Enacts Community

We're going to be looking this morning at Luke 7 and a particular story which is pretty well known. It's a very poignant, significant moment in Jesus' ministry. Imagine for a moment you were at a dinner party. You had been invited by a person who is a respectable church minister, a pastor, really respected, really well known. He invites you to his house which is in a really posh side of town, an extravagant mansion of a place.

The dinner party is in honour of a special guest. You're glad to have been invited because there's been a lot of commotion about this particular guy. Some people won't have anything to do with him. You, however, haven't made up your mind yet. It'll be a good opportunity, you think, to really suss out what this guy is all about.

You're in the middle of having your pre-dinner wine and a few hors d'oeuvres when you hear someone make a surprised gasp and you see a woman pushing her way into the packed room. You see the face of the host fall as this person enters the room. And as this lady comes in, you see that she's wearing a tight fitting, low cut blouse, a mini skirt that's way too short, and stiletto heels that could kill someone. She's got bucket loads of makeup on and her perfume is overpowering. She looks like the sort of woman who stands on street corners. Her eyes lock onto the visiting speaker.

She pushes towards him and throws her arms around him. She kisses him all over his face and falls in a heap at his feet, hugging his legs like a little girl hugs her father's legs. Everyone in the room freezes. What a thing for a man of honour and prestige to endure. How embarrassing.

But instead of pushing her away, he reaches down to her, smiles, and strokes her cheek. A cheek that is now covered in runny mascara as the tears are streaming down her face. "Hi there," he says. "Thank you for welcoming me into this home." What an outlandish thing to say.

This isn't her home. She probably doesn't even have a home. It's obvious what kind of woman she is. Why is he not embarrassed by this? Why is he not outraged?

Perhaps he's one of her customers. Luke tells us of a situation very similar to this. Let's look at Luke 7. We have to imagine this scene. Homes in Jesus' days, especially the homes of wealthy people, which Simon the Pharisee probably was, were semi-public.

They had these big portals, these big verandas that would open up to the public. And so people could be standing looking at your eat at dinner time. These rooms opened into a courtyard and anyone could come around and see what's going on inside the house. People were a lot more open about their privacy than we are today. Imagine that today.

The woman of the story was probably an uninvited guest loitering in this courtyard area. She's not invited but she squeezes through this pack of onlookers and she starts rubbing Jesus' feet as they are stretched out on the couch behind him. This house, however, is no ordinary house. It is the home of a Pharisee. And although it's not explicitly stated, this woman was quite likely to have been a prostitute because we read in the text here that she had a sinful life and everyone in town knew about it.

Everyone in town knew about it. To the Pharisees, she would have been like an infectious disease. You just don't go near her. Just like last week's message on Luke 5, however, we see Jesus eating and drinking and associating with sinners. We find just before our text in verse 34, just before we get to this passage, Jesus says of Himself, "The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you say, here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners."

Jesus was known for this. Jesus was stereotyped like this. Again, Jesus demonstrates God's grace and welcomes a sinner. But this woman doesn't just enjoy dinner time with Jesus, not just a friendly conversation or a chat. She shows an immense intimacy with Jesus.

It's just so shocking. First of all, she lets down her hair in order to wipe Jesus' feet. Now in those days, that was shocking. To let down your hair, to uncover your hair is the equivalent of today of walking around topless, taking off your shirt and being topless in public.

A scholar has commented that it would be scandalous. She pours very expensive perfume over His feet and she kisses them. Kisses the feet. Everything about this situation is wrong. Everything about this is scandalous.

She doesn't belong here, and the actions she performs are inappropriate by any stretch of the imagination, especially for a man revered like Jesus was. Jesus, however, does nothing. He doesn't pull back. He doesn't say, "Well, thank you very much but this is not right. This is not the right setting."

And then we read in verse 39, "When the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, 'If this man were a prophet, He would know who is touching Him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner.'" But Jesus is happy to link His identity with hers. Again, we see in Luke how he likes to pick up on these events. Luke likes to pick stories involving tax collectors and sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes.

They exemplify notorious sinners. That's why he does it. I'm sure Jesus had many, many dinners like this. But Luke's making a point here. It's like he's testing his readers.

Have you grasped God's grace yet? Have you grasped His limitless acceptance and love? Do we celebrate it, or are we scandalised by it? The grace of God is uncomfortable. It's embarrassing.

Jesus is portrayed, is seen as socially disruptive. His radical grace disrupts social institutions. Do we get grace? That's the question. Involvement with people, especially the marginalised, begins with a profound grasp of grace. Understanding and accepting them means we have to understand and we have to live grace.

