I have been wanting to preach on the book of Romans and the life of Gideon for sometime now. But each time I feel constrained to defer. Particularly with Romans, I feel that I need more time to ponder and think. As a result over the period of this year without planning it I have each time I have spoken ended up speaking about the kind of church this church should be. We talked about being the church of the scandalous God – the church where God humiliates himself to demonstrate his radical acceptance. We talked about being the reflexive church – a church that is constantly interrogating itself and its most cherished beliefs so that we never fall into the trap, as most evangelicalism does, of believing that what you believe must be the truth no matter what. We talked about being the Roman church based on the list of names in Romans 16 about being a church where each person no matter how small a role he or she played, mattered in the scheme of God. Then about a month or so ago we talked about being the church of the Good Samaritan – a church, which performs its worship through acts of costly love on the altar of broken lives.

As we close this unintended series this year, I want to talk about becoming the Immoral Church. Three steps to becoming a successful immoral church. What triggered this in my mind and meditations was the Roy Clements incident.

As some of you know, this church invited Roy Clements, who was until recently one of the foremost representatives and heroes of evangelicalism. Who some touted as the potential successor of the great John Stott. And then overnight all that went down the tubes when he came out. Suddenly he lost his ministry. He was a sinner. An immoral man. A pariah having forfeited the right to speak for God. And we had the audacity to invite him for a by invitation only lecture. Some of the churches here went into a rabid frenzy. Emails started circulating around suggesting and blatantly stating that we were getting him here to give an immoral talk to propagate darkness and immorality. The emails bordered on legal defamation and had we wanted to we could have sued. But we didn’t.

As it turned out the talk was nothing of that sort but was on “Biblical Preaching in the Post Modern World” and those who did suspend judgement and came for the talk found a speaker who was deeply engaging and deeply concerned about the issue of post-modernity and the future of evangelicalism. They left enriched and so did we. My only regret with that talk was that there was not enough time to interact on the subject as there were important issues brought up by the Christian leaders who did visit us.

As I have reflected over that incident, I was deeply fascinated by the rabidity and the vitriol of some of the Christians – some even distinguished leaders – about us. It struck me that in that event we had been blessed and had become a little – just a little bit - like Jesus – for he too was called immoral without being given a proper hearing by many particularly the religios establisment of his day. It struck me that perhaps therein lay a part of the calling of this church – that is to follow in the steps of Jesus to become the Immoral Church. So today I want to share with you from a passage in Luke about how to become a successful “immoral” church. Only three steps.

Luke 7:33-48

(Jesus said:-) 33John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' 34The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' 35But wisdom is proved right by all her children." 36Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38and 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. 39When 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." 40Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." "Tell me, teacher," he said. 41"Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" 43Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said. 44Then 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. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven--for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." 48Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."

When I was a University student, four of us set up home in Australia. All four were second year students two in accounting, one in economics and law and the other computing and electrical engineering. The four of us came together as had many other Asian students to set up a Christian household. And like many of the student Christian households, ours was a dysfunctional one. Things got so bad between the four of us that at one time our church elders almost insisted that we split up from one another. However we did not and fifteen years down the road, we are still very good friends. Over the years that we lived together that household became known as the Margaret Boys – because the street we lived on was called Margaret Avenue . The rest of the Asian Christian students preferred to live on another side of the university so we were quite a distinctive household.

One thing I appreciated about that household was that there were no pretensions. We knew we were rather messed up. In our second year, Keat failed his electrical engineering course and had to drop that degree ending up completing only one degree i.e. his computer science. Both David and Teck failed their tough second year accounting course and even had to face the expulsions committee. Thankfully they managed to stay on and complete their degrees; today doing quite well in their careers. And as for me, I lost whatever dream I had of doing my honors in law or in economics that year. Let me tell you it was one really screwed up household. And it didn’t help that many if not all of us while never admitting it to each other were struggling with one or more aspects of our identity and our faith in Jesus. It did not help that all four of us while struggling also played prominent leadership roles in the student Christian group. Looking back today we would have been called an immoral household living a double life.

Yet I believe Jesus was very much in that household. We were known amongst the Asian student Christian community there as a household of hospitality. Despite the troubles we faced, we made it a point to invite one or two people home each week to have a meal with us because we took turns cooking for each other. Another tradition we started as a household, was a Christmas dinner that we would have close to Christmas. For this dinner, my three housemates would cook a special meal since all three of them were excellent cooks while I was tasked to scout around the university grounds for an appropriate tree from which I would rip out a large branch to perform the function of a makeshift Christmas tree. So if you were from my university and ever saw me wandering around the grounds past midnight close to Christmas, I was not stalking anyone but was looking for a large branch for a Christmas tree.

For this dinner we would identify two or three people whom we felt did not fit into the mainstream Christian community, who were left out or rejected and we would invite them over for that dinner and even prepare gifts that we would exchange with one another. At times we even provided a refuge for people who were down and out – for a time we had a schizophrenic staying with us. Another time we had a guy who had stalked his ex-girlfriend all the way from Malacca to Australia living with us for a time. We felt an urge to gather in those who were not acceptable.

I still remember one night, we came home and because we did not have a fence around the garden we found a Caucasian man, drunk and sprawled in front of our door. It was not a particularly pleasant night since it was winter and therefore cold and wet. And for some strange reason we were rather alarmed – perhaps because there had been a number of rapes happening around the campus at that time –but four mean afraid of being raped by a drunk man was probably a tad bit overdramatic. What can I say? – tells you a little about our inclinations I suppose.

Anyway we had a brief debate and decided that we could not call ourselves Christian if we did not bring this man into the house. So we held a quick prayer meeting, went out and lifted the fellow into the house. Gave him a warm drink, sat with him then sent him home.

I have fond memories of those four years that the household stayed together at Margaret Avenue. If there is one thing I learnt from these three men, it was the importance of being hospitable or kind to the stranger – the person who did not fit in. It reminds me of a bad reputation that the Christians got in the University. Every year the various Christian groups would get together to hold an evangelistic rally. And for some reason the hospitality index of the Christian households went up many notches during that period as they suddenly became rather friendly to non-Christians so that they could invite these people to the evangelistic rallies. When the rallies were over, the hospitality index would fall back again. The non-Christians became so irritated that one of them once told me he felt the Christians on campus “acted like angels but behaved like devils.” Thankfully the Margaret Boys did not practice that kind of hospitality.

Over the years I have asked myself why it was that a household that had so many problems could still have been so hospitable to others who had problems. Perhaps it was because at some level we each did not feel that we really did fit in with the wider student Christian community. We somehow always felt that we were on the fringe – somehow that if people knew who we truly were, we ourselves would have been a rejected bunch. Thankfully though that sense of alienation did not cause us to be bitter but was channeled by God to reach to others with the arms of friendship and welcome.

You need to understand that the context of the text before us is hospitality. Simon had invited Jesus into his home. Jesus had probably earlier preached a sermon and as was the practice of that day, itinerant teachers would be invited to the homes of prominent leaders for a meal and for continued teaching. But this invitation that Jesus got was no simple event. It was designed to insult.

The usual practice in the Middle East of that time was that when a person is invited to your home for a meal you had to do three things. You had to greet him with a kiss – if he was your equal you would kiss him on the face. If he was of a higher rank you kissed his hand. In this case since Simon had addressed Jesus as Rabbi therefore acknowledging Jesus’ higher rank, should have kissed Jesus hand. But he did no such thing. Secondly water had to be offered to the guest to wash his feet. In the case of Simon, he probably would have had sufficient wealth and therefore would have had servants to wash Jesus’ feet. This would have been done once Jesus had reclined at the dining table. But again he did not provide water even for Jesus to wash his own feet. Thirdly a guest would have been anointed with at least olive oil. But again there was none offered.

While these rituals may seem quaint to us, they were mandatory in Jesus’ time. To not offer these preliminaries was a supreme act of insult. And not only was it an insult, it was a public insult. The kind of dinner Simon did for Jesus as can be implied from the text was a public event. While the guest ate, the public could walk in and out of the house – that is why that woman managed to be there. It was a public statement designed to tell people that in the eyes of this Pharisee, the man Jesus did not derserve the common dignity given to guests - that he was not fit to be treated with respect. So here was a Pharisee putting Jesus to the test. He invites this rabbi – whom he calls a rabbi and therefore should have shown the proper respect only to publicly insult him.

