At His Feet

Rev. William “Buck” Day

As Chris said we are moving into another purpose of our church and we are talking about worship.  When we start thinking about worship, boy, our minds go all over the place, don’t they?  We go in lots of different directions when we start thinking about worship.  Right away some of us go right to the idea of thoughts or of style and all of the things that are associated with style.  Things like what kind of instruments are going to be part of that worship?  Or what type of music are we going to have? Or maybe even, is that style what I would consider reverent worship? And we go right there.  Yet others of us maybe go to the environment; what does it look like around here? What is the lighting like? Are the candles lit?  Are the pastors wearing robes?  Is that child behind me going to be quiet so I can hear?  Then there are others of us who just say, you know, I just want to worship.  That got me thinking.  It got me thinking about, well, what is worship, the what of worship, if you want to call it that; and the how of worship, how are we supposed to worship; and even, then, the where, where are we supposed to worship? I thought, as we continue to look at the purposes, I thought that that would maybe be a way for us to get into it.  So because there are so many different ideas around worship, I thought I would take a little bit of a different track to try to get at some of those things.  I thought well, we always talk, well, what is worship.  Let’s not start there today.  Let’s start by maybe looking at the how of worship, and maybe that might give us better information regarding maybe about the what and the where of worship. 

So to that end we want to look at our text.  Our text comes from the gospel of Luke and I invite you to open your bibles in the pews if you would like to follow along.  It is the story of Jesus going to a dinner party.  I invite you to follow along starting in verse 36.

“One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him.  And he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.  And a woman in the city who was a sinner, learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house.  She brought an alabaster jar of ointment.  She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair.  Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.

Now when the Pharisee who invited him saw this he said to himself, “if this man were a prophet he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner”.  Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”  “Teacher” he replied “speak”.  “A certain creditor had two debtors, one owed five hundred denarii, and another fifty.  When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts of both of them.  Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “Well, I suppose it’s the one he cancelled the greater debt.” Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.”  And then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “ Do you see this woman?  I entered your house and you gave me no water for my feet but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I have come in she has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore, I tell you her sins, which were many, have been forgiven.  Hence she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.”

Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”Those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this that even forgives sins?” Then he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Let us pray.

Mighty and holy God we ask that by your Holy Spirit you would quicken our hearts to hear what you want to say to us this day.  We ask this because of Jesus.  Amen.

Well in our story today, not only does Jesus put Simon the Pharisee in his place, like he does usually when he interacts with a Pharisee, but for our purposes he also makes some very clear contrasts between the woman on one hand and Simon on the other.  So what I would like us to do is to take a look at the two and see if this helps us understand the how of worship.  So let’s start with the woman.  She is considered a sinful, immoral woman.  Now the fact that Luke puts this in the text I think shows that everyone in the town pretty much knew this.  This was common knowledge for all of them.  So for her to even enter into this party, she really had to swallow her pride.  She had to know what was going to happen when she walked into the room.  So she walked in.  And, I think, as a part of that she also had to overcome some fears; because not only did everyone know who she was and what she was about, but she knew it as well.  But even beyond that the thing that probably frightened her as she stepped across the threshold into the house was that she did not know how Jesus was going to react.  For all she knew Jesus could have very much reacted like everyone else in that household.  So she had to overcome some fears as well.  Once she gets to where Jesus is reclining at the table, that’s when the fireworks really begin.  She is crying, crying to the point that there are tears dripping off of her face; that is how hard she is crying, to the point then that they are falling on Jesus’ feet.  She then lets her hair down and uses her hair as a towel to wipe Jesus’ feet.  Now in that day and time, when a woman let her hair down in public like that, that would be equivalent to you and I getting undressed on the corner and running around without any clothes on.  She was exposing herself in the most intimate way.  She was saying, “Here I am; this is who I am; this is what I’m about”.  As she is wiping his feet with her hair, she also then takes this jar of ointment, this expensive ointment, and begins to pour it on his feet.  No doubt as soon as she began to pour this ointment, that if the other guests didn’t see what was going on, they now smelled something that was going on.  So it directed all their attention to what was going on between Jesus and this woman.  She was giving all that she had, this alabaster jar of expensive ointment or some texts call it perfume.  The woman swallowed her pride.  She faced fears that she had.  She revealed who she was and she gave everything she had.  Well what was she doing then at the feet of Jesus?  Was she seeking forgiveness?  Maybe.  We don’t know; she didn’t ask for forgiveness.  Was she doing something else?  Was she worshipping?  Could that be the what or even how of worship?  Well let’s kind of go with it.  Let’s kind of run with it a little bit because we wanted to start with the how, let’s take that and continue to kind of tease that out.  If this is the how of worship, if this is a kind of worship, how was she worshipping?  She’s freely giving up all of what she is and who she is before Jesus, isn’t she?  Isn’t that a definition of surrender?  To give up freely who and what you are.  Is it too much then to say that the how of worship is surrender, that how we worship is to surrender.  To surrender all that we are before Christ and God the Father.  Is full surrender what we see going on in this story with the woman at Jesus’ feet?  I think it is.  I think it is.  Well that’s the woman’s story so let’s put her here.  Now let’s move over to Simon the Pharisee and see how he responds.

