up in the rules about things rather than the heart of the reason why God had created that law in the first place. The is what Jesus pointed out in Luke 6:1-11. The religious leaders were more concerned about what Jesus' disciples were doing on the Sabbath than what God created the Sabbath for in the first place.
Just a little bit later, Jesus challenges the Pharisees on how they treat people. Luke 7:36-50 records an encounter with Jesus and a conversation with a Pharisee that I think we sanitize when we read it. We picture at least a somewhat presentable person coming into Simon's house and anointing Jesus with perfume, and weeping at his feet, drying them with her hair.
We understand it was a costly jar of perfume she used and we talk about the cost to her. We talk about Simon, the Pharisee, whose home Jesus was visiting when this occurred. All are good things to notice and learn from. But, I think in our version, we miss something important.
Jesus honours and values this woman, who was seen only as a sinner by society. Jesus saw who she really was and called it out in her.
When Luke writes that she was a woman who lived a sinful life, he's not talking about the sin that, although we know it's still sin, we have somehow deemed acceptable to struggle with. This woman was a prostitute. She lived a life that went completely and openly against God's laws. She would have been pushed to the outskirts of society - excluded and looked down on, often treated poorly.
Put yourself at the table for a minutes. You've been invited to have dinner with Jesus. Everyone at the table lives a good life. You all follow the rules and do everything you're supposed to. While you're eating dinner, someone comes into the home you're gathered in, uninvited.
For the sake of helping us understand this, this person is homeless - their hair is unwashed and messy, their clothes are dirty from sleeping outside in a tent for months, they're carrying all their personal belongings with them. Everyone at the dinner party knows who they are - they have a reputation in the community.
When this person enters the room, they offer Jesus their most prized possession and fall at His feet weeping. They've created quite the scene and everyone is watching Jesus to see how He responds.
What will Jesus do? Will He send the person away? Will He reprimand them? Will He try to ignore them?
But, as you all watch, Jesus reaches down and wraps His arms around the person. He embraces them and lifts them up. Instead of the disdain this person is used to experiencing, Jesus has love in His eyes and on His face as He looks at this person. Jesus seems not to notice or care about the appearance or reputation of the person.
Jesus begins to speak like - to point out the good in this person, to identify the beauty and image of God in this person that society doesn't see. Jesus doesn't condone the poor behaviour and choices that have led to this person's reputation, but neither does He talk only about it.
When I look at how Jesus treated the woman in Luke 7 and so may others in the gospels, I have to think that Jesus would have spent His time in the middle of the broken, hurting and lost people in our society. He wouldn't have been looking down on them trying to give them a negative label.
Think for a moment. When I started describing the person who came into you dinner party with Jesus, what words came to mind as how you labelled the person?
Junkie . . . Hopeless . . . Just an addict . . . Lost cause . . .Dregs of society
I hope not. I hope reading those words was as difficult for you as it was for me to write them.
I think I'm pretty safe to say those wouldn't be the words Jesus would use. Labels like that destroy people. They don't love them the way Jesus modeled for us.
What about the words . . . man/woman created in the image of God . . . loved by God . . . value . . . worth . . . I think these are what we need to see when we look at people like this person who intruded on our dinner party with Jesus.
Where would Jesus be in our society?
Jesus would be in the middle of the pain and brokenness. Yes, that includes the illness, death, family breakdown, job loss, etc of those of us who have homes and aren't looked down on by society. But, we can't keep operating like those are the only places Jesus would be.
Jesus would also be in the middle of the pain and brokenness of those who we generally see as outcasts in our society. Instead of judgement and anger and disdain, Jesus would be loving them and speaking life and identity to them. He would be inviting us to come alongside and love these people. He would have, and still does, expected His followers to be an active part of the solution.
If you're still with me, thanks. I hope I've challenged you. This been a challenging post to write and I've had to wrestle with what this looks like in my own life. I don't get it right all the time. But, I think we have to allow ourselves to be challenged by Scripture if we claim to follow Jesus.
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