So while we may read the text and see a genteel dinner – that night it was a dinner filled with thick tension. What would this rabbi do to such a public insult? Would he pack up and walk away? Would he admonish his host? The air would have been thick with anticipation. But Jesus kept silent. Others who were present would have been placed in an awkward position – what were they to do? If they offered Jesus the necessary pleasantries they risked offending a key member of their community – a Pharisee no less. If they did not they risked offending a charismatic preacher. They chose the former – afterall the preacher would leave but they would have had to contend with the Pharisee. Perhaps there were many others who are like Singaporeans – why get involved? It is too troublesome. Let’s just see what happens.

The woman had also obviously heard the message of Jesus. She had had some kind of encounter with him or with God. Perhaps being a rejected person herself - for the text implies that she was known in the city as an immoral person – she felt keenly the sting of rejection that Jesus was experiencing. Whatever it was the sense of rejection that she saw Jesus experiencing became unbearable and she stepped forth to perform the very acts of hospitality that Jesus had. She whose dignity had been trampled upon by the community rushed forth to redeem the dignity of another rejected person.

Not having water, she wet his feet with her tears. Not having cloth she cleaned his feet with her hair. Not being able to kiss his hand she kissed his feet. And not having olive oil, she poured out her expensive perfume from the alabaster flask she kept between her breast to perfume herself for her customers.

And Jesus in turn was hospitable to her. He could have stopped her as what she was doing was really quite scandalous as I will illustrate below. What she was doing would get the rumour mongering going on for months if not years. He could have stopped her but he in turn was hospitable to her. Again perhaps it is because he too was called immoral by his community as the text of Luke 7 shows. So here we have one immoral person welcoming and being welcomed by another immoral person.

One of the great risks that the Free Community faces is that we risk becoming too gentrified. We risk losing our “immoral” status. We risk forgetting our humble roots. I pray that as a church we will never forget the sting of rejection we have faced. I pray we never forget that this church started because one of you was kicked out of yours for being who you are. I pray we never forget that our worship has improved tremendously because one of you was stopped from being in the worship team in your large church. I pray we never ever forget the sting of rejection we have faced and that this memory will propel us to be ever hospitable to those who are rejected and maligned.

The Bible has a stream of teaching on hospitality; that is being being to the stranger and the alien. Abraham invited the three men in and was kind to them and he was blessed. Immediately after that we find Sodom and Gomorrah treating these same very three strangers with not only rejection but threatened to rape them and those cities were destroyed. Moses was a stranger and running away, and Jethro took him in – gave him food and a place to stay. Gideon was hospitable to a stranger and it turned out to be God. Boaz was hospitable to Ruth even though the Bible taught that the Moabites would forever be shut out from the assembly of God and as a result Ruth (whom the Bible unequivocally shut out from fellowship) became a descendant of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that Jesus came unto his own but his own did not welcome him. The book of Hebrews admonishes us to be kind to strangers and some who have have entertained angels. I don’t if you will ever entertain an angel but I tell you if you will be kind to the stranger who steps into your doors you will definitely find yourself entertaining quite a number of fairies.

The stream of hospitality in the Bible – in Deuteronomy for instance - is based on the premise that the people of God were once strangers, aliens, rejected and oppressed; therefore they are to remember their beginnings and be kind to the stranger. It is for this same reason that Jesus in Matthew 25 says that in the end days we will be judged according to the kindness that we have extended to those who are alone, who are rejected and who are outcasts. That day at Simon’s house, while the Pharisee may have had all religious knowledge and spirituality, it was the immoral woman who was truly Christian.

