I fear that I might have been agreeing with the Pharisees that day. It must have been somewhat confusing to watch the scene unfold. A lady comes in that everyone knows as a person with a bad reputation. Maybe she was still flirtatious after her third divorce, maybe she had experienced a few abortions, maybe she was selling her body to make a living or maybe it was one of a dozen other things. The point it, she was known and any "good Christian" knew to avoid her.
Then Jesus just sat there and let her touch him. She wept over him and anointed his feet. No one could avoid forming an opinion or overlooking what was happening. Jesus forced everyone in the room to learn something that day.
First it seems that Jesus gave her back her dignity. He looked at her as his child, as his creation. She was a person not a thing to be avoided. He looked beyond the actions into the heart.
Then he called others to do the same. He called the Pharisees to move from exclusion to inclusion.
Where would I be? Where am I now? How hard it can be to not stereotype or label people. How easy it is to avoid someone that my class of society disapproves of. How easy to forget that I am called to help people -- all people, whatever person -- to polish the image of God that was placed within them at creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment