Where the Women Were

Text: Luke 7:36-8:3

Focus: The Holy Spirit (Pentecost 5)

Function: to train people in humility

Form: Storytelling

Intro: How do you react to this story of Jesus, the woman and Simon the Pharisee?

I remember a great Annual Conference address, “Do you see the woman?” whereby the speaker compared the washing of Jesus’ feet by a woman in both Simon the Pharisee’s house, and Simon the Leper’s house.

Jesus appeared much more comfortable in the house of the outcast than He did in the house of the Religious leader.

And in both cases, first, defending Himself against the Pharisee, and then defending Himself against a person who would use religion for a source of personal greed, points to the woman and demands that instead of passing judgment on people, they should look at the person, their circumstance and then, always then, give them grace.

Jesus does something huge here. He condemns religious exclusion in every form simply based on the capacity of a person to turn to Jesus for healing and restoration.

That, Jesus is showing us, is what the Church is and should be.

Remember, we have the power to forgive people their sins.

We empower people to live holistic lives that are surrendered to Christ Jesus.

I used to frame this as Jesus confronting self-righteousness.

But it is more. Jesus is condemning the structures that were designed to keep people on the outskirts of society. And, it happens in order to maintain power and control.

So again, how do we react to this story?

Before our church got the hearing devices, one lady, who barely heard depended on reading my lips to fill in details of my sermon. I keep my mustache trimmed because of her. And sometimes, she would call because she misunderstood something that I said.

But this one day, she reacted to me telling people that “woman of ill-repute” was an euphemism for Prostitute. She absolutely refused to believe that such a man of God, as Jesus was, would ever allow such a person to actually touch Him.

And then she realized that the Simon’s self-righteous offense was the sin in the story.

The story itself is intended to elicit, or, if you are offended as Simon the Pharisee, or this woman was, to provoke an understanding inside of us as to how we ourselves can use our own levels of comfort/discomfort to exclude or include others who are on the outside.

And something else is not lost in this story beginning with the rest of the today’s text.

The introduction to the gospel of Luke self describes it as an historic time-line of the events around Jesus as Luke saw it.

The women that were following Jesus followed Him for quite some time and yet, for some reason, right after this story of the sinful woman, Luke decides to add to the narrative of Jesus these women in His group.

This might be an unfortunate chapter break. The Chapter break between chapters 7 and 8 are not part of the original text. We tend to separate the footnote of who these women were from this story of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet.

But that was not Luke’s intent and the fact of that is not lost on those who prepared our text for the 5^th week after Pentecost.

On the 5^th week after the beginning of the Church’s focus on who and what the Holy Spirit is and does and the power present in the Church, we focus on who and what these women are and were.

Unfortunately, we do not get much mention of the women who supported Jesus in the gospel accounts, but I find some things about it significant.

In an historically male dominated culture and church, we are tempted to think of the story of Jesus as “Jesus and the 12 disciples.”

But here, all of a sudden, the men are mentioned only as the 12 and the women are elevated and are called out by name.

So, let us put this all together.

The religious folk are the antagonists in this story. They want to keep the circle of who is in and out smaller and Jesus opens the door to yet another group of people who are welcome in the Kingdom.

The women represent everyone who humbly comes to Christ.

They didn’t bicker.

They didn’t seek the limelight.

They loved and were spiritual.

They came from all walks and stations of life.

From these different stations, they created a real live community, focused on Jesus Christ.

The Sinful woman approaches Jesus with love, humility and enough brokenness to recognize the healing power of Jesus’ ministry of love, grace, acceptance, forgiveness and finally, repentance.

The religious folks were to proud to see their own need for a Savior.

And in the power of this woman’s love, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit Herself comes into the room, and through her love, both the woman’s and the Spirit’s Love, Jesus is anointed.

Now, in the second anointing, at Simon the Leper’s house, Jesus is anointed for death. This time, it is near the beginning of His ministry, and again, just as the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus for ministry in the form of a dove, here, the Holy Spirit anoints Jesus in the form of a woman.

Where the women were was right there, in the middle of it all, full of faith, setting an example of what it means to love in community.