I hope this church will always remember that because many of you are rejected, because many of you are outcasts, you will be kind to the stranger – to the person different from you who steps into our doors. For a long time I have been quite troubled about the way we treat – or rather fail to treat the stranger who steps in. But three weeks ago I saw a touching moment. A young man had stepped into the service. He was sitting alone. Arthur went up to him welcomed him and invited him to sit with Arthur and his friends. I don’t know whether Jesus was in the worship songs or the communion or the sermon that morning. But I do know that Jesus was very much present in that moment between Arthur and that lone visitor who had stepped in that morning.

The Immoral Church is an Hospitable Church which welcomes the stranger, the alien, the outcast into her midst.

Today many of you reading this passage would probably think that Simon was quite a bit of a jerk particularly in the disdaining way he treated the woman. Indeed he was quite disdaining. He referred to Jesus as “this” and the woman as “what kind of woman” – a sinner.

Simon did what everyone who wants to malign and reject another person does. It is an act called objectification. When people want to malign and reject you they reduce you to an object – a “this” – they reduce you to a label – a sinner, a homosexual, a prostitute, a glutton, a drunkard, a destroyer of family values. The human being we want to reject and malign is no longer a full human being. He or she becomes a label and object. We reduce and indeed strip that person of her humanity so that it makes it easier for to reject and be mean and evil towards that person. And indeed this is what many of you have experienced.

Simon was a jerk and a really big one. But you know if you and I had been there that day, we probably would have sided with Simon. What this woman was doing was incredibly salacious. It was scandalous. I am going to be a bit graphic. Some of you may be offended by what I am going to say next but it will give you a flavor of how incredibly scandalous this woman was behaving that day.

It is Easter Sunday. Mary a well known high profile sex worker in Singapore had just had a great and riotous night with an orgy of customers. She wakes up in the morning and decides that she needs a tan. She packs the skimpiest of the skimpiest of her bikinis – a Dolce and Gabbana translucent luminous yellow bikini and goes off to River Valley swimming pool for a tan in the car one of her rich clients had given her. Who knows she might even be lucky and pick up a few people there – poor woman didn’t know of course that River Valley swimming pool is a bad place for women to pick up men. Anyway so she goes, the sun is out and she is feeling sexy.

But as the morning passes by and she swims multiple laps each time jumping out of the pool in the most alluring way possible she still has not found a man. She is dejected. So she gives up and lays down for a tan in the mid morning sun. And somewhere between the beautiful sun rays, he sense of dejection and nights naughty activities Mary gets an epiphany – she has an encounter with Jesus at the pool. Suddenly after years of emptiness and longing she senses for the first time in her life what it means to be loved, embraced and accepted just as she is with no string attached. A flood of gratitude washes over her as her sense of excitement and joy rise up. She is beside herself with thankfulness.

Forgetting to put on her clothes, she feels a sudden urge to worship God and give thanks. She jumps into her S Class Mercedes convertible in her skimpy translucent luminous yellow bikini and rushes off to find the nearest church. After driving around for a bit she catches glimpse of a church steeple. It is the steeple of a famous cathedral in the city. God must be present there today she asserts in her heart and rushes towards the cathedral beating even a few red lights on the way.

She arrives at this grand cathedral where the bishop was presiding a traditional Easter service that Sunday. The cathedral is jam packed. But Mary is not deterred. She rushes forward to the front of the cathedral, the water from her body jumping off and sprinkling the congregants like holy water. She reaches the front, grabs the microphone from the bishop to want to lead the congregation in worship (forgetting of course that she was hardly wearing anything). To her dismay it dawns on her that the congregation was bored and apathetic – going through their 700th hallelujah and 300th amen of the liturgy. She is aghast. This is not worship. Not knowing what to do but remembering that she was once in a charismatic church that taught her how to do a wave offering with some flags, she rips off her translucent luminous bikini top exposing her breasts and shouts out, “Hei, let’s give Jesus a wave offering. He deserves to be worshipped heartily!”

You know I somehow can’t picture the dear bishop raising his hands saying, “Praise Jesus. Glory hallelujah. Let’s join in this wave offering to God!” He probably would have angrily ripped off his sacred robes and dumped it on Mary to cover her nakedness and perhaps even reprimand her – of course he would make sure he inverted the robe first lest some people thought he was installing a new bishop that blessed Easter morning! And you know to be honest if either I or you had been in the bishop’s place that morning we probably would not have behaved too differently.

