Reflecting on Luke 8:40-56
"Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you." (Luke 8:45)An unclean woman and a dead girl.
Both were to be avoided according to the religious rules.
But if the unclean and unholy cannot be touched, how can they be helped?
If sinners are to be avoided, how will sinners be saved?
The bible seems to teach both gracing sinners and avoiding sinners.
This tension between holiness and unholiness is seen especially in the temple.
The temple represented ‘God with us’, a holy God living with unholy people.
God lived among Israel by grace alone, and not because they were clean or holy.
I used to think that the many sacrifices are what made the people holy.
But now I realize that the sacrifices do not change a thing.
Rather they serve as constant reminders of the gracious love of God.
They do not represent our sacrifice that makes us clean.
They represent God’s sacrifice that makes us clean.
How God Who is holy empties Himself to dwell among us and save us.
God accommodates our sin and weakness, and allows His Name to be associated with us.
He walks among us, even though it means we will crowd Him and touch Him.
He Himself is not infected by our unholiness; His holiness infects us, heals us.
His good and healing power goes out to us, restoring us to life.
Grace does not separate itself from sin.
Grace takes the sick hand of sick and dying sinners and helps them.
Grace sees the struggling sinner and lives and serves among them.
This is a great comfort to me, sensing how Jesus lives with and serves me.
He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.
His power goes out to me as I reach to Him with my less than holy heart and ways.
He comes to me in my helpless (dead) condition and says, ‘my child, get up!’
I am convicted by how I fall short of the glory of God’s gracious love.
I do not love God like God loves me, nor do I love others like God loves them.
I am prone to avoid the people I see as wrong or sinful.
The people who believe or think differently than me – Jesus walks among them too.
Jesus is on a mission to go to the people I prefer to stay away from.
Jesus is calling me to join Him on the way among the unclean masses.
Jesus is asking me to follow Him in loving, serving, healing and restoring sinners.
Am I going to the places where people who need Jesus are?
Am I looking down on the unclean and unholy, or graciously lifting them up?
The power of gracious love needs to be with us for it to work in us.
We need to be with others for the power of gracious love to work through us.
It is not pleasant or comfortable to be with people who are hard to be with.
Who are the people that I have a hard time being with? – I can think of some!
Do I avoid such people, do I look down on them, do I judge them?
We have just celebrated Christmas, where God in Jesus comes to us.
The stable, with the animals, the smelly shepherds, and the foreign pagan magi?
All kinds of people and places that religious people preferred to avoid.
But God steps into our unclean, unholy mess, and gets messy Himself.
God gets handled by sinners, yet is not made sinful by that interaction.
Rather it is the other way around; His holiness makes us holy.
His life restores life to us, His healing power makes us whole!
This is the Jesus I want to be with, and to walk with in this world.
If I want to be with this Jesus, I need to go where Jesus is.
Among the unclean and unholy… so that grace can help them too.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, You are with me and Your power is restoring me... unholy as I am. I want to be both a recipient of, and a receptable for, the power of Your gracious love. Help me to walk where You walk, and to bring hope and healing and grace to the many others who need it, just like me.