The Pharisees were offended at...
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The Pharisees were offended at the unpredictability of Jesus' ragtag band of followers, especially the woman who cracked open the alabaster jar and anointed her master's feet. As Eugene Peterson puts it, though, life among the forgiven will always be a little messy:
"Churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms. Entering a person's house unexpectedly, we are sometimes met with a barrage of apologies.... Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not show rooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpet. For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance -- and there is no indication as yet that he has changed his policy in that regard -- churches are going to be embarrassing to the fastidious and an affront to the upright." (Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination, 54.)
"Churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms. Entering a person's house unexpectedly, we are sometimes met with a barrage of apologies.... Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to churches that are lived in. They are not show rooms. They are living rooms, and if the persons living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpet. For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance -- and there is no indication as yet that he has changed his policy in that regard -- churches are going to be embarrassing to the fastidious and an affront to the upright." (Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination, 54.)
