Our Unexpected God: When Jesus Says You Matter

In Luke 7, when a woman with a sinful reputation anoints Jesus' feet with expensive perfume, the religious leaders judge her harshly. But Jesus asks a profound question: Do you see this woman? While others saw only her past mistakes, Jesus saw her courage, devotion, and worth. This story reminds us that much of women's work goes unnoticed by the world, but Jesus sees everything. He sees the late-night sacrifices, the emotional labor, the quiet faithfulness that keeps families and communities functioning. Whether you're a mother, mentor, leader, or caregiver, your value extends far beyond what others recognize. Jesus doesn't just see your work - he honors your dignity and calls you valuable.

Transcript

All right, church, I'm going to invite you to open up your Bibles to the book of Luke, chapter seven. We're going to start in verse 36. This is a story I think many of us are going to be familiar with, but it's a story I think on Mother's Day especially, we need to hear again a couple of things I want to add to this. We are finishing up today the last part of our sermon series, Our Unexpected God. And we're going to start this summer with a new sermon series that's going to be hopefully just fun.

We're going to call it Tell Me the Stories of Jesus. And we're going to talk through all the fun biblical stories of scripture. We're going to dive into those and hopefully laugh a lot. And there'll be lots of pop quizzes during the summer. You'll all be put on the hook for that.

It's going to be a lot of fun. So you don't want to miss all the things that are happening this summer here at Community Brookside. All right, here's the word of the Lord for us today, starting in Luke, chapter 7, verses 36 through 50.

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisees house and he reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisees house. So he came there with an alabaster. So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.

Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner. Jesus answered him, simon, I have something to tell you. Tell me, Teacher. He said, two people owed money to a certain money lender.

One owed him 500 denarii, the other 50. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more? Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. You have judged correctly, jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet. But she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a Kiss.

But this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. Then Jesus said to her, your sins are forgiven.

The other guests began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins? Jesus said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

This is a beautiful story and one of my favorites.

Men, I'm going to tell you something that I don't think you have forgotten. I think it's something you know, but maybe not something you realize all the time. Do you recognize that there are moments in women's lives that no one sees? Late night emails that women have to send because maybe she's the only one who remembered the deadline, the meeting that she leads where she has to be twice as prepared to be taken half as seriously. The quiet prayer she whispers before walking into a room where she knows she'll be underestimated.

The emotional labor she carries so her family, her team, or her friends can breathe a little easier the moment she cries in her car between responsibilities because she doesn't have time to fall apart anywhere else that was. Huh?

And if you grew up in a house like I grew up in, you might know this. There is no such thing as a self running life. There are only women who make the world work. Here's the thing. Most of a woman's work goes unseen.

Can I get an amen, ladies?

Uncelebrated, unapplauded, Unnoticed. And today on Mother's Day. We're not here to reinforce stereotypes or to reduce women to roles, because I think that's done far too much. We're here to do something a little bit deeper. What you do matters.

Your presence matters.

Wow. Okay. So your courage matters. Your leadership matters. Your devotion matters.

You matter. And Jesus sees just how much you matter, even when nobody else does. Right.

Luke tells us that Jesus is invited to a dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. What do you think of when you think of Simon's house? If you were to walk into Simon's house, what do you. What do you. What do you see in your mind's eye?

What do you see? I bet it is a nice place, right? If there's a big dinner and they're celebrating Jesus. Right. It's got to be really nice.

What other things do you see in your mind?

Sure, yeah. Like religious, you know? Yeah. Symbolic stuff that's a great. Yeah, I imagine the house is packed, right?

Like, wall to wall. Just so many people are there. And Luke in this section is leading us to believe that it's a room full of religious men. A room full of opinions, right? Because when you get two guys together, they're going to share their opinions.

It's a room full of people who think they know who belongs and who doesn't, right? And then she walks in, initially, probably unnoticed, probably standing at the periphery, trying to sneak her way in to get close to Jesus. And I'm sure that there were more than a few religious leaders who told her that she shouldn't be there. What are you doing here? Don't you see?

This is for us. This isn't for you.

Scripture tells us that she was a woman who, quote, unquote, had lived a sinful life. A woman with a reputation. A woman who, in the minds of those who were in attendance at Simon's house, isn't even supposed to be there. Not just because she was a woman among men in a culture where women should not be unaccompanied by a family member, but also because she was what the Greeks would call a hamartalos, a sinner, right? A woman who had missed the mark.

A woman who had lived in deviation to God's plan. We confer that she was a woman who had been talked about, judged, dismissed, and probably pretty avoided by the religious men. Simon clearly knew who this woman was, and he was kind of surprised that Jesus didn't. Surely, if he knows who this woman is, he wouldn't allow her to touch him, right? And then we find out that she brings an alabaster jar of perfume with her to dinner.

She gets as absolutely close to Jesus as any person had ever been in the entire time that Jesus had been walking the streets of Galilee, right?

She starts to weep in his presence. And then it says that her tears are so. There's so many tears that it just. It wets his feet. And then she wipes his feet dry with her hair and she kisses his feet.

And then she breaks open that alabaster jar and pours perfume on them. And this, in this moment, is a picture of Jesus that we don't really get very often, right? We know that many people appreciate Jesus, but nobody appreciates Jesus to this extent. This woman is in love with the fact that Jesus is in her presence. And she believes that Jesus is something special.

And here, Jesus allows this woman to be so close with him and so intimate. It feels to me like when we Read the scene. Like this should be a private scene, right? This woman who recognizes how sinful her life is should experience this moment with Jesus. Not in front of everybody else, but somewhere private.

And here, in this moment, it's not in private. It's out in the open. It's vulnerable. It's courageous. It's, some would say, pretty scandalous.

And I bet if those religious people were anything like religious people I know in my life, I bet the anger in that room would have felt pretty palpable, right? There wasn't any yelling or screaming. Why are you. Why are you here, Master? Why are you spending so much time with her?

Why do you let this woman touch you? Do you know who she is? There was no anger or jealousy spoken out loud. But Jesus hears the internal thinking of their hearts, right?

Simon thinks to himself, well, if Jesus really were a prophet, he would know what kind of a woman this is.

Friends, while the world labels this woman by her past, Jesus sees her potential.

Everyone in this room sees her reputation. They know her mistakes. They know about her past. They know her shame. And they have categorized her.

She's not one of us. She's somebody else. But in this moment, Jesus sees clearly that she has courage. She sees her devotion. She sees that she has this beautiful insight to know that Jesus is something very different and very special.

He sees her love and moaning. Most importantly, in this moment, when nobody else does, Jesus sees her worth.

When people all around Jesus see a teacher, she sees something that the Pharisees can't see. She knows that Jesus is the only one that can restore her life. She gives him the most valuable thing that she owns. When she pours out the perfume on his feet, she gives him, in this moment, all of her tears. She gives him her vulnerability.

It's like she's giving him her whole heart.

Sometimes the people the world overlooks are the ones who understand Jesus the best.

I have heard so many women, including my own wife, say things like, I feel like I'm always doing 100 things that no one notices until the moment that I stopped doing that thing, right? The only time that people in my household appreciate me is when they run out of clean underwear, Right?

Friends, this is not just a simple complaint. This is naming a truth that I don't think we want to name. All of us have unfair expectations of the women in our lives. Whether they are our wives, our mothers, our sisters, or our friends. Many of the women in this room carry the entire emotional weight of their families on their shoulders.

Many of them carry the strategic weight of the companies that they run, the spiritual weight of their communities, the invisible weight of expectations that we place on them both as husbands and partners, children they carry, the quiet weight of being the only people that sometimes we can rely on when our lives are a mess. And almost every moment of that expectation of the women in our lives comes without applause, without fanfare, without any recognition at all. But Jesus sees it. Jesus sees the woman who stays late at work because she's the only one that can fix the problem. Jesus sees the woman who sacrifices in order to balance the budget.

Jesus sees the woman who mentors younger women in her field. Jesus sees the women who get up every morning to go to work, to make the kids lunches, and does it all without anybody else. Jesus sees the woman who shows up for others even when she's exhausted. Jesus sees the woman who travels hundreds of miles to be there to care for her family in their time of need. Jesus sees the woman who sees her husband's hand, who holds her husband's hand as he suffers through chemo and surgeries and rehab.

Jesus sees the woman who feels like she's not enough, but keeps going anyway.

Jesus sees you, and he loves you. Not because you can reproduce, but because you reproduce the life of Christ through the way you love and you care for those around you.

Ladies, hear me when I say this. Jesus sees the work. You think that no one else notices.

So for me, Mother's Day is beautiful, but it's also very complicated, right? So many pastors around the world today are getting up here and they're thanking all these mothers who've had children. And I think that it can't be limited to something so simple. Don't get me wrong. Raising children, starting and creating a family, is a beautiful and sacred thing.

But we shouldn't appreciate their women only for their reproductive ability. Okay? Growing up in the church always been some sort of celebration for mothers, for the women who chose to or could bear children. But I think here in the 21st century, we need to recognize and realize that women are more valuable than what they can provide for us.

Today, we choose to celebrate more than the act of bearing children. Today I hope that we recognize that women are gifted and they mean something very special to every one of us. They mean something special to the mission of the church, to the ministry of Jesus and to our world. So today, I want us to be a church that honors the women who are exhausted, the women who feel like they're failing, the women who are thriving, the women who long to be moms but can't or never could. The women who chose not to be moms, the women who've lost their moms, the women who had complicated moms.

Today we want to celebrate the foster moms, the adoptive moms, the stepmoms, our church moms. Right? Like Erica. She's my church mom.

Today we celebrate our spiritual mothers, our mentors, the leaders and aunties, the women who mother this church with their presence, their wisdom, and their love of every one of us. Today we want to celebrate the women who lead companies, the women who lead, The women who lead classrooms, the women who lead ministries. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a woman pastor. I can't imagine that. The women who lead their families.

Today we celebrate the women who lead quietly, who lead faithfully, and who lead powerfully.

Mothering is just not. It's not just a biological category, friends. It's a spiritual calling that so many women in this room have answered.

And God sees every woman who nurtures us in any form, mother or not. So here's the heart of what I'm trying to say today. One of the most beautiful and intimate encounters with Jesus ever recorded in the Gospels. Jesus turns toward the sinful woman. He doesn't turn to the Pharisee.

He doesn't turn to the critics in the room, not the men who hold all their power. In that moment, Jesus turns to the woman and he says to every person who can hear him, do you see this woman?

He didn't ask if they knew her reputation. He didn't ask if they could all recount the number of mistakes that this woman has made. And they certainly didn't ask if she had borne any children.

He asks if they can actually see her. And then he says, her sins are forgiven. Her love is great. Her faith has saved her. Go now in peace.

Jesus says that in this moment, in this room full of men, that she matters.

And you matter when the world says you don't. I promise you, Jesus believes that you do.

If you've ever felt like your faithfulness goes unseen, like you're never appreciated or just hanging on by a thread, Jesus sees you when others judge you. Jesus sees you when others dismiss you. Jesus chooses to honor you when others underestimate you. Jesus wants to lift you up and build you into a worker in God's kingdom. When others define you by your past, Jesus defines you by what you're worth.

When others question your value, Jesus calls the work that you do beautiful and sacred. And this beautiful story today reminds us that Jesus doesn't just forgive a sinful woman in this moment. Jesus restores to her in this moment dignity.

So here's our invitation on this Mother's Day.

Let the God who sees you actually see you. Let the God who defended this woman defend you. Let the God who honors this courage honor the courage that you have. Let the God who called her valuable here in this moment that he calls you valuable too. And then our call is to go and see the unseen work in others.

We have to be the moms and the women and the church that goes to speak life into women who carry the world quietly on their shoulders too. Go honor the faithfulness that never makes the highlight real.

Because our unexpected God is the God who says that you matter. Church. Let's pray together.