Back to Sermons Page

Sunday's Sermon
Feb 25, 2007

1059
Where Jesus Walked - Lent 1
The Rev. Dennis Posno

Have you ever gone for a walk.
I mean, gone for a walk!
On our holiday in Florida, Kim and I did a lot of walking on a Gulf Coast beach.
Two or three hours a day.
Now I must confess that Kim was always a little more eager than me
but was usually able to persuade me to get up and get going.

One year, in our getting up and getting going,
we walked the beach from the place we had rented on Redington Beach
to the spot where the beach ended at John’s Pass, near Treasure Island.
“This is wearing me out,” I’d complain.
“It’s just a little further,” was the usual response.
“It’s not the getting there I’m worried about,” I’d say.
“It will be the getting back.”

When the “just a little further” landed us at the beach’s end at John’s Pass
we sat there awhile to rest and then headed back.
“This will kill us both,” I said.
Well, it didn’t.
But I didn’t walk much after that, that year.

When we went out for supper that night
I said to Kim, “I’m going to see how far we walked today.”
“Oh, Dennis,” she said, “it wasn’t that far.”
So we got in the car and on our way to supper
and I clocked the distance.
“Close to 6 kilometers one way,” I said.
“We walked 12 kilometers today.”
“Like I said,” Kim replied, “it wasn’t that far.”

Well, for those of you who walk, and walk regularly,
that may not seem like a great distance.
But I tell you, my legs still ache from that walk ~
even after all these years.

As we enter into the Lenten Season …
as we walk through the days that lead us to Easter …
I will be wrapping my messages around the words “Where Jesus Walked.”

They are words drawn from an old piece of music called
“I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked.”

The song speaks of the places where Jesus walked “in days of long ago:”
the hills of Galilee, the Mount of Olives,
along the shores of the Jordan River,
the Garden of Gethsemane, and the hill of Calvary.

But there were other places where Jesus walked,
places I call “places of the heart.”
They are the places that reveal the heart of the One we call Saviour
just as they reveal the heart of God.

A place of the heart is seen in this remembrance by Howard Thurman.

Howard Thurman, pastor, dean, and author,
whose writings I lovingly appreciate,
was one of the great spiritual thinkers of his time, or any time for that matter.
In his autobiography, “With Head and Heart,”
he remembers a stranger who came to his aid in a time of desperate need.

Because there were only three state supported high schools at the time
for black children in Florida,
Thurman was scheduled to travel by train
to a private church supported high school in Jacksonville.
At the train station he was devastated to learn
that his trunk would have to be sent separately.
He only had a dollar and some change.
It wasn’t enough.

Thurman writes:

"I sat down on the steps of the railway station and cried my heart out.
Presently I opened my eyes and saw before me a large pair of shoes.
My eyes crawled upward until I saw the man's face.
He was a black man, dressed in overalls and a denim cap.
As he looked down at me he rolled a cigarette and lit it."

After a brief exchange,
the stranger took young Thurman around to the agent and did something
that would eventually bless thousands of people around the world
for generations to come:

"...he took out his rawhide money bag and counted the money out.
When the agent handed him the receipt, he handed it to me.
Then, without a word, he turned and disappeared down the railroad track.
I never saw him again."

Though Thurman never saw the man again, he never forgot him.
His autobiography begins with this moving dedication:

"To the stranger in the railroad station in Daytona Beach
who restored my broken dream sixty-five years ago."

Sometimes there are people who walk into our lives
and we never forget them.
Something changes.
Sometimes everything changes.
Jesus was such a man.

It is a powerful message to me that Jesus, in His walk,
walked where many had not walked before …
walked into the places of the heart and people’s lives
and in walking into them transformed them.

So let us go to these places of the heart “Where Jesus Walked.”
Let us look at this One who, as Thurman wrote of the stranger,
restores broken dreams.

In the passage of scripture read today,
Jesus was invited to someone’s house for dinner,
and the someone’s name was Simon, a Pharisee,
one of the keepers and interpreters of the Jewish Law.
Upright, righteous, decent ~ Simon was a good man.
It was to this man’s home that Jesus walked
and into his home that He was welcomed.

No doubt there were other guests there.
And it was customary at such festivities for uninvited guests to be there too.
They would have dropped in for the food and the entertainment.
It would have excited no comment
for any number of uninvited people to be present.

And so it was
that as the host and his guest and the others reclined at the table
a woman, described by Luke as one “who had lived a sinful life,”
entered and stood behind Jesus.

And it was here that something quiet remarkable happened.
It was remarkable because it was so unexpected.
And it was so unexpected because it ran against the way things were.

In a wholly unexpected and extravagant gesture,
she knelt, and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears.
With her hair she dried them.
With her lips she kissed them.
And with the oil from an alabaster flask she anointed them.

And the host thought to himself,
“What kind of man would let a woman like this ~ a known sinner ~
do such a thing?”
And sensing the unspoken words of his heart,
Jesus asked Simon: “Do you see this woman?”
I think Jesus would ask the same question of us.
“Do you see this woman?”

Well, of course Simon saw her.
Just as one who looks at an old piece of furniture
in a second hand store or antique shop
may see just a forsaken piece of wood,
perhaps beat up,
covered with layers of paint or layers of varnish,
not of much use and not very beautiful,
Simon saw her.

And what did he see?

Just that.
Something not very beautiful.
Something not worth restoring.
Whatever beauty there was, he didn’t see it.
Whatever value it might have once had, he didn’t recognize it.

When you look at this woman, Jesus asked Simon, what do you see?

All that Simon saw was a sinner.
All that Simon saw was a presumptuous act.
All that Simon did was judge her, and by that judgment leave her in her misery.

But Jesus saw something different.
Looking at that same piece of furniture,
once beautiful and now anything but beautiful,
once of value and now seemingly valueless,
Jesus saw something more.

He saw the beauty and value in her.

Throughout His ministry,
in place after place,
in life after life that He walked into,
Jesus says God’s loves restore us
because that is what God does,
and that is what He does.

All that Simon was able to see was a sinner.
What he forgot, however, despite his own goodness,
was that he was not good enough.
Jesus saw a beautiful deed.
All that Simon was able to see was a presumptuous act.
Jesus experienced the beauty of a loving heart.
All that Simon did was judge her.
Jesus accepted her kindness.
A kindness His host had not offered.

John Ruskin wrote that
“The question is not what one can scorn,
or disparage,
or find fault with,
but what one can love,
and value,
and appreciate.”

What Simon did in that moment was scorn
and disparage
and find fault with.
He only had eyes for what he saw ~ without.
What Jesus did, and it was so typical of Him, was love
and value
and appreciate.
He only had eyes for what He saw ~ within.

And while the rest of that moment told by Luke
recalls the conversation between Jesus and Simon,
and ends with the woman’s sins being forgiven
and a blessing that she go in peace,
it is the beauty of this extravagant love that is remembered:
the woman’s and Jesus’.

How do you suppose the woman felt ~
this battered old piece of furniture ~
when Jesus said to her “Your sins are forgiven?”
How do you suppose the woman felt ~
this discarded and devalued piece of furniture ~
when Jesus said, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace?”

Something amazing happened.
The amazing thing that happened was grace ~
this unexpected love of God that transformed not only a moment
but that transformed a life ~
that restored her.

Now we don’t know what happened to this woman when she left Simon’s house.
We can only speculate, I suppose, as to what that moment meant to her.

I can see that woman walking away ~
walking with her shoulders back and her head held high.
I can see that woman walking away ~
walking into a new life, a better life, a holier life.
I can see that woman walking away ~
walking with a value that only love can bestow.

Just as she had walked into Simon’s house
Jesus walked into her life and she became a woman reborn.

And we don’t know what happened to Simon, either,
after His guests had all left
and Jesus and the woman were also gone.
We can only speculate, I suppose, as to what that moment meant to him.

I can see Simon reclining alone at his table.
Reliving the moments.
Scratching his head.
Trying to make sense of it all.

I can see Simon ~
a witness to the love of Jesus
and a witness to love’s power.

I can see Simon,
going to the synagogue and opening his scriptures,
and reading words he had read a hundred times before
but reading them, again, for the first time:
“Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

And the words that jump off the page
are not sin and transgression
but the unfailing love and great compassion of his God.

I can see Simon coming to the same conclusion that Paul, another Pharisee, did,
that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Even him.
And that “we are made right with God (justified) freely by God’s grace.”

I can see Simon standing there, understanding at last,
and in that understanding falling to his knees,
and bringing his broken spirit, his broken and contrite heart to God ~
the God of unfailing love and great compassion ~
because Jesus had also walked into his life,
into the deep places of his heart.

In the affirmation of faith which we said together
at the beginning of the service, we acknowledged this same truth.

“God is everything to me,” we said.
“Where would I be without God’s love?
A sinner, without forgiveness …
a wanderer, without a way …
a person, without meaning and purpose …
wounded, without a healer …
broken, without a mender …
questioning, without an answer.

Because of God’s love,
spelled out most beautifully in Jesus,
in a language I can understand,
I know God’s forgiving grace …
I have found my way …
my life has meaning and purpose …
I have experienced God’s healing and mending …
and the answer to my deepest questions is found in Him.

Where would I be without God’s love?
God is everything to me.”

Where, indeed?

Thank God that Jesus has walked into our lives. Thank God.

SOLI DEO GLORIA

SCRIPTURE + Luke 7:36-50 (NIV)

Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman
Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and 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 men 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 canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled."

"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—for she loved much. But he who 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."

Footnotes: