I’m trying something different for my sermon tomorrow. Instead of taking a passage section by section and expounding, illustrating and applying each point, I’m taking a rather more narrative approach. Many have done this before me, and much better. I have tried to retell the story, bringing in the cultural significance of certain aspects to add colour. My hope is that some listeners will make their own applications along the way. However I have concluded with a section of responses, which tell you the impact this story has had on me this week, and the challenging lessons it raises for me on the relationship between church, mission and kingdom. Here goes …

Luke 7:36-8:3

Story[1]
It was a meal with open doors, a typical Middle Eastern invitation to dinner
where the feast was in public. Groups of interested people formed religious societies
to discuss theological issues, and Simon the Pharisee may have invited Jesus
to one such dinner. This travelling teacher would be sure to provide some
interesting discussion material. He had a controversial reputation. This could
be stimulating.

The principal guests would be placed in order of rank, reclining
in the centre of the room, leaning on their left elbows near the bowls of food.
Behind their feet (placed away from the food, because they were considered
unclean) would stand the onlookers from the community, who had wandered in
through the court gateway and the door.

Guests would normally have been welcomed in three ways. A servant
would have washed their dusty feet. The host would have given a kiss of welcome
(either on the cheek to an equal, or on the hands to a superior, such as a
rabbi, a master or a parent). In fact, all the male members of a house would have
stood in line to kiss a rabbi’s hand. Then his head would have been anointed
with olive oil, which was cheap and plentiful. Not to follow these customs was
more insulting than failing to take someone’s coat, invite them to sit down and
offer them a drink in our culture.

However, although this meal was effectively public
entertainment, Simon would still have wanted isolation from ritually unclean
food and impure people. Which made the arrival of a notorious woman discomfiting.
Everyone in the community knew her. Simon knew her – not that he was one of her
customers, but he knew enough about her to warn others against associating with
her or her type. Tension rises at what should have been a convivial evening of
feasting and debate.

For just as Simon has heard Jesus preach and been impressed
with his intellect or intrigued by controversy, so too the woman has heard him
before. And Jesus has made a life-changing impact on her.

She comes, prepared, with a flask of perfume. Women would
wear such a flask around their neck, and she sees the calculated insult Jesus receives
upon entry to the house when he is not even anointed with cheap olive oil, nor
are his feet washed, and nor does the host kiss him. So she takes her perfume,
which would have been so important for her trade as a prostitute, and instead
of pouring it over herself to make her body more desirable, she bathes his feet
with perfume. Servants would anoint the feet of noblemen in the houses of kings
and priests; so she anoints him as if she were his servant and he were
deserving of great honour. In response to the deliberate insult Jesus suffered,
she says, “I have no more need of this perfume for my old way of life. I am
leaving that behind, thanks to you. Let me offer this to you in gratitude and
devotion. Others may mistreat you, but I honour you.”

The atmosphere is electric. The temperature is rising. Jesus
has been affronted by his host, but the person who has made up for the social
snub is most unfitting! What will Jesus do? Nothing. He stays silent.

The dread and silent outrage are only to increase, though. For
the woman also realises Jesus has not been kissed. What can she do? She is in
no position, behind him, to kiss his hand or his cheek. Well, she can kiss his
feet. But in her devotion and anger, she bursts into tears, and the tears dripping
from her face wash away the dust that should have been cleaned from his feet
when he arrived.

However, she now has a problem. She had come prepared with
the perfume, but she had not anticipated the tears on his feet, so she has no
towel. Simon would certainly not give her one. What can she do? In attempting
to compensate for the offence shown to Jesus and in demonstrating her own love
for him, she answers with her most provocative action of all. She lets down her
hair, and uses it to dry him. A woman would normally only let down her hair in
the presence of her husband. For a prostitute to do this – and in such
respectable company, too – just feel the collective blood pressure rising. Rising
with anxiety. Rising with rage. Maybe rising with other unworthy thoughts.

All eyes are on Jesus. And all eyes are on Simon, the host.
Simon blinks first. Instead of being humbled by the woman’s compensation for
his inhospitable attitude, he insults Jesus further. ‘If this man were a
prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching
him—that she is a sinner.’ (7:39) He mistakes her touching for something
sexual. And he doesn’t recognise that Jesus is
a prophet (and more), who actually does know the woman, and that this touching
isn’t promiscuous but devotional. To Simon the woman is still a sinner, whereas
Jesus sees her heart truly, as repentant.

This is Jesus’ moment. He breaks his silence. He uses a
phrase designed in Middle Eastern villages to introduce a blunt and
uncomfortable statement. ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he
replied, ‘speak.’ (7:40) Why, Simon is so uneasy that he even calls Jesus, ‘Master’
– the one thing his hostile actions have effectively denied!

Yet the blunt statement turns out not to be condemnation but
a parable. Jesus tells a story, and invites Simon to find his place in it. He talks
of a moneylender and two debtors. One owes a small debt, the other a large
debt. The lender forgives both. Who will love him the more? It’s a strange
thought at one level in English – who would think of ‘loving’ a moneylender? But
in the Aramaic language of Jesus’ day one word means both ‘debt’ and ‘sin’, and
the words for ‘debtor’ and ‘sinner’ are similar. Culturally, there is a
contrast between the woman, who is a ‘sinner’, and Simon, who is socially in
debt. But in Jesus’ eyes, they are both sinners. Simon is trapped by Jesus’
question about who will love the more. Embarrassed, he stutters, ‘I suppose the
one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ (7:43)

Now Jesus gets bolder. Affirming Simon’s answer, he
continues speaking to him, whilst looking not at him but the woman – for he is
about to praise her. ‘Simon,’ he says, ‘you insulted me as a bad host. You didn’t
arrange to have my feet washed, you didn’t kiss me and you didn’t anoint my
head with oil. This woman, whom you despise, did all this instead of you.’

This isn’t just an exercise in contrasts. Jesus is trashing
social convention. It was always the rôle of the guest at the feast to praise
the hospitality of a guest, and it was always the function of the host to
provide every want of the guest, and to demur at the sound of all praise for
his efforts. However rude Simon is, it is also true that Jesus is a bad guest. However,
he is prepared to be a bad guest for the sake of grace and truth. In a
male-dominated society, he extols the virtue of a woman – and a woman of
dubious virtue. ‘Simon, I didn’t even ask you to wash my feet, I only expected
the water to be provided, but you couldn’t be bothered to do that. This apparently
despicable woman washed my feet with tears and wiped them dry with her crown
and glory, her hair.

‘You gave me no kiss – neither as an equal, nor as if I were
your rabbi. You might as well have slapped me on the face. But in place of one
absent kiss, this woman covered my
feet – yes, my feet, the symbol of degradation! – with kisses!’

‘One other thing, Simon: you couldn’t even run to
inexpensive olive oil for me. But this woman you consider worthless spared no
expense. Simon, in these three ways this woman whom this community considers
inferior to a man of your standing has proved herself superior to you. For those
who know they have been forgiven a lot love extravagantly; those who have only
received a little forgiveness only give love in small quantities.’

He doesn’t even say that Simon doesn’t need much
forgiveness, only that he has only received a little forgiveness. In other
words, Jesus’ devastating analysis is that Simon and the woman are both
sinners. The difference is that the woman has sinned outside the Jewish Law,
but Simon has sinned inside the Law. So much for the righteousness with which Simon
would have prided himself, which isn’t that unusual in religious circles
throughout history. Simon, it isn’t that you’re a good man with a few spiritual
debts, such as some social failings as a host; no, you are proud, arrogant,
hard-hearted, hostile, judgmental, shallow, insensitive, sexist and a stranger
to God’s grace. You are the unrepentant sinner, not the woman.

As I said, devastating. And if that isn’t shocking enough, Jesus assures the
woman that she has received God’s forgiveness. How dare he? Hearing that,
people have to come down on one side or the other regarding him. Heretic and
blasphemer or prophet and Messiah? With it, he protects her from the seething
religious crowd, for he sends her on her way: ‘Go in peace’ (7:50).

Responses
As the woman goes in peace, the diners and remaining spectators are left with
their question about Jesus. They have to answer for themselves, just as we have
to supply our own ending to the story, as if we were present.

Would Simon have admitted that he was as great a sinner as
the woman is, to the point that if Jesus really wanted to avoid sinners then he
should have given him a wide berth? Would he have recognised that he had not repented
of much and found God’s grace? Would he have responded to the woman’s model of extravagant
love in response to divine mercy?

