Loving the fat smelly old woman

Our portrayal of the people Jesus healed, served and taught as being lovely, quaint and dear people is a disservice to our ministry and the kingdom.  In our mind’s eye we have depicted the people with whom Jesus interacted in an almost universally positive light.   Only Judas, the high priest, and the Romans are imagined as not being nice.   I think this causes us to have a false narrative about the folks we will deal with as we follow Christ. 

In Luke 13:10-21, we see Jesus in a synagogue for the last time in Luke's gospel.  On this occasion Jesus meets a woman who as result of the work of the demonic has for 18 years been crippled.   Jesus heals her. It is Jesus's default setting to have mercy.  We might recall the ancient prayer that reads, “But Thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy”.   We might assume that in some way this woman had opened herself up to the power of the demonic.  At some point in her life she had, perhaps, given herself over to the powers of evil and the demon took control, twisted her and held her. Jesus simply heals her without any expectation for her to clean up her life, reform her ways or realign herself spiritually. She may have been a mess, but Jesus didn't care. He simply healed her. She, and others Jesus healed, are presenting in our art and imagination as lovable people. The pictures I've seen depicting this occasion portray her as a grandmother who might be on her way to bake cookies.

But maybe she wasn’t like that.  Maybe she was like a lady I met this week.  She lives in a shabby, run-down trailer in a swampy part of Florida.  She came to the door with a broom, with which she beat at her dog, but if she had mounted it and flown off it would have fit Hollywood central casting.  When she opened the door the smell of body odor and dog feces was overwhelming.  Her conversation was laced with profanity; she seemed to live with a low-grade anger that boiled over into fury quickly and easily.  She disliked people of color and “other foreigners”; she hated the cars on the road and even the trees beside the road.  Her hair was greasy and needed washing, (apparently she burned her bra in a 1960’s protest and never replaced it), she wore a thin, dirty “wife beater”.  Her face was marked by anger and facial hair.   Maybe this is what the woman in the synagogue was like.  And Jesus saw the need beyond the symptoms and His default setting of mercy moved Him to act. 

The glory of Christ is manifested in His acts of power.  But it is also manifested in that He expressed His mercy to the most undeserving people, all of us, including those who never respond to that love and mercy.  We have no evidence that this healed woman became a disciple of Jesus.  Perhaps this woman held onto that which enabled the demon to dominate her and she never responded to Christ’s love.  Christ, far too kind to impose Himself, accepts that His love is at times unrequited.   The objects of His love can be most objectionable. 

As a disciple of Jesus, if I really want to be like Him, I must understand that no one should be outside of my heart’s reach.  This must include the awkward teen that strives for attention to the point of annoyance, the arrogant elitist so convinced of his superiority that they would be a racist but for the fact they consider everyone their lesser, the social and relational leech that demands and demands and then demands more, never lifting a finger to help themselves or offering a word of thanks, or the unhygienic old woman living in filth of a home and perhaps a heart.  

But I only want to deal with people that are nice and responsive and grateful and interesting.  This is not about walking in someone else’s shoes to try to understand them.  That can degenerate into so much psychobabble and lead to patronizing condescension.  No, what I must do is by the power of the Holy Spirit have my default setting reordered so that my first response is to have mercy.  I can’t do it by myself; this must be the gift of grace.  It will only come as I die to self and live for and in Christ.  What I can do is make that choice and ask for forgiveness for my past attitudes and seek the Holy Spirit’s judgment and help.