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” (Luke 7:39, NIV).
Just over two years ago now, I preached a sermon that I titled A Tale of Three Women. Due to the unusual impact this sermon had on my congregation, I posted the text to it here. That post remains one of the most viewed and most often viewed posts on my blog.
The sermon is based on Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus is the guest of honor at a dinner party of Simon the Pharisee. While Jesus and the other guests are reclining at the table, an uninvited guest, a “woman in that town that lived a sinful life,” shows up, begins to cry and at Jesus’ feet, poured perfume on them and dried them with her hair.
My central point was that Christians should be living in such a way as to make Christ attractive to the broken, the lost, and the outcast. Yet too often the opposite is true. We think about how it would make us look. We worry about our image. We worry about the cost. We don’t want to deal with the headaches, the heartaches, or the pain. We fear walking into the pain, loss, brokenness, and sin of such people. Yet this is what Jesus did again, and again, and again. I further illustrated the point by telling the stories of two other women that I knew personally: one who got lost in the church, and another who is currently broken outside the church. In both cases their experience paralleled that of the woman in Luke 7.
One of those women was Rachael, a high school student of mine when I was teaching Bible at a private Christian school in central New Jersey. One day she just disappeared. After a couple of weeks we were told she had withdrawn because she was pregnant. School policy was that student pregnancy was grounds for immediate expulsion, so it was either withdraw or be expelled. Unfortunately, even though she and her boyfriend Nic owned up to their behavior and were repentant, her friends and most of the teachers at the school basically wrote her off.
Fortunately, God did not act in the same way.
Today Rachael and Nic are married. They have a wonderful family. And they have a ministry called Shores of Grace which is located in Brazil that minsters to girls and women who are victims of human trafficking. They have been through some really rough times, but God keeps showing up in His grace and power overcoming every challenge and problem they face.
One of my daughters is named after Rachael. She and Nic are both dear friends. I am glad that I did not run from them then, am humbled to be still standing with them now, and am not at all surprised to see how God’s grace has taken their broken wings and made them fly again. After all, that is what God loves to do. They are great examples of what Jesus wants us doing—bringing His grace to people and places where it is least expected and terribly needed.
One of the ways they raise money for their ministry is through music. They have a whole series of worship CDs out that are just—well—amazing. Their latest album, Kiss the Dawn, is about to come out. Unlike their past worship albums, the songs on Kiss the Dawn are born out of their life lessons and express the ways in which God has faithfully cared for them. For the next week you can get a free download of their song Blackbird (which I believe is the title track). All the proceeds from the sale of their music goes into their ministry. I encourage you to check it out at www.shoresofgrace.com.
Below is the music video for Blackbird. Enjoy!
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 