Is it possible, then, that the longer we stay in religious
circles, the more we get into routines and familiar responses, the more we have
to guard our hearts from the danger of forgetting our fundamental need of God’s
grace in Christ? The moment we start labelling certain sections of society as
particular sinners as if we somehow are not, alarm bells should ring. We may
have lost our grip on grace and we may have wrongly labelled some people as
beyond the love and mercy of the God whose Son went to the Cross for our
redemption.

Then there is the woman. She had already encountered Jesus
before this incident. Jesus’ mission did not begin here. The religious world
may be scandalised and offended by certain people, and Jesus never minimises
their sin, but his mission begins with love and mercy for such people. Grace warms
hearts, not condemnation.

And if Jesus’ mission has begun before his dinner date with
the theological students, then it makes me wonder about the way we organise
things in the church. We have an obsession – and it certainly affects me – to get
things right in the church before we venture out on mission. Part of that is a worry
that if people are touched with God’s love, then what kind of church will they
then encounter? This concern is based on experience. I have seen a young
convert trying to cope with a spiritually cold church. I have known a
congregation where one woman makes a beeline for new visitors, ‘welcomes’ them,
and within minutes starts telling them all the things she doesn’t like about
the minister.

But Jesus’ approach upends all my concerns here. The woman,
the ‘new convert’, finds her way into the midst of those who consider
themselves experienced in the ways of God. And at first, she doesn’t get the
welcome into the pilgrim community. But Jesus is not under obligation to keep
that community going. If necessary, he will create a new community as
he gathers the sinners and outcasts who have found new life in him. In 1983, Howard Snyder wrote
these words:

The church gets in trouble whenever
it thinks it is in the church business rather than the Kingdom business.

In the church business, people are concerned with church
activities, religious behaviour and spiritual things. In the Kingdom business,
people are concerned with Kingdom activities, all human behaviour and
everything God has made, visible and invisible. Kingdom people see human
affairs as saturated with spiritual meaning and Kingdom significance.

Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice;
church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth.
Church people think about how to get people into the
church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church
people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see
the church change the world.[2]

Jesus challenges our priorities. We are obsessed with saving
the church; he is committed to saving the lost. If we joined him in his enterprise
of saving the lost, then maybe the church will be saved in the process. The Simons
of this world will have to decide whether they come along or stay behind,
without Jesus.

Technorati Tags: sermon, narrative, Jesus, Simon, Pharisee, prostitute, KennethBailey, HowardSnyder, church, kingdomofGod, mission

Ruth Haley Barton has an excellent article (which may not be reproduced without her permission) on this theme. Quoting a former contestant on the reality show Survivor who said, “I didn’t want to be the leader because the leader always gets voted off the island,” Barton examines the inevitability of pain and unpopularity in Christian leadership. She says the Scriptures are ‘unflinchingly honest’ about this, but it had passed me by until I quickly started finding myself in the crossfire within weeks, if not days, of beginning in the ministry. She argues that the recipé for spiritual sustenance is the discipline of solitude – being alone with God, away from the ego-feeding busyness of ministry.

Technorati Tags: RuthHaleyBarton, leadership, ministry, solitude

Luke 7:11-17

Introduction
When I moved to my last appointment, it was a double move. Initially I had to
move into a manse that the circuit was in the process of selling. I lived there
for eleven weeks, living and working out of boxes. I did this until the manse I
was supposed to live in was ready. Somewhere in one of those two house moves, I
lost a prized four-CD box set of Fleetwood Mac, the music on which stretched
back to their earliest days.

I wonder if you’ve ever had anything stolen. Was it a prized
possession?

What if I suggested to you that Jesus had been stolen? You’d
want to track down the thief, wouldn’t you? But what if I said it was the church that had stolen Jesus? Does that
shock you? Yet that was the claim of a great nineteenth century spiritual
writer, Henry Drummond:

In many lands the churches have literally stolen Christ from
the people; they have made the Son of Man the priest of an order; they have
taken Christianity from the city and imprisoned it behind altar rails.[1]

I suggest to you that today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus
brings back from the dead the son of the widow at Nain, is one such case where
we imprison Jesus in the church, rather than setting him among the people. He performs
this miracle not in the synagogue, but in the town. This is not Jesus
buttressing the faith of the faithful but Jesus on mission in the world. Therefore,
as we look at the qualities displayed by Jesus in this story, I’d like us to
see them in missional terms.

