[category wrecker par excellence]

Here's a great way to make friends and influence people!

Enlarge your moral circle and then switch things up a bit! While I'm familiar with the text referenced here, I never thought about it like this before...

Wrecking every category he had, Jesus tells the religious leader to learn from the weeping prostitute, not the other way around.
— Tullian Tchividjian (@PastorTullian) March 10, 2015

Anointing His Feet

36-39 One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”

40 Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

41-42 “Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”

43-47 Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”

“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”

48 Then he spoke to her: “I forgive your sins.”

49 That set the dinner guests talking behind his back: “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!”

50 He ignored them and said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

Luke 7:36-50 The Message (MSG)

p.s. I dare you to try this with your pastor...

[glad to hear from us... whenever]

God is glad to hear from us, wherever and whenever. Jeff Chu tells this story:

On my flight home after meeting with Bryan, I try to find a word to describe what he is seeking from God. I'm reminded of an anecdote Lupe shared: "Let's say there's a woman and she's a prostitute. At night, she falls into bed exhausted. As she goes to sleep, she cries, 'God, help me!' She wants to be helped. But then she gets up the next morning, she prays, she gets ready for work, and she goes to turn tricks. At the end of her day, she says again, 'God, help me!' What is that? Is that a woman who loves God and is crying out? Is that a woman who God is not going to reach out to until she stops sinning?"

In a soft maternal voice she answered her own question. "After years of listening to people's stories, I tend to think God knows she's trapped. He loves her," she said. "He's glad to hear from her. Whenever."

Lupe then questioned the premise of her question. So which woman is it--the desperate one who is truly seeking God's aid, or the forsaken one who needs to turn to face God before He'll face her? Maybe it's not one or the other. Maybe it's both. Maybe God will meet a prostitute--or a gay man or anyone--wherever he or she is, just as Jesus met the adulterous Samaritan woman at the well before she stopped sinning.

From Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America by Jeff Chu, page 125.  http://doesjesusreallyloveme.com/

[wwjb?]

what would jesus bake? and who would jesus bake for?

Forcing a Christian to bake a cake for a gay wedding is like forcing an African-American to bake a cake for the KKK.

Richard Land, Evangelical Pastor

I’d rather go to jail than make a cake for a gay wedding.

Jack Phillips, Christian Baker

If someone compels you to bake a cake for them, bake them two cakes.

Jesus, servant to all

Matthew 5:38-42, paraphrased for our time and culture.

p.s.
And you'd better make sure they are good cakes too!

rob g

---

On a related note, Tony Campolo tells this story about throwing a birthday party for a prostitute:

Read Tony's story about the birthday party for a prostitute.

If video is not embedded, click here to watch it on YouTube.

sparrows

special number

Pastor Stickman has invited a friend to be part of the worship service. An unexpected friend.

If you attend a church, what do you think would happen if this took place on a Sunday morning? The parishioners might be unsure how whether to applaud or not. Some might be shocked or outraged. And some who have read Bad Girls of the Bible might be quite pleased to meet Rahab in person.

But in general, while many Christian have heard Rahab mentioned in sermons, we don't expect her to be a hero if she showed up today, especially if announced as a prostitute. Now to be fair, there is some debate as to why she is referred to that way, considering that she was an innkeeper and likely made fabrics (based on the quantity of flax on her roof). But the Bible is full of stories of God using unlikely people to further His kingdom, so why not?

Why not indeed?

While I don't know of any Old Testament characters known for singing (aside from the woman in the song of solomon, perhaps), you can imagine what kinds of names might have popped into people's minds when the pastor first started speaking. Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Naomi, and other familiar ones. But today, the visitor is Rahab who protected the spies when they came to her city.  And because of what she did, she and all who were in her household were spared.

What might her song be?

Can you hear it?

televangelesus

Jesus didn't care about his reputation. He acted Christ-like regardless of who was around him and regardless of what the religious leaders thought about it.

Philip's reply was prophetic: while we don't hide passages where Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, or was called a glutton and a drunkard, we downplay the significant ways in which Jesus broke the stigma and social mores of his time to reach out to those on the margins.

How about you and me? Do we love people like Jesus did? Or do we let cultural and social rules determine whom and how we love?

---

Note to readers: after reading this cartoon, one of my friends commented that it really should have been Philip who was concerned with Jesus' reputation, and Jesus replying this his disciples will ignore the significance of this in the future. This makes good sense in general, except that this is the "western jesus."

Who is that, you ask? It is a Jesus who acts the way that contemporary North American Christians tend to. This idea and theme came out of reading Richard Beck's book unclean, taking some of the concepts from it and applying them to Jesus. In other words, if Jesus was the way we tend to be, how would he have acted in the situations he found himself in?

I realize after his question that this is not so obvious in this particular cartoon, so I am pointing it out here.

See all western jesus cartoons.

[vineyard memorial garden for lost women]

Winnipeg.

A city where nearly 50 missing women, children and transgender Winnipeg sex-trade workers had been murdered or gone missing over the previous 26 years.

Most of them aboriginal.

Word has it that there has been a serial killer at work, and on Monday, June 25, 2012, police charged a man with three of these killings.

In Winnipeg's inner city is Vineyard Church,

located in a century-old warehouse at Main and Sutherland, which backs onto the memorial garden.

The Vineyard Memorial Garden, as it is formally called. Rieger [one of the pastoral staff at the church] and some friends started it to remember first 20, and now 24, murdered and missing neighbourhood women. At first, Rieger recalled Monday, it was murdered sex-trade workers who were memorialized; now it's any woman from the area who dies violently.

It was living sex-trade workers who inspired Rieger because they kept coming to him and asking if he could drive them to cemeteries where their friends were buried. And it was these same women -- women like Jane -- who helped build the memorial garden.

Stone by stone. Name by name. Tear after tear.

It was built in way that also honoured aboriginal tradition, and in a manner that allowed families and friends to have a place close by to grieve. The plaques to each woman still have to be put in place. So I asked Rieger when it would be finished.

"Never," he said.

Quotes from Gordon Sinclair Jr.'s full article at Winnipeg Free Press.

For more, read the Vineyard Church's story about the garden.

---

Christine Pohl tells this related story:

A very moving example of hospitality caught me by surprise as I visited one of the communities. Jubilee Partners has set aside a beautiful spot on its property for a graveyard. In it are buried several people who had been homeless before they died, a couple of refugees who became ill and died after they had come to the United States, and two men who had been convicted of capital crimes and were executed by the state. The quiet beauty of the place offered a poignant recognition of the humanity of people who were in many ways society’s castoffs. Their lives had been acknowledged with a simple funeral service and grave marker, arranged by a community who noticed, and cared about, their passing. This dimension of hospitality has very ancient connections. The early church took responsibility for burying strangers, especially indigent ones.

From Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, p. 167.

Added January 3, 2013.

[why would I ever go there?]

grace: visual edition is an amazing book which combines the writings of Philip Yancey in his book What's so Amazing about Grace with great visuals. Here's one story which will give you a taste of the book and which also ties in with the theme of this blog:

"A prostitute came to me in wretched strait, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me that she had been renting out her daughter—two years old!—to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit.

I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable—I'm required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help.
I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face.

'Church!' she cried. 'why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse.'"

What struck me about my friend's story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened?

Yancey, p. 21

guess

A "Guess who's coming to dinner" program would be a lot more exciting if the invitations were handed out on street corners and in the inner-city, don't you think? Unfortunately, it's not any more likely to happen than "Back to church Sunday" attracting large masses of people. In this example, one can only assume that either the woman found the brochure lying around somewhere, or that a very adventurous parishioner handed some out in a red-light district.

Today's reading: Matthew 22: 1 - 14.

Background for those who are not part of this particular church sub-culture phenomenon: some churches hold a "Guess who's coming to dinner" event. Everyone interested signs up. The organizer makes groups comprised of four individuals or couples, and chooses one host from each group. The host only knows that three other sets of people will be coming over for dinner, but not who they are. The other three sets of people only know whose house they will be going to, but not who the other invitees are. After the first dinner where they all meet, each couple takes a turn hosting during the following three weeks.

messed up

At least several ironies here, from thinking that he has it all together to the ludicrous idea that a person had the power to determine who can enter the kingdom of heaven and in what order. Of course, that's a game that's often played, with unfortunate consequences as people are judged and subsequently leave never to return (or never enter a church to begin with).

Who decides who gets into heaven? Has someone decided that you or someone you love won't be allowed in? Or shouldn't be allowed in?