If my description of the Mary and the Easter service offends your sensibilities, good! Because what the woman was doing with Jesus that day was at a level of salaciousness comparable to what I have just described.

You think using the hair to wipe Jesus feet is a beautiful act of worship. Let me tell you, that the Talmud is supposed to say that if a woman lets down her hair in public it is grounds for divorce. Also in the Talmud in the instructions on stoning a woman, the display of her hair is placed on an equal level with the display of breasts in terms of its sexually seductive powers.

And not only that, the alabaster flask of perfume she used was a flask that women like her would hang in between their breast to perfume themselves for their customers. And then she was not content to kiss Jesus feet once, she kissed it again and again. And Simon understood just how obscene her behavior was by the standards of her day. That is why he said: "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."

The Greek word for “touch” that Simon used has a double meaning. It means ‘to touch’ as well as ‘to set on fire’. So Simon was saying that if Jesus was truly a prophet he would have known who this sinful woman was who was trying to set fire to his lust. Her behavior was absolutely scandalous no less than our fictional Mary with her wave offering in the cathedral that Easter morning.

One of the great tragedies of modern Christianity is that we gentrify the Bible. We make it prudish. The Bible is no such book and Jesus was no such person.

It is a scandal that some of you are here today. It is a scandal to some that we have a woman chairperson. It is a scandal that we have someone who is dressed up as a woman attending our service. It is a scandal that we have a distinguished clergyman as part of our life. It is a scandal that an active minister from a mainline denomination and an elder from another church preaches here. It is a scandal that some of you went to a party dressed up as women to celebrate a nine year monogamous relationship between two men. It is a scandal that people dare bring their mothers to this church. It is a scandal that a mother would allow her 19 year old son to be part of the worship team. And may the scandalization never stop. We have a scandalous God who calls us to be a scandalous people who perform scandalous acts of love.

But not scandal for the sake of scandal. The woman was not interested in being scandalous so that Luke could write about her and we can preach about her 2000 years later. She was scandalous because it was the only way she knew how to oppose to reject the true scandal of that day – the scandal of heartless religion - the insult that Simon threw at Jesus face that day in his home. The scandal of the dignity of a child of God being trampled upon.

Where he was not offered water to wash his feet – because to omit the washing of a guest’s feet is to imply that he is one of inferior rank - she used her tears which shed for his dignity. Where he did not even get a kiss on the face to at least say he was considered equal when he should have been kissed on the hand, she profusely kissed his feet. And for a Middle Easterner to kiss another’s feet is to demonstrate how highly the person kissing viewed the person being kissed. Jeremias a commentator the parables shared a talmudic illustration of a man who kissed his lawyer’s feet when his lawyer successfully got him acquitted from a death sentence. We see a bit of this too when you recall that John the Baptist described Jesus as one whose laces he was unfit to even to untie.

And then there is the perfume. Usually a guest is anointed with olive oil. But she anointed his feet with perfume. Lamartine, a French traveller in 1821 passed through the Middle East recounted that wherever he went he was greeted as a European prince. In the village of Eden in Lebanon, he was greeted on arrival by having perfume anointed on his head. Ibn al-Tayyib, an ancient Iraqi commentator of the Bible said that it was the custom in the past that noblemen were anointed with ointment or perfume to signify their status. So while Simon belittled Jesus she dignified him by her scandalous actions treating him as a noble person. Often when the disempowered are unable to speak. When they are not given access to justice they resort to scandalous acts to emphasize the dignity of the mistreated. This woman undertook her scandalous act of love as an act of redemption – to redeem the dignity of man who was a child of God who had in turn restored her dignity. And this person Jesus further redeemed her dignity.

