But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.  - Luke 6:35-36

I’ve often pictured this image of Jesus, walking among ruins. I can picture Him walking through rubble on streets, found among the sick, lowly, and lame; here to stay. 

They often appeared throughout His story in the Gospels. He changed their lives. Whether we’re looking at Zacchaeus or Matthew, the tax collectors turned followers, or the woman with the issue of blood who was healed with one touch, or the man who sat by the Pool of Bethesda and was infirm for 38 years then suddenly healed—if you’re looking for Jesus in ancient times, you might find Him among such as these. 

But there’s an instance in the Gospels that’s always struck me—Jesus, sitting down with a different kind of person, someone you might not expect, a Pharisee. Luke 7:36 reads, “When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.”

It’s always struck me that Jesus accepted this invitation. The Pharisees by far were His biggest opponents, constantly objecting to Him, trying to trip Him up, never realizing how crazy they sounded or that they were actually furthering people from the Living God. And yet the Living God accepts their invitation.

In this same story something else amazing happens that still astounds me today. A woman of the city, as the Scriptures describe, with an ill reputation enters the scene. She was known for her sin. But something amazing happens when she encounters Jesus—she begins to anoint Him in an extravagant display of worship.

The text reads, “And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment” (Luke 7:37-38).

In the story, the Pharisee named Simon objects. How dare she, she’s a sinner, he intimates. All the while, Jesus praises her, and she becomes a beautiful part of the Gospels. 

Sometimes, I think there’s this side to religion that won’t permit any kind of weakness or infirmity within its boundaries. Sometimes I think it still objects to extravagant worship even in tears.

And I think religion still bares its teeth at the face of Jesus, still hiding its face from Him.

Yet He responds yet again in John 5:39-40: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” I hope you can hear the invitation. 

Because it was a Pharisee who invited Jesus to his house and his table, but it was Jesus who invited the Pharisees into His life, to the point of giving it up for them.

It absolutely sweeps me away that He would stoop so low, not just to accept an invitation from one of them, but to entertain their silly arguments, to go back and forth with their reviling constantly, to bear their hatred and enmity on His shoulders, to continually reach out His hand to their venomous biting, to give them an answer that always pointed straight to Him as the Messiah, to continually let them know He was the One they had been searching for and it was Him all along, to carry even their burdens all the way to the Cross, to breathe again and continually invite them into His life still.

Because Jesus loves the freaks just as much as He loves the Pharisees. 

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16