Last week as we kicked off this series called unstoppable Tim described a moment that probably changed the course of a woman life forever. Here’s the story…
Imagine a woman, who lives in the Middle East in a small town, in a very religious community some 2000 years ago, she is well known as a sinful woman. Maybe she’s sleeping with her boyfriend. Maybe she’s married and she’s cheating on her husband or a prostitute. The text doesn’t exactly tell us.
All we know from history is that she’s a well known notorious sexual sinner, unclean woman the Bible tells us.
We also know historically some important things about women some 2,000 years ago in this culture. We know they
• Couldn’t vote
• Couldn’t own property
• Couldn’t testify in court
• Did not participate in the meals
• If they let their hair down it was grounds for a beaten.
• And was, often times considered property of their husbands or their dad.
That’s the life of this woman we walking with in this story in Luke chapter 7.
Imagine what her life is like, how damaged and broken and brutal it must be from all she has gone through.
And then one day she experiences something or better yet someone that alters her entire destiny
Luke 7:36-49
Here we find the religious people inviting Jesus to have dinner…in particular he’s having dinner with the Pharisees. The Pharisees where the church attendees. This is a private dinner party in a home and Jesus accepts the dinner invitation. This woman bursts on the scene. Her reputation is damaged, destroyed, because she’s considered dirty and defiled in that culture.
And she hears that Jesus is at this man’s home. So she’s going to do the unthinkable. She walks to the door… and just walks in the house…And they all know her, they all know her reputation. She walks right into the dinner party, she’s the only woman in the room. And they smell the perfume. This is very expensive perfume. This is costly stuff. This may have been the perfume she wore to entice men, we don’t know.
But we do know in the text is that she noticed that Jesus feet were dirty, I mean people back then were walking along dirty, muddy paths, the same paths that the animals walked, which probably meant they had stepped on feces and garbage and mud. And the way the dinner table would’ve looked is their dining table would have been low to the ground. And the men’s feet would have been coming out from the table in a circle, basically right in front of someones face.
That’s why it was customary to have someone wash your feet because of this and because in the text it tells us that she was the one that did this, it can be assumed no one even bothered to do this for Jesus. And then, all of sudden, this woman who would not be stopped, she bursts on the scene and she notices that Jesus’ feet are dirty and she does the unthinkable. She approaches Jesus.
Why is this unthinkable? You need to understand the culture. Even though the bible doesn’t forbid it, the culture of the day forbids a woman like her from touching a man like him in any way.
She gets down, perhaps on her knees and she goes to wash Jesus feet.
There are moments in our life that shape us, that define us and that mark us. I believe this was one of those moments for this woman.This woman had everything to lose socially by doing what she was doing so here’s the question I want to pose today…
Why, why did she do it? Why put herself in danger? Why give away this perfume? Why take a risk and do something no one would understand or even accept…why?
First off, I do believe you may have misstated the above sentence when you said the woman had "EVERYTHING TO LOOSE SOCIALLY". Or maybe you didn't and that being the case,I believe the woman had NOTHING to loose sociallly by anyone's standard of her day. She was already an outcast.
ReplyDeleteBut why did she take that risk to do something THAT publicly, in front of THOSE people, and their wives who were surely in the background somewhere, seeing this as well? Why do something that no one would understand or would've even ALLOWED less alone ACCEPTED?!! Because she was DONE! She was tired of the life she was living and she wanted forgiveness for herself? She needed healing because it wasn't in her to change on her own and her soul was crying out for something to stop the pain of the sickness and depravation that was eating her up on the inside. Darkness of the heart has a metal hand on the flesh when one is weak but it can never grip the heart and her heart is what heard that the man Jesus was near. She had heard the stories, word of mouth back then was better thatn FACEBOOK, so His reputation had preceeded Him.
I believe that the men sitting aroung that dinner table with Jesus that day had a more personal relationship with that woman than the story even mentions but that is speculation and conspiracy thinking at this time. But was came across as evident to me is the irreverence these men, the Phairasees had for Jesus and themselves. The fact that none of them cleaned their feet THAT night. Was that the only night they sat around and ate like that or was that habit? If not, then why that night? Was it because of the guest? What they thought of Him?
I don't believe that woman came in that door to offer to clean Jesus' feet. I believe she came in to give up something-that expensive bottle of perfume, as sacrifice of all her worldly possessions in order to be saved. But she was a Lion chaser and took a daring chance and leaped on it because she did the unthinkable, she actually touched the feet of Jesus with her tears, hair and hands. No one in the room would've thought to do that. Though the reasons why she did that may not have been evident to all witnessing it, Jesus knew why.