The first thing about this passage is that one of the Pharisees invited Jesus into his home and he went. Jesus did not spend all his time with sinners, but also with those who had theological training and were seeking righteousness. Those who did not think they were broken, but counted themselves as righteous.

And then a whore enters the room and starts kissing his feet.

And Jesus uses this to teach the Pharisee. The woman knew she was broken. She knew she had been cast out of society. And she was acting in devotion to Jesus — worshipping him, rather that seeing him as a theological colleague.

In the church we still have problems handling the mad, the drug addled, the bad, and the notorious — they are smelly, unkempt, have lice (sometimes literally). We hesitate in welcoming them into our house. But when they repent, they are fervent, for they have been to hell, and have chosen not to live there. The Broken get the need for salvation because they know the path that they were on destroys.

Luke 7:36-8:3

³⁶One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. ³⁷And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. ³⁸She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. ³⁹Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him-that she is a sinner.” ⁴⁰Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” ⁴¹“A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴²When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” ⁴³Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” ⁴⁴Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. ⁴⁵You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. ⁴⁷Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” ⁴⁸Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” ⁴⁹But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” ⁵⁰And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

¹Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, ²as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, ³and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

In this passage Jesus shamed Simon the Pharisee for not doing his duty as a host. Perhaps he was treating Jesus as some lower form of teacher. One can speculate. But the use of shame is instructive. For shame can be good. We should be ashamed of what we have done that is wrong, not flaunt it, not say that everyone does this (and so it’s OK). Morality is not relative: you should not go to the coliseum and watch the gladiators in any culture. (And there will be a parallel in almost every culture — the public hangings were one such in Georgian England, and the glorification of gladiatorial bouts by Hollywood and Pay TV have similar drives behind them).

The whore did not need to be told the be ashamed. She was ashamed. Her very actions said this. Shame is needed for repentance. You cannot preach the gospel without shame.

And this is why self esteem is so pernicious. It encourages us to believe we are whole, when we are not. To believer we are not wounded, when we are being held together by twine and duct tape. To believe we are as Gods, when we are frail, mortal, limited, and Broken.

But the good news of the Gospel is that the Broken get it. The women who followed Jesus — and we now call saints, Joanna, Mary Magdeline and Suzanna — were all broken before Christ. Christ healed them, and in Christ we will be healed.

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The word submission has a bad press. The feminists and the progressives continually claim that they are following the rules of liberty: that they alone are the masters of their fate. At the same time they try to regulate speech, so that no one can say they are evil. Their aims are destructive, their tactics are those of the bully, and they believe they control the high ground, for they have done the “long march through the institutions”.

But the instututions of a nation are not the nation. The public discourse is a matter of greater (or lesser) hypocrisy. And the war that we fight is much more around obedience to the truth, than it is around revolutions, resistance and the current political discource.

Our struggle is dealing with our own faults, our own lies, and seeing the truth. For the truth is of God.

2 Corinthians 10:1-18

¹ I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ – I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away! – ² I ask that when I am present I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to human standards. ³ Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; ⁴ for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments ⁵ and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. ⁶ We are ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.

⁷ Look at what is before your eyes. If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we. ⁸ Now, even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it. ⁹ I do not want to seem as though I am trying to frighten you with my letters. ¹⁰ For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” ¹¹ Let such people understand that what we say by letter when absent, we will also do when present.

¹² We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another, and compare themselves with one another, they do not show good sense. ¹³ We, however, will not boast beyond limits, but will keep within the field that God has assigned to us, to reach out even as far as you. ¹⁴ For we were not overstepping our limits when we reached you; we were the first to come all the way to you with the good news of Christ. ¹⁵ We do not boast beyond limits, that is, in the labors of others; but our hope is that, as your faith increases, our sphere of action among you may be greatly enlarged, ¹⁶ so that we may proclaim the good news in lands beyond you, without boasting of work already done in someone else’s sphere of action. ¹⁷ “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” ¹⁸ For it is not those who commend themselves that are approved, but those whom the Lord commend.

We need to be clear here. The truth is not ideology or theory. A theory is an explanatory statement that gives a coherent explanatino of known data, and can predict (or be tested). In the region of physics, this is easy — the various theories around, say the structure of the atom, can be tested experimentally. But in historical, anthropological, geological and evolutionary terms the tools of the historian are much more important — and the assumptions on which the edifice is built can be broken by one discordant fact. Black swans matter.

And this does not challenge my belief… for the hard athiest position (which claims things for evolution that assume the gaps in the theory do not exist) requires more faith than I have. The search for truth, the study of the good, the noble and the beautiful are not only licit for the Christian, they are part of the struggle.