We often think that the Biblical characters were overly patriachal. Overly anti-woman and some of them and their behaviors were. But for Jesus that day in his time and culture, to uphold this sex worker publicly in the house of the religious Pharisee and not only uphold her but to use her scandalous behavior as an example to teach the Pharisee and proclaim that what she has done will be remembered in the ages to come as we are even now remembering her today was a radical and scandalous act of affirming a down trodden person’s dignity. Today we have forgotten how difficult it was once to be a woman. In the Western world just over two hundred years ago, a woman could not even enter into a contract on her own much less vote or have a voice. It was a thousand times worse in the time of Jesus where the testimony of a woman even a dignified woman would not stand in a court of law. And here Jesus praises the scandalous loving acts of a female sex worker. Let me ask you: Who are the rejected today? Who are the alienated? Who are the downtrodden? How are we restoring their God given dignities?

I was deeply troubled when I found out that one of our transgendered members used to go to a church. And after years of struggle she decided that it was time for her to embrace the identity of a woman. When the church came to find out that she was actually transgendered, her cell group refused to call her by her adopted name calling her constantly by her male name. Can you imagine a person dressed as a woman, who has adopted the identity of a woman and who actually even looks like a woman going to a Bible study each week, only to be called in front of everyone by a male name. Can you imagine the shame and the trauma of that repeated experience? That was not a Jesus cell group – it was a Simon cell group.

I don’t profess to understand transgendered people. I don’t even profess to agree with them. But I do know that I cannot presume to impose on them what I believe to be right and wrong even when I don’t agree with them. I do know that no matter how much I disagree I must work towards protecting the human and God given dignity of the person in a way that that person understands.

Recently some people decided to go to a cross dressing party to celebrate the ninth anniversary of a monogamous couple. One of the guys, Ho, wore a woman’s clothes though he in no way wants to be a woman. They had a good time. But what struck me was when Ho told me that after that he decided to go out with some friends for a drink, and he decided that he would go in his woman’s clothing. He told me how after he got out of the car and he was about to cross the road at the red light and he saw all the people in cars staring at him because if you know how you know he is not petite but rather muscular! He told me how he felt strange and alienated and how for the first time in his life, he came to understand how painful it must be for a transgendered person and how much courage it must take to wear the clothing of a different gender when you don’t look like the traditional stereotype of that gender.

You know I don’t know if Ho gets spiritual experiences when he comes to church on a Sunday but I tell you one thing, that night as Ho stood by the red light getting stares, he learnt a deep spiritual lesson on empathy and incarnation. To me that was a Jesus moment. It was an incarnation moment. We need to constantly put ourselves in the shoes of those who are marginalised so that we can understand a little bit of what it means to work towards restoring another’s diginity. This woman understood what it meant to be rejected.

This woman – this nameless woman who will never know until the Book of Life is read - acted out a scandal and Jesus participated in her scandal. They were co-actors in the scandal of redemption. In my view when Christian redemption stops being scandalous, it has stopped being Christian. I pray this church will continue to be ever scandalising. But not scandalising for the sake of scandal but scandalizing for the sake of restoring dignity to those who are rejected to those who are outcasts that we too may participate in God’s drama of human redemption. And if we are to take Matthew 25 seriously then everytime you and I restore the dignity of another who is rejected and outcast, you and I restore the dignity of Jesus himself.

The Immoral Church Is A Scandalous Church, which performs outrageous acts of love. Not for scandal sake but to restore the God given dignity of scandalous unacceptable people who are belittled alienated and rejected by traditional religion. I hope that will be the kind of church you and I will be.

I look at my life and I see the twists and turns that it has taken. I realise that I could have turned out really badly. I have cousins who are down and out – compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, junkies and the chronically unemployed. But on hindsight my life has turned out quite ok. Life could have been easier but I seem to have come out the richer. Of course the jury is still out on my life – it is after all still very much in progress. But God has been good to me thus far. He has kept me safe and preserved my sanity despite times when I thought it was all over. When I think about this it gives me a deep sense of gratitude and gratefulness. My relationship with God is no longer one of driven-ness. I don’t need to gain his approval. But strangely knowing I have his approval is a tremendous force.

