Transformation

I’ve been having an email conversation with a friend of mine over the past few days, and the Lord has really been speaking to me in new ways about hypocrisy. My friend mentioned the story where "a sinful woman" pours expensive oil on Jesus’ feet and people think it's a waste of money. I had written about that story in my post “Volver a Empezar,” but I don't think my friend had read that post. It came up in our conversation because my friend was specifically noting that one of the messages of the Gospels is that this woman, though a sinner, is complimented by Jesus for being generous, and she was commenting on something that we’d been talking about, that there is someone in my life who has been judging me harshly and falsely, perhaps based on my old life. My friend was saying that if Jesus could hold this woman up as an example of generosity in spite of her past, why then would anyone think they had the right to judge me?

I love my friend because she will always be on my side. She’s fair and honest, but she’s loyal too, so if I tell her a story, she believes what I say. Her loyalty is not blind or naïve – she’s known me for a lot of years and she probably knows more about me than anyone does except for God, and I can’t think of anything that He knows that she doesn’t. But she knows that even with my faults and flaws and mistakes I’m not a dishonest person, and she doesn’t judge me for those faults and flaws and mistakes but accepts them as part of my being human.

In our conversation I’ve started to understand that it is a rare person who can look at another person who they know personal things about and detach from the act of judging. I know I do it myself – I sometimes work with people now who are drug addicts or former addicts, and because I know people from that world from my own life, I make assumptions sometimes about what they’re doing now that is based on what I know about their present or even their past life. If someone starts getting erratic or forgetful or has outbursts of anger, I sometimes assume that they’ve had a relapse or they’re still using. Sometimes that’s the case, but not always, and it’s doing a person a disservice to make the assumption based on what they have shared with me about themselves. If we talk about what’s going on and they share with me that they’ve relapsed, then we can talk about it, but to make that assumption is unfair to them and to the situation. There’s that old expression that we should never assume because you make a you know what out of u and me. Fill in the blank, please, because one thing that the Holy Spirit has changed in me is that I don’t curse any more – or very rarely anyway.

I’m not joking when I say that – I know Jesus is real because I’ve had a transformation experience in my life. There are things that I used to do that were second nature to me that now I can’t believe I ever did. There are some things that I used to do all the time that don’t come naturally to me now – I don’t know exactly how or when the change occurred, but it did without my noticing until one day I noticed that I just didn’t want to do them any more. And there are other things that do come naturally that I never would have done before. I saw a man with a walker trying to cross a busy street in midtown Manhattan the other day and the light was changing so I offered to help him. Even though he said he was fine, I stood in the way of the oncoming traffic until he got safely onto the sidewalk. Things like that I would never have done in the past – I would have thought, what an idiot he is to think he can make the light, as I lightly skipped on over on my own two strong legs. Now I’ll stand in the middle of oncoming traffic and offer my help in any way I can. That’s not normal behavior for me – it’s Holy Spirit behavior – and that’s why I know Jesus is real.

What I’ve been starting to understand through my conversations with my friend is that if people don’t have that transformation experience, it doesn’t matter how much they shout Hallelujah and raise holy hands in church. If they haven’t truly had a transformation, they don’t know that it’s possible. I was writing to my friend that it’s easy for people to fall in love with the idea of Jesus – who wouldn’t love the idea of a kind and loving shepherd who takes care of us and loves us in spite of all our faults and weaknesses  and mistakes? Who wouldn’t love the idea of a Savior who went to the Cross so we wouldn’t have to? It’s understandable that some faith beliefs think it’s blasphemous – sin needs to be paid for and we need to be accountable for our actions. Whoever heard of a God who said our sins were forgiven and we didn’t have to pay a price? But that’s exactly what Jesus says to us. But there is something more that He says to us too, and sometimes people are so excited about the first part that they don’t wait around and listen to the second.

The message of salvation through Jesus Christ is very simple. All we have to do is believe that He died for our sins and that He rose from the dead and that He is the son of God. But that sentence is packed with important points and sometimes people don’t get all of them. The fact that He died for our sins means that we have sin that was so bad that someone had to die for it – that not only did He have to die for it, but He had to go through a long horrible day of torture and humiliation because of it. And because He is the son of God, He could have stopped at any moment, but He chose not to. It wasn’t because of anything that we did that was so wonderful that He chose to do what He did, and it wasn’t because of anything that we are that gave Him the ability to die for our sins. He chose to do it because of His great love and mercy, and our sin was so bad that it was only His sacrifice that could atone for it.

In Jeremiah 30:12, we read, “This is what the  Lord says: “Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing.” In Lamentations 2:13, the prophet Jeremiah says, “What can I say for you? With what can I compare you, Daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, Virgin Daughter Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” But in verse 17 of Jeremiah 30, we read this, “But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds, declares the Lord.” And then in Lamentations 3:21 after verse after verse of descriptions of suffering, Jeremiah says,  “Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

In the story about the woman who pours anointing oil on Jesus’ feet and washes them with her tears and dries them with her hair, the striking thing to me has always been that she knows that she has been a sinner and that she is forgiven. Jesus doesn’t judge her and tell her that she is a sinner and needs forgiveness, but everyone else in the room does judge her, and they don’t seem to understand that they are also sinners who need forgiveness. There is such tenderness in that image of the woman at His feet. In spite of what everyone around her is saying, she just keeps right on washing His feet because she knows that He is good to those who seek Him. She knows His great faithfulness. The other people in the room who are so busy judging her that they don't see their own need for forgiveness are missing out on all that He has to offer. When we understand our own sinfulness and our need for His healing, His love can know no bounds in our life.

When I looked up the verse from Jeremiah, I found a sermon from a man named Ben Edgington who lives in Woodley, near Reading, UK. The sermon is titled "God Cures The Incurable," and it was preached on February 8, 2009 at Woodley Baptist Church for the evening service. Here is what I read:

http://www.edginet.org/christian/sermons/jer30_12to17.html

I loved reading his sermon, because it was a confirmation of the message that the Lord had given to me to write for today, but it was written in such a different way than I write and it added so much to what the Lord has been speaking to me.  He starts off with doctor jokes and he carries the metaphor of God as the physician throughout the sermon. He also ends with an encouragement to tell people about what God has done for you, something that I always do and that I’ve found can sometimes get me into trouble. In my conversation with my friend over the past few days, she suggested that it was my honesty about my past and the transformation that Christ has made in my life that has caused this other woman I know to start judging me and condemning me based on that past. I started to think that maybe I shouldn’t be so honest with people, and reading Ben Edgington’s sermon helped remind me that I have to be honest. I can’t walk around acting like I’ve always been the person I am now because I know that’s not true. It would be hypocritical and false and it would be a lie, and none of those things would honor the God who went to the Cross so that I could live my life in peace and love and joy.

There will always be people who look at us without the love of Jesus in their eyes. There will always be those who don’t understand that He has triumphed over sin in a way that can transform a life, in a way that makes all things new. In Ben Edgington’s sermon, he used two verses that speak directly about what is available to us by the power of the sacrifice Jesus made, “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24). It doesn’t matter if there are people who think that people can’t change, because there’s a God who says that by the power of His blood we can.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan