Who Is He Looking At?

I think my favorite story from the Gospel of Luke (other than the resurrection accounts!) is the story of the sinful woman who entered the home of Sanctimonious Simon the Pharisee while Jesus and His disciples were being served lunch and checked out by the religious bigshots of the day. The story is found in Luke 7:36-50. If you aren’t familiar with the story, I would encourage you to stop reading me, go read the story, and then come back to me.

Luke is a very creative writer, and if we read him too quickly, we might miss some of his subtle ideas that can impact us. In verse 44, after telling a short little parable about forgiveness which forces Simon into a corner he can’t get out of, Luke says of Jesus, “Turning to the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman?…’” (The Second Testament)

I’ve read this story countless times and have preached from it more times than I can remember. But recently, I’ve been drawn to this phrase – “turning to the woman, he said to Simon.” It has prompted me to think about this question: “Who might Jesus be looking at when he is talking to me?” (I hope you are comfortable with the idea that He speaks through Scripture, so, “when I read Scripture, who is Jesus looking at?”)

For example, when Jesus is talking about the great judgment and says, “For I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;” (Matthew 25:42 (NASB) would He be looking at a room full of American children, who despite living in the nation with the greatest GDP, 1 in 6 under the age of 5 live below the poverty line; 9 million face hunger or food insecurity issues; and 11 million of the total 74 million children in the United States live in poverty? Should I hear this text as saying “You see these children; they were hungry?”

What about, “I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in?” (Matthew 25:43) Is it possible that when Jesus asks me about that, He could be looking under an interstate bridge in cities like Atlanta, seeing some of the 582,000+ Americans who were homeless in 2022? This is an easy “out of sight, out of mind” issue for those of us who live in the suburbs and rural areas and typically don’t see under such bridges. Or maybe He is looking at an immigrant camp around the southern border. Regardless of how the federal government treats the issue of immigration, could Jesus be saying to believers as He looks at these abandoned people, “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me”? (You might want to look at what the Law of Moses and the Prophets said about welcoming strangers before you answer!)

“I was sick, and in prison, and you did not visit me.” (25:43) What if, when Jesus asks me about that, He is looking at a group of prisoners somewhere in the United States? That wouldn’t be hard to find; somewhere around 1.9 people are in prison – federal, state, and local – which comes out to be something like 573 people per 100,000 citizens. That doesn’t count people on probation, etc. That is the highest number of prisoners of any country in the world – which is saying something – and Georgia, where I live, is in the top ten states when it comes to incarceration. Maybe He is looking at the politicians we elect – often branding themselves Christian while having a “lock them up and throw away the key” attitude about almost any crime imaginable – and is saying to them, and to me, “I was sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.”

In a world that marginalized children, Jesus seems to think that caring for children is important. He speaks directly to that at least twice, while never specifically mentioning abortion. For example, in Mark 9:37, He says, “Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me.” What if, when saying those words to me, Jesus is looking at a group of women in the waiting room of an abortion clinic, at least some of whom are there because they saw no way to take care of a child – and had no idea that we Christians should be pro-life as well as pro-birth? Don’t read this as pro-abortion, but it takes more to thrive as a child than to merely be born.

I hope these imagined scenarios are causing you to think about some of the important issues of our time. There are others like these, of course, but perhaps this sets your mind to exploring what it truly means to follow Jesus.

But back to Luke. Simon the Pharisee was no doubt a law-keeping Jewish man who lived by checking off all the right boxes on the checklist for how a person of God should live. Most churches I know would welcome him as new member. The woman, unnamed as she is, probably had not checked any of the boxes, and stepping into a church building on Sunday would be a challenge for her and create a stir for us. In each of the examples I’ve given, I think you could use these two as paradigms by which we can think better about what it means to follow Jesus. I’m not defending anyone’s bad behavior – but I am convicted by the idea that the Jesus story should be transforming and that our call is not to allow some form of government to set our standards, but to follow the gospel, which rises above any human inventions and rule making. (Read Colossians 2:16-23)

Were I to summarize, I might say that Jesus is saying to Simon, as He looks at this woman who was a sinner, “Simon, your ideological, rule-making, sanctimonious, nationalistic way of life won’t get you to where you want to end up. But her faith – why, her faith has made her whole, and she can go in peace.”

It happens every time. Jesus is always more interested in who we can become than He is impressed with who we are.

One more time: when Jesus is speaking to you, who might He be looking at in order to give you something to think about?

^{Photo by Lauren Kan on Unsplash}