Over the years I have shifted in my theology and my spirituality. I am an almost compulsive journaler. If you read my initial years as a Christian, my journals are filled with dark thoughts of unworthiness and unacceptability. I was totally sinful. It was only the grace of God that saved me and even then I just got into heaven my hair somewhat singed from the fires of hell. Then as I got older I moved to the other extreme – got caught up with the power of positive thinking theology. That if you confess it you will get it. The power of confessing faith – you know Yonggi Cho, Kenneth Hagin and all that jazz. See it. Speak it and it will be.

Today I keep meeting Christians who are trapped in either one of those extremes. I meet people constantly who are caught in the grip of condemnation. Who feel that they are totally unworthy. That they will never measure up. Then I meet people who think they rule the world. They think that all they have to do is believe and whatever it is they want God will give them.

I don’t think either is healthy. The first group of people are crippled. They are constantly wallowing, writhing in the cesspool of guilt and condemnation. The other bunch grow to be power Christians who are devoid of empathy and sound theology.

The challenge for the Christian is to be able to straddle the middle. To live one of the greatest paradoxes of Christian existence. To truly realise our deep unworthiness and yet to come to a profound understanding of our total acceptability and empowerment in Christ. To know that without the grace of God I am indeed drowning in a cesspool of evil and yet somehow in Christ while not losing my darkness which lurks in the background all the time, I am the child of a king empowered to be an ambassador for the divine on earth. That I am called to call others into the light of the kingdom while constantly realising that I have at least one foot contstantly dragged down by my darkness and yet one foot on the mountain of God.

This was the realization that the woman had come to. It was not that she was more sinful than Simon. Only that realising her sinfulness and the redemption she had received she became deeply grateful. Simon in his religiosity and psedo-spirituality was blinded to the true darkness of his own soul and therefore blinded to the profound acceptance that Christ could offer to him.

When you begin to truly straddle this paradox it leads to a penetrating and radical gratefulness for the life of Christ in you. You begin to understand why you can never be self righteous though you are completely righteous in Christ. It is easy for us to assume that the woman in the passage was forgiven for her sex worker life. The truth is the Bible is silent. Whatever it was that she was forgiven for was a transaction between God and her and we may never know. The point of the passage was that she was judged and rejected on the basis of how her community viewed her but Christ came to draw her back into his fold. We will never know if she continued being a sex worker after this event. I am amazed at how often when Jesus says someone is forgiven we are given no evidence whatsoever of that person’s life after the event of forgiveness. Those of us who are purist would like to believe with all our faith and might that she went on to get married and have children and lived happily ever after as a “family values” mum. Or that she became some kind of super single woman missionary reaching out to sex workers all over Judea bringing them to “righteous” living in the name of Christ. Maybe she did but the point we don’t know. We may never know. And I don’t think God wants us to know.

However the point that he wants us to know is that each of us has to come into a reckoning - into a transaction with the living God wherein we encounter the holiness of God against our deepest darkness. And in that encounter come to experience the radical liberating and transforming acceptance and forgiveness in the cross of Jesus Christ. And in that dynamic interaction of darkness, acceptance and light, a fountain of gratefulness will spring forth like a small bubbling brook that transforms into a flowing river of life. It will be a gratefulness that will lead to us being empathetically hospitable to those who are rejected and outcast. It will be a gratefulness that will lead us to incredibly scandalous acts of love that restore others’ God given human dignities. Unlike Simon we will never have to condemn another verbally. Our very acts will become the acts of God’s silent judgement and these acts will speak in ways that words will never able to express. And it is these acts which will be remembered in the annals of God in the aeons to come.

Here was a woman who was profoundly grateful. And that gratefulness became the source of powerful works of love and redemption that operated through her life. The Immoral Church is a profoundly grateful church.

I pray this church will grow. That you will be the church of the scandalous God where God humiliates himself to demonstrate his radical acceptance. That you will be the reflexive church where you do the hard and sometimes painful work of interrogating and challenging your own belief systems so that you never enter the arrogance of thinking you are definitely right. That you will be the Roman church where every single person no matter how small will matter deeply. That you will be the church of the Good Samaritan who will perform acts of loving worship on the altars of broken lives. And that you will be the Immoral Church which will redeem the dignity of others out of a profound sense of gratefulness. That is the calling of the church of Jesus Christ. Amen.