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Making Room: Luke 7
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
No one needs you to be perfect. We just need you to be real.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:If we have not met, my name is Bobbie, and I am one of the pastors on the team here. Now I wanna begin today by thanking you for two things. First, some of you have joined us for First Steps this fall, and we created First Steps to help people find some inroads into the community. We know that it's not always easy to figure out where commons came from or what makes it tick or how you can kind of find your own place here. And last week, I was leading step one of first steps, there are four of them, which is all about the backstory of commons.
Speaker 1:And at the start of the discussion, we took a second to introduce ourselves and mention our own background when it comes to faith communities. So people went around the room and named these backgrounds, Catholic, Anglican, Chinese alliance, no church background whatsoever, a variety of Baptists, Alliance, Presbyterian, Russian Orthodox, Pentecostal. I mean, that's wild. Right? It is a minor miracle to make a church out of all of those backgrounds in light of larger church history.
Speaker 1:In the church's past, real blood has spilled over differences like this. So here at Commons, we are living something miraculous, actually, right now. You sit here with so many different backgrounds, and you choose this variety instead of assimilation or uniformity. You choose this. So whether you realize it or not, you're already living into the theme of our new series called making room, which is all about hospitality.
Speaker 1:Last week, Yelena brought us into the theme of hospitality with such a great sermon on Jesus and Zacchaeus. If you missed it, you should 100% go back and listen online through our podcast or our YouTube channel. And today, in our making room series, we are headed for another well known gospel story in Luke. It's the story of Jesus at a Pharisee's house just having dinner, and the whole crowd is surprised by who shows up and what she does when she gets there. So we're talking about hospitality as attention to others.
Speaker 1:And I was gonna call this sermon, who is Becky and what's up with her hair? Hey, which is a Beyonce reference that might click for you a little bit later, but that does take too much pop culture explanation, which I am usually here for, but we'll kinda skip that today. Instead, I am calling this sermon, let down your hair, and we are going to talk about attention to power, a prophet and a parable, the next step in hospitality and peace to go. So let's take a moment to breathe deep and settle in, and let's pray. Our loving God, as we take this moment just to be a little bit still, we are mindful of the places in our lives where we sense welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the gift of these places, Relationships where we see feel seen and heard, jobs where we are thriving, spaces in our communities where we are known and can know others. But we are also mindful of the places where welcome is just not on offer. Places of fear and judgment in relationships. Places of division and hostility near and far. Places of difference and scarcity that turn us into threats instead of collaborators and friends.
Speaker 1:So may we sense an invitation from you today, Jesus, to pay close attention to our differences, to reach just past them towards the image of God in one another. His spirit, you are here. You're healing and restoring all that is broken and making us more whole. And for all of this, we do give thanks. Amen.
Speaker 1:Now I mentioned at the top that I actually want to thank you for two things, so here's the second. Thank you to everyone who took the time to listen to the first episode of Between Sundays, a new podcast we're making here at Commons hosted by yours truly. Between Sundays is all about finding the sacred in the everyday, and the format of the podcast is long form interview. So I prep a bunch of questions, but the conversations with people connected to commons, they're not scripted, and that's kind of the thrill of it. Right?
Speaker 1:Our first episode is a conversation with Emmanuel Simon, a local poet and rapper who goes by the stage name Oliver Throne. And we released that episode a couple of weeks ago, and, course, you can still find it wherever you get your podcast. And the second episode is coming out this Wednesday, so watch your podcast feeds. It's with Ben Putt from Monogram Coffee, and we drop new episodes every other week until Christmas day. That's like my Christmas gift to you.
Speaker 1:And then that will be the end of season one, which we have called the creative urge. And I have loved chatting about what this first episode did to you, how it maybe took you somewhere you weren't expecting to go. For example, this text message from my aunt remember, she's referring to the first conversation, which has a lot of hip hop culture references in it. So she wrote this. I put your podcast on before Dolly Parton's America, which by the way is a really good new podcast.
Speaker 1:Get into it. And she says, I'm impressed, but I wasn't sure I would listen to the entire thing based on the overall subject matter. But it was interesting, and I loved it. And it makes me want to learn more about hip hop culture even though I'm not attuned to the sound. Well done, my dear.
Speaker 1:You are a great host. I look forward to the next episode. Congratulations. Do you guys have an aunt like that? Because it's great.
Speaker 1:Well, I shared this with you. First, again, to thank you for listening. Second, to invite you to listen. But third, and probably more importantly in this moment, to bring us to the story that we dive into today in our series on hospitality. Because in both the podcast and this gospel narrative, we have these worlds colliding, and we'll notice the power of personal stories to cross all kinds of boundaries.
Speaker 1:So we need to know who's who in the story. So we're gonna see some great introductions in Luke seven. When one of the pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the pharisee's house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house. So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.
Speaker 1:As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them. So all across the New Testament, the kingdom of God is pictured as a banquet. This place where everyone feasts and belongs. So again and again in the gospel of Luke, we find Jesus around a table eating and drinking with all kinds of societal riffraff and bigwigs.
Speaker 1:And yes, I did just say riffraff and bigwigs. I don't know. Is that still a thing? Probably not. So let's do a compare and contrast with the people that we see in the scene.
Speaker 1:First, the Pharisee. Now there is a long interpretive tradition that paints Pharisees as bad guys. In fact, the writer of Luke sometimes hints at that himself. Now Luke's gospel was written and shared during a time of intense persecution in the early church. So it could be that the writer attempts to shift the empire scrutiny of the church onto these Jewish leaders.
Speaker 1:Then what we get with this, like, shade throwing is interpretation that casts pharisees unfairly as enemies of Jesus. But in this story itself, at this table, we see something different. Here, we have a Pharisee who offers genuine hospitality. And the host here, he's given a name. It's Simon.
Speaker 1:So he's made personal. And he proves himself to be a competent interlocutor. Okay. Let's take a look at the woman at the start of the story. And a version of this story is in all four gospels, but with some variation.
Speaker 1:In the other three gospels, the story of the woman pouring fragrant oil on Jesus is located closer to the passion narrative, so near the end. So her action in the other gospels is interpreted as this anointing for burial. But here, it's too early in the gospel for that. Here, her actions belong just in this moment. And the writer lets us know that this is a bombshell of a story.
Speaker 1:The woman is introduced not with a name, but with the Greek phrase, kai edu, which is an imperative phrase, meaning like, look, behold. Basically, check this chick out. And for your information, I am not for women being called chicks, but the setting here hardly preferences the experiences of women nor does it consider the societal reasons why women are forced to do things that they do just to survive. But still, this woman, she surprises everyone. So as Jesus and the company around the table recline in Hellenistic fashion, meaning that they lounge on their sides with their feet pointing away from the table, the woman barges in and she throws herself at Jesus's feet.
Speaker 1:She's pretty out of line here. And we have to wonder, what did she know? Like, what did she know that the others didn't? Like, what is this force inside of her that drove her to ignore custom, ignore limitations, ignore the rules that kept her away from a meal like this. What did she know?
Speaker 1:But also, here are some more questions for you. Whom do you identify with here? Have you been a rule follower, a person who does everything just right? Have you hidden out in the rules of society, the rules that give you power because you are able-bodied? Or because the color of your skin doesn't really disqualify you from anything?
Speaker 1:Or because you did exactly what was always expected of you? You found a nice partner. You settled down. You put on a happy face. Or have you had to carve out your own way to get what you need and what you want?
Speaker 1:Maybe you've had to, like, claw your way to a place that doesn't want you and tries pretty hard to keep you away. Maybe you don't look or think like people who seem to have an easier time of it. Maybe life has thrown you an unreasonable amount of struggle. Well, guess what? None of those differences really matter at this table.
Speaker 1:You can have a lot of power, and you can have what feels like none. And you can both be drawn to Jesus without always knowing why or what's to come. This prophet is anything but predictable. So the powerful Pharisee and the powerless woman, they are both welcome here. And the story continues.
Speaker 1: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. Now, the English translation kinda flattens out what's going on here. Because in Greek, the sentence starts with a verb, harao. And it means having seen. So the verse starts more like this, having seen now this Pharisee.
Speaker 1:And the verb has a metaphorical meaning to indicate inward spiritual perception. So what do Simon's, like, spiritual spidey senses perceive when this woman just barges in with all of this emotion, and Jesus just lets her weep and wipe his feet. Well, in Simon's mind, a prophet does not violate norms like this. And as soon as Simon thinks these very private thoughts, Jesus addresses him. And the irony here is that, of course, Jesus knows who and what this woman is on the inside and the outside.
Speaker 1:But what's also true is that Jesus knows who and what Simon is on the inside and the outside. So Jesus kinda calls Simon out, but he doesn't do it with a scathing rebuke. Jesus tells a story. Jesus answered him, Simon, I have something to tell you. Tell me, teacher, Simon said.
Speaker 1:Jesus says there were two people who owed a bunch of money to the same creditor. One owed as much as he could make as a leather maker or a field worker in a day, And the other debtor owed one tenth of that. Neither of them had the money to pay what he owed, so the creditor forgave both men their debts. And with that, Jesus looks right at Simon and asks which of these two men will love the creditor more? And Simon says, with some reluctance, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.
Speaker 1:Jesus says, you have judged correctly. And so with just a simple story, the prophet brings together all that is divided, the debtor and the creditor, the fact and the fiction, the inside and the outside. Another way to say this is that Jesus uses story to build a bridge between difference. And sometimes our spirituality is so wrapped up in what makes something right or wrong. Who might be saved or damned?
Speaker 1:How to be blessed and not cursed that we just miss the point that the parable makes. Through a story, Jesus brings a fractured world together. Jesus says, can you imagine love like this debt forgiveness? As it is lavish, and it is undeserved, and it is always on offer. So let the story be your teacher.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you give mercy, you forgive a brutal betrayal, you build healthy boundaries and then offer a second chance. You choose kindness when someone insists on cruelty. And sometimes, you receive that mercy. It's your debt that is forgiven. It's getting the help you weren't sure would ever find you.
Speaker 1:It's love that arrives after a long stretch of loneliness. In this prophet's story, one mercy is not better than the other. But just because Jesus tells a story doesn't mean Jesus is there to sugarcoat what's going on in the room. There's more to come. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, do you see this woman?
Speaker 1:I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet. But she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.
Speaker 1:Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. Now, I have a bit of a bone to pick with many interpreters of this passage because they get, I think, a little bit lazy. What I mean is they say, oh, look at that dull Pharisee, So stingy with his hospitality. But you know what?
Speaker 1:Simon is not bad at hospitality. He's just conventional. After all, he invites Jesus to his home. He feeds him. People are reclined around Simon's table.
Speaker 1:And years after this scene, the Talmud will teach about good Hebrew hospitality, and the rabbis call it a shell. And that Hebrew word goes all the way back to Abraham. In Genesis twenty one thirty three, Abraham will plant a shell at Beersheba, and it's a tamarisk tree. And the rabbis agree. Abraham planted it as a sign of hospitality.
Speaker 1:And the rabbis, they take it further. They clarify the heart of hospitality through an acronym built on that Hebrew word, Eshel. So the first letter, Aleph, stands for feeding. And Shin, the second letter stands for drinking. And Lamed, the third letter stands for lodging.
Speaker 1:So when you look at Simon's hospitality that way, our little Pharisee, he gets full marks, like, a plus. Well done, dude. But the woman who shows up unannounced, unnamed, but somehow pretty well known, she takes hospitality in an unpredictable and untamed direction. And Jesus holds her actions up as exemplary. But hospitality is not a competition.
Speaker 1:Right? It's an invitation. Jesus invites Simon to this next step in hospitality. Jesus isn't taking away his conventional way of welcoming others. He's just saying, don't let that limit you.
Speaker 1:Jesus is saying, yeah, feeding, it is fine. But have you tried weeping? Like drinking is great. But have you tried wiping each other's tired feet? And lodging.
Speaker 1:Lodging is lovely. But have you tried kissing? Jesus looks around the table and out at us from that story and makes this point, making room for one another, a stranger, a long lost friend, a foe, making room for company like that, it denies your comfort. It opens up your circle. It expands your whole world.
Speaker 1:This is hospitality that pushes past conventions and opts for, well, something that can get pretty awkward. Might also feel clumsy. And it is certainly risky. And therein lies the key to finally feeling at home. So allow me a vain example.
Speaker 1:I have always been pretty self conscious about my ears. I don't really remember when it started because as a kid, I rocked my little alien ears like a star. My auntie would come home from to the farm from Winnipeg, and I would, like, run over to my grandma's house just so anti fake could French braid my hair and pull it all back. Just let those little alien ears show. And maybe hating my ears started in adolescence like many of these things do when young people compare themselves to one another and unrealistic beauty standards.
Speaker 1:It's kind of always happening. As I got older, I just stopped pulling my hair back. I styled it so that no one would see my ears. I was sure that these ears were just, like, too low on my head and kinda pointy, well, one of them anyways. But then, some time passed.
Speaker 1:And one evening as an adult, I found myself watching Tina Fey on her hit TV show, 30 Rock, and I noticed something that changed my life. Tina Fey's ears were kinda low on her head too. And as I watched, maybe in a scene with all Alec Baldwin just killing it like she did, I thought, what am I doing? Like, Tina Fey, she is a knockout beauty. Not because she fits some ideal proportion or perfection, but because she's freaking Tina Fey.
Speaker 1:And after that, I started pulling my hair back too. Just throwing all kinds of bobby pins in it. Just rocking my ears just the way they are. When we live in our bodies, in brave, awkward conversations, and boldly express our admiration and our love for one another, even if we don't know how it will be returned. When we rock our unique features and let down our hair and choose to be vulnerable and messy, but so sincere and solicitous, When we do all of this with love for people who are like us, but also for people who were so different from us, then, yes, then.
Speaker 1:We are making room for one another, freeing one another to be who we really are. No one needs you to be perfect. We just need you to be real. The late Henry Nouwen, a priest for my own soul, says this about that next step in hospitality. The term hospitality should not be limited to its literal sense of receiving a stranger in our house, although it is important never to forget or neglect that, but as a fundamental attitude toward our fellow human being, which can be expressed in a great variety of ways.
Speaker 1:And Nawan goes on to say, God alone reveals the movements of the spiritual life. It's not a movement from weakness to power, but a movement that makes us less and less fearful and more and more open. So the story of Jesus and Simon and the woman, it ends like this. Then Jesus said to her, your sins are forgiven. The other guests began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins?
Speaker 1:Jesus said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Now, something I've been wondering about is why doesn't Jesus ask the woman to recline at the table with Simon and the others? Right? Like, why?
Speaker 1:Wouldn't that really drive Jesus's point home? Imagine it. Right? Jesus looks from the woman to Simon to the other men around the table and then he holds out his hand to the woman while elbowing the guy next to him. Fellas, like, shove over, will you?
Speaker 1:Let's make room for her. But Jesus doesn't do that. At least, that's not the story Luke's gospel tells us. The theologian, Letty Russell, walks out an idea that can kinda help us with this. She says that since the beginning of the scriptures, riotous difference I'm gonna put those two words together again for you.
Speaker 1:Riotous difference has been God's gift to the world. Think about it. God delights in the difference in creation calling it good. And God uses different languages to stop people who compete with the divine and trample on one another in Babel. And God is present in those different languages at Pentecost, not through uniformity, but through understanding.
Speaker 1:Letty Russell says all of the differences in our midst, the differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, political preference, personal histories, culture, all of those differences are actually God's gift to the world. So rather than eliminate the things that make us unique, God would have us pay very close attention to those differences and find something of our shared humanity in each other's stories. That's the power of the scene at Simon's house. Two people so drastically different from one another end up mutually illuminating one another. Simon, he actually can't see himself without this woman's interruption.
Speaker 1:And the woman, she can't see herself without this relaxed rabbi reclining at the table. And you can't know who you are until you're face to face with someone who is different from you. Hospitality in the name of Jesus does not take away what makes you you. Hospitality in the name of Jesus says, you being you is a great gift to the world. So no, this woman does not take a seat at the table with Simon and the others.
Speaker 1:Maybe Jesus knows this is not a place where she will be most free. So she turns from that table and walks out the door having encountered love like never before. And you know what? I think she's gonna be alright because she carries the peace of Christ with her wherever she goes. Now, what about you?
Speaker 1:Will you pay attention to power? And notice that whether you have a little of it or whether you have a lot, everyone is drawn to the divine in their own way. And will you allow the stories of other people take up some space inside of you and change you? That story can be real or made up. It can be found in a podcast or a parable or even on the playground where your kids hang out.
Speaker 1:And will you take the next step in hospitality? You know, just let your hair down. Risk being seen. Allow raw honesty and emotion to be your guide. Someone else's freedom may very well depend on that.
Speaker 1:And you know, whatever you choose, you are welcome here. And more, I deeply believe this, you have so much to teach us. Please join me in prayer. Our loving God, your welcome stretches out to each of us through the stories of one another. You meet us in our riotous difference.
Speaker 1:There's so many things that we struggle with still. Find ourselves most free, we struggle with our fears, our isolation, our insecurity, and still none of those barriers ever ever ever keep you away. So Jesus, as you meet us in stories, And this story of two very different people who have a lot to teach each other. And we also see differences gifts. And may we pay close attention to how you are healing us and renewing us in the middle of it all.
Speaker 1:So spirit of the living God, present with us now. Enter these places of our vulnerability in our bodies, in our minds, and spirits. And God, will you heal us of all that harms us. Amen.