Because often our instincts are to keep our distance. The cleaner we become, the more God works in us and sanctifies us, makes us holy, the more we feel that we have to keep a distance. But we see the Son of God eating with sinners. He lets them kiss His feet. He is the friend of the underbelly.

He is the friend of the underbelly. He's the friend of traitors. He's the friend of the unrespectable, of drunks, of druggies, of prostitutes, of the mentally ill, the broken, the needy, the clingy. People whose lives are a mess. We see in the story that there are two sides of it.

It's not only a story of Jesus again welcoming sinners and eating with them, but it's a story of sinners welcoming Jesus as well. Luke sets the scene. It's another place of hospitality. It's another intimate setting. It's someone's home.

But Luke wants to make the particular point that this is the home of a Pharisee. He says it twice in this text. Twice. The home is the home of Simon, Pharisee. Simon is the host.

Now in our society today, a good host would welcome their guests, shake their hands, take their coats, give them something to drink before the dinner, you know, settle them in. In Jesus' time, what you did is you kissed your guests, you gave them some water to wash their feet because they were dirty and dusty. But Simon, we see, does none of this. Simon had one purpose for his dinner party and that is to check out this Jesus, to see what all the commotion is about.

Is he the real deal? Is he really a prophet? Is his message to be believed? And how did his message compare with our message, the message of the Pharisees? Was he a threat or an ally?

Could he be convinced to jump on our bandwagon? Should he be resisted? Should he be opposed? Should he be put to death or just ignored? These are some of the questions that may have been running through Simon's head, suggesting some of his motivation perhaps was to check him out.

How do we know this? Well, we see what's going on in Simon's head. We see his logic. It goes something like this. His premise is that if Jesus was a prophet, if He was a man of God, He would know who this person was.

Touching His feet, kissing Him, clinging to Him. If Jesus knew this woman was a sinner because He was a prophet, He would have nothing to do with her. From that logic, he makes these conclusions. He says, "Well, since Jesus has accepted this woman, He doesn't know her character. Since Jesus doesn't know this woman is a sinner, He cannot be a prophet."

"Since Jesus is not a prophet, I can reject Him. I can reject His message. I can reject His ministry. I have my answer. Before the first course has arrived, I know who this Jesus is."

Simon decides that Jesus can't be a prophet because Jesus doesn't seem to have the God-given insight to see the true character of this woman, to see the backstory. But Simon is in for a shock. Jesus can see the story of this woman. He knows. In verse 47, He says to her or about her that her sins are many but that she has been forgiven.

But the shocking thing is, more than that, Jesus can see into the heart of Simon. He looks into his mind and understands what he's thinking. Luke writes in verse 39, "Simon said to himself." And then verse 40, Luke writes, "Jesus answered him." He didn't say it out loud.

He thought it. As though Jesus replies to Simon's thoughts. Simon's heart is laid bare before Jesus. Jesus, however, ironically sees the heart of this woman, sees the heart of Simon, and is more disappointed with Simon's heart than with this woman's. Jesus tells Simon a story in response to his thinking and He tells the story of two people who owed some money to a rich man.

One owed 500 denarii, which is a lot of money, and one owed 50. But both of them didn't have enough money to pay this man back. So he cancels both of them and he says, Jesus asked the question, "Now who would be more grateful? Who would love this person more?" And Simon, being this rational, logical man that he is, says, "Well, of course, the one who has been forgiven the most."

And this is where the penny drops. This is the moment in the text. It's where the whole situation opens up and we see just how ironic this situation actually is. Simon's question in his heart shows how totally different he and this particular woman is. It's not just how they view Jesus, but it's also how they view themselves.

Simon has no need of forgiveness. Simon has no perception of his brokenness. But the woman, she has a strong awareness of her need of forgiveness. She has a strong awareness of her brokenness. She knows her life is a mess and she sees Jesus as someone who accepts her anyway.

She has an overwhelming love for Him, a love that is willing to take this perfume worth months and months and months of wages and to pour it on His feet, the lowliest place of the human body. Not His head, not something that's gonna smell good for at least a few days. His feet's gonna get dirty again in a few hours. She understands she has a love for Jesus that risks even social disgrace. She's got nothing to lose.

The challenge for us because our involvement with people, our love for them must begin with a sense of our need for grace as well. It's not just God's grace for them, but it's God's grace to me. I need to be melted. I need to be broken by grace every time. When I speak to someone about God's grace, someone who's an alcoholic perhaps or a single mother, someone who's depressed, who's unemployed or unemployable, I must do so as a fellow sinner.

