Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Easter 2014: Incomprehensible Goodness

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/20/2014

video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard
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[Dictaphone story, sale of Straight Talk Plus to Poinsettia on last day of quarter…]

God loves to do good to those who depend on him, who trust in him, who take a leap of faith on him.

I knew it on that day. I tasted and saw that the Lord was good.

In the midst of an anxious system, stress-filled people passing their stress around like the flu in a first-grade classroom, God stepped in with a little bit of life.

I’m so glad you leaned on me; I was hoping to bring you abundant life today.

I don’t remember anything I bought with that commission. That’s not where the life was.

I do remember the feeling of being a star when I returned, because of the praise that came my way from Jane, but that’s not where the life was. I knew my star didn’t shine half as bright as the true light that had provided life for me that day.

No, the life was in the experience of God present with me in the midst of this stressed out world. The signs of his presence in Poinsettia’s light up the room smile and favor. The signs of his presence in the thrill of last second rescue. The wonder of his surprisingly generous response to my asking. The peace and faith that lasts with me to this day in the ever-fresh discovery that he is real, that he is good, and that he loves me in some kind of personal, aww-shucks, embarrassing and a little silly to talk about to another person way.

I have to think that was just the beginnings of a hint as to how the disciples felt when Jesus’ showed up in their locked room, the evening of that famous Sunday, the third day after he’d been killed on a Roman cross.

Here’s the story.

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20 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

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3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

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11Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

13They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

15He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

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Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

16Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

17Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”

18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

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19On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

21Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of anyone, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

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We’ve spent the last 6 weeks talking about the goodness of God demonstrated in Jesus, and there is no doubt that the resurrection teaches us something about the goodness of God, because we see in it how the Father does good to Jesus who entrusts himself to him on the cross. After all, Jesus had taken the ultimate leap of faith, hadn’t he?

But the resurrection teaches us something more than that about the goodness of God.

Yes, God loves to do good to those who depend on him. The Resurrection is the ultimate “Amen!” to that truth. It’s the ultimate vindication of Jesus as the good king of God’s good kingdom, the ultimate “Yes!” to the good news Jesus has been announcing and embodying and demonstrating in his pre-resurrection life.

But God is really, really good.

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God loves to do good - so much so that he loves to do good not just to those who trust in him, but also, and even,

to those who reject him.

To those who persecute him, who do violence to him.

Paul writes about it this way to the new disciples in the capital of the Roman Empire…

6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5v6-8

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No one is exempt from the Resurrection-charged Love that Jesus brings to this world with his nail-pierced hands.

No one.

Not you.

Not the people you love.

Not the people who stress you out and cause you pain.

Not the people who tease you and disrespect you and take out their issues on you.

Not your worst enemy.

Not the person in your life that doesn’t want to hear another word, ever, about God.

No one is exempt from Resurrection-charged Love.

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We said at the beginning of Lent, the season of preparation for the Resurrection, that Jesus came that they might have life, and have it abundantly. “They” includes everyone, anyone who would receive him.

Life for the women in grief.

Life for the disciples in fear.

Life for the members of the crowd who mocked him and called for his crucifixion.

Life for the soldiers who whipped him and nailed him to the cross.

Life for the religious and political leaders who organized his arrest and mock trial.

Life for the “witnesses” who testified falsely against him.

Life for every single one of us who participates, often unwittingly, day after day, in the same enslaving systems of envious desire that focused its Satanic energy on him that Good Friday and whose power he dismantled on Easter Sunday.

It’s Jesus’ resurrection that demonstrates that most powerfully.

It’s his resurrection that makes it possible.

It’s his resurrection that opens the door to us, a door that cannot be shut.

Let’s talk about that. What does Jesus’ resurrection from a brutal, violent death have to do with all of us having life, and having it abundantly?

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Well, it has to do with the wholly unanticipated and striking forgiveness we experience, and are invited to extend, when the resurrected Jesus shows up out of the empty tomb. (Forgiveness is what the peace be with you is all about, and the showing, and the breathing…it’s experienced…)

A forgiveness I experienced that day at Dictaphone, in Poinsettia’s office.

A forgiveness each of us can experience, now that the resurrection has happened, anywhere at any time.

Right in the midst of our stressful work.

Or conflict with other people.

Or in the mundane anxieties of day to day life.

Or in the midst of depression or sickness or tiredness.

A forgiveness that meets us while we are all bound up by death and the brokenness of our broken desires and sets us free to participate, joyfully and freely, in Life. In God’s Life.

To help us see it – because it’s in the seeing of it, the experiencing of it, that its power is made real - we’ve got to go back all the way to the beginning. To Genesis.

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God is with the first human beings, Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden. Human beings, his image bearers. Meaning, at one level, people who are meant to be like him, to share in his purpose, to participate in his desires for themselves and for creation. Unique in the exquisite freedom of their desires, their wills.