Anytime that a traveling teacher or rabbi, there were lots that traveled around in Jesus’ day, anytime they entered into the town, to invite one of these traveling rabbis or teachers into your home for dinner was a very big deal.  It was a very prestigious thing.  You kind of scored and got the inside tract to get that person into your house.  Now think that it is Jesus and the crowds that follow Jesus and all the controversy even if you didn’t agree with what he was teaching, to score having Jesus have dinner at your home was major kudos among all your buddies.  So okay, here’s a Pharisee, he’s going, “Ha ha, look who I got in my house.”  So he’s like, all right.  So where’s his pride right now?  Did he swallow his pride?  Then think of what’s going on in his mind as he sees this woman, who everyone knows who it is, walk into his house.  He’s going “Oh no.  She’s ruined the whole evening”.   He’s thinking, “Okay, she’s ruined it”.  But how did she ruin it?  She ruined it because his fear was not about her being in there, it probably was about what all of his buddies were thinking about him now.  You know, he could almost hear their thoughts, “Oh man, how did this one get past his guard or his maid, to let her in, how did he let this happen?”  So you can see how this fear begins to consume him.  I think then that turns to ridicule as Jesus sees his thoughts where he is saying “if this guy were a prophet, he would know who was touching him” and he probably begins then to discount the words that Jesus would say as being on the same level as the worthlessness of this woman.  If the woman didn’t hold anything back, what did Simon hold back?  Well we know from our text those common courtesies that were extended to guests. Simon didn’t do those, did he? He didn’t wash the guests’ feet; didn’t anoint them with oil; didn’t give them the greeting kiss that was part of the culture.  Simon was surrendering as little as possible.  So if the woman surrendered and as a result worshipped, if that’s where we want to go with that, did Simon surrender?  I think he did anything but surrender, didn’t he? 

So here we have this picture of one who surrenders and one who does not.  And then Jesus, of course, brings this dichotomy to a head when he says, “Those who have been forgiven much, love much and those who have been forgiven little, love little.” At face value when you say that you step back and go “Huh, what are you talking about Jesus?”  Is he saying Simon only needed to be forgiven a little?  Not at all.  He’s not saying Simon needs to be forgiven little, even though Simon probably in his own mind an argument can be made that he doesn’t even think he needs to be forgiven at all, let alone a little, and that the woman needed a lot of forgiveness.  What Jesus is getting at here is that when our perspective of ourselves is that we need just a little bit of forgiveness, “you know I’ve just done some kind of minor things in my life, minor sins, you know, I’m okay for the most part.”  Then our response to that forgiveness will be to love little.  You see the self-centeredness. The kind of me centered part of that equation.  But when we understand our hopelessness, our hopelessness apart from God’s forgiveness, and there is nothing we can do and we are in a heap of trouble, that when that forgiveness then does come, oh, man, our response is overwhelming love because of what God has done for us.  That’s the response we see from the woman. 

So what does that mean for worship?  Could it be that our ability to surrender in worship is a function of the gratitude we have because of the forgiveness that we’ve received into our lives?   If the how of worship is to surrender all of who and what we are before Christ, does that help us then understand the what of worship?   Could the what of worship be our response to God’s work in our lives?  In other words, we worship because of our response to God’s work in our lives.  And the level of our worship is related to our understanding of how much God has done for us.  If we believe that we have been forgiven much, we will love much and the natural outcome of that is to worship much.  The other side of that coin is that if we believe that we have been forgiven little, we will love little and we will worship little. 

