Looking at People Through A Mothers Eyes.

Text: Luke 7:36-49

Focus: Focusing on the person.

Function: To help the congregation understand my vision of caring for the “one.”

Form: Story Telling

Intro:

I Come to the Garden’s purpose

• A woman loving her son.

Mothers believe in their children.

When no one else believes in them, a mother and a good wife know how to believe in and trust.

It is a special quality that women have.

Jesus was going through this time when people did not believe in Him.

He had enemies. The only people Jesus had conflicts with were the religious leaders of the day.

When a “sinner” came to Jesus: He welcomed them. So, the leaders condemned Him for being a Friend of Sinners.

I like that term.

It is like Susan’s sign, “No Sin is Greater that God’s Forgiveness.”

On the other side, “be safe, pull in here to text or make a call.”

The message is that we care for holistic ministry: body, spirit, mind and soul.

So Jesus upset the status-quo of society.

He called the rich to be generous to the poor.

He commanded people to stop using their religion as an excuse

And He was making enemies pretty fast.

READ LUKE 7:36-49

He is in the house of His enemy, Simon the Pharisee. Simon is hoping to trap Him in something. He is also being rude to Him.

A woman walks in, a prostitute. She is crying, she washes his feet with expensive perfume; she dries them with her hair.

Simon thinks he has Jesus trapped. He says to himself: “If Jesus were a prophet He would not let such a person touch him.”

But look at verse 36, first statement: Behold.

• Not a literary device to open a new story, but a command to really think about this next story. God says, “Look at this. It is a visual image. When you see it for what it really is, you will understand. (That is, provided you are willing to let God be the one to lead you).

Then again, Verse 44: Do you see this woman?

Everything changes when we stop to consider the consequences of our actions, the consequences of the way we judge people, the consequences of the way we justify ourselves.

Simon has just “justified himself” by objectifying this woman.

To objectify a person is to ignore them, or not love them as a neighbor, or condemn them, or mistreat them because they are “less.”

It was easy for Simon. Although he was wealthy, arrogant, proud, an abuser of the poor, a religious hypocrite, at least he wasn’t her.

That is the beauty of mothers, or what mothers are supposed to be. They always see the potential inside someone. They have that quality of being able to love unconditionally.

He said to himself, at least I am not her.

And, that sinful human device continues today.

My mom gave me permission to say this.

• Raised in Clyde, Ohio, in Sandusky County.
• Unlike where she raised me, in the middle of an inner city-
• Because of the location where she was raised, she did not have the pleasure of knowing and learning to appreciate people of different races.
• Until her and my dad took on their first pastorate.
• They moved to Brownsville, Tennessee and started a church in an old storefront right downtown.
• Her first reaction to people of different color was fear. She did not know them.
• All she heard was stories about them.
• But she quickly changed her mind when she lived in a multi-cultural community.
• And she was terrible grieved at the way the African Americans were treated in the South, in the 50’s.
• BEHOLD THE PERSON.
• She was incredulous –I mean she found it incredible that people could treat their fellow people that way!

This Pharisee used the term “sinner” in order to justify himself.

I have fought racism my entire life. It is a big part of my calling. And it comes from the way I see Jesus looking at people.

The Pharisee was looking for any excuse to continue his lavish lifestyle, his control over the people. He needed to not feel bad about taking advantage of others, so he uses this term: Sinner.

Jesus, uses the term: Woman. Neighbor.

Terms have been used throughout history to objectify others.

Have you ever heard the term: Cretan?

• If you watched Mash, Charles Winchester, the snobby doctor would use that term any time he felt someone was acting out of the common class.
• It is actually a biblical reference.
• Titus 12, Paul criticizes a church because one of their pastors said, “all Cretans are liars, lazy and worthless.”
• That term, in that day, wasn’t any different than my mom hearing the “N” word in the South.

Hitler’s propaganda minister, Goebbels, started the Pollock joke as a way to objectify the Slavic people in Poland and Czechoslovakia. They were white, like his beloved Aryan race, but he wanted their land for himself and he figured his soldiers would have a moral problem with killing similar peoples, so he started the jokes in order to help his troops see another person as less than human.

