Yes, the Gospel Crank is very happy. I was gone this weekend and didn’t get to hear Tim’s sermon. I had to listen to it online. It made me smile. In fact, I was dancing in my seat. I was doing the Bar Stool Boogie in my seat. I loved what Tim had to say about gratitude.
He implied that gratitude cannot be forced or contrived, but must be a genuine appreciation for what some one has done for you. In terms of God and the gospel, gratitude comes when we “get” what Jesus has done for us. Or maybe I should say the degree to which we “get” the gospel is the degree to which we have gratitude.
If you are a do-it-yourself religionist, a self-remodeler, if you are spending your life’s energies trying to make your dead soul become Jesus-like, if you are busy fixing the “outer man” but have no clue what is happening to the “inner man,” well, you’re not going to be grateful for a teaching like this one. Why? Because this kind of gratitude comes from the heart, the inner man, that’s why. Faking it on the outside, on the exterior means nothing, zip, nada. Doesn’t count with God.
The story of Simon the Pharisee and the slutty ‘ho with the hair is a living object lesson. It’s an ambulatory parable. Jesus has been trying, with no success, to make a dent in the Pharisee’s well defended religious helmet of self-justification. He seems to be, in this passage, ratcheting up the energy. You have to hand it to Him for not giving up on this bunch. You and I would have just thought, “You know, you’re right. I don’t like you either. The hell with the lot of you.” But Jesus keeps on coming with these guys.
In Luke 15 you have Jesus reassuring the poor and down-trodden with parables of the lost and the losers: lost sheep, lost coin, lost sons. Only, one of the Sons obviously represents the religious leaders in Israel who don’t want to come to the party anymore because Jesus is letting in the losers and the riff-raff. They are offended. They are not losers and riff-raff, they believe, so they don’t want that kind of party.
Jesus tells them “you are the ones who justify themselves in the eyes of men. But God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight (Luke 16:15).” Ouch! Detestable? Yes, detestable. And then Jesus tells the Rich Man and Lazarus parable where the apparent loser is the winner and the apparent winner is the loser. Jesus is warning them that they are going to end up like the Rich Man because their value system is upside down.
And then Tim skips back to Luke chapter seven where Jesus is at lunch with Simon the Pharisee and the slutty ‘ho walks in and starts weeping in gratitude and her tears splash on Jesus’ feet (she is standing behind Him while He is reclining at the table) so she wipes them with her hair and pours perfume on them. It’s not a parable; it’s real life. And Jesus tries to make the same point with Simon as with the other Pharisees of later chapters – their value system is upside down. Simon is not thinking like God thinks. He doesn’t love what God loves.
What does it mean to be “blessed by God?” That you have wealth, health, general happiness, a good looking spouse, smart obedient kids? Almost all of would say, “Heck yeah, such a person would be blessed.” How could we not say that? For many of us being blessed means not being like others. Being blessed means having a better car or house than most. It means catching a few breaks. It means not having any inconvenient crisis and trouble in our life. We are blessed. Thank you God.
But Jesus is telling Simon, Jesus is telling us, that our default value system of comparisons to other people is not only wrong, but it gets in the way of what God is trying to communicate to us. Therefore our value system is detestable to God.
How can we be grateful if we think the ‘ho with the hair and Lazerus at the rich man’s gate are not blessed? I mean, challenge yourself. If you were driving by the rich man’s gate and saw the two characters what would you think. I’ll tell you what you would think, “Rich guy, pillar of society, got it all together, blessed. Guy with dog licking his sores, loser, must have made some really bad decisions to get to this place, not blessed.”
That’s what we would all think. I’m the Gospel Crank and I know these things. And our thoughts would be detestable to God … unless … unless our faith in what God has done for us in Christ has converted our thinking. I firmly believe that the Spirit of God would guide us to assume that they both need help. The rich man primarily needs spiritual help. Lazerus needs to be taken to the emergency ward. The Spirit would give us compassion for both. God wants to work through us to meet their individual needs, whatever that may be.
Our gratitude for what Christ has done for us in the gospel would cause us to “regard no one from a worldly point of view (2Corinthians 5:16)” or “after the flesh” as some translations say. At least this is our only hope of seeing past our default detestable value system. We really are blind, you know. Have you figured out that you don’t see what God sees?
And so we end up right back at the feet of Jesus where we belong. And that makes the Crank happy.Lord, we are blind. Help us Jesus. You’re our only hope.
The Gospel Crank
