Seen by Jesus

For the last few months, I’ve been leading a Wednesday night Bible study on Forgotten Women of the Bible. We’ve talked about Leah, Michal, Jehosheba, and more. There are a few women who, I don’t think I could lead an hour-long discussion about them, but I still wanted a chance to share their stories. I don’t want them to be forgotten. And so, today, I want to tell you about one of those ladies.

Hers is one of the more familiar stories out of the bunch. (We know our Gospels a lot better than we know our Old Testament!)

We meet her in Luke chapter 7. Jesus is having dinner with a Pharisee named Simon, when an unexpected visitor joins them:

And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster 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 her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. (7:37-38)

Simon is scandalized by what he sees, and he thinks to himself, ‘Well, if Jesus here were really a prophet, then he’d know what kind of woman this is touching him—this sinner.’ (7:39)

But he did know. Simon thought that this woman’s distance from God would repulse Jesus, but her distance from God was precisely why Jesus wanted to be with her. His mission was to seek and save the lost, not wash his hands of them and cut them loose.

Besides: to Jesus—unlike Simon—this woman wasn’t defined by her sins. She was defined by her great love. To Simon, it’s very simple: “she is a sinner.” (7:39) But Jesus isn’t content with that. He asks Simon, “Do you see this woman?” (7:44) Do you really see her? Do you see what she’s done for me? Some people may only see your past, your mistakes, your collection of scarlet letters, but Jesus sees your heart, who you’re trying to be, who you can be someday. Simon sees a woman who has sinned. Jesus sees a woman who has been forgiven much and loves much (7:47).

This nameless woman’s story reveals how Jesus looks at you and me, whenever we come to him ashamed and in the wrong—whether it’s from that one nagging vice that, try as you might, you just can’t kick, or it’s from a lifetime of self-centeredness and self-indulgence. He looks at you the way the prodigal’s father looked at him: longing for his child to be close, to be home again. To him, you’ve always been so much more than a sinner.

The late Dallas Willard described the scene in Luke 7 like this: “She had seen a goodness in him that could only be God, and it broke her heart with gratitude and love.” That’s why she shamelessly adored him with her ugly crying, messy hair, and pricy ointment. May we all find a way, today, to show Christ our gratitude and love.

You can listen right here!

Sweat the Small Stuff

There’s a great quote from St. Augustine, an influential Christian bishop from the 300s-400s, that says,

Do not shrug daily sins aside because they are small; fear them, rather, because they are many… How tiny are grains of sand! Put too much sand into a boat, it sinks. How tiny are drops of rain! They fill rivers and wash away houses, don't they? So don't just shrug these sins aside.

When I look at this or that “small” sin, it may not seem too alarming. Okay, so I voiced that criticism that I should have kept to myself. I ignored that phone call that I should have taken. (I’m sure I’ll call them back!) I fueled my resentment by reading that news article, even though I knew it would only make me mad. It happens. God will forgive me. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that my day is filled with those small sins. How long before all of those rain drops swell into a flood that does serious, lasting damage?

When I saw that quotation, it reminded me of some other words, from Catherine Sanderson, a writer and professor of psychology: “You gotta sweat the small stuff.” Sanderson’s point was that tiny, seemingly insignificant decisions and acts lead you somewhere. They set a trajectory that, once you get a little farther along, may not seem so tiny or insignificant. That affair began with an “innocent” conversation at work. That rift in the friendship began with the choice to bring last week’s argument back up. If you want to avoid trouble and hurt down the road, you’ve gotta sweat the small stuff.

And maybe that’s why Jesus said in Luke 9:23 that “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

Taking up your cross daily means sweating the small stuff. It means refusing to shrug off those tiny sins. Jesus isn’t calling his followers to carry a literal cross like his and go to their deaths—not usually, at least—but to carry a cross of daily self-denial, of setting aside my preferences, my feelings, and my desires, for the sake of loving God and loving my neighbors. In that classroom full of hyper kids. In your car at the intersection. In front of a sink full of dirty dishes at home. All day long you have opportunities to either shrug off a tiny sin and do what you want, or to take up your cross and go where Jesus is leading.

And whether I am a faithful disciple of Christ today probably isn’t going to depend on how I respond to some earth-shaking temptation or obstacle. It’ll depend on the choices I make in all of those small moments. It’ll depend on whether I pay attention to and get intentional about the small stuff.

Listen to this devotional below (read by Stuffy-Nosed Nance!):