Well if that’s the what of worship and how of worship, where do we go for the where of worship?  Well it’s only speculation on my part for sure, but what do you think that forgiven woman’s life was like after her encounter with Jesus?  What do you think happened to her?  We don’t know in the text but I’m guessing she lived life very differently.  She took the love that she received from Christ and I’m guessing she lavished it on the people around her.  She just poured it out.  I think that’s the encouragement that we see coming out of Ephesians 5 from Paul.  Paul calls us to live a life of love, he says to “surrender yourself like Jesus, making yourself a fragrant offering to God”.  You see the overtones of the alabaster jar?  Paul continues and says “we are to live wisely, making the most of every opportunity, living a life fully pleasing to God, singing to him, singing praises and hymns in thanksgiving”.  That sounds like worship, doesn’t it?  If living life based on the gratitude that we have for what Christ has done for us, it’s our call.  Is it too much then to say that we are to live a life of worship in every area of our lives; that our lives are to be a life of worship?  If that’s the case, what does that look like?  How might our actions be different if we take that attitude and incorporate that kind of gratitude into every area of our lives?  Well, first off, worship isn’t just about Sundays anymore, is it?  It’s an everyday, every moment kind of thing.  Style doesn’t matter anymore.  Environment doesn’t matter.  I mean you can worship driving down I-394 now.  What matters is the surrender that we bring.  The surrender that we bring because of the gratitude we have for what God has done in our lives and we are incorporating that, saying “thank you Lord, thank you”.  That’s an everyday kind of thing.  What does then, in practical terms, that kind of life of gratitude, a life of worship look like?  When you get up in the morning, what’s the first thing that comes into your mind?  Is it “oh man I’ve got so much stuff to do today” or is it “Thank you Lord for a good night’s sleep and for this day, whatever it brings”. 

As we walk through our days do we see those places where God can be thanked, where He can be praised?  Do we see where we can offer up a prayer spontaneously because of something that has crossed our life?  Maybe we pray for the driver in front of us because they won’t allow us to merge in as we are getting on the freeway.  That’s a new way to take it.  Maybe it’s, you read the paper and you go “Oh Lord I pray for that church in Colorado Springs that’s going through troubles right now because of Ted Haggard.  Lord more importantly I pray for your church and the abuse that it will take in our world”.  Just because you maybe read that or you watch it on TV or you pick it up on the internet and you go “oh.”  Stop, pray, give God thanks.  Pray over those things.  That’s worship. 

How do you surrender to Christ at work, in your homes?  What might that look like, an opportunity to maybe act a little bit kind of on the border ethically?  What do you do with that?  You know, are you a friend to the outcast, like Jesus was to the woman, to those sinful people around us?  I want to encourage you to walk through your day looking for those places where you can act like the woman in our story, where you can swallow your pride, where you can face your fears, where you can reveal who you truly are and allow yourself to give sacrificially.  As you walk through your day kind of just have this mental note in your mind.  Every now and then just maybe have it pop in your mind.  Maybe if you’re not like that maybe you just need to write it down and put it on a desk or kitchen table somewhere and just say “How’s my surrender?  How’s my surrender today?”  Knowing we are all sinful creatures that there are going to be times as we walk through our days when we’re going to be more like Simon than like the woman.  Let’s be honest about it.  In those times you say, “I’m sorry Lord, forgive me” and you pick it up and you start over again.  Because what we are talking about, this life style of worship, is something that we must train for rather than simply trying in our own mind and our own strength and our own will just to do.  If we just say we are going to do it, we are going to fail.  But if we train to do it over time, guess what; over time we will become more like we want our outcome to be.  So know that we are in training, that’s part of growing in Christ, is this idea that we are training to become people more like Christ than what we are today.  We are not just simply trying harder.  So our lives are to be worship in everything we do. 

Worship encompasses every area of our life.  That’s why I like the song (from Casting Crowns, a Christian musical group) that says “Let my life song sing to you.”  Our “life song” is the way we worship, they way we walk through our day.  Let that sing to our Lord.  That’s what Christ is calling us to.  That’s what worship is supposed to be about as we walk through our days.  So that when we do come together like this, in a corporate setting, man, we can blow the roof off this place in our praise and our thanksgiving of what God is doing.  But we were created to give God glory, that is part of our spiritual DNA.  To do that we have to be grateful for what God has done for us.  He has forgiven us; He has redeemed us; He has sealed us; and He has even glorified us.  To God be all the glory forever and ever.

Let me pray for us.  Mighty and Holy God we do give you our worship.  We give you our praise and Lord we ask that we would become people of surrender, that we would surrender every area of our life to you that it might be worship.  Help us to start on this training regiment knowing that you will bear fruit as a result of it.  Thank you Lord God.  In your name, Jesus.  Amen.