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I’ve got provision and life for you, God tells them. All these trees, full of good food for you. A tree of life, even.

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But also in this garden is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat from that tree, God tells them. You’ll certainly die if you do. And of course, God desires life for them – he always has – life, and life abundant.

Now, we need to notice something about human desire that is very helpful for understanding what happens next. Imitation and desire and powerfully linked. If one person desires something, other people who become aware of that desire are strongly inclined to desire the same thing. It’s even been suggested that all desires are, at root, borrowed desires. Advertisers know this; it’s why they’ll show a celebrity using a product and talking about how much they want it – it makes you and me more likely to want it too. Parents and child-care workers know this too. Picture a play room full of toys, with a single toddler playing with one of them – let’s say it’s a cheap happy meal toy, for example. Now another toddler comes in the room. Of all the toys in there, which toy does she want? The one the other toddler is playing with, of course.

So what happens to our ancestors, to Adam and Eve? These image-bearers, created for life, exposed to the desires of God for life, and offered the tree of life, come across a serpent.

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A serpent who points out the tree of knowledge of good and evil, who calls into doubt the idea that they will surely die if they eat of it. You’ll become like God, the serpent says. And in the account in Genesis, the fruit of this tree is now described as desirable.

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Because now Eve wants it. She wants it, at some primitive level, because the serpent wants it. The serpent desires to be like God, the serpent desires death for human beings, the lords and priests of God’s good creation. And now she gives some to Adam, who wants the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because Eve wants it.

And thus begins what is sometimes referred to in theological language as original sin. Sin that prevents us from imaging, from imitating, God’s desires, God’s will, and instead imaging, imitating the desires of the serpent, and of one another.

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We know what happens when our desires are tied up with what other people want. We become rivals. Just like the toddlers in the play room. Two happy kids now fighting over a limited resource.

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And at the end of that story, barring the intervention of Love, is always violence. And death. God in the garden was truthful with Adam and Eve. If you eat of it, you will surely die.

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And thus began a cycle, a system of self-perpetuating violence in human history from which there is no escape from the inside. We can’t always kill our direct rivals, like Cain killed his brother Abel, because if we did, there would never be any civilization or culture. So instead, we temporarily find outlets for our rivalrous envy by unifying in hatred for someone we can pin the blame on for the stress we feel. A process we call scapegoating. We stand in judgment over these scapegoats – people we attribute all kinds of evil to, all the while maintaining our goodness (remember, the tree whose fruit we ate is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) – and we kill them. And remarkably, the tensions we previously felt because of our envy and rivalry calm down for a while, and we can get on with building our cities and countries and empires. But it only lasts so long, and we need new scapegoats.

We see the same dynamics in schools with the majority of kids getting along while they tease a couple of other kids – they always find some reason, and feel justified in it, blind of course to what’s actually happening. It happens in workplaces. In politics. In families. In teams and every kind of human organization.

Cultural anthropologists, scientists who study human beings and culture and civilization, observe that almost every major culture in history has a founding myth that involves a scapegoat, a person whose death gave rise to the building of that civilization or culture.

Scapegoating works, which is why it’s so powerful, and it’s evil at the same time. And when we’re in the midst of participating in it, we’re in darkness about it, feeling good and justified in our persecution of the scapegoat. (Unless you’re one of its victims, of course.)

Scapegoating can only give us the dimmest shadow of life, a shadow with a horribly high price tag – the lives of countless victims, and the ongoing price of an existence with fear at its center. Because any of us can become the scapegoat at any time; not one of us is wholly innocent. Every one of us, but for the Grace of the God who is Love, is inescapably caught up in the original sin of rivalrous desire.

God sees the violence and death and sin we are enslaved to, and it grieves him. He longs to deliver us, to set us free, to save us, to give us life, and life abundant.

Which brings us to Jesus.

At the beginning of John’s gospel, the story that ends with the resurrection, John writes about Jesus:

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In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [could not comprehend] it.

John 1v4-5

Have you noticed that it’s almost impossible to understand what someone else is doing when their desires are fundamentally different from yours? This is why the darkness could not comprehend Jesus.

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Jesus was free from rivalrous desire, from envy. He only does what he sees his Father doing. He was a true image bearer, an imitator of his Father in heaven. All of his desires flow from God, the God who is love.

Here’s where the plot gets really interesting…

Love’s desire was that God himself would allow himself to become the world’s first truly innocent victim of scapegoating.

Only, unlike any victim before him, return, alive on the other side of death, resurrected, to confront the “righteous” ones who heaped their sins on him. Forever taking the sting out of death, shining such a light on sin, on rivalrous desire, that it could be seen for the first time what it is – an imitation of the serpent’s desire, that which is not Love, and be sorrowfully repented of.

