Grace at the Table

Well, good morning, everybody. It is great to see you today. My name is Valerie. I'm one of the pastors here. And whether you're here in the room with us or joining us on the live stream, I am so glad that you're with us this Thanksgiving weekend.

Now, before we jump into the sermon today, I wanna tell you a little bit about what's coming up. In addition to the great things that Adrienne talked about, next weekend, we will also reveal our food drive totals. I know you're all very excited. I'm excited too. Next weekend, we will find out if we met the goal we set for ourselves as a church to raise $200,000 for our local food bank. And also next weekend, we kick off Advent. That's the weeks leading up to Christmas. And we're starting a new series called Christmas Surprises.

Now, you might think that you have a pretty wild family tree and Thanksgiving, frankly, may have confirmed that for you, but you should get a load of Jesus's family tree. We are gonna spend the month of December looking at some of the amazing people in Jesus's earthly family. And who we see there may surprise you, but what we see there is the amazing story of how God intervenes in our lives and brings grace and redemption. It's gonna be great. I can't wait to kick that off, but first, we need to wrap up our Thanksgiving series, Gratitude and Grace. That's what we call the series.

Last week, Mark talked to us about gratitude. And we learned about the benefits of gratitude for ourselves but most importantly, we talked about the incredible impact expressed gratitude has on all of our relationships, our relationship with God and our relationship with others. Gratitude is so important. But here's the question. How do we live in a state of gratitude? How do we do that? I mean, if you've been around people for more than 10 minutes, it's a tough crowd, the humans. You know it's hard to live in a state of gratitude around people. Or if you've been alive for more than a few years, you know that life has disappointments. Circumstances change. The good job becomes the bad job or no job. The good friend becomes the former friend. Circumstances in life can change everything in a moment.

So how do we maintain gratitude in spite of our circumstances, in spite of sometimes the people around us? I think we live in gratitude by focusing on the unchanging grace of God. And if you're taking notes on that sheet you were handed on the way in, you can go ahead and fill that in. Focus, focus on the unchanging grace of God. And that's exactly what we're gonna do today. We're gonna focus on grace.

Now if you've been at TLC for any length of time, you know that we talk about grace a lot here. A lot. But I have to confess to you that grace and I have a complicated relationship. It's complicated. Now I would tell you that I have believed that Jesus was my savior since I was a young girl. But when it came to living in that grace, I've been frankly a mess.

I grew up in a very strict Christian home, part of a denomination that had tons of rules. Some of it in the Bible, some of them not. And to add to that, my dad was a drill instructor in the Marine Corps. Yeah, the Marines love rules, FYI. They love 'em. And so my family was also a little complicated sometimes. And out of control. But I started to learn that rules meant control. So I began to embrace the rules and follow the rules. And I tried and I would follow the rules and I would think, okay, now I'm good. Or I'd forget to follow the rules and I think, oh no, I'm bad. But the rules helped me maintain control. And I could also tell pretty quickly when I met you whether you were good or bad. I love the rules, they were so clean. So easy to follow that way. And I loved it.

But there was a problem. Because as the older I got, the more dead I started to feel on the inside. The less joy I had, the more harsh I became. And I became so afraid. So afraid that God would not love me. That I would not be good enough for God. And it just kept me in a panic, honestly. But I'm stubborn. So I just kept trying. I pretended and I tried and I tried until finally in my mid-20s I was exhausted. I did not know what to do. I had this imaginary list in my head of the things you needed to do to get God to like you. And I had done everything but one on the list.

The last one on the list was in the group I grew up in. We had this idea basically that missionaries were the pinnacle of living out your faith. And missionaries to China or Africa were the pinnacle of the pinnacle. And so I applied and I moved to southern China as a missionary for two years. And you know what? It was amazing. I loved it. I got to visit remote villages in China. I taught English to factory workers at 10 p.m. at night when they finally finished their shift. I got to eat fish eye soup. It is not often that you eat food that's looking back at you. It was all just amazing.

But when I came back to the States after those two years a horror began to slowly grip me. Because I had done everything on the list. And I felt as disconnected from God and dead as I ever had. I was in a very bad place. So what do you do? What do you do when you've done everything on the list? What do you do when you feel dead on the inside and you're at the crossroads of your faith? What did I do? Well, I'm gonna tell you at the end of the sermon. But first, I'm gonna tell you a story.

Go ahead and open up your Bibles to Luke chapter seven or your Bible apps. Luke is in the second half of the Bible, the New Testament. And today we're gonna go to a dinner party with Jesus. And we're gonna meet two people. Two very different people. But two people who have the same need but a different understanding of that need. So Luke chapter seven and let's start in verse 36. When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. Now there was a woman in that town who lived a sinful life and she learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house. So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

Now I wanna stop here for a moment and just put some cultural context in place. So Jesus is invited to the home of a Pharisee. That's a religious elite person. This is a guy who knew the rules, lived the rules and went around making sure that you kept the rules. And it wasn't unusual actually for a Pharisee to invite a rabbi into their home. They would do this in order to get to know them, to question them, to make sure they understood the religious law. But into this dinner party walks this woman. And we're told she's a sinful woman. We don't know what her sin was. There's a tradition that says she was a prostitute. We don't know that for sure. What we do know is she has a reputation. The whole town knows about it.

Now to us it might seem kind of odd that this woman would just walk in to a dinner party uninvited. But dinner parties in Jesus's day went down a little differently. It was almost like public theater when a distinguished person like a Pharisee would throw a dinner party. Or when somebody would invite somebody who kind of had some buzz around them like Jesus did. It became like public theater for everybody. You know, it was pretty amazing actually. You would have all these people, the invited guests that were around this low table and they would be leaning on their left elbow on some pillows and their right hand basically became their fork. And they would be eating their food and all around the room the uninvited guests would just come and watch. It was really amazing.

Take a look at this picture and you can kind of see how it looked. Here they are, they're just kind of reclining at the table. All the invited people have a spot at the table. Their feet are facing away from the wall. And then the people in the town who weren't invited would kind of be around the edges. They would probably sit against the wall. And it was an amazing opportunity for those people because they could learn, they could catch up on all the town gossip and bonus, when the party was over, the people against the wall got to eat the leftovers. So even though Simon, who was very pious, would normally not have wanted to associate with the people against the wall because they were probably unclean, also knew that part of his obligation was to take care of those less fortunate than himself. So that is how that woman with a reputation could walk into the home of a pious Pharisee. She was one of the ones against the wall. But she doesn't stay there. And the dinner party gets real interesting, real fast.

So let's dive into this passage and let's take this story from the pages of scripture into our lives. Let's find ourselves in Simon the Pharisee, and the woman against the wall, because guess what? They're both in there. And we all need to know about the amazing grace of Jesus that we find out at this dinner party changes everything. So let's pick up the story in verse 38. It says, "As this woman stood behind him, Jesus, at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them." The first thing that we see in this story is the compelling nature of God's grace. God's grace is compelling.

I mean, can you imagine what it took for that woman to walk in, step across the threshold, into Simon's home, knowing that every single eye would be on her? And she begins weeping. And the original Greek word here for weeping does not mean polite tears that you dab. It means wailing. And then she does something that's hard for us today to understand the shock of. She lets down her hair. And Jewish law absolutely forbid a woman to let her hair down except if she was alone with her husband. I mean, this action was like high-level, gasping horror, shocking for these people to see. But she's not done. She then takes the perfume that she's brought with her and she opens it up and pours the perfume out on Jesus's feet. I mean, even before this woman knew how Jesus would respond to her, even before the grace when it was just, oh, I hope he's like they say he is, she was compelled to go to Jesus. And that's what grace will do for us. Grace is compelling. It's irresistible even when we want to resist it and we do sometimes. We want the answer to be anything but grace.

God's grace will woo us. It will draw us out of the shadows of our own life, whether they're the shadows of maybe our reputation, or it will draw us out of shadows of our relationship, or maybe just out of the shadows that are in your heart that only you and God know about. At this point in the dinner party, I'm thinking it's silent. Except for the wailing. No one in this room has ever witnessed a scene like this before and no one makes a move. Not even the host. But the host has a thought. He is shocked that Jesus isn't doing something about this. He says if this guy's a prophet, if he's all that everybody thinks he is, why isn't he doing something? He knows this woman's a sinner. Why isn't he rebuking her? And I love the turn of phrase that are in these verses here. It says, "Simon said to himself, and Jesus answered him." Simon thinks his thoughts are all up here in his head to himself. But Jesus answers him. Can you imagine the look on Simon's face? Like, did I say that out loud? I thought I just said that in my head.

Well, Jesus answers him with a story. And this story tells us the second thing about God's grace that we see in this passage. And that's God's grace is unexpected. It's unexpected. Jesus says two people owed money to a money lender. One owed him 500 denarii and the other 50. Neither of them had the money to pay him back. So he forgave the debts of both. Now, which of them would love him more? Two people, two debts to give you some context. One owed about a month and a half worth of salary and the other owed about 18 months worth of salary. But there's no hope of paying. They have no money and that day, that meant you go to prison. But this money lender does something very unexpected. He forgives their debts. And then Jesus asks Simon a question. Now remember, the Pharisee as the host would have expected to be the one doing the asking. But Jesus asks Simon a question. And in my head, when Simon answers, I hear him reluctantly answering. I think he started to sense Jesus was slow walking him to a conclusion that he didn't wanna get to. But Simon replies, "I suppose." I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. And Jesus replies to Simon with the two words we all love to hear, "You're right. You're right." But Jesus doesn't stop there. And I think this is the part that Simon was dreading.

He doesn't stop there. He turns toward the woman. Don't you just love that phrase? He turned toward the woman at his feet. The woman wailing. He turned toward the woman. It's just amazing. And then Jesus does something very unexpected. He turns towards this woman and he starts to adjust the scales. To everybody in that room, to everybody rooted in that honor and shame culture, Simon was up here and that woman was down here. But now Jesus starts to level everything out. He says, Jesus says, "I came into your house, Simon. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair." Verse 45, "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 poured perfume on my feet."

Jesus points out to Simon, "Mr. Rule follower, you forgot to do some basic things. And I don't know why Simon did this. There is literally no chance that Simon did not know these were his duties as a host. I cannot imagine he treated any other guest in his home that night this way. It would have been an absolute insult." In that culture, a good host would have greeted his invited guests. And remember, the passage tells us Jesus was invited. He would have greeted his invited guests with a kiss. He, or in Simon's case, probably one of his servants, would have washed the guests' feet and dried them with a towel. They would have given them some olive oil for their hands. It was sort of the soap of the day because remember, their hand was about to be their fork. And then for a special guest, they would have had special oil or perfume that they would pour on their head and anoint them. Simon, the protector of rules, the protector of tradition, had done none of this. But the woman had done it all.

This woman risked everything for Jesus and to get to Jesus. And she found at his feet somebody who turns towards her. And not just somebody who turns towards her and sort of acknowledges her. He lifted her up. He elevated her, completely unexpected grace. I love the way New York Times writer Peter Werner puts it. He says, "There's a radical equality at the core of grace. None of us are deserving of God's grace, so it's not dependent on social status, wealth, or intelligence. There is an equality between kings and peasants. The prominent and the unherald rule followers and rule breakers." Probably anyone with the last name, Spurlock. But I love the way he puts this. But I get it. It doesn't make sense. We want grace to make sense and it doesn't make sense. We want grace to fit in a package, but unexpected grace spills out of all of the packaging. Grace is messy, but in a world that is so transactional, what have you done for me? What can I do for you? In a society where you can be canceled in a sentence, grace is unexpected.

But grace doesn't leave us against the wall. As the gift of God's grace takes root in us, we begin to change. And this is where I started to get really messed up. Because I basically said, "Okay, thank you God that you saved me. I'm super grateful. I'll take it from here. We've got it." And I tried to produce change. I tried to live a good life in my own strength. And it didn't go well. Change was temporary. Guilt motivation only lasts as long as the guilt. But grace, compelling, extravagant, unexpected grace, that's where transformation happens. No matter if you were at the head of the table or wailing against the wall, God's grace brings transformation. That's the third thing we see about God's grace in this story. God's grace brings transformation. And it all begins with God's forgiveness.

Verse 47, Jesus says to Simon, "Therefore I tell you, her many sins has been forgiven as her great love is shown." But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. Now be careful of the turn of phrase here. He doesn't say because she did all these things, her sins are forgiven. That wouldn't be grace. He says that what she did was a reflection, was gratitude for the grace that she has already received. Look at that last phrase that's there. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. Whew. That's the mirror none of us wants to look in, is it? That's tough. Jesus is saying there that how we respond to others, how we forgive others is directly tied to how we see our own sin and God's grace and forgiveness of us.

We wanna put a little asterisk by grace. I get it, we're like, yes, okay, grace for that person, that person, that person, of course me, but not that person. No way, we don't wanna give grace to them. They aren't ready for it yet. They don't deserve it yet. I get it. Forgiveness is hard. Grace is tough. I have some tough stories in my background and God and I have done and continue to do a great deal of talking about forgiveness. And forgiveness looks different in different situations. It's complex, yes. However, we can't dodge the sentence here. There is no asterisk.

Back at the dinner party, I'm thinking the room is quiet again. Jesus has just taken everything up a notch as Jesus often did. And he's forgiving sins. Verse 48 tells us that the quiet room becomes a loud room because when Jesus forgives sins and says that to the woman, people talk. And they're like, who's this guy think he is? Forgiving sins, hauling off and doing that. Everyone's a buzz. And you know what's kind of sad to me? That we don't see anyone else at the dinner party or Simon embrace this transforming grace. Now I think because I relate to Simon, I personally imagine that Simon did embrace grace, eventually. Because whether we are a 50 denarii or a 500 denarii person, you know what? It really doesn't matter. Because the truth is it only takes one to be in debt. And that's all of us, every single one of us.

But the good news is as we realize that the God of the universe has looked towards us. He's looked towards you as we take that truth in. As we realize that God would send his son as we'll study all next month to save our sins. And as we yes see the depth of our own sin and wrongdoing, and we need to see that, but don't stop there. Look at the greater depth, the immeasurable depth of God's grace for you. How could that not change us? How could that grace not transform how we treat each other? If we imagine our sin and our savior to be little, we're gonna hold grudges. We're gonna have our tally sheet out and we're gonna be keeping score. Oh, I see that, okay. Oh, I'm better now. Oh no, now I'm worse, oh dear. We're gonna be doing that, spending all our time doing that.

But when we see the unexpected transforming grace of God, when we respond like the woman against the wall, we can't hold on to grudges then. As Pastor Tim Keller said, and I love this, if you see how sinful you are, you'll be too humble to keep a grudge. If you see how forgiven you are, you'll be too joyful to keep a grudge. Now the text doesn't tell us this, but can you imagine how that woman walked out of that house? Can you imagine the transformation from the fear, compelling fear, but fear to the lightness, to the joy of forgiveness? How about you? What's your relationship with God's grace? Are you kinda, I know it's there, I'm kinda saving it for the big stuff, but I pretty much got the rest of it. Or maybe you can relate to me. You think, oh yeah, God's grace and I, we have a complicated relationship, I'm trying, but I'm trying not to try.

No matter what your response is, I'll tell you this, we all have a response, 'cause you can't be neutral when it comes to grace. It calls for a response. I've personally had two responses to grace and I think these are the two we all have. Control and surrender. Control is what I spent a good portion of my life doing. I haven't quite passed the halfway mark of not doing it that way, so basically over half my life, I've been working on control. As silly as it sounds to you, it sounds silly to me to say it. I tried to control grace. I tried to control the God of the universe. I would say, okay God, here's what we're doing. I have done these good things and now I think you should like me and do these good things for me. Or I would try to control God's grace for others. I would say, okay, this person over here, they're causing trouble. Grace is making 'em think that it's all okay, so let's say we lighten up on the grace, scare 'em a little, and then they'll act the way I think we should. So controlling. Control. Simon the Pharisee was all about control and I can relate. And you know where control landed me? With a full checklist and a dead heart. That's where it got me.

In God's mercy, when I returned from China, two things happened. I was at my lowest point, but at that low point, two things happened. I met a great Christian therapist and I came on staff at Twin Lakes Church. René had also just come on staff as a senior pastor here. And René talked a lot about grace. A lot. And I squirmed. And I was uncomfortable. And I thought, this is wrong. This can't be good. And I, this is so terrible to admit, I marched into René, the senior pastor, also known as my boss, I marched into his office and I said, you have gone too far. Enough with the grace. These people are gonna haul off and do whatever they want if you keep talking like this. So fortunate that I stand here still today employed at Twin Lakes Church. René showed me grace. I had no idea yet of the transforming power of grace. How when I, when anyone takes in that amazing grace when we receive it, it can't help but change our hearts, our actions, our relationships.

I fought though, I'm stubborn. I fought control. I wanted to cling to control. And I fought surrender like a toddler fighting a nap. I thought, there's, I'm just gonna hold onto this. I can make this work. I can make this work. And there was definitely some pride in me, but there was also just a lot of my past story making me feel like an absolute unworthy mess. I came to grace kicking and screaming until one day I finally stopped. I finally stopped and I surrendered. And I couldn't tell you the day that I surrendered, but for about the past 27 years, I have been daily, daily would be optimistic moment by moment, millisecond by millisecond, surrendering to God's grace.

And the amazing thing that comes from surrender is that surrender also begins to turn into a basking, a rejoicing in the amazing grace of God. And what's the result of surrendering to God's grace? It's peace. It's peace with God, peace with others. In verse 50, Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." The faith of this woman, the faith of this woman to walk into that house, to go to the feet of Jesus, the faith she had in the grace of God in the face of a hard life. Oh my goodness, it's an example for all of us. And look how her reputation has changed. She went from having a reputation for a few years in that town to having a reputation for faith for all of time in the words of scripture. "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."

I wonder if that woman had had a moment of peace in her life. Given her reputation, I'm guessing not. I don't know how she got a reputation, but I'm pretty sure it was a road that was laced with pain, with things done to her, said to her, choices she had made that had utterly and completely robbed her of peace. "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." Words that that woman needed to hear, but words that every single one of us longs to hear. We long to know that there is forgiveness for that thing that just makes us wince at the memory. We long to know that there is peace for the shame and the endless tapes of unworthiness that we play in our heads. But how do we get that? We find forgiveness. We find peace in the exact same person that that woman 2,000 years ago did, Jesus. Jesus, the embodiment of God's love and his grace for each one of us. Unexpected grace that draws us in and transforms us. Grace we could talk about frankly and sing about every weekend until the end of time and we would never exhaust the subject or the need for us to hear again about the grace of God.

I love the third stanza of the poem, "The Love of God." It says, "Could we with ink the ocean fill or were the skies of parchment made?" Just think about that next time you look at the ocean. All the water ink, all the sky, paper. "Were every stalk on earth a quill or every man ascribed by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the hole, those stretched from sky to sky. Oh, love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong. It will forevermore endure the saints and angels song." It's grace, grace, grace, grace. From our first breath to our last breath, it's the story, it's the song that we will never, ever exhaust. And all we have to do, like that woman against the wall, is to simply come in faith and receive. Receive that compelling, totally unexpected and transforming grace of God.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your grace. Not a person in this room could stand without your amazing grace to each one of us. God, I wanna pray for each person in this room today. I pray for the people in this room who, like me, maybe relate more to Simon. And they're trying, they're keeping the rules, they're trying, but they feel dead on the inside. God, I pray that you would just put a spark of faith in their life today or this week. God, that you would spark that in them, that they would be compelled by your grace in some way. And for the person in this room right now who feels against the wall, and they feel like they are out of options, God, I pray that you would remind them, that you would shower them with your unexpected grace in whatever situation they find themselves today. God, we are, we need you. We need you. I pray that we would grow in your amazing grace this week. In Jesus' name, amen.