As someone who is broken, who is in need of God's love as much as that person is. We're all broken. We're all broken people in a broken world. If I don't understand this, if I don't get it, then any good thing I do for this person is just patronising. It's just patronising.

It's saying, "Well, anything that I say will just sound like, be like me. Be like me." It's only when we're struck over and over and over and over again by God's grace that our lives and our words will be able to point to Jesus as Saviour. Jesus' acceptance of this woman is again found in this special significant context of hospitality. Even in this inhospitable home of a self-righteous Pharisee who doesn't provide his guest of honour with the basics, hospitality is shown in this inhospitable place but it's shown by a woman who's a sinner who washes Jesus' feet with her tears and kisses them.

Then Jesus, we see in Him His hospitality as He accepts her and He listens to her. Hospitality. This whole situation is an act of grace. Meals especially are an act of unity, being one together. It involves welcoming.

It involves making time, making space, creating space, paying attention, providing. Meals slow things down. Meals create communal opportunities because it forces us to be people-oriented rather than task-oriented. And as we go on in our series, we're going to understand this more and more. Sharing this time together, sharing a meal, sharing wine and crackers together is a way to build relationships.

And it's possible to remain at a distance from someone in public gatherings, even in a Bible study, but meals bring people close. You see who people are. You connect and you communicate. Now what we learn from this, I believe, is that we understand and we just have ingrained in us that church is a community. We understand that.

We talk about loving one another. We will talk about this story and we will say, "Let's be like Jesus was. Let's welcome people who need grace." We understand that. But when we eat and drink together, we take this theoretical idea, we take this great theology, and we actually make it a reality.

Real people with real quirks meeting together. Our homes and our meal tables become an opportunity to give up on our ideals by which we judge others, but now we accept them in a place of real community created by the cross of Christ with all their brokenness, with all their weirdness. It's easy. It's easy to love people in some abstract theoretical realm, to preach the virtues of love, but we're called to love real individuals around a real table. That can be much harder than you think.

It is difficult. It is a mind shift. As I was writing this and finishing off the last little bits yesterday morning, I was sitting at my computer and I heard the doorbell ring. I thought, "Okay, here we go." I walked down and it was a man from the Roy Morgan polling company and they had a thirty-minute questionnaire that they wanted me to sit through.

And I thought, "Well, I don't really have time for this. I'm actually working" and I started, you know, trying to think of some way that I could worm out of it. But I thought, "Okay, it's okay. It's a Saturday."

"I'll entertain this guy." So we went through this and, you know, he asked me all the weird and wonderful questions that they ask. And during our discussion together, he learned that I was a pastor and that I had been studying and that, you know, I was an enlightened individual, he said. But I found out that he is a devout Muslim. His name is Nazir.

And not just that, he's a South African. Lived in Johannesburg. And not just that, he lives near the Karabi mosque that I drive past every Monday night to go and play volleyball. A very devout man. And he was talking about our need to understand and accept the truth, he says.

At the end of our discussion, said, "Come over to my house, we'll go and have tea together, and we're going to talk about faith." At the end of this, and to be honest, I wasn't thinking about this way when I went down from my study to go and answer the door. At the end of this, I thought how easy it could have been to have been so hypocritical to be standing up here and preaching this and then to have closed that door on him. Inviting him home into my home, spending that time together even though it didn't feel like I had the time to spare, has created this amazing opportunity. That's all that it takes.

Love real individuals in real situations even if it doesn't quite fit into your schedule. In classic buddy movies, two people are often thrown together. People who are complete opposites. You see these sort of movies, they're usually police movies. And I love the movies because it's so funny.

You have like a real, you know, straight guy and a real wacky guy and they come together and at the start of the movie, they are complete opposites. Their stark differences conflict with a lot of humour usually. But after going through a life and death situation together, these two form deep lifelong friendships. This church which we belong to, which we are called to be a community in, is a community full of differences. Full of differences, racial, ethical, sporting club, whatever.

Humanly speaking, it ought to result in conflict. But like a good buddy film, we have shared in a life and death experience. We are sharers in the death and the resurrection of Jesus. His death became our death. His life is our life.

This life and death experience binds us together into this friendship, into this community. Paul writes in Galatians, "For all who are baptised into Christ have clothed themselves with Christ. Therefore, there is neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." We are broken.

We are quirky. We are people who would normally be enemies, but because of Christ, we are now equals. We are now one family. That is community. That is church.

It's real and it's messy, but that is who we are. We have a wonderful example of Jesus this morning in Luke 7 welcoming someone who is messy into His family, into His relationship with Him. We are called to do that, friends. We are called to do that.