So…
Have you noticed?
One of the great things about our
amazing brains is how incredibly efficient they are at straining out
unnecessary information.
Think about it. When you wake up in the morning,
it is your brain that wakes you. And from that point forward it uses a process
of selective information gathering and output to get you through the day.
Imagine iof you had to consciously think
through every step of the process of getting out of bed in the morning. Open
right eye, open left eye, breathe. Now turn head, look at clock, lift arm, drop
it on alarm clock.
Now bring arm back, turn head, close
eyes, go back to sleep. And that’s not mve the sheets, lift leg, move body, or brush
teeth or put on clothes, or feed dog. It would all take an immense amount of time.
So our brain short cuts it all and
creates routines, habits, that allow us to hear the alarm, get in the car, brush
our teeth, eat breakfast, go to work, get out of bed, drink a cup of coffee, put
on clothes, take a shower, start the coffee, and get all those things and the
million component parts of them in the right order.
The problem with the process, with
habits, it that sometimes that they don’t work. They don’t take into account
new information. We drive to work only to remember half way there that the
meeting this morning is in a different place in exactly the opposite direction.
We do things the same old way, the
habitual way, and don’t notice.
Habits un-examined can lead us down a
dangerous path, like when we decide to play football with the kids when we are
grandpa’s age only to discover our backs don’t flex that way.
A body at rest can’t eat the calories
like a body in motion can. A bedtime of 2am may work when you are 21, but at 61
a bedtime past 10pm is dangerous.
Routines and habits allow our brain to work
quickly and efficiently until faced with a change. It is necessary to work
quickly and efficiently, because otherwise our brains would struggle and stop
to pause trying to decide to have us walk, breath, talk, have a heartbeat,
process food, and see the car headed for us at break neck speed all at the same
time.
So, it is no wonder we don’t notice
things, changes, sometimes to our detriment.
And it is why Simon the Pharisee might
not have noticed the woman.
But of course, he had, but not in the
way Jesus felt he needed to.
What Simon noticed was her gender and her
status. And putting those two facts into his habit computer what he came out
with was that she shouldn’t be there where she was, that she should be doing
what she was, and that Jesus should be wildly upset over it all.
Simon thought these things because in
Simon’s world as a Jewish man and as a Pharisee he believed that women, should
be at the table except to serve it with food, that women shouldn’t be touching
a man they were married to or children or immediate relatives with, that women
should not be anointing anyone, and that as a woman of, as they say, ill
repute, she should be far a way from a holy man, if indeed that was what Jesus
was.
“Simon,” Jesus asks, “Have you noticed
this woman?”
I’m sure Simon’s eyebrows were about on
top of his head at this point! He might have replay, “Ah yeah!” But Jesus was
already teaching.
And what he wanted to teach about was a
failure of habits of routine, a routine where dismissing the woman was key,
instead of seeing her as evidence that the Kingdom of God was present.
How would it change our community, our
worship, our fellowship, if the routine became, if the habit became that we
could not begin worship, or the Kafe, or a prayer meeting, or a bible study until
at least one new unchurched person was in the room, because we believed the Kingdom
of God wasn’t yet present until they were there?
“Simon,” Jesus asks, “Have you noticed
this woman?”
Because she is doing all the Kingdom
things you neglected. She wilding grateful for a God who has forgiven her. She
is thinking of herself as lowly in the presence of a Holy God. She is living
sacrificially by doing what could get her in trouble, because of her heart’s
yearning to worship.
She understands what she has been
forgiven. Do you? Have you noticed? Or are you so caught up in your habits and
routines that you can’t see the new thing God is doing:
· Accepting the lowly
· Lifting up the downtrodden
· Forgiving sinners of all kinds
· And offering them a seat at the table in the Kingdom
of God
Have you noticed?
Habits allow our brain to function. But
hear Jesus, sometimes habits get in the way of the Kingdom of God.
Amen.
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