Sermon: Grace and the Sinful Woman part 1

text: Luke 7:36-50

Jesus is in the town of Nain which is in Galilee, just a short walk from his hometown Nazareth.  In Nain Jesus has already raised a widow’s only son from the dead and, Luke tells us in chapter 7 v. 2, “...Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind.”

But also in Nain, as always, Jesus meets with skepticism from the Pharisees and experts in the law.
In verses 29-30, Luke gives us the reason for their disbelief:
    
“All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.”
    
John’s was a baptism of repentance. John didn’t make baptism up. Aside from mikvah baths which we’ve spoken of before, baptism was also already practiced on Gentile converts, symbolically washing away their sins and impurity in the process of leaving the gentile world and becoming Jews. This sort of baptism, a baptism of conversion/repentance, was not required of Jews but was exclusively for gentile converts.
This is explains the uniqueness and the offense of John’s preaching and of the baptism he called all Israel to share.  John’s baptism essentially said that Israel had been so unfaithful corporately and individually to God that, in his eyes, Israel no longer stood within the bounds of God’s covenant people. Repent now and be restored in preparation for the coming of the Lord, John said. But, and here is the dilemma, doing that meant being willing to say “My sins have put me outside the body of God’s faithful people.” Those who’d been willing to do this, Luke tells us, believed Jesus and those who did not rejected him.
That chasm between those who recognize themselves as sinners in need of repentance and those who do not divides Israel and determines who follows Jesus and who rejects him.
And it divides the Church today. Some believe the church to be a gathering place for the good people of the world to differentiate themselves from the bad people of the world. Others see it as a hospital for wretched sinners where the Great Physician applies his power and grace and mercy to heal and restore us.
The Pharisees saw the “church” of their day, the body of those who keep Torah, as the place of differentiation between the holy people and unholy people. They were the holy people.

But John first and then Jesus said to them—and we must remember that the Pharisees were by external standards men more respectable morally upright than anyone in this room, men who would put us all to shame—Jesus said to them: “prostitutes and liars and thieves and murderers will get into heaven before you”.

If you don’t see yourself as a sinner and recognize that on your own merits you have no hope of eternal life, then it’s impossible for you to be justified before God. Because if you think of yourself in that way you won’t repent and trust in Jesus Christ and you’ll die in your sins. Congregations full of people who think that way, tend to think of the church as the holy place for holy people. They cease to be hospitals for sinners and become whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones.
    
Now let’s turn to our text. “36Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.”
    
Many Pharisees have already rejected Jesus, but for Simon, the jury is still out or he wouldn’t invite Jesus to his home. Simon wants to see for himself. This is good. And Jesus is willing to go to Simon’s house to dine with him. He’s always willing to go where he’s invited. Simon believes that he’s weighing and measuring Jesus, considering his claims to be Messiah. But, and this is true not just for Simon but you and me and for anyone who comes into contact with Jesus, Simon is the one in the dock. He’s the one being examined and measured. He just doesn’t know it yet. 
Now just a logistical fact. Meals were either eaten on very low u shaped tables or on the ground. Simon, we’re told, had a table. You’d recline leaning on your left shoulder, eating with your right hand, with your head toward the meal and your legs would be stretched out behind you so from above the table people’s legs would look like spokes of a wheel. That helps us understand what happens next.

As they’re reclining for dinner a woman enters. Luke describes her in verse 37 as “a woman who had lived a sinful life”. The ESV simply describes her as a “sinner”. We’re all sinners but Luke is telling us that this woman has a reputation as a notorious sinner. There is no way to be absolutely sure, but she’s almost certainly a prostitute. And as such she is alienated religiously and socially.
Religiously, she’s shunned by Pharisees like Simon. The woman has chosen to live a wicked life and so the consequence of that choice is to be cut off from the people of God.

There is some truth in this practice. Jesus gives the church in Matt 18:15-20 a process for discipline. When someone is committed to a particular sin,  refuses to repent, is defiant…”I’m going to do this and I don’t care what God says…” then ultimately, Jesus says, that person must be disciplined and put out of the church. But the difference between the NT perspective on discipline and what the Pharisees practiced is that the ultimate purpose of NT discipline is restoration. The church is always to seek the restoration of someone under discipline. Those who are spiritual, Paul tells us in Galatians 6, are to go to him with love and with gentleness and by the grace of God to bring him to repentance and then welcome him with joy and thanksgiving and no recrimination when he returns. Pharisees did not generally seek the restoration of those who had been put out of the synagogue because their concern was not so much the restoration of the sinner as it was the maintenance of their own and the community’s holiness. Contact with notorious sinners would compromise holiness. The law certainly provided a way for sinners to be restored but Pharisees did not see restoration as their concern. And so this woman would have been religiously invisible and unimportant to Simon and those in his circle in Nain.

