Do You See This Woman?

Following our current "unit" of discussing Pastor Rich's sermons, we discussed the story in Luke 7:36-50. It's the story of Jesus having dinner at a well-known religious leader's house and a rather infamous woman from town comes to honor Jesus. She cries on his feet, then wipes them with her hair, and anoints him with some expensive oil- much to the disgust of the religious elite, who feel that if Jesus really knew who she was, He wouldn't have anything to do with her. It's a story about spiritual pride and how that pride leads to blindness. A real, live person becomes a talking point, a pawn in their games of self-importance and status. They turn a complex human into a caricature, and if they even notice her at all it's to say "At least we're not her!" But mostly she's not even worth wasting the time to think about.

Jesus turns it around and calls out their blind spots- "Do you see this woman?" is not a question of whether they can physically see her. They have quite obviously noticed her. But it goes deeper than that, to demand that they not value one human life less than another. And if we're honest with ourselves, we need that advice today just as much as the Pharisees needed it 2000 years ago.


Discussion questions:

Name something that is often associated with a class/group that you belong to, but that you don't think personally fits YOU. Once again, the danger of the single story came up. We all have parts of a stereotype that we don't claim and that we'd hate to have define us.

Talk about a time when you felt like someone really "got" you. What made you feel that way, and did it change anything for you? You can't fake "seeing" someone- it requires openness and receptivity to see them as they really are, not just as you want them to be. And "seeing" goes way beyond just interacting with words and physical presence.

What are some of the reasons we choose not to truly see another? There's a cost to seeing others, understanding where they come from, and why they re the way they are. Some of the costs include:

• Social relationships (That person is just too weird! Your friends might expect you to just ignore them like everyone else, assuming if you can understand them and find value in them, you must be just like them)
• Time (Seeing might require that you take action in order for you to maintain a sense of integrity in your beliefs)
• Emotional (it can feel like going through the wringer to put yourself into their shoes and truly understand their emotions and motivations in anything other than a clinical way)

Is there a particular group it's easier for you to understand/see? Is there a group that's harder? It's easiest to understand those who have something in common with us. And our society often tries to divide rather than unite- THAT political party, THOSE immigrants, THAT race.

Do you think it's easier or harder to "see" those closest to you?  It's easy to only view our family members and friends through our own perceptions. But what about switching your viewpoint so that they're the main character in the story? What do you learn about them when you view them as the center of the universe instead of yourself? What about seeing yourself? Maybe you see yourself well enough to know that you're shielding some things from your consciousness, and truthfully, a full reckoning of our faults and skills would be overwhelming. But to recognize that we CHOOSE to not see everything is a good first step towards getting to know ourselves better!