In what I think is my favorite story in all the gospels, Luke tells us about an invitation to dinner Jesus received and accepted. The story is found in Luke 7, beginning with verse 36 and I never read it without marveling at the power of Jesus to turn everything on its head and remind us of why He came.
The invitation itself was from Simon, most often I refer to him as Sanctimonious Simon. He was a Pharisee, which among other things meant that he was fairly confident that he never messed up, was even more confident that He and God were best friends, and that this want-to-be rabbi from Nazareth was little more than we might describe as “poor white trash.”
So Simon invites Jesus to dinner – not so much to befriend Him as to test Him; not so much because he was impressed with Jesus, but because He wanted to make Him look foolish. It appears that Simon had a few of his friends with him and Jesus brought along His disciples. It was quite a gathering for this dinner.
Out of nowhere it seems, Luke says “an immoral woman” came into the dining room. In his ever astute sense of appropriateness, Luke doesn’t tell us who the woman was – just that she had a reputation. My guess is that everyone in town – including Sanctimonious Simon – knew this woman and knew how she made a living.
She comes to Jesus and begins to wash His feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and anoints Him with an alabaster jar of perfume – perhaps the only thing she has as a possession that connects her to her family – who surely are depressed and disappointed about how her life has turned out.
In the kingdom of the world we are prone to wish we were like Simon – apparently rich, living in a nice house, respected, and uber-religious. In the kingdom of the world we are prone to dismiss this rather slutty woman with an attitude of “it is what it is.”
But not so in the kingdom of God. Jesus seems to always turn things upside down in ways that shock us. The real hero of this story is this “immoral woman.” She is a hero not because of who she is, but because of who she wants to become. Simon isn’t the hero at all – he is so impressed with himself and his self-perceptions about his righteousness, that all he can see is “who he is,” with no idea that there is a different Simon that he could become, and who would be a welcome guest at the banquet table of God.
Jesus is simply never content to leave people as they are! For Simon, that means he can’t find contentment in his overly religious approach to life. For the immoral woman, that means she can find hope in a new life – one in which she is empowered through her faith and love to walk away from the sin that has so easily and seemingly completely entangled her.
All year we have been talking about “the way things ought to be.” As one of our chapel speakers earlier this semester noted, it is a challenging thing to think in terms of “ought” instead of “are.” What I know about myself better than anyone is that there is some room in my life to make things more “how they ought to be,” and that the temptation to say “it is what it is” is an alluring and powerful force.
When you leave today, you are going to be given a little silicon bracelet with the phrase “How Things Ought to Be” imprinted on it. I plan to identify one of those areas in my life where I haven’t reached “ought to be status” yet and focus on that for these days of the season of Lent. It may require that I give up some things – but it may not. The key is that I want to identify an area – and commitment myself to working on that for Lent.
I’ve been praying for administrators, faculty, staff, and students since early January that you will join with me in that adventure. Think of the impact on this campus community if we all simply worked on one thing and managed to bring it closer to “how things ought to be” than it is right now.
One thing is for sure – this story from Sanctimonious Simon bears it out – Jesus is never comfortable with “it is what it is.” I want that idea to be in the category of “no more” for me. I hope you do as well.
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