Two Kinds of Hosts

Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut.

The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

This can be found on page 1027 of your Pew Bible.

At the home of Simon the Pharisee, Jesus uses the striking contrast between his host welcome and the extravagant attention of an uninvited sinful woman to teach about forgiveness.

A reading from Luke chapter 7, beginning with the 36th verse.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him.

And he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table.

And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner when she learned that he was reclining at a table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabasta flask of ointment.

And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of a head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

Now, when the Pharisee, who had invited him, saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him.

For she is a sinner.

And Jesus answering said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you.

And he answered, Say, teacher, a certain moneylender had two debtors.

One owed 500 denarii and the other 50.

When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both.

Now which of them will love him more?

Simon answered, The one I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.

And he said to him, You have judged rightly.

Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman?

I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, and she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.

You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.

Therefore I tell you, her sins which are many are forgiven.

For she loved much.

But he who is forgiven little loves little.

And he said to her, Your sins are forgiven.

And those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, Who is this?

Who even forgives sin?

And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you.

Go in peace.

May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

We were staying with a Christian international school that provided free education for local children.

And one day, our team went out to do outreach in one of the major slums in the area.

It was dirt roads, no plumbing, and miles and miles of tin shanty homes.

Coming from the US, I was shocked by the level of poverty that I witnessed there.

I mean, these are things you only saw on television.

And I never imagined that I would see with my own eyes.

We went from home to home, distributing food and supplies and offering prayer to anyone who wanted it.

And then we gathered in their very simple open-air village church and led worship.

I was standing in the back of the room when I noticed a young girl walk in.

She was about 14 or 15 years old.

She was wearing a low-cut tattered dress.

And she just began to sing and dance with the carefree joy of a child, twirling around to the music.

And that's when I noticed a chain around her ankle.

At one point, she turned around and looked at one of our leaders who was standing right behind her.

He was so visibly shocked by her appearance, he didn't know what to do.

And so he just simply motioned with his hand, asking her to turn around and face the front.

That experience prompted us to ask ourselves a very hard question.

What do you do when someone shows up to church that you weren't prepared for?

When you were confronted with evil so great that it's no longer hidden, but it's standing right in front of you in broad daylight.

That was quite the lesson for our missions team.

We were prepared to meet people with food and supplies, but we were not prepared for the kind of brokenness and darkness we encountered that day as we worshiped in that village church.

And I think that raises an important question for us as we continue in our sermon series, welcome to the table.

As our church continues to grow and expand into Stanford, are we prepared to love and welcome people whose brokenness does not fit neatly into our categories?

What happens when brokenness is no longer hidden, but it's standing right in front of you?

What happens when the person sitting across from you makes you feel uncomfortable?

Well, that's exactly what we encounter in today's story in Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Jesus is invited to the dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee.

And sometime during the meal, an uninvited guest appears.

Now Luke describes her simply as a woman of the city who was a sinner.

We don't know exactly what her sin was.

It's most likely that she may have been a prostitute or someone who was very promiscuous.

Whatever the details, one thing is clear.

She was most likely the subject of gossip in town.

She walks into the dinner uninvited, approaches Jesus from behind, and falls at his feet.

She begins to weep.

Her tears fall on his dusty feet and she wipes them with her hair.

She begins to kiss his feet and pours perfume over them.

And the people in the room are shocked.

For a woman in that culture to let down her hair in public was inappropriate.

And then to use her hair to wipe a man's feet would have been considered an intimate or scandalous act.

And Simon, the dinner host, is appalled.

He says to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.

And knowing Simon's thought, Jesus responds by telling him a story beginning in Luke chapter 7, verse 41.

Luke 7:41

He says to Simon, A certain moneylender had two debtors.

One owed 500 denarii and the other 50.

When they could not pay, they canceled the debt.

He canceled the debt of both.

Now which of them will love him more?

And Simon answered, Well, the one I suppose from whom he canceled the larger debt.

And he said to him, You have judged rightly.

Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman?

I entered your house, and you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.

You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.

Therefore I tell you that her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little.

And that's the point that Jesus wants Simon to see.

Both are in need of mercy.

Simon is looking at this woman and he's saying, She's a sinner.

She's the one who has the problem.

But Jesus is saying to Simon, but you have a debt too.

The difference is that she knows it.

She knows that she needs forgiveness.

She knows that Jesus is the only one who can forgive her, and that she has nothing to offer him except her brokenness.

So she boldly comes to Jesus, risking humiliation, rejection, and judgment of everybody in that room.

Simon, on the other hand, doesn't seem to recognize his own need.

He invited Jesus into his home, but he doesn't offer him the basic hospitality that was customary for a guest: water for his feet, a kiss of greeting, oil for his head.

The woman wasn't even invited to the table, yet she welcomes Jesus with everything she has.

She pours out her heart and worships extravagantly.

And that's what happens when we truly recognize our need for Jesus.

When we recognize how much we've been forgiven, it changes us.

We worship differently.

We love differently.

We see people differently.

And I think that's the first invitation that Jesus gives us through this story.

And it's that before we can host anyone at our tables, we must first host the presence of God in our lives.

This means simply more than simply knowing about Jesus or coming to church once a week on Sundays.

It means recognizing our need for him daily and intentionally making room for him in our lives.

Simon had Jesus seated at his table, but he treated him casually.

And I wonder if we're honest with ourselves, how often we can do the same thing.

We can become so familiar with Jesus and our many spiritual activities that we stop being amazed by him.

We can go through the motions, follow the rules, and become so familiar with church that we completely miss Jesus.

And that is the danger of religion.

We can be around the things of God without actually encountering God.

We can sing about Jesus and not meet Jesus.

We can speak about grace without actually receiving grace.

That's what happened to Simon the Pharisee.

His religious activities led to self-righteousness, which blinded him to his own need for Jesus.

There was proximity without surrender.

And this is a powerful warning for those of us that have been Christians for a long time.

So how do we begin to host the presence of God in our lives?

Well, think about when you have a guest coming over.

If you know that someone is coming, you're not going to just open the door and then go about your day and pretend that they're not there, right?

You're going to prepare the place.

You're going to pay attention to them.

You're going to spend time and engage with them.

You become intentional about their presence.

And the same is true for hosting the presence of God in our lives.

It means intentionally making space for God, spending time with him, listening to him, worshiping him, turning our attention toward him throughout the day.

And that kind of intentionality usually begins with hunger.

There has to be something inside of us that says, God, I want you more than anything else that this life has to offer.

A hunger to know God, not just know about him, but to encounter him.

If I had the power to impart one spiritual gift to you today, it would be the gift of hunger.

Because it's hunger that keeps you drawing back to Jesus.

It's a hunger that says, I'm going to make room for God's presence in my life.

And when we do, we begin to hold him in ways that changes our lives.

He begins to change the way that we see ourselves.

He begins to change the way we see our circumstances.

He begins to change the way we see other people.

Ultimately, he changes the way we live.

What we behold, we become.

And after being there for about a week, I quickly realized that, you know, there is a limit to what our team can offer in such a short amount of time.

We can give people food, we can give them supplies, but what they need the most is not what you could put on a table.

What they need is an encounter with Jesus.

And so I took one of the interpreters with me and we began to walk around asking the Holy Spirit to highlight people to pray for.

And we came across a woman who was seated at a table with her children.

Her face was slightly swollen and partially paralyzed.

Her right eye was almost completely shut, and half of her face was drooping down.

When we asked her about her story, she shared that she grew up in an orphanage and at 15 years old she suffered a stroke.

Her life was marked by pain and rejection and betrayal and trauma.

It was so hard to hear her story.

And so we asked, could we pray for you?

And so she said yes.

And as we began to pray, I saw a picture of Jesus leaning towards her and kissing her face.

And in that moment, I sensed the Lord inviting me to imitate what I saw him do.

And honestly, I was uncomfortable.

The thought of kissing a complete stranger on the face was way outside of my comfort zone.

But God said to me, Are you willing to risk love over comfort?

And so I told the interpreter what I saw, and we asked her if we could do it, and she said not.

She nodded, yes.

So I cupped her face in my hands and I began kissing her cheeks.

And I looked into her eye and I said, Jesus loves you.

You were wanted by God.

He has a purpose and a plan for you, and you are beautiful to him.

After the prayer, my interpreter and I looked at each other in complete shock because her right eye that had been shut was open.

We were able to see both of her eyes.

God had not only healed her heart from the pain of the rejection and the trauma, but he also healed her physical body.

The love of God is so extravagant.

There are times it can make us feel uncomfortable.

It crosses boundaries and move towards people that we might move away from.

It touches people that we might be afraid to touch.

It welcomes people we might not know how to welcome.

That is what we see in the life of Jesus time and time again.

He did not weigh people to have it all together before he moved towards them.

He entered into the spaces that religion said to stay away from.

He sat with those who were considered broken and unclean.

And it was his presence that transformed them.

And he grew up in a tradition that was all about following the rules.

Keep this, keep this, keep this, and you'll become this.

Well, one night he had a dream that his church sanctuary was filled with drug addicts, prostitutes, drug dealers, and people from all sorts of crime life.

And they were doing everything wrong.

They were fighting in the aisles, they were drinking, they were having sex in the pews, they were dealing drugs, and he was doing everything he could to stop them.

And finally, in his anger, he yelled out, If you can't honor God's house, then get out.

And as soon as he said that, he heard God speak to his heart and say, Why would you send away what I've sent in?

And the pastor said, God, I never asked for this.

And God said to him, You asked me for the loss.

Now keep it simple.

Love them and let me change them.

See that dream completely revolutionized the way that he thought of doing church and evangelism.

It wasn't about pointing to people what they were and were not doing, but what Christ was inviting them to.

It was God who pursued us first and loved us.

We were not saved by our own efforts or our own goodness.

We are saved by his grace.

So if we do not go to them, how will they ever know and experience the love of God?

My deepest prayer for us as a church is our benediction song, Pentecost.

That it would not be something that we sing every Sunday, but it would become our reality.

Come, Holy Spirit, make your dwelling here in us.

Fill us up with your great power that we may go out with you and stand for you, speak your name, to touch and heal with signs and wonders that all might know you came.

May that be more than just words that we sing.

May it be the life that we live.

Amen.org.