He did the same thing with the Jews.

I hate it when I hear believers call Homosexuals: “Queers” and “Fags.”

It keeps us from seeing others as people that Jesus died for.

The Pastor Parish committee asked me to articulate a little more clearly what my vision is as the pastor of this church.

And if one statement could sum up how I believe the Church should do its ministry it is this: “Look at the woman.”

I could add, “Simon, look at the woman.”

Do you see the difference?

I want to look at the woman the same was Jesus looked at her, not the way Simon looked at her.

In Korea and Vietnam, the enemy was referred to as Gooks. It is another objectifying term used to dehumanize the other.

Those words should not come out of the mouths of believers.

No less than 8 times in the New Testament, does the command from Jesus get said and repeated: A new command I give you, Love one another.

In Romans 13 Paul said, all the commands about how we live with others is summed up in the one command, Love one another.

The change starts with language. When I stopped telling Pollock Jokes, my whole attitude towards everyone began to change.

I began more and more to see everyone as my neighbor.

I was working on this language thing with one of my parishioners in Indiana, and he said to me: “But my whole life, I have comforted myself with the knowledge that at least I am not a ***** (you can fill in whatever racial slur you want).

I believe it was Charles Wesley, the preacher of the Great Awakening who commanded his pastors to prepare sermons with “a bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.”

If the preaching isn’t relevant to the culture, then it is mere theory and there is nothing practical about it.

So here goes, and I am not being political.

Two weeks ago on facebook I was called a liar, a heretic, a twister of scripture and unpatriotic.

I was told this by a friend of a friend who posted a question on her facebook page.

• She said, “what do you think of Arizona’s new immigration law.”
• I am sure we would have a variety of opinions here.
• I am sure that everyone has reached their conclusions with sincerity and integrity.
• My twin brother is pretty far right in his politics, and next to my wife and my mom, he is one of my most trusted friends.
• He keeps telling me, “Phil, we need a balanced approach to our news outlets, in order to make good choices, the way our democracy and press work, two sides speak their minds and the population then makes decisions.”
• And he agrees with me that the conversation has gotten so mean-spirited that we are stuck.
• The rhetoric is too strong.
• So, on this friends Facebook page, I simply asked this question: “Would Jesus call them `Neighbor’ or `Illegals?’” I said, the whole discussion changes for us Christians when instead of objectifying them, we use Jesus terms.
• Apparently, that makes me a heretic and a liar in the eyes of the woman who bitterly opposed my question.
• You see, she just objectified me by calling me names that are not true.
• Given the other Pharisees question, right before the story of the Good Samaritan, “Who is my neighbor?”
• I can’t in any universe picture Jesus using any other term for her.
• Jesus told him the foreigner, the alien, the despised, and for lack of better terms, the despised illegal alien –there was real hatred between the races- was his neighbor.
• But please, I know you are smart enough to consider this: I hope you are thinking how deep this goes.
• Because not only did she objectify me, but I objectified her.
• That woman isn’t my enemy, she is my neighbor and I didn’t treat her like one.

I learned this from my mother. She taught me how to love others unconditionally.

Sometimes, when we point to “the enemy, the other” and say to someone else: “Is that person your neighbor?” it works.

In John 8, there was the woman caught in adultery.

It is easy to blame the woman in that sense and you have all heard about the hypocrisy of the men condemning her when they didn’t bring the man to Jesus as well. I have heard sermons “Where was the man?”

And Jesus, in her defense says to them, look at the woman, and then look at yourselves and if you are sinless, cast the first stone.

From the oldest to the youngest, they were convicted and left her.

For once, people looked at the woman and recognized that they too, needed a savior.

Let us never cast stones, at anyone.

The story had an happy outcome when the people gave up self righteousness.

That is my vision. I believe that ministry will begin to flow out of it.

I think about next weekend, sitting in a room with people who are guilty of murder, rape, theft. God keeps speaking to me, when I look into the face of those men, I am looking into Jesus face.

The more we adopt this spirit, the more God will send His hurting babies, His tender sheep, His lost souls for comfort and rest.