The Power of Brokeness
Pastor Carter Conlin Timesquare church
"And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him.
And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. And,
behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that
Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of
ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash
his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and
kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the
Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spoke within himself, saying,
This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner
of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner"/ (Luke
7:36–39).
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> What was it about this woman's actions that prompted God to record
it in the pages of Scripture, to be remembered throughout the
generations?
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> First, we know that the woman was a sinner, although we do not know
for sure what her specific sin was. She had with her a jar made of
alabaster, a type of stone that was carved out to contain costly
perfume. The only way to get the perfume out was to break the neck of
the bottle. In other words, it was in the brokenness that the
fragrance would be released.
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> Perhaps all this lady had left was contained in that alabaster jar.
There were no banks back then, so this could have been the entirety of
her savings—maybe even the wages of sin. It was a representation of
all of her hopes, her dreams, her ambitions and her future. However,
this woman found something so wonderful and profound about Jesus
Christ that she took that jar, broke it, and poured the ointment out
on His feet.
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Frannie