1. Compassion
It all starts when Jesus witnesses a grieving widow, who has lost her son:

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to
her, ‘Do not weep.’ (verse 13)

Compassion for the widow is where it begins for Jesus. She has
lost her only son. We too might have compassion for her. As a minister, I have
had to take funerals where parents have lost a child. Even if that child has
grown to adulthood, it is common to say, ‘No parent should have to bury their
own son or daughter.’

However, Jesus’ compassion here is not simply grief at a
life cut short. It is grief for the widow.
She has no husband to provide for her, and now she has no son to do the same. His
compassion is not only about the bereavement, but also about the economically
devastating effects on the widow through losing her son. She will be destitute,
and the healing miracle Jesus performs here is to save a widow from desperate
poverty in a culture that had no welfare state. That is why when the dead man
gets up and begins to speak, Jesus restores him to his mother (verse 15). Therefore
this healing is not only a physical miracle, it is an economic one, too. It reminds
us not to channel our compassion narrowly.

Not only is it broader than physical healing, it is broader
in terms of who we pray for. The compassion that leads us to pray is one we
exercise not only in the church but also among our friends and family members
who do not share our faith. The late John Wimber, who – whether you agree with
him on every point or not – did so much to encourage Christians to pray for
healing, emphasised that such spiritual gifts were as much for use in the world
as they were in the church.

I am not suggesting that we don’t care for our friends who
are in desperate straits, be it due to bereavement, major illness, family
troubles, job losses or other crises. But what I do wonder is this: if a
Christian friend hits trouble, we have no difficulty in saying to them, ‘I’ll
pray for you.’ We know they will usually appreciate such an offer. However, we
tend to hesitate with non-Christian friends and loved ones. We’re more likely
to be nervous about how an offer to pray might be received. Will they reject
us? Will they laugh at us? On the other hand, if they welcome our offer to pray,
what happens if we do pray and then the desired blessing doesn’t materialise?

If that is how you feel, let me venture that we are like
young eagles, and the Holy Spirit is like the mother eagle, pushing us out of
the safety of the nest. We find ourselves in mid-air – but it is the only way
to learn how to fly. We find ourselves on the brink of the nest when we know it
would be good to offer prayer for someone. As we wobble, the Holy Spirit says, ‘Fly!’
For we were never promised the security of the nest and the possibility of
remaining spiritual eaglets all our lives; God called us to spiritual maturity
and that requires daring, risk-taking faith.

So, why not keep alert this new week for friends in real
need? Will you let your natural compassion move you to pray for them? And will
you be daring enough to offer prayer or tell them you are praying? You may feel
like you are falling off the precipice, but you may actually be beginning a new
chapter in an exciting and fruitful life of faith in Christ.

2. Authority
There is a tangible note of divine authority about Jesus in this story. Luke
calls him ‘the Lord’ (verse 13), and then, when he takes action, we hear him
speaking with authority: ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ (verse 14). Perhaps
we think we wouldn’t have the nerve to speak like that, especially as we aren’t
divine like Jesus. It seems a long way from what we feel capable of saying.

In fact, we see Jesus’ authority in more than his words. Even
before he speaks with authority, he acts with authority. He comes forward and
touches the bier (verse 14). That is shocking for a Jew who was not supposed to
touch dead bodies, for fear of becoming ritually unclean. However, that doesn’t
worry Jesus. He has authority over death. Ritual uncleanness is inferior to who
he is. So he is not intimidated by death or by religious regulations. He is ‘the
Lord’, and he knows these ritual laws are meant to be servants, not masters. So
he takes authority over them for the sake of the situation when he touches the
bier.

And remember, he surely didn’t need to touch the bier to
perform the miracle, but he did. He makes his authority clear before he speaks
with that authority.

So where might this connect with us? Surely, none of us can
speak and act as Jesus did here? None of us owns the title ‘the Lord’: we do
not have his divine status. That may be true, but that is no reason for us to
hide away from the challenge to prayer and action when faced with something
terrible in the world. For one thing, remember this verse from 1 John:

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
because the one who is in you is greater
than the one who is in the world.
(1 John 4:4)

We are not impotent: God is with us! The Lord is here, and
his Spirit is with us. When others are suffering, we do not come against them
alone, but with the power of God’s Spirit. Do you not feel braver to act when
you know you are not alone? If someone is standing alongside you, it makes all
the difference. Moses asked that his brother Aaron could come with him to
Pharaoh – and even do the speaking for him! We have the Holy Spirit with us. He
is the one called in various translations the comforter, counsellor, advocate
or helper. It’s a word that means ‘one called alongside.’ The Holy Spirit is
the ‘one called alongside’ us when we need to speak and act with authority.