For the struggle is with the modernists, who tried to destroy beauty, with the post -modernists, who tried to destroy truth, and the Islamicists, who consider all things are decided momoment by moment by their pagan God, and the search for anything is immaterial.

Now we under pressure, because the current administration of the USA is corrupt, and they are listening to everything we say. As Mark Steyn notes.

So we know the IRS is corrupt. What happens then when an ambitious government understands it can yoke that corruption to its political needs? What’s striking as the revelations multiply and metastasize is that at no point does any IRS official appear to have raised objections. If any of them understood that what they were doing was wrong, they kept it to themselves. When Nixon tried to sic the IRS on a few powerful political enemies, the IRS told him to take a hike. When Obama’s courtiers tried to sic the IRS on thousands of ordinary American citizens, the agency went along, and very enthusiastically. This is a scale of depravity hitherto unknown to the tax authorities of the United States, and for that reason alone they should be disarmed and disbanded — and rebuilt from scratch with far more circumscribed powers.

My answer to this is simple. Let them. It is our job to confront evil, choose good, shun the ugly, seek beauty, and let all things fall under the will of God. Including the IRS, the NSA… before they become one with Tyre, Sidon and Sodom.

Today we have a text that makes those end time people happy, because they can start talking about what each little bit means, and symbols. and powers and aouthorities. The sunday text includes two passages — the one I quote and one from the Gospel, where a widow’s son is returned to life (When Jesus did this is Nain, the people seeing this knew that this was Elijah had done).

Instead I want to talk about women, and why the church is feminine, and what this means to men. I doing this, we will, as usual contrast: however the hint is given my C.S. Lewis when he said that compareed with God, we are all weak, powerless and dependant. If providing and caring is masculine, then God is very masculine. (This has been perverted throughout Church history — from the monks conflating courtly love and making Mary a virgin queen of heaven as well as the Christ bearer to the Jesus in my boyfriend songs which I cannot sing because they are not merely gay, they are wimpy)

For in these passages there are some fairly strong images of women at their best and worst, And the woman in travail, sent to the wilderness, could be the church. Or Mary: all the young boys were slaughtered by that tyrant Herod in the hope he would kill the baby Jesus. I will leave that to the scholars.

Revelation 12:1-12

¹ A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. ² She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. ³ Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. ⁴ His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. ⁵ And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; ⁶ and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.

⁷ And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, ⁸ but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. ⁹ The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

¹⁰ Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. ¹¹ But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. ¹² Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

1 Kings 17:8-16 (17-24)

⁸Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, ⁹“Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” ¹⁰So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” ¹¹As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” ¹²But she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” ¹³Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. ¹⁴For thus says the LORD the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.”¹⁵She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. ¹⁶The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by Elijah. ¹⁷After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. ¹⁸She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” ¹⁹But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. ²⁰He cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” ²¹Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” ²²The LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. ²³Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” ²⁴So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I kno

Now, the angels, and men fought. The widow’s son worked to provide for his mother. Without this son, the widow was reliant on charitly and as Elijah noted, in the pagan towns, this was a recipe for starvation. Vox Day makes a point today which is can be taken as a gloss on this.

Now I’m going to teach you a hard, but very important lesson. You see, I don’t care you how feel. I really don’t. More importantly, neither does anyone else. Only about 200 people on a planet of 7 billion actually care about your feelings, and that’s if you’re lucky. The sooner you grasp this lesson, the better off you will be. And since almost no one gives a damn what you do, say, think, or feel, appealing to your feelings when you encounter differences of opinion is not only illogical, but useless.

What Vox says is true. The average man did not care about what was happening to the widow or to the woman giving birth. Most of the world does not care about the thousands who will die today. And we are not told about how many of those will be martyred for their faith in the long standing war of Islam against civilisation

And how we feel does not matter when the ravening hordes, be they progressive, religious, or the racialunderclass being let loose by their political overlords — descents. What matters is being able to protect, and being able to defent. The truth, our thoughts, our lives. A discourse that relies on feelings simply will not work.

And this is where the current church is wrong. We have stopped teaching the gospel. We have stopped saying what is true. We have stopped standing for what is right, even if the state then labels us, and we have instead become part of holy huddles, feeling for each other.

This feminizing of the church is wrong. We are supposed to be the worthy bride of Christ. And Christ dies for us. We are expected to die for him. We are expected to have courage, like him. Jesus was not a wimp, which is what many men in the church have become. Compared with God, who created this earth by the word, or by the command line, we are all weak, fearful, needy, dependant and poor.

So let’s get back to concentrating of being like Jesus, and not on how we feel or acceding to the current intellectual fashions, as if it has no more import as how the Parisian fashion houses are ruining tailoring this year. What we think matters. What we do matters. And for most of us, raising our children is the most important thing we do.