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 7:37-39)

This is one of the most poignant scenes in the ministry of Jesus and it clearly contrasts the heart of religion and the heart of love. In the days of Jesus, when notable individuals visited a town and were invited to a prominent persons home, the villagers were typically welcomed to come and sit around the perimeter of the courtyard and listen to their conversations. Undoubtedly, most seats were reserved for close friends and family of the host but others could, perhaps, hang around the perimeter if they remained quiet and “invisible.”

On this particular evening, one of the “others” broke all protocol and eased her way through the onlookers to the very feet of the notable visitor. I’m sure that both social tension and eyebrows rose as she did so. First of all, this was a woman and women were not welcome to assert themselves in Jewish culture in the first century. More importantly, this presumptuous woman was notoriously known for her sin and certainly did not inhabit the social circles of Simon the Pharisee. It must have been an incredibly awkward moment for the host who had scored a social coup by having this young, controversial, miracle-working Rabbi accept his invitation to dinner. But now, this loose, very unwelcome woman was in the spotlight rather than Simon. More than that, she was making a scene with her sobbing and her theatrics – pouring perfume on the feet of Simon’s guest and wiping is feet with her hair. I’m surprised that Simon didn’t have his servants escort her off the premises but, perhaps, he saw this as a kind of test for Jesus. How would he deal with this breach of etiquette? If he truly were a prophet would he not know that this woman was a blatant sinner and rebuke her before all the righteous gathered in the courtyard?

And what of Jesus? If I had been him I would have found the moment even more awkward with this woman weeping, pouring expensive perfume on is feet, and wiping his feet with her hair with everyone looking on and wondering how these two might be connected – wondering if there were some revelation of scandal in this moment. I’m sure that for her sake and for the sake of everyone there I would have invited her to meet at a better time in a more appropriate setting. But not Jesus. While she is pouring, weeping, and wiping he simply tells a story that justifies the sinful woman and condemns the righteous Pharisee while calmly accepting her worship and repentance. It is likely that only two people in the whole courtyard were not embarrassed – Jesus, the healer of broken hearts, and this broken woman who had come to the Rabbi with a true sense of desperation about her life.

The religious condemned her and rejected her while the creator of the universe and the sinless second Adam embraced her. The religious focused on who she had been while Jesus focused on who she could be. The religious defined her by her sin and wanted nothing to do with her while Jesus saw her sin as the symptoms of a shattered soul and chose to do something about it. If the religious had ruled the moment, this woman would have disappeared into the night carrying an unbearable load of guilt and rejection convinced all the more that God hated her. Jesus showed a different heart and I believe it transformed her life.

The last look at this woman we get through Luke’s gospel ends with Jesus saying, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Lk.7:50). John, however, may open the door for us a little wider when he speaks of Mary in his gospel. In John’s gospel, Mary has a high profile and is the sister of Martha and Lazarus. These three seem to have been very close friends of the Rabbi. You’ll remember that in the 11^th chapter of John, Jesus stood outside the sealed tomb of Lazarus and commanded him to come forth, performing the most notable miracle in his three-year ministry. In the beginning of that particular account we are told, “This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair” (Jn.11:2).

Some scholars do not believe that the woman of Luke 11 is the Mary who played such a prominent role in the life and ministry of Jesus, but I see no contradictions. She, who had been forgiven much, loved much. I believe love took a broken, sinful woman and restored her hope, her dignity, and her family. I believe love took a nameless woman without purpose for her life and gave her an eternal purpose and a name remembered for more than two millennia now. No wonder she was so attached to this distributor of God’s love and sat at his feet while her sister rattled the pots and pans. No wonder she believed that Jesus could give life to her brother since he had already given life to her.

That is the triumph of love over religion and relationship over ritual. Religion simply categorized this woman as a battered and worn relic of humanity ready for the trash heap. Jesus, however, saw her potential. He reclaimed her and repurposed her. He made her beautiful and useful while most of us would have simply walked by her like junk on the side of a road. I absolutely believe in love over religion but, if I’m honest, I drift away from love and into religion and judgment more often than I care to acknowledge – not just toward others but also toward myself. How often do I judge and reject my own heart, thoughts and actions as I compare them to some cold standard of acceptability rather than through the eyes of my Heavenly Father who never rejects but continues to repurpose me in my life. When I judge and reject myself, I reject others. When I receive God’s immeasurable love for me I tend to love others so much more. I’m betting Mary was a lover of broken people and my prayer is that I will also love as Jesus loves.