Alternatively, put it this way: there is a strange and difficult
statement of Jesus in John 14:14, where he says, ‘You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.’ It’s the ‘in
my name’ bit that interests me at this point. When we act in someone’s name, we
act with their authority. Years ago when I worked in the Civil Service I daily
signed letters with my signature, ‘pp’ (per pro) my manager. I signed in my
manager’s name. That is, I signed with my manager’s authority. To ask the
Father in Jesus’ name is to ask with his authority. It is to say, ‘Heavenly
Father, your Son has given me the authority to ask for this.’

Now my feeling about this kind of authoritative praying is
that it is one to be used only when we have concluded we are certain of God’s
will for a person, group or situation. However, if we are certain, then it is a
daring prayer that we may pray with the full permission and blessing of Jesus. Imagine
how much good we could bring to the world by carefully seeking God’s will and
then praying this way. However, I think we should use it with some caution, and
not throw it around willy-nilly, like a TV evangelist spraying around false
promises. And nor is ‘in your name’ a liturgical formula to provide a neat
ending to prayer: it is something dynamic and powerful, and therefore to be
used with considerable care.

But we always have the authority of the Holy Spirit within
us and alongside us. As Graham Kendrick once commented, ‘When the odds get too
great I just remember that Jesus plus me equals an invincible minority.’ God
calls his invincible minority into action out of love for the world.

3. Favour
Note the reaction of the crowd:

Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A
great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his
people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding
country. (verses 16-17)

I think I’d have a good dose of fear if I’d just witnessed
someone being raised from the dead! But in the wake of it, there is a deep
sense of wonder – it’s that kind of fear. Luke records the testimony of the
onlookers: ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ To Luke Jesus was much more
than a prophet, but in his generous attitude he notes that here at least is the
start of a positive response to him. It’s an attitude well worth bearing in
mind when we are in conversation with those who are missing from the love of
God: we bless the positive response, even if it is not all we hope it to be. We
see it as something to build on, rather than something to tear down.

Then there is the other response: ‘God has looked favourably
on his people!’ That’s a big one for mission. Isn’t it often the case that the
impression Christians give the world is that God looks unfavourably on them? But the mission of Jesus is the sure sign
that God looks favourably on people. Not in some ‘Smile, Jesus loves you’ badge
kind of way, but more that God is so full of love for his broken world that he
didn’t even spare his own Son.

This is not to minimise the seriousness of sin, which often
leads to the ‘God looks unfavourably’ approach; rather, it is to say that
despite all the sin that shatters the connection between God and humans, that
God is still so full of love he reaches out in love. Supremely he does that in
the coming of Christ, and especially in his death and resurrection. However, Jesus
witnessed to it before the Cross, and he did so by bestowing favour on the
broken, just as he did for the widow at Nain. It’s no good having a message of
God’s favour for people unless that favour is going to put on legs and walk.

And that’s what Jesus does in the miracle here. He doesn’t
preach a sermon about how God is gracious to the undeserving and merciful to
sinners, he gets on and dishes out the favour of God. The explanations can come
later. The other night, Jane, Joanna and I heard a lecture by Andy Griffiths,
the vicar of St Michael’s Galleywood,
in which he spoke about the importance of ‘values’ for mission. One that his
church has adopted is that of ‘showing before telling’: they show the love of
God first, and then they tell it. I think Jesus does something similar here. He
shows the favour of God: any telling comes later. That isn’t to excuse us from
talking about our faith, but it is to say that it must be credible first. Where
this week can I show the favour of God to those who might not think they have
it?

Conclusion
I guess that word ‘values’ is what runs like a thread through this sermon. It
is Jesus putting into practice the divine values of compassion, authority and
favour that we see in this story. Our call to mission requires something
similar: a broad compassion that encompasses all people and a wide range of
needs; a wise exercise of divine authority, especially because as Christians we
never act alone; and a commitment to demonstrate God’s outrageous favour to broken,
needy and sinful people – a favour we pray we shall then have an opportunity to
talk about. Where can we start getting on with the job?

Technorati Tags: HenryDrummond, missional, Jesus, Nain, compassion, authority, favour, JohnWimber, GrahamKendrick, Luke, AndyGriffiths, StMichaelsGalleywood