“Who is that woman? Good Lord – she’s dressed for a cocktail lounge, not my dining room. Is she a new servant? Now what is she doing? She’s gone straight up to Jesus. Who does she think she is? And now she’s crying? She’s on the floor? Touching him? Weeping all over his feet, wiping them with her hair? Someone get her out of my house!”
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, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, 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.
Disruption. It’s fast becoming one of my favorite religious words. I’m thinking of reading my way through the gospels just looking for scenes of disruption, and people who disrupt. Often, it’s Jesus, upending expectations of how holy people behave, inviting new expectations of how God operates. Sometimes it’s people asking him for help, occasionally upending even his expansive expectations.
Something expands in us when our routine is disrupted, whether by God or by something or someone so "off-norm," they cause us to see in a new way. The scene created by this woman, a known “sinner” (as opposed to the rest of us who tend to keep it better hidden), invited everyone at that event to see grace and repentance, even hospitality, in a new light. Her awkwardly intimate attention to Jesus was seen by the host as scandalous, but interpreted by Jesus as an appeal for healing and forgiveness. He saw someone who wanted to live a new life, with a cleansed heart.
When has someone "crashed" a party of yours, bringing new life? Who disrupts your notions about God? About church? Maybe other kinds of Christians? Maybe people outside the community of believers, who want something we have?
When do you see yourself as a disrupter? What spaces or forms would you like to disrupt? Is God inviting you to do that, or is it coming from you?
In this story, we see Jesus regard a party-crasher as someone worthy of honor and healing. Who is trying to crash our parties? What parties might we want to crash to come closer to our Lord and receive his deepest blessing?
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