John continues:

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The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

John 1v10

We have come to understand that Jesus was present and active in the creation of the world in Genesis, of course. But this text hints at something more. This world – this present system of cultures and civilizations built on scapegoating, was made through the blood of sacrificial victims. Jesus is coming as God, identifying himself with the victims of sinful humanity, becoming one himself. John is saying, in a sense, that not only did Jesus create the world originally, but it was also built on him in his revelation of God himself as the ultimate victim of the scapegoating system. And the world didn’t recognize him. It couldn’t recognize him, so blinded was its sin. God, a victim!? Never!! The gods of this world are always the ones to whom victims are offered.

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Not until Jesus hung on the cross, and the Roman Centurion, the tip of the spear for sin our world, looked up at the shining, holy, blameless victim hanging there, and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” It’s no surprise there were earthquakes at the crucifixion of Jesus – something earthshaking, history altering was happening.

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And now Jesus is alive. Death couldn’t hold him. The blood soaked earth that held so many victims previously, upon which had been built our broken world, had to open up and let him out. Jesus, bearing the wounds of our sin on his body, so that we might see the truth of the awful darkness of sin every time we encounter him, and see at the same time the absolute fallacy of the fear of death that might keep us from following in his footsteps as his disciples. Jesus, coming to us not with vengeance or retribution for what we’d done to him or all of our other victims, but with forgiveness.

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Peace be with you!

Again Jesus said, Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I also send you.

He was sent to us with forgiveness, and we are sent into this world with it as well.

So let us see Jesus, the light of the world, this Easter. Jesus, the innocent victim of our sin, meeting us with the forgiveness of God, setting us free. Jesus, walking out of the grave into a garden from which springs a new creation, one in which we are free to take up our image-bearing role again, imitating him in his imitation of the Father, imitating him in love.

Let us see Jesus everywhere we encounter the goodness of God in our lives, whether in provision as we depend on him or in forgiveness as we ignorantly and willfully crucify him afresh – and see his goodness in the light of the resurrection.

The world of the first creation, the City of Man ruled by the Father of lies, is built on the blood-filled tombs of mythologized victims, their pain and cries for justice silenced by death and buried by the judgments and accusations of their killers.

But not the New Creation.

Because the Prince of that world has met his match in the Prince of Peace, and death has lost its sting, swallowed up in the victory of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The world of the New Creation, the Kingdom of God, is built from a garden growing up around an empty tomb, its once-but-never-again tenant now alive and well, making all things new through his loving justice, announcing forgiveness with his Spirit-filled voice, a voice that roars like a lion and lands like a kiss.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Leap of Faith – The Mystery of Goodness

 

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/13/2014


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How many of us have had the experience of our worst fears (in some dire-seeming situation or another) not coming true? Like you were sure you were about to be fired, and then you weren’t. Or like you were sure going to have to owe more taxes than you could afford to pay, and then it wasn’t all that bad. Or you thought something was going to be impossible, or that you were going to die, or whatever, and then it wasn’t, or you didn’t, or whatever.

[earliest experience – 9 years old returning from Germany, only to discover plane was overbooked and my seat was taken...]

Have you ever thought to yourself, in the aftermath, “Phew, God is good?”

Sure, those kinds of experiences are encouraging, but the truth is, sometimes our worst fears are, in fact, realized. What then? Will we be ruined? Where is God in those moments, in those situations? What do we see of the goodness of God then?

This is precisely the situation Jesus faces in Luke 13. He’s warned that King Herod wants to kill him. And of course, even though Herod ends up playing a relatively minor role, the threat isn’t empty. Jesus will die at the hands of the authorities, and not long from now. How does Jesus respond? What does his response teach us about the goodness of God? What goodness is revealed in him? Let’s read.

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31At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”

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32He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ 33In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

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34“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Luke 13v31-35

Before we dig into it, a few things to mention.

This passage has connections to the last week of Jesus’ pre-resurrection life, the week he spends in Jerusalem before he is crucified (we’ll explore those connections in a bit). Here in Luke’s gospel, it shows up earlier, but in Matthew’s, it takes place a day or two after Palm Sunday.

Palm Sunday, which we celebrate today in Christian tradition, is the day Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, to the acclaim of crowds of Jewish people who recognize him as the long promised Messiah. They lay palm branches on the ground in advance of his path, thus the term “Palm Sunday.”

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This is a special season for those of us who keep company with Jesus. Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week, when we remember, reflect on, and celebrate the events of Jesus’ life as he approaches the cross, and as he dies, and is buried in a tomb until his resurrection on Easter morning. For us, this is the week in which all the goodness of God that we see shining in Jesus comes head to head with all the horrible darkness of evil present in our broken world, in demonic powers, in institutions of power, even in fearful people. This is the week in which all the longings of our lives are gathered up with Jesus’ fate, and from which all of our hopes for a good future spring. It’s the week which shapes all the joyful possibilities of our lives in the present.

What can you be doing to prepare for and get the most out of this week, and the Easter celebration that follows next Sunday?

Invite someone to church next Sunday. There can be a lot of barriers to someone coming to a church, but a personal invitation goes a long ways toward lowering many of those barriers. Invite them to join you for breakfast at 9; it’s always pretty phenomenal.

We often have a larger turnout on Easter, so please park farther away if you can to make space for new guests, and sit in the middle of the row (the outside seats are the prime real estate).

Blow some money or time on one of your 6 this week, if you haven’t yet. Make it a “Good Friday” for them this year. (Don’t forget about the community-wide Good Friday service, too – the Tenebrae service at People’s should be really interesting).

And finally, if you have the chance to come to the church on Wednesday morning between 6:30 and 8, this is the last of the Lenten prayer hours before Lent gives way to Easter.

So,

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We’ve been talking all Lent about the goodness of God. About how Jesus is really good. Which matters to us, because the key to getting life from God is taking a leap of faith on him – it’s trusting in him for help, depending on him, waiting for him, coming to him. Because he’s a God who gets all his glory from working on behalf of those who look to him for everything they need. As Jesus puts it, he’s come to give us life, and life to the full.

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Here, in this passage from Luke, we’re going to discover that the goodness of Jesus is both the most visible, and the most mysterious, in the face of the greatest darkness and horror. The mystery of Goodness revealed as Jesus allows himself to be overwhelmed by the mystery of evil.

31At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”

We don’t know if these particular Pharisees are looking out for Jesus’ best interests, or just want to get him off their turf, but it’s not really the point. The point is their message – “Herod wants to kill you” – and Jesus’ response.

Herod is a king because his dad, Herod the Great, was the most effective thug around, and the Roman Empire made him king to carry out their agenda in Israel. So in a sense, Herod’s desire to kill Jesus is just the tip of the spear of all the powers of evil out to bring destruction on humanity. He’s a puppet, and a maniacal puppet at that.

If Jesus’ voice is the voice that says, “I have come that they might have life, and life to the full,” Herod’s voice is the voice that wants to silence the voice of life. Herod’s voice says, “I have come that he might die, and die with much suffering.” [some of us hear that voice too…]

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32He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ (A symbolic reference to two days of work, with a victorious conclusion on the third day; Jesus is prophetically talking about his death and resurrection.) 33In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! (This reference to dying outside Jerusalem is loaded with sarcasm. Because, of course, Jesus will die outside of Jerusalem. As in directly outside the city walls, on a hill taken over for the purpose of killing criminals outside the city.)

Do you hear the snarl and spine here, the blood and fire and spit and bone? Makes me like Jesus just a little bit more than I already do. He’s just not intimidated at all. Even though he knows the worst is coming.

It’s interesting to me just how free Jesus is of the curse of catastrophic thinking.

Catastrophic thinking is a form of less-than-rational thinking that happens when our brains begin to imagine and dwell on worst-case outcomes, especially when something happens to discourage or threaten us – even if it’s something minor. We picture it as the start of some major catastrophe in the works. Like me at the airport when I was 9. [Other examples…”You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone, Mommy.” …play video …]

Catastrophic thinking is rooted in anxiety. But we often don’t notice the anxiety behind it because anxiety is such a normal state of being for us that we just think of it as normal reality. It’s incredibly destructive because it takes all of our energy away from living life and put it’s into worry or unnecessary defensive and protective actions. It’s like getting the wind knocked out of you – even though you’ll survive it, it feels awful, and you can’t do much else until you get your wind back. And for many of us, it happens all the time, day after day after day, because our world is steeped in anxiety.

But notice how Jesus isn’t caught up in anxiety or catastrophic thinking at all, even though the worst case is coming, and he sees it. He’s free as free can be, responding with humor in the face of threat, pressing on with purpose in his mission, eyes wide open. As we said a couple of weeks ago, clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose. It’s the can’t lose part that’s so extraordinary. He has so much confidence in the goodness of God that even though he knows he’s about to lose, he’s not afraid of losing. Losing isn’t the end of the story for Jesus. What’s up with that? How do we get some of that?

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34“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, (city of peace – “Jeru” + “Salem” as in, Shalom – an irony here) you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

A few things here. Maybe the most important things of all.

Jesus is speaking here about two terrible & related events that are going to be happening in Jerusalem. The first is his death on the cross. The second is the bloody sacking of the city and the fiery destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, 30 years or so after his death, when the Roman army invades Jerusalem in response to rebellion by Jewish zealots.

Everyone in Israel at this time understood that a great crisis was coming. Tensions had been building with the Roman occupation. Jewish people were crying out for a Messiah, an anointed leader sent by the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to be established as the true king Israel and end the exile and oppression. You could feel it in the air, everyone was talking about it. Prophecies foretold it. All the signs were pointing to it. Many people thought Jesus himself might be the Messiah who would lead them through the coming crisis to victory. They weren’t afraid of the coming crisis; they were embracing it, knowing that Israel had a great calling (the blessing of the whole earth, for Heaven’s sake!) and that with great callings come great tests.

Except. Except Jesus himself was advocating a way of peace, not a way of war. He was saying, in many ways, on many occasions, lay down your arms. Don’t pursue this path of violence, or violence will be visited on you and you will regret taking that path. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus was a different kind of Messiah than anyone expected. He was offering to lead them through the crisis to victory, but it wasn’t going to be a military victory. It was going to be an offering of his own life at the hands of all the evil powers – Rome included, but also sin, and death, and fear – in order to defeat evil in the most profound and lasting way possible. His instruction to his disciples was not “take up your arms against your oppressors” but rather, “take up your cross and follow me.”

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Jesus knew that Israel, on the whole, wasn’t listening. They didn’t want to do what he was proposing. That’s what Jesus means when he says “you weren’t willing.” Jesus saw that they would persist in their violent path, and he would be unable to protect them from the suffering that would sweep in like a wildfire in 70 AD.

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Jesus’ comparing himself to a hen – in stark contrast to Herod the fox – is a pretty staggering image of his goodness and love. The metaphor Jesus is using would have been familiar to his hearers, but perhaps not to us. Flash fires were a common threat at the time, and there were no fire departments to stop them. The scene is a barnyard, and animals scurrying to and fro to escape an out of control fire, and a mother hen gathering her chicks to protect them with her wings. There are reports of those cleaning up after such fires have discovering a dead hen, blackened and scorched, live chicks sheltered beneath her wings.

What love! Like a mother, fiercely protective in the face of threat. At the same time, gentle and good down to the bone, laying down her life so her children could live. This is Jesus’ desire, his purpose, his offer. To take all the heat that evil has to offer, so that anyone willing to be gathered up under his wings could live.

You are probably familiar with the Lord’s prayer, the prayer Jesus taught his followers to pray. One line is almost always misleadingly translated: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

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As if we need to worry about a good God tempting us to sin. Many scholars, including N.T. Wright, conclude that a better translation is: “Do not lead us into the Testing (or Great Trial), but deliver us from Evil.”

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Jesus, in other words, knew that the Trial with a capital T that was coming was more than anyone could handle, that it would be horrific, the full force of evil unleashed on the earth. The clash of the titans, when God himself takes on the witches’ brew of empire/religion/dark powers. And Jesus knew that it was for him, the anointed one of God, to endure, and not for any other human being.

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[Bible geek alert: the phrase “Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord” is a reference to the title given to the High Priest in psalm 118, and a way of Jesus saying that he was to recognized as the true High Priest after his death and resurrection, his entering into the Holy of Holies represented by the tomb, and then emerging from it with forgiveness, having opened the door to a new creation.]

You see, the reality and mystery of evil is the secret, insidious power underneath catastrophic thinking, the thing that gives it its legs.

Most of the time, our imagined worst case scenarios don’t actually happen. And most of the time, even when the worst case scenario happens, we survive it. We discover resources we didn’t know we had within us, or around us, and we actually emerge stronger. It’s called “Post traumatic growth.”

But. But. But most isn’t all or every. We’ve all encountered the mystery of evil in this world. Evil is awful and knows no limits. Sometimes, evil is ruinous. Sometimes it isn’t what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Sometimes what doesn’t kill us leaves us with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sometimes what doesn’t kill us cripples us. Sometimes it does actually kill us. What then?

What then? The mystery of goodness is what. The mystery of the cross is what.

We’ve seen Jesus’ goodness in so many ways this last month or so. In his trustworthiness, his humility, his incorruptibility, his lack of fear, his forgiveness, his healing power, his gentleness toward the weak, his love for the outsider, his compassion, his brilliance, his power. Jesus is really, really good. In ways any of us can see and understand and cheer wholeheartedly for.

But the cross is something a quantum order up in terms of goodness. It’s confounding. It’s goodness with mystery at its core.

I’ve spent – and perhaps some of you have too – years and years trying to understand how what Jesus does during holy week defeats evil. Trying to understand why good Friday is good even though it’s so truly horrible. And even though there are so many ways of understanding it, so many windows into the goodness of God on display on the cross, some of them helpful and others decidedly unhelpful, at the end of the day, it’s a deep mystery.

A mystery we can only truly apprehend from the inside as a participant, not from the outside as an observer. Like art, or music, or love. A mystery we are invited to enter into, to experience as goodness, to taste and see, to have its goodness done to us, so that we ourselves are set free from the grip of evil, of sin, of death, of fear. Much in the way a chick experiences the mystery of its mother’s goodness under her wings when the fire comes.

So that’s the invitation today. Are you willing to let Jesus gather you today, under his mothering wings? Are you willing to face the fire approaching you, the evil that threatens you, the people that seem bent on harming you, not by taking up arms against them, not by living in lala land and pretending nothing bad can happen, but by taking shelter in Jesus, and Jesus alone. Not sheltering in violence or defensiveness or trying to escape into something or someone else that offers protection or escape. But sheltering in Jesus. In the mystery of goodness revealed on the cross. The suffering servant who allows himself to bear the full weight of evil, God his only hope, even a God who seems to have left the building and abandoned him.

We see where Jesus’ faith is when evil bears down, and we see his response. We hear his invitation to come near, to gather around him. Are we willing to take a leap of faith that looks a lot more like a waiting in the darkness when everything in us wants to run or fight?

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Practical suggestion:

“Get a feel” for the Mystery of Goodness, revealed at the cross.

Not a mere explanation (something you might regurgitate on an exam) but a real feel.

Take the image offered--a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wing—and internalize it. Imagine what it would feel like to be covered from harm in this way.

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Common image in Psalms: 17:8, 57:1, 63:7, 91:4

Hint: When you see such an image offered, it pays to ponder-imagine-reflect on it.

Ponder the words. Picture what the words signify. Place yourself in the scene.

Notice the details. Stay there for a while.

Take note of the feelings, impressions, etc. evoked and see how that affects your understanding-experience of God.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Leap of Faith – Un-Exiled

 

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 03/30/2014


video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard
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or via iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/vineyard-church-of-milan/id562567379

Note:  As you will surely notice, this text is actually from Luke 7v36-50.  However, all of the images say “Luke 8.”  This is an error.  If you look for Luke 8v36-50 you will find stories about a demonized man, a dead girl, and a sick woman.  This message has nothing to do with those stories.  Alright….carry on!

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36When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38As 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.

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39When 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.”

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

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

41“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

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43Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

44Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

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48Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

50Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 7v36-50

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We’re going to talk today about forgiveness. About how the goodness of God, and the goodness of Jesus is revealed in forgiveness. About how Jesus’ forgiveness is one of the reasons that we can trust him, that we can have confidence in him, that we can be sure of him, that we can be free to take a leap of faith in depending on him. About how Jesus is really good, better perhaps than some of us might ever have imagined.

We all come to the topic of forgiveness with different perspectives, emotional responses, experiences. Some of us have experienced profound forgiveness, perhaps after having wronged a family member, or a really good friend, or maybe even a stranger who surprised you by their response to you. Some of us, maybe, even from God, in a moment, or many moments of spiritual repentance. Some of us have been offered forgiveness, but we feel conflicted about receiving it. Some of us have longed for forgiveness from someone, and they have been unwilling or unable to give it to us. Some of us wrestle ourselves with forgiving someone else. Perhaps we’ve started to, but it feels like more is required than we’ve already given. Perhaps we’re afraid to take the next step, or unsure if we even should. Probably, for some of us, we don’t even know exactly what forgiveness means. We have some feelings about it, but it’s hard to get our minds and hearts wrapped around it, at least enough to resolve the internal conflicts we feel about it.

[Dating Ronni…blowing it big-time, causing her deep pain and distress…the sense that I felt unsafe to her, the rift in connection…the mutual vulnerability…the decision, embrace, the end of exile]

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Notice a few things. Forgiveness is not saying “what you did is OK.” It’s saying, at a more profound level, “there is no outstanding debt between us. I’ve canceled it.”

The terrible thing may remain a terrible thing. But forgiveness robs it of its power to separate people, to inhibit the intimacy where love brings life in a relationship.

That’s part of why, in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the words for debt and sin were the same thing. When we sin against someone, we put ourselves in their debt. And beyond the pain of whatever the harm we’ve done, debt changes the power structure between human beings. It puts one in power over the other, just because of the presence of the debt. And power differentials make intimacy very, very unstable in human beings. Because intimacy is a fragile thing in the best of situations, given how dependent it is on trust. Throw a power difference in the mix, and the volatility of the intimacy goes way up. Can the debtor trust the indebted to pay them back? Can the indebted trust the debtor to not use their power to manipulate them? Every relational exchange becomes loaded with questions and suspicion. That’s why we hate having debts between family members or close friends – we recognize that the potential for the collapse of intimacy is sky high. Which puts love and the life that flows from it in jeopardy.

When Ronni forgave me, in other words, she was lifting me up from the position of a debtor, saying we were on equal terms with each other, neither owing the other anything but love. A powerful, courageous action that made room for intimacy to be re-established, and love to take root, and life to flow freely again between us.

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In Jesus’ day, the forgiveness of sins had an even larger, nation-wide implication. The Jewish people understood their exile from God – the experience of being out of his favor and under Roman occupation – as punishment for their collective sins. So the forgiveness of sins meant nothing less than “the end of exile.” It was much more than an individual wrestling with a troubled conscious. It was about God himself coming home to his people and saying, “It’s all over. I’m here and I’m with you! Your exile is over! We can get on together with the blessing of the world part of the story.”

So with all that in mind, let’s go back to that story about Jesus and the woman at Simon’s house.

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36When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.

Set the scene.

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Dinner parties were semi-public affairs. Takes place in an open air courtyard, with the door left open so uninvited guests could enter, sit by walls, and hear the conversation. The guests would have been seated on the ground, at a very low table – probably a Roman triclinium, a U-shaped dining area made up of three tables, diners on the outside, reclining with feet stretching away from the table. Servants could enter at the center of the table to replenish food, etc.

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Simon, a Pharisee, has invited Jesus to a dinner party at his house. The Pharisees had a conflicted relationship with Jesus. At one level they treated him as an equal, because they recognize he’s got the ear of the populous, and because he clearly has some extraordinary personal strength. On another level, they despise him, because he’s been hanging out with various “sinners” – the term the Pharisees used for religious, moral, and political outcasts. They think what Jesus is doing is really terrible. In their view, these sinners need to be condemned so that they get with the Pharisees program and reform, or they should be ignored and despised so that they don’t corrupt the “true” Israelites. In some ways, they’ve lumped Jesus with these “sinners” and consider him tainted by them. So this dinner is probably an attempt to either challenge Jesus and persuade him to change course, or it’s a chance to expose and humiliate him so that he loses credibility with the people.

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37A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38As 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.

We’ll talk about why she does this in a bit. For now, let’s just get a handle on what she did and why it was so incendiary.

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The phrase “a woman in that town who lived a sinful life” is a polite way of saying she was a local prostitute, and that at least some of the people in the courtyard knew that about her. Simon the Pharisee among them.

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This woman had come along with a jar of expensive perfume, probably to give it to Jesus as a gift. It seems clear from the context that she’d heard Jesus’ message of good news that God loves people like her. That God’s grace was available to her even though she couldn’t pay the debt she owed for her sins. That she was welcome in Jesus’ community, even though she was an outcast in her own. So she had come to thank him.

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But something happens before she does that, and it causes her to weep. She notices that her tears are falling on his feet, outstretched from the table towards her. Her tears are mixing with the dirt on Jesus’ feet, so she bends down and uses her hair to wipe his feet.

A few things about this were provocative to anyone witnessing.

First, feet are taboo in Middle Eastern cultures. They pick up the dirt of the roads, and in agrarian society, you shared the roads with livestock and all that they would leave behind, muddying the roads. As we’ll discover, Jesus’ feet at this point in the party are unwashed, and here this woman – a known prostitute - is kissing them.

And she’s let her hair down in the process. It was taboo for women to do that in the presence of any man except her husband. A woman’s hair was considered highly sexual (and still is, in conservative Muslim and Jewish cultures). In the first century, the most pious Jewish woman wouldn’t even let their hair down in their own homes. Had this woman been married, letting her hair down in public, where other men could see, would have been legal grounds for her husband to divorce her without any financial settlement. This prostitute does this highly charged act to a respected Rabbi, at the dinner party of a Pharisee’s home. That’s like flashing the Pope while he gives mass at the Vatican.

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39When 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.”

Simon’s response, all things considered, is not surprising. It’s confirming to him everything negative and judgmental he’s thought about Jesus.

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

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

41“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

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43Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

44Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.

Ah, now some of what’s happening behind the scenes is starting to reveal itself. In Jesus’ words, we can begin to understand why this woman did what she did, and what it all means about her, and about Jesus, and about how staggeringly, remarkably, unprecedentedly, wonderfully good Jesus is.

The first thing that becomes clear is that Jesus was snubbed by Simon when he arrived. Powerfully, intentionally snubbed.

In any culture, there are things you are expected to do when a guest you’ve invited arrives to your home, especially if they aren’t a close family member or friend. Even here in the 21st Century U.S. you greet them at the door. You say hello, welcome, please come in, make yourself at home. You offer to take their coat. You offer them something to drink if the food isn’t ready yet. You turn off the TV, put your phone on vibrate. If it’s an honored guest, you maybe have the house all straightened up, candles lit, nice music playing, you bring the kids over to say hello, one by one. Not doing even a couple of these things – especially the common courtesies – can make a guest uncomfortable, feel unwelcome. For example, if I don’t offer to take your coat or suggest a place you can hang it, you’ll wonder if I don’t want you to stay very long.

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Basic Jewish hospitality at the time of this story required hosts to do at least three things for any guest – simple, common courtesies - none of which Simon did for Jesus. There was no water to wash his feet. An honored guest would have had a servant come to wash his feet for him, no less. There was no kiss on the cheek, no oil for his head. And it’s not like this rudeness could be explained by an oversight…Simon calls Jesus “Rabbi” earlier on, so we know he knew who Jesus was and what kind of respect would be anticipated. This is calculated mistreatment to knock Jesus off balance, to send him a message.

Imagine Jesus walking in. He’s taken a risk just accepting this invitation. He looks around and is met by…? Silence? Staring? Awkward ignoring as others wash? How long did it go on? We don’t know. We just know that eventually Jesus sat down at the table on his own, un-greeted, shamed.

And we know what that can feel like. To be hated, humiliated in that way. Made into an outcast.

And we know the woman could see it, what Jesus was experiencing. This woman who knew what it was like to endure that kind of humiliation, day after day, perhaps every day of her adult life. She knew how painful that was, even when she felt like maybe she deserved it. It’s awful, the heaviest kind of pain, the kind that pushes air out of your lungs and doesn’t let it back in easily. And here was Jesus enduring it. Without protest. Jesus, making himself vulnerable amongst the powerful. Taking his seat, as everyone watched without watching, out of the corner of their eyes.

Enduring it not because he’d earned it for himself, but because he made space for people like her to not feel it in his company.

So this woman who has come to thank Jesus, to honor him, sees the dishonor and begins to weep.

Tears of compassion.

Mixed with tears that spring from her own pain, too.

Then, it seems, she sees them splash against his unwashed feet. The rivulets and streams forming, accenting the dirt that signifies his humiliation.

She cannot let this go on.

She loves Jesus.

She feels safe with him.

So safe that she loses all regard for her own self, and makes herself completely vulnerable in this house of judgment.

She lets down her hair. Washes his feet.

Kisses them.

Opens the perfume and pours it on him.

She’s made a royal mess, and she doesn’t care.

Nor, it seems, does he.

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Jesus takes in the judgment breathed against her by Simon, and probably by many others at the table, and tells his parable.

A parable that reveals the forgiveness she’s already experienced from him. The way in which he has cancelled her debts and put her on equal footing with himself. The way in which he has announced to her that her sin doesn’t stand between them. Forgiveness that everyone can see, a reality that’s embodied before them. Forgiveness that has made intimacy possible between them, a place for love to grow and life to flow. A table prepared for both of them in the presence of their enemies, as the psalmist wrote.

And a parable that shows Jesus has cancelled Simon’s debt for his rudeness as well. Except that Simon perceives his own cancelled debt to be small, as revealed by the smallness of his love.

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47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

48Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

50Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Do you see? It wasn’t her love that earned forgiveness from him. Her love that shone a light on the forgiveness she’d already received.

What she had was faith. Confidence in him. What faith, confidence, trust had she demonstrated? Simply that she could approach him vulnerably without fear, fully herself before him. The willingness to trust his forgiveness. To take a chance on it. To taste and see that he was good. To see that he was as good as she hoped he was.

What goodness Jesus must have exuded. We tend to conceive of forgiveness as an intellectual decision of sorts. Not for God. For God, forgiveness seems to be something of who he is towards us. Jesus seemed to have worn it on his shoulders, like clothing.

Because forgiveness is a relational reality. It is renewed peace between us and God, embodied in God’s incarnated love, Jesus of Nazareth.

The result is salvation and a life drenched in peace.

And so she welcomes Jesus where no other welcome was to be found for him.

He who was in exile in this house finds himself at home with her.

His exile over.

The forgiveness of sins, realized.

She who was in exile everywhere else has found herself at home with him.

Her exile over.

The forgiveness of sins, realized.

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Practical suggestions:

1. Put yourself in the prostitute’s place. Take note of any vulnerability you feel when it comes to considering a leap of faith with Jesus. The vulnerability that comes when you think about asking him for help or responding to some invitation he’s giving you, depending on him to come through for you. Or maybe when you think about trusting him with your life and committing yourself to being his disciple. Now imagine yourself as that woman in that scene with Jesus, seeing Jesus vulnerability and shame. Ask God for the grace to leap the way she did, to see in Jesus the end of your exile and to be moved to trust from a place deep in your heart, not in the risk calculating part of your brain.

2. Give away some perfume. Give a gift to a vulnerable person, as a thank you to Jesus for his forgiveness. It could be a world vision or compassion international sponsorship, or a gift to the compassion ministry, but perhaps better would be a direct gift to someone like a homeless person. So you can experience the exile/vulnerability dynamics personally.