Cost of Discipleship, Table - Luke 7

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Mark 11:1-11 Colossians 1:1-8 Luke 7:36-50 Maturing in faith, love, and hope The Cost of the Such a Table Introduction We continue in our second week of our Lenten sermon series “The Cost of Discipleship,” focusing on the Gospel of Luke. This series is inspired by the spirit of this rich season of the church calendar: a season when we are reminded of Jesus' resolute journey to the cross and His call for us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow Him (Luke 9:23). It is also a season of celebrating the paradoxical nature of our faith—in dying, we come to live more fully. The central premise of the sermon series revolves around the key question: What did it cost for Jesus to call us into discipleship? While last week we looked at the cost of the wilderness, this week we turn to Luke 7:36-50 to see the cost of discipleship in terms of radical table fellowship, and the radical acts of repentance and affection that such table fellowship with our Lord inspires.

Connection Group Study COMMENTARY STUDY v. 36. “Reclining at the table” is a common gospel phrase, indicating the Greek custom at banquets of lounging at one’s side at low tables. Feet would point away from the table. Note that such banquets played important an important part in society in religious, social, and entertainment

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS v. 36. Discuss: Why do you think the Pharisee might have invited Jesus to dine with him?

Study: We would do well to briefly trace Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees up to this point in Luke. Assign to different individuals in your Connection Group the responsibility of skimming one chapter of Luke 5, 6, and 7. What are the

terms.

references to the Pharisees? How would you summarize these interactions?

Study: Were we reading straight through Luke, we would note that Luke’s narrative here shares several key elements with that of Jesus’s earlier healing of the paralytic in Luke 5:17-26. Read that passage now: What are some of the common points of the narrative? What might Luke be trying to emphasize?

Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1618

v. 37-38. Luke does not make clear the nature of the woman’s sin; what he does make clear is that the woman has a profound response to learning of Jesus’ table presence, bringing an alabaster flask of ointment— perfumed olive oil, use for anointing— and weeping all the while. Note that, because Jesus was reclining with his head toward the table—as was the Greek custom of the time—anyone approaching him from behind would be at his bare feet; sandals were left at the door, dirty as they were.

vv. 37-38. Meditate: Read these two verses aloud, slowly, multiple times. As you picture this emotional table scene, what emotions come to your mind? What adjectives would you use to describe the woman and her act?

Reflect: The woman surely would have known how scandalous her actions seemed to be to others in the room—weeping at the feet of a man; letting down her hair in public; wiping Jesus’ dusty feet with her hair. Yet such is her affection for Jesus that she does not hold back. Reflect: Does your affection for Christ outweigh your self-perception and self-concerns?

Discuss: How do you understand the woman’s actions to be an act of repentance?

v. 39. Likely concerned that the

v. 39. Discuss: How, according to one possible

woman is ritually unclean (as in the manner of Leviticus 15), and even more likely distressed by the sinful woman’s brazen affection, the Pharisee has no category in his mind and heart to understand the woman’s actions, and Jesus’ response.

reading, is this verse deeply ironic in terms of the Pharisees words?

v. 40. As teacher, Jesus must correct the Pharisee’s, Simon’s, misunderstanding of God’s character, laws, and ways.

Discuss: Translating across the centuries, what might a “scandalous” act of affection and repentance—like that of the woman—look like in the church in the modern day?

v. 40. Reflect: In terms of the “cost of discipleship,” would you consider yourself to be, in the words of 7:34, a “friend of tax collectors and sinners?” In what ways do you express this friendship?

Discuss: What do you make of the fact that, according to Luke’s narrative, Jesus uses Simon’s name only at this point in the conversation?

Discuss: How are Jesus’ prophetic capacities demonstrated here in responding to Simon’s comments?

vv. 41-43. Jesus seizes this teachable moment by telling Simon a parable of gracious forgiveness; the verb here χαρίζομαι (charizomai), “cancelling a debt,” has the nuance of “to graciously forgive.” The emphasis on this parable is clearly on the intimate connection between forgiveness and love, particularly love in the sense of gratitude.

vv. 41-43. Discuss: Why do you think that Simon’s response to Jesus’s question on the greater love includes the rare Greek word, ὑπολαμβάνω (hyopalambano)—“I suppose”?

v. 44-47. In explaining the parable in terms of the repentant and affection acts of the woman, Jesus argues in reverse from the love shown by the woman to how she must have been forgiven. Note here that the Greek syntax (the order of the words) emphatically draw out the pronouns “my” and “to me”—as in, “water to me,” “my feet,” “to me a kiss,” “my head”—putting these words at the beginning of each phrase. As such, Luke seems to be subtly emphasizing that the presence of Christ—the presence of God’s very salvation (Luke 2:30)—calls forth a loving response, especially as we know how richly we have been forgiven.

vv. 44-47. Discuss: With whom do you identify more: Simon or the woman? In what ways are you like them? In what ways are you not?

Discuss: What do you think Simon was feeling upon hearing the critique of Jesus?

Pray: Pray that we would rightly see those around us—at our jobs, in our families, and in our neighbourhoods.

vv. 48-50. Based upon the Hebrew vv. 48-50. Reflect: What is the connection notion of peace, shalom, as between my own failures to love and my sins? wholeness, harmony, and wellbeing, the woman is in a state of wholeness through having been forgiven and saved, and Jesus’ farewell to her bids her to go and live in this state of well-being (See George Martin’s Bringing the Gospel of Luke to Life, 213). Yet, the others at the table remain skeptical, in a similar response to that of Jesus’ healing of the paralyzed man in 5:21.

Reflect: In what ways do you remain skeptical of Jesus’ power to forgive your own sins? Might it be a sense of false guilt?

Pray: Pray that we at FBC would be a people who go forth in peace, knowing the cost of discipleship in terms of a Saviour God who "deigns" to dine with us sinners!