If you Love ME, love my people
And I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. Hosea 2:19
In Luke 7:36-50, we read that Jesus was eating one day at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. A woman entered the house. Luke tells us she was “a sinner,” which is most likely a polite way of saying she was a hooker. No doubt she was an uninvited guest, scandalizing everyone there except for the one truly holy person at the table. She had lost her reputation, a good deal of her virtue was missing, and generally speaking she had the all good things knocked out of her.
Surely, she hadn’t always looked like this. There was a day when she had been someone’s little girl, when someone cherished dreams for her, perhaps. When she had dreams herself,maybe. But that day had been gone a long time. It had been years since she had been in the public company of anyone respectable. It took all the courage she had to face the looks and whispers in that room. She stood behind Jesus, at his feet (people reclined rather than sat at a table in those days). But when she could bring herself to look into Jesus’ eyes, rather than contempt she saw love. She had brought perfume to anoint Jesus. This was generally done by pouring the perfume on the person’s head. But as she watched Jesus, the tears came. Maybe she was thinking of how she earned the money to buy the perfume. Maybe she was thinking of the little girl she once was. Maybe she was thinking of the gap between who she had become and who she wanted to be. At any rate, instead of his head, she began to anoint Jesus’ feet with a mixture of perfume and tears. Then she did something—she let down her hair. This was never done. It was a violation of social custom; respectable Jewish women always kept their hair bound in public. As a prostitute, she had let down her hair many times before. And each time was another wound to her heart, another scar on her soul. But this time it was for an act of homage, to dry the feet she had bathed and anointed. She who had let down her hair so many times before let it down once more. But this was the last time. This time she got it right. The days of her raggedness were about to end.
God says, If you Love ME, love my ragged people. It’s a package deal. If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards. In Jesus’ day, it was the people who were most aware of their raggedness who were most open to his love. So it is today.
Yours in Christ,
Apostle Ashok Martin