Mother's Day.

I have written four different sermons for today. There are a lot of different things I wanted to say, so many different directions that I wanted to go. But as I was prepping and thinking through it, I thought about all of the mothers that I know and all of the mothers in my life.

I think about my grandmother who raised her kids in South Brooklyn, New York City, while her husband worked the night routes on the city bus and she knew no English. I think about my other grandma, mother of nine who had her first when she was only 15. She cared for her children while my grandfather was in the military. I think about my mother sitting at parent-teacher conferences with her broken English trying to advocate for her children.

I think about all the moms over my nine years working in early childhood education who trusted me with their little ones. I think about my friends becoming moms, sharing with me about the sleepless nights, the fears, the feelings of helplessness and not being enough for their child. I think about the immense love in their eyes when they look at their sweet little babies. I think about the sacrifice without thought.

When I was little and I would get anxious, I've had Sunday scaries my whole life, and I would be scared to go to school on Monday, so my mom would get in bed with me and she would sing worship songs to me until I fell asleep. To this day, when the Sunday scary hits, I still fall asleep to worship music. When I think of moms, I think about walking in strength when you have no strength left to give. I think that's something that we can all learn from.

My weakness is an invitation for God's strength

Our message today is this: my weakness is an invitation for God's strength. My weakness is an invitation for God's strength. And now we pour ourselves out to him. Today we're going to be reading about my favorite character in scripture. It's actually my favorite Bible story.

We're going to be in Luke chapter 7, verses 36 through 50:

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A 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. 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.” Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. Then 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. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 7:36-50 (NIV)

My friend Charity and I were sitting down for coffee one time a few years ago and she asked me this classic Bible college question. When you go to heaven, who from the Bible do you want to meet and what would you say to them? My answer then and my answer now is still: I want to meet this woman. And I just have one question. I want to ask her her name. Scripture never mentions her name. In this story, she's only listed as the sinful woman.

Reputation and being seen

Your reputation is what you're known for. It's how the society around you perceives you. Reputations are rarely accurate, often short-sighted, frequently born out of gossip, usually widespread, and difficult to change.

I had a reputation my whole life as Kimberly's little sister. Kimberly was always very well known, very well liked. She did very well in school. And I was the small version of her. Everyone knew me as Kimberly's little sister. This is hilarious because if you know me, I am neither quiet nor shy. But that's a different story. Even the kids in my own grade knew me not as Nerma, but as Kimberly's little sister.

When we look at this story, we see a woman with a reputation not quite as kind. She's known as something, not by her name, but rather as the sinful woman. Her reputation is that she's a notorious sinner. She didn't even have the luxury of being fake. There was no mask she could wear to cover up this reputation she had.

She was known by her sin. When people looked at her, it was the first thing they saw. I want you to take a moment to think about that. Think about that thing you've done or that was done to you that you pray no one ever finds out about. That thing that's your unspeakable. Everyone knew her unspeakable thing. Imagine that, walking around your city, your neighborhood, your place of work, every relationship in a state of constant exposure and rejection. She was known by her problems.

We don't know what it is that was so notorious about this woman. The scriptures don't tell us what the sin was. Some scholars say it was sexual promiscuity, and they call her a harlot, but we don't know what her past was. And I think it's important to note that Luke, who's the author of this passage, didn't find it relevant enough to mention in the writings. It doesn't say she was a harlot. It doesn't say she was a thief. Luke doesn't think it matters very much. If it mattered what her sin was, he would have written it. So we're not going to try to insert things into the story today because we don't know what her problem was.

But this is what we do know about her: she was alone. This alabaster jar is something that almost every family, the eldest daughter, would have been given as an inheritance. And if she's been given her inheritance, it means her father is dead. We can also infer from the passage that she's an unmarried woman without a father, which means in the cultural context that she was unprotected, unprovided for, and alone.

You know what blows my mind about this woman? She walks into a Pharisee's house full of men, full of religious men, and kneels at the feet of Jesus and cries. I cried in front of someone I care about and when I did so I looked off to the side so they wouldn't notice. This woman walks into a room full of strangers and weeps at Jesus' feet. The vulnerability of this moment. She must have been desperate.

Can you even for a moment imagine this? Imagine walking into a room full of people who have treated you poorly, who have judged you harshly, who have the authority to have you stoned. Can you imagine walking into a room where you do not belong? Women weren't to be in the same space that men were being taught. Jesus was a teacher in this room. She wasn't supposed to be there. In fact, the Pharisees had a prayer that literally said, thank God I'm not a woman. Their wives had to walk behind them looking at the floor when they were in public.

She did not belong in that room under any circumstances. And she walks in to sit at the feet of a man that she doesn't know. She's only ever heard of Jesus and his teachings and his miracles. She doesn't know him. She had heard that Jesus touched lepers when no one else would and they were healed. She had heard that Jesus spoke to women and taught women. She had heard that Jesus forgave people of their sins. She had heard that Jesus stopped people from stoning a woman not too long before this. She had heard that Jesus was her last hope, and so in desperation, she walked into a room covered in shame, full of people who shamed her further, and knelt at the feet of Jesus and hoped that maybe, just maybe, this man was who everyone said he was.

Do you see this woman?

Then there's Simon, the Pharisee, who says if he knew what kind of woman this is that is touching him. Simon really thinks he knows this woman. But isn't that like the whole premise of reputations? They're an assumption. They're an assumption about who a person is based on a morsel of visible information.

If you've been here the past couple of weeks, we've been doing a sermon series called Am I the Problem? And we've been evaluating different characters in scriptures and looking at where maybe they were the issue in the story and how sometimes we're the problem. And we wrapped it up last week, but I just want to suggest one more problem to you. Just one more. We assume way too much. We assume we know people we don't know. We assume we know their motivations when we don't. We assume we know what they've been up to behind closed doors when we don't. We define the people around us by our assumptions, and in our prideful pursuit of holiness, we become like a Pharisee instead of like Jesus. And that is exactly what Simon showcases here.

If he knew what kind of woman this is that's touching him, he was right. She was unclean. She shouldn't have been touching him. But he assumes he knows her. He doesn't know her. He knows her problems. And Jesus defends her.

I love this. I love this because he didn't have to defend her in order to offer her forgiveness. He didn't have to defend her to heal her or restore her. He defends her because he loves her and because he's making a point that he protects the ones he loves. Listen, God doesn't play about him and his children. God doesn't play about his. I want to pause and encourage you right now if your character has been put in question. If you've been beaten up, if the enemy has been stomping on your throat, if shame has been tearing at your heart, Jesus defends his people. Jesus is your defender and he doesn't play about you.

Jesus looks at these people and says, do you see this woman? He describes her for her love and devotion. He describes her for her worship. He describes her for her repentant heart and her devotion to Jesus. Jesus knew she was sinful. Jesus knew what the Pharisees knew about her. Jesus knew she was unclean, but Jesus saw her.

For the first time, this woman is experiencing being seen as a person and not as her problem. I had a conversation with my best friend over a year ago, and I was frustrated. She asked me, Nerma, what do you want? What is it that you want to feel? After thinking about it, I remember telling her, I want to feel human. I felt stuck and feeling like I was a thing. I felt like I was a commodity for people. I just wanted to feel like a person.

Jesus saw this woman for who she was. He didn't concern himself with treating her symptoms or addressing all the things floating on the surface. He spoke straight to her heart, the very core of her need. As she came into alignment with him, she was set free. It wasn't in her stopping sinning. It wasn't in her trying hard enough. It wasn't in her strength. It was in her surrender. It was in her praise. It was in her vulnerability. It was in her using the last of her courage to kneel at his feet. That's when her freedom came.

Weakness and strength

Grace that sustains

Let me quickly go to 2 Corinthians 12, verses 8-10:

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 (NIV)

The weaker I get, the stronger I become. Here's the thing about the woman in the story in Luke. In order to receive the restoration that her story ends with, she had to embrace her present reality. She couldn't run from her past. She couldn't just move on and do better and pretend the bad stuff never happened. She had to own it.

And there's Paul. When Paul talks in this passage, he isn't a new believer. He's been at this for a while. And he's still suffering. And there's still this thing in his life that he wants God to take from him. God's sovereignty does not anesthetize our experience. Jesus' response to her pain did not suddenly mean that all the pain from those experiences just went away. Paul's understanding and relationship with God did not make his experience less painful.

Scripture does not say everything that happens in our lives is good. It says he works them out for good. Scripture doesn't say it's all beautiful. He says he will make ashes to beauty, mourning to dancing, and sorrow to joy. But that means that there are ashes, there is mourning, and there is sorrow.

As long as we are on this side of eternity, our experience will include these things. And we cannot pretend that just because we've been at this for a while, we shouldn't still be feeling all of these things. I fall into this all the time with the mindset of, I've been following Jesus for too long. I've seen him do too many things. I'm a pastor. I shouldn't still struggle with anxiety. I should be able to move through hardship without difficulty because I've been following Jesus for a long time, and I'm an empowered woman.

The weakest I've ever felt was about two years ago, almost exactly two years ago, when a childhood friend of mine passed away. I was in a really fragile state to begin with at the time. A lot of different things were going on. And this just felt like the cherry on top was getting a text message that a childhood friend had been shot and killed. And I remember having a really hard time, not really knowing what to do.

The next day was Sunday, and I needed to get up, and I needed to preach. Actually, similar to today, the rest of our team wasn't here, so I kind of had to run the show on my own. And I didn't think I could do it. Truly, I was fully convinced that I had nothing left to offer, nothing left to give. I was prepared for the pastor to discover that I had abandoned the church and gone back to Florida, and it was over.

I remember the morning of Sunday morning, waking up the next day after finding out that he had passed. Sitting on the edge of my bed with my mattress on the floor, and I sat there with my knees all up to my chin and I prayed. I remember saying, Lord, you said when I'm weak, your power is made perfect. You said that in my weakness, you are strong. So come be strong in me. I was fully convinced in that moment that I had nothing left to give. And so if his word was true, the only strength I had to offer was whatever strength he had to give me.

I feel very strongly about this. The most prevalent disease in Christians is the belief that God's grace is enough to save me but it's not enough to sustain me. I know that Jesus can do what he did with that woman. I know he can bring forgiveness. I know he can love me. I know he can bring me into his family. But now it's up to me to maintain that and to sustain myself. He could bring me into salvation. But can he help me when I haven't slept? Can he help me when things are getting rough? Can he sustain me? Because now it's on me.

Saving grace is just the beginning. There is a sustaining grace that is accessible. His grace is sufficient for you on day one and for all of eternity. This woman didn't run from her weakness. She presented it to God as an offering, and he empowered her. Paul had this weakness that wouldn't go away. He didn't run from it. He didn't beat himself up for it, for not being better by now. He said, I'll boast in my weakness because his grace is sufficient to sustain me. And in my weakness, his power is made manifest.

It is grace that saves me, sanctifies me, heals me, frees me, restores me, redeems me, revives me, defines me, and it's grace that sustains me.

Who is this who even forgives sins? I love that in this story, this woman who is so small, so insignificant, so irrelevant by normal standards, becomes the power player in the room. By the end of the story, aside from Jesus himself, she's the most powerful person in the room. All these Pharisees are shook.

When the woman walked into the room, all she had was hearsay about who Jesus was. But when she leaves the room, she knows. Who is this who even forgives sin? She would answer them. He's Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ. Who is this who even heals? Who is this who even forgives sin? Who is this who even takes shame? Who is this who even frees? Who is this whose grace saves? Who is this whose grace sustains? He is Jesus.

One of the things that I get to do here at the church that is my absolute favorite thing is I get to lead a class called Alpha. Alpha is designed for people who aren't necessarily traditional churchgoers or who aren't a part of the faith at all, or maybe just people that have big questions that they want to ask. And every single week we get to wrestle through a different question. My two favorite weeks, there are two weeks in the beginning of Alpha about Jesus. And the first week we wrestle through the question, who is Jesus? And then the second week we wrestle through the question, why did Jesus die? And why does it matter to me? And I think one of the things I love so much about those two weeks, and it's why I'm obsessed with it, is there's an activity that I always do at the end called your Alpha list.

And I ask all of the participants, and my favorite is to do it with people who have been in church their whole lives. And I ask them to make a list telling me who Jesus is. We do two lists. One is our objective list. And that's who is Jesus objectively. This is the hearsay part. Who have you heard that Jesus is? What does the Bible say about Jesus? What does history tell us about Jesus? Those lists usually say things like he was a refugee. They say things like he was born to Mary. They say things like he's the son of God. And they tend to be more generic titles that we have for Jesus. And then the second week, I ask everyone to pull out their list. And we modify it. And I ask them to do who is Jesus subjectively. So who is Jesus to you? And why does it matter to you?

Jesus died on a cross for our sins and shame. But why does it matter? It matters because this God of grace sustains me. It matters because in my life I need his grace every single day. It matters because I am weak and I need him to be strong in me.

I'm going to invite everybody to stand up on your feet. In just a moment, the worship team is going to lead us in a song. And there are two things I would like for us to do while this song is going. You're welcome to worship. If you need to take a seat, process, pray, whatever, that's fine. There are two things we're going to do during this time.

The first is I would like us to reflect on that second part of the list. Who is Jesus? Who is this that even forgives sins? Who is this that takes our worries, takes our anxieties? Who is this that turns ashes to beauty and mourning to dancing? And why does it matter to you? Who is Jesus in your life? And why does it matter?

And the second thing I'd like us to do is if you walked into this room working really hard to be really strong, and there are some heavy things you've been carrying that you don't quite have the strength to continue to carry, I want you to follow in the footsteps of the woman in Luke chapter 7 and pour that out on Jesus. Scripture tells us to lay our cares on him and to take his yoke upon us for his burden is easy and his yoke is light. So we're going to pour out our love on him. I'm going to pray for us and then we're going to go into a time of worship.

Jesus, we thank you because your love for us is radical. It's so unlike anything we've ever encountered or anything that any person could ever offer us. We thank you for your work on the cross that gave us access, unending access to your love. Lord, I pray that as we go into this time of reflection and of worship, that you would just meet us. That the person that's walked into this space weighed down, that they walk out light. That the person that's walked in feeling helpless, feeling they have to be strong, Lord, that they would find freedom in the reality that it's okay if they feel weak because in our weakness your power is made perfect. Lord, I thank you and we welcome you to move in your holy name. I pray. Amen.