One of the most sobering passages in the New Testament is spoken by Jesus in Luke 11:37-53.  The NIV places a heading before this text that simply says, “Six Woes.”  Luke records these as a conversation Jesus had with one of Israel’s religious leaders.  It is always easy for us to point the finger at the Pharisees of Jesus’ day and accuse them of hypocrisy and legalism.  But we need to examine ourselves from time to time to see if we have slipped silently into one of the religious habits that Jesus warned  about.

In the beginning of this section, Jesus is eating with a Pharisee who questions him because he did not go through the typical ritual hand washings of the Jews before eating.  Undoubtedly Jesus passed on the ritual because he knew it would be a conversation starter with his religious host.  Jesus began by speaking a hard truth to the man.  He told them that he and other Pharisees were very concerned about washing the outside of a dish while ignoring the inside which might be full of rotten food – greed and wickedness.  He then proceeds to express six “woes” toward the religious elite of Israel.  “Woe” is not so much a declaration of judgment in the original language as it is a statement of how deplorable and pitiful their condition is because they have missed the heart of God.

The first woe describes men who are meticulous at keeping religious ordinances while treating people poorly or while being indifferent to people who are struggling or hurting.  Often the Pharisees saw sinners. broken people, the poor, and those in bondage as being in that condition because of their sin.  They often  saw their condition as God’s judgment on sinful people.   He spoke of the Pharisees as men who were so careful to keep the law that they would even go into their herb gardens to count out a tenth of the produce to meet the demands of the law and to take to the temple while, at the same time, neglecting justice and their love for God. Before we raise our eyebrows at such “religious” behavior we might ask ourselves a few questions.

How many of us are faithful in giving, faithful in church attendance, faithful in our small group Bible studies and are the first to register for every church conference but rarely give series thought to the poor or the oppressed in the world or in our communities?  How many of us have actually taken action on behalf of the unborn that are being aborted by the millions or have stood up to slumlords on behalf of the poor?  How many of us have opened our homes or our pocket books to the homeless or foster children who have been removed from abusive parents?  How many of us have actually worked at soup kitchens or serve at homeless shelters on any consistent basis?

It’s easy to work for the poor or the homeless or for the unborn one day or one weekend a year so that we can “check the box” on caring for the poor.  Serving on a weekend is a good thing but do we actually have a heart for the poor, the oppressed, and the broken? Do we give thought to injustice, poverty, and oppression on all the other days?  I find myself being very willing to serve those I know and those I am confortable with but I also find myself shying away from the poor, the junkies, the prostitutes, and the homeless. And yet Jesus  steers us in that direction on multiple occasions. Remember the parable of the sheep and the goats that were divided on the basis of their caring for the poor and visiting the imprisoned?  Jesus said, “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.“ (Mt. 25:43-45).

This blog is dedicated to helping every believer find freedom and healing in the Lord and to help every believer move in the power of the Holy Spirit.  But to find freedom, healing, and power we must keep our hearts aligned  with the heart of the Father.  If he cares for the poor we must care for the poor.  If he cares for the weak, we must care for the weak.  If he cares for the oppressed, we must also.  As we grow in the gifts of the Spirit we cannot allow ourselves to become self-edification societies who simply sit around and prophesy over one another in our living rooms  or keep our healing gifts within the walls of the church.

As much as we talk about relationship versus ritual it is still easy to slide into religion where we are meticulous in keeping the rules of the church and staying in good standing with the brethren while the world around us is falling apart.  The gospel, the gifts, and the power of God have not been given to the church for safekeeping but have been given to the church to be taken into the world on behalf of the oppressed, the abused, those suffering injustice, and those in bondage.  If we were honest, we would have to say that many churches want to keep “those people” out instead of drawing them in.  That is the heart of the Pharisees and that is the heart Jesus warned us about.  He also said that while tithing meticulously, they also neglected their love for God.  According to Matthew 25, we love God when we love the poor, the down and out, and all the others beaten up and discarded by the world.  The church can have great preaching, great worship, great facilities, great youth programs, great marriage ministries and so forth but if we reserve them for the saved, the members in good standing, the affluent, or those like us rather than spending them on the lost and the broken then we are close to the first “woe” Jesus uttered toward those who claimed to know God best.  I know I am prone to insulate myself from the world but I must remember that Jesus died for those still outside the walls of the church.

God give me the heart to care about those used and abused by the world and give me the love and wisdom to do something about it so that your heart might be blessed, Jesus might be glorified, and your Spirit might move with power.  Amen

Tomorrow – the second “woe.”

