Eating together as enacted community (Luke 7) #1

The Crowded House hosted a conference for people interested in missional church and church planting tied to the book Total Church. This is the second talk that I gave at the conference:

Imagine you’re at a dinner party. The host is one of the leaders of the church and a local councilor. He’s very respectable. He lives in one of the big houses on the posh side of town. And this is great party: the candles are glinting in the cut crystal, you’re sipping sherry, enjoying your deep fried Camembert starter.

Tonight the dinner party is in honour of a visiting speaker. And you’re glad to have been invited because there’s a lot of talk about this man. He’s been causing something of a stir with his radical views. Some people won’t have anything to do with him – they think he’s dodgy. But you’ve got an open mind. And so has the host of the dinner party. You’ve talked about it together. Maybe there are some things you could learn from him. So it’s good to have an opportunity to meet him; to find out what’s he’s really like.

You hear the doorbell and think nothing of it until a woman pushes her way into the room. You can see the despairing face of the host’s wife over her shoulder. This new arrival is wearing a tight fitting blouse with a low cleavage, a skirt that’s way too short with brightly coloured tights and high heeled shoes. She’s painted up to the nines and totters slightly as she walks – probably because she’s had one drink too many. She looks like the sort of person that stands on the corner of West Street, looking for custom. Or maybe she worked in the old ‘massage parlour’ before it was closed down and became a sari shop.

She goes straight to the visiting speaker and throws her arms around him, clasping his head to her bosom. ‘I’m yours,’ you hear her mumble, ‘I’ll always be yours’. She begins to massage his shoulders. It’s then that you notice she’s crying, her mascara streaking down her cheeks.

Everyone in the room seems to freeze. What a thing for a respectable person to have to endure! You feel for him. How embarrassing!

But instead of pushing her away, he reaches up and puts his arms around her. He says something to her which sounds like, ‘And you’re mine’. But he can’t have said that. It’s obvious what kind of woman she is. He can surely see that for himself. He ought to show some discernment. What would people think? What will she think? She might get the wrong end of the stick. She might think it’s a ‘come on’. But then maybe it is a ‘come on’. Maybe he’s one of her ‘customers’. It’s pretty clear this visiting speaker has some big problems.

In his Gospel, Luke tells us about a dinner party very similar to the one we have just described.

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.’ (Luke 7:36-39)

1. Jesus welcomes sinners
Everyone in the city, Luke tells us, knew she was a sinner. She may well have been a prostitute, although Luke does not say this explicitly. To the Pharisees she is like an infectious disease. And yet Jesus accepts her. He welcomes her. He demonstrates God’s grace by welcoming sinners.

But that’s okay by us. We love a good before-and-after story.

Yet this woman treats Jesus with a shocking degree of intimacy. This is not appropriate public behaviour. She lets down her hair to wipe her tears from Jesus’ feet. In that culture letting down your hair was what you did in the bedroom. In public you wore your hair up. Only in front of your husband would you let your hair down. That’s why Paul urges the Christian women of Corinth not to display their new freedom by wearing their hair down (1 Corinthians 11). Then she kisses the feet of Jesus and pours perfume on them. There is perhaps even a suggestion that she is treating Jesus as a client, possibly the only way she knew to relate to men.

And yet Jesus does not stop her. I guess he could have said, ‘I appreciate what you are doing, but it’s not really appropriate behaviour’. And yet Jesus doesn’t stop her.

He doesn’t stop her even though his identity is at stake. ‘When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.”’ (verse 39) Is Jesus a prophet? Is he the promised Son of Man? The questions are swirling the air, but Jesus is happy to link his identity to hers. And he is happy to link his identity to your identity and mine.

It is just before this story that Luke recalls the accusation that Jesus is ‘a friend of sinners’. How is Luke going to defend Jesus against this accusation? And the answer, of course, is that he doesn’t. In fact he tells a story that shows that it’s true. Jesus is the friend of sinners. He links his identity to ours to reveal himself as the gracious Saviour. He comes ‘eating and drinking’ to show that sinners can be part of his kingdom. The glorious Son of Man described in Daniel 7 is the gracious dinner companion of Luke 7.

Luke seems to pick stories that involve tax-collectors and prostitutes. They exemplify notorious sinners. It is as if he is testing us. Have we understand God’s grace? Jesus is pushing us to the limit. How do we react when a promiscuous woman kisses the body of Jesus? Do we celebrate God’s grace or are we scandalised? The grace of God turns out to be uncomfortable and embarrassing.

Involvement with people, especially with the marginalised in our society, begins with a profound grasp of God’s grace. Often our instincts are to keep our distance. But the Son of God ate with such people. He let them kiss his feet. He was the friend of riff-raff, traitors, unrespectable people, drunks, druggies, prostitutes, the mentally ill, the broken, the needy, people whose lives were a mess.

Jesus does not love the poor and broken at a distance. He eats with them. He refuses to be embarrassed by them. He welcomes them into his community.

And ultimately he gives his life for them.

‘Glutton and drunkard’ is an allusion to Deuteronomy 21:21 which describes how a rebellious, drunken son is to be stoned. Jesus, they are saying, is a rebellious son of Israel. ‘But wisdom is proved right by all her children’ (Luke 7:35). In other words, we will see who proves to be the rebellious child. And it turns out not to be Jesus. Jesus will prove to be a faithful son, indeed the faithful son of Israel. It is Israel itself which is a rebellious son of God.

But here is the amazing irony. Jesus does die the death of a rebellious son. Not stoned, but hung on the cross. For that same passage in Deuteronomy which condemns a rebellious son is the one which declares that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Jesus is not the rebellious son. I am. Simon is. You are. But Jesus dies the death of a rebellious son. He dies my death. He dies your death. He dies the death of sinners.