There would have been social reasons for her alienation as well that are not too hard to figure out. Men would need to avoid her or have their own reputations questioned. Why is Mr. Jones talking to that stripper? Why is pastor Matt speaking with that prostitutes on Robinson Street? And other women, married women especially, would generally despise her because her business was to entice their sons and husbands.
    
So religiously and socially, this woman is isolated. Her “friends” are other prostitutes and clients. To everyone else, she’s dirty. Who knows where she’s been. Who knows what she has done. She is damaged goods. Avoid her. 
    
This is her life. We should be careful not to paint her as a victim and assume that she was forced into that life or that environment or circumstance compelled her to live in this way. That’s the modern way…to excuse sin on the basis of a tough circumstances. Maybe she came from a broken home? Maybe her parents were abusive? But scripture always places the responsibility for our sins on us. No one can force you to do anything, no circumstance can make you sin. There’s always a choice of the will and so this woman has no excuse for the way she’s lived. To understand the full weight of what Jesus does, we’ve got to banish from our minds any sense that Jesus has compassion on her because he sees that difficult circumstances have driven her into a life of sin. That’s not what happens. That robs Jesus of his grace. His compassion and forgiveness comes despite the fact that this woman is fully responsible for her sins and a great debt. Our culture offers so many so many opportunities to paint ourselves as victims, “deserving” forgiveness. If it hadn’t been for this circumstance or that circumstance I’d be a great guy. That is just a subtle way of putting God in your debt. He owes me forgiveness because he’s let my life be so hard. Jesus does not have mercy because we’re victims of society or of bad parents, or whatever.  He has mercy despite our sins not in light of our circumstances. This woman, by her own actions, has set herself in a very lonely and miserable place. But that is a consequence of her own decisions.

That has to be clear in order to see what Jesus is doing.
    
Okay why is she here? Luke tells us in 37 that she “learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house”
    
What things had Jesus already done in Nain? He’s claimed, as he did in every town, that in him the Kingdom of God has come to earth and he offers the mercy to all who repent. He’s demonstrated his authority to make that offer by healing the sick, raising the dead, and casting out demons. He’s been walking around with a tax collector in his inner circle. This woman would’ve seen these things, heard these things, and known these things. Nain was not a large town.

If you’ll allow me to speculate just a moment, I think she saw and heard these things and recognized in Jesus a way to be rescued from the hell she was living in. A way to be accepted again by God and by other people. Up until the day Jesus walked into town, she thought that her life was going to just drag out day after day, night after night. But out of nowhere, suddenly hope is in her life. And she had to have it. 
 
I wonder what went through her mind when she discovered Jesus was at Simon’s house? There’s no home in that city where she’ll be less welcome and wanted. Imagine. The only One who could possibly help her is at dinner with the people who she knows will despise her most. 
    
Often, unfortunately, this is an accurate picture of the church.

The only One who can forgive, bring life, transform the world is often obscured by the coldness of the people who eat with him every Sunday. So that even if by God’s grace someone like this woman knows she needs to be rescued, she ‘s very likely to be afraid to come to a church find him. “Well that may be all for the best. We don’t want that kind of influence around our children. You can’t be too careful these days. Maybe she should go to some community program of some sort. I suppose she can worship here, but don’t invite her to anything and if she asks say something polite and move away”

Our desire for safety, stewardship of God’s property, personal comfort, plain old spiritual pride and self righteousness can make the church an obstacle to Jesus rather than the place where his mercy is proclaimed and lived out. I think Good Shepherd is a very welcoming place. But I do think our legitimate concern to be good stewards of this property, our good concern for the safety of our kids, our spiritual pride at having stood through the test of the last two years could, if we’re not careful, put us in a place where Good Shepherd is looked on as Simon’s house rather than Jesus’ body.

We are here and I don’t know that this has sunk in yet, we are here to transform this part of Binghamton through the power Jesus Christ and the proclamation of his gospel. The reason I don’t think its sunk in yet is that when it does people, like this woman, will see what we do and hear what we say and be compelled, like her, to find Jesus here. I don’t think we’re there yet. It’s a shift from orienting everything we do around the goal of self-preservation to orienting everything we do around the goal of transforming this community through the power of Jesus Christ by the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It’s more of a heart shift than a program shift.
    
application

prayer

end

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