In the early pages of the gospel of Luke, Jesus had just been questions by disciples of John the Baptist.  John had sent them to ask Jesus if he were, in fact, the Messiah or if another was to come.  That moment gives us some insight into the ministry of prophets.  John was, according to Jesus, the greatest of the prophets and yet he was unsure of whom Jesus was. Paul says of New Testament prophets that “we know in part and we prophesy in part” (Jn.13:9).  Apparently that was true of Old Testament prophets as well.  They spoke the things that God put on their hearts and in their minds but often those prophecies were just bits and pieces of God’s overall canvas rather than the whole picture.  John had been confident at one time that Jesus was the Messiah but even John seemed to be looking for a powerful, political, and military savior of Israel rather than a suffering savior who would die on a cross.

But John had come in the spirit of Elijah and was the last in line of the great Old Testament prophets.  He had been sent to prepare the hearts of the people for the coming Messiah who was already among them.  Many of the Jews sensed the call of God to return to him and his ways and so submitted to John’s baptism as a sign of repentance and a need for spiritual cleansing.  Luke said, “All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John.” (Luke 7:28-30).

The last phrase really catches my attention.  “But the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God’s purposes for them…” The religious elite and those who knew scripture best rejected God’s purposes in their life.  The evidence of that was that they had refused to be baptized by John because to do so was a confession of spiritual need and sin that cried out to be cleansed. Here is what we discover.  I n our relationship with God, the heart is more important than the head.  These were men who spent their lives in prayer, fasting, and study of the Torah.  But their study had not prepared their hearts for God’s Messiah.  Undoubtedly, they did not have the benefit of the Holy Spirit but the common people responded to John’s preaching while the religious elite did not.

I can think of a couple of a couple of reasons. First of all, the religious system of the Jews did not meet the need of the people at all.  They had limited access to God because they were not priests.  The Law seemed like a burden the demanded much and delivered little for them. Their tithes supported a system that had little regard for the unschooled and the unwashed. Because they had little standing with the religious leaders they felt they had little standing with God.  They were in need of good news.

For the Pharisees, however, the Law and the religious system that supported the Law gave them status and a false sense of security about their salvation.  Doing all the right religious things and being schooled in Torah theology gave them the sense that God was pleased with them and honored them as much as they honored themselves.  They were wrong, of course, but that was their view of themselves and God.

Secondly, the Pharisees and experts in the Law were a self-righteous bunch.  Legalism, salvation based on our own merit, forces people to one of two positions. Either I give up all together because I’m overwhelmed with my personal sense of sin and failure or I convince myself that I am more righteous than most so my odds for getting into heaven are pretty good. The common people felt the wait and hopelessness of salvation based on personal merit.  Again they needed good news so when John began to hint that a new doorway to God was about to be opened, they were willing to listen.  The religious leaders, however, needed to protect their righteous persona so they could not submit to a baptism that was overtly for sinners.

The lesson is that self-righteousness and a commitment to the religious status quo will cause us to miss God’s purposes for our life.  God reveals his purposes to the desperate and the hungry. Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Scripture is clear that God has purposes for believers in general but specific and unique purpose for each believer.  “   For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph.2:10). “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers^” (Rom.8:29).

When we are living out God’s purposes for our life, our lives have eternal significance.  We experience the pleasure and the power of God flowing through us as we fulfill those purposes.  Life seems abundant and exciting rather than tedious and boring. The problem with legalism and religious systems are that they are a treadmill with each day seeming much like the one before it.  Depending on God and stepping into his purposes each day is an adventure.  Have you ever noticed that the most extreme believers seem to have the most fun?  It is because they have pushed into God’s purposes more that most of us.

I believe the abundant life Jesus promises is tied up with the purposes God has ordained for our lives. Religion will not get us there but instead will blind us to those purposes. Self-righteousness and a need to be in control will also cause us to miss God’s directions. A commitment to a static faith and a spiritual status quo will also cause us to miss his purposes that, like his mercies, are new every morning.  Let me invite you to humbly ask God to show you his purposes for your life today and for faith to pursue those purposes. Those who hungered for a fresh touch, a fresh revelation, and rekindled relationship with the Father discovered his purposes for them in the days of John the Baptist. That same hunger will open up his purposes for us today.  Be blessed by going after your destiny in Christ.

If I had written the script, I probably would have painted Christ’s greatest opposition as unreligious pagans who would have accused him of being narrow, bigoted, and judgmental as he preached God’s truth in an uncompromising way.  And yet, his greatest opposition and the primary force pushing for his execution were the religious leaders of his day. Was it just ignorance or a misunderstanding of scripture that created the opposition or was there something else behind the hatred they felt for this young Rabbi?

In John 8, Jesus had presented a stinging indictment of many of the religious leaders of the Jews.  He said to them, “I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me because you have no room for my word…If God were your Father you would love me…You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.”

The healing of the man who was born blind (John 9) may give us some additional insight into this violent opposition.  In this section, Jesus comes upon a man who was blind from birth.  Jesus spit on the ground, made an ointment of mud, rubbed it on the man’s eyes, and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. When the man obeyed, his sight was restored.

Apparently, everyone in the neighborhood new this man and so the news of such a miracle traveled at the speed of gossip (a little faster than the speed of light). Soon the Pharisees were investigating the matter. Their first response to the miracle was that Jesus could not be from God because he had healed on the Sabbath.

The first indicator of “religion” (and I think a spirit of religion) rather than relationship is that events are judged first by their form rather than by their fruit. Jesus had not acted in accordance with their rules and their expectations of how God works so that the fruit became irrelevant.  Never mind that their forms had never healed a rash much less the eyes of the blind.

Secondly, they denied the miracle. They assumed it was a scam and that this man had never actually been blind. Religion always establishes parameters within which God is permitted to function.  Anything that occurs outside of those parameters cannot be authentic or from God.

The next indicator was pressure for everyone to conform to the rules.  Even though an undeniable miracle had occurred, the Pharisees continued in their attempts to discredit the claims. When undeniable evidence was produced that this man, who now had sight, was born blind, they focused their attention on discrediting Jesus – the one who had performed the miracle in the name of the God of Israel.  I love their logic.  If a man does not conform to our rules then he can’t be of God. If he performs an undeniable miracle that could only come from God then it didn’t come from God because he didn’t conform to our rules and our rules don’t produce miracles. Therefore, he must be a sinner. Not only that, but we’re not so sure about the one who received the healing either.

The fourth characteristic is control.  The parents of the man who was healed would not give a positive testimony for Jesus for fear of being put out of the synagogue.  Clearly, they understood that disagreement with the leaders about how God operates would mean excommunication.

A last ditch effort by the Pharisees in response to other undeniable miracles that operated outside their rules or parameters was to simply claim that a miracle had occurred but that Satan had suddenly gone into the healing business. Many religious folk will paly the “deception card” when confronted with something outside their theological comfort zone.

The response of religion, which is defined here as an organization that operates on the basis of form and ritual rather than relationship with God, was to immediately deny the work of God because it didn’t fit their well crafted definitions nor was it subject to their control.  It is not that we should accept a claim that anything and everything done in the name of Jesus is approved by God but neither should we reject out of hand an event or an interpretation of scripture that we have not seen before or heard taught before.  It’s great to refer to precedents established by scripture but every precedent began with a “first time.”

With that reasoning we could dismiss out of hand Moses’ experience with a burning bush.  God never did it that way before.  Ten plagues on Egypt must have been from the devil or meteorological anomalies because God never did it that way before. Don’t pass through that opening in the Red Sea – it can’t be of God. Whoops! No precedent for true prophets walking on water or feeding thousands with a few loaves and fish.

Rather than asking if there is a strict biblical precedent for every way in which God is moving today, we need to look at the fruit of certain ministries.  Do they produce righteousness?  Are they consistent with the Spirit of Christ and the redemptive heart of God? Do they draw people to Jesus? I think biblical precedent is important and should be looked at but should it be the final word?  If it is, then God will do no new things in the earth today even though Jesus said we would do even greater things than he had done. Certainly we are to test the spirits and prophecies, but the question becomes the criteria for testing.

We should be careful of using the same criteria as the Pharisees who had no room for the words of Jesus and whose father was the devil.  Paul warned of those who had a form of godliness but who denied the power of godliness.  Too many believers today fear and distrust any display of power in the kingdom…healing, deliverance, or miracles of any kind. John warned us that the spirit of anti-Christ had gone out into the word – not the spirit of anti-Jesus but anti-Christ.  Christ refers to the anointed one of God.  It makes you wonder if that spirit works against God’s anointing for his people because without it there is no power in the church.

It’s easy to think of “all those churches” out there that are just religious but the bigger issue is to look at our own hearts to make sure that a spirit of religion doesn’t settle there.  Even those of us who believe in the power of God and the move of the Holy Spirit quickly judge others who do it differently or have experiences beyond our own.  Let’s judge righteously but not rush to judgment.  What is the fruit? Is it bringing people to Christ?  Is it done with love? Does it promote righteousness? Are we wanting to control what God does at some level?  These are questions I must ask myself from time to time.  Maybe they would be helpful for you as well.

Blessings.