Starting at 2:53 PM Eastern time on May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points.  Five minutes later, the Dow Jones hit a low of 9872.57. Your minister suggests the latest stock market crash, commonly referred to as the "flash crash", would not have been as painful had mounds and mounds of Kleenex brand products been on hand. Consider it. If all that soft, absorbent stuff had been laid out over Wall Street to the depth of super-thick mattresses, could last year's crash—or previous crashes—been as painful? Not only can Kleenex cushion the crash, but to those who lost significant investments that day? Well, here's a nearby tissue for you to cry into!

I know, brilliant.

Well, someone did cry, and it happened long before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, or the crash of 1929. The one who cried, the one who truly knew who Jesus was, did not use a tissue or paper towel. She used her hair.

We can all see this scene clearly enough to imagine this woman's weeping was not just a teardrop or two around her eyes. No, it's easy to picture this woman wailing streams of tears, and her heart-to-heart moment with Jesus was so real, so genuine, that she reached for what was closest to dry her face, and that was her hair.

That scene is not difficult to imagine, so neither should your meeting with Jesus be difficult to imagine. She wept because Jesus knew of her sins and he forgave her. He let her be real with him, or she was wise enough to be genuine with him.

This scripture is very real because when you come to Jesus, you have choices too. You can be like this sobbing, slobbering woman, you can come right up and fall at Jesus' feet, you can bring the best gifts, or you can be like the Pharisee Simon.

We know from this text that Simon opened his home to Jesus. That's not enough. I'm inviting you to open your heart to Jesus, as this woman did. Our first point this morning is to open your heart to Jesus.

It's good we've mentioned Kleenex-brand products because opening your heart can get a little messy. Touching, crying with, and kissing—all motions or emotions that come not from the head but the heart—are all so personal; they are also profoundly human—and what that woman did in our lesson is necessary for our walk to discipleship (and our walk, you remember, shapes itself this month and next). Without touching, crying and kissing, we become nothing but plastic. In other words, an open heart for Jesus mandates us to touch, to cry and yes, to kiss. An open heart for Jesus—one ripe and raw, real and unreserved—requires us to need to Jesus.

Simon didn't need Jesus. If anything, the dinner Jesus was invited to was only perfunctory. It was just business (or business as usual) because the host never offered Jesus water to wash his feet nor did Simon offer Jesus any oil, both of which were customary in the day. No, for Simon it was just dinner as some today see Sunday morning at First Congregational-UCC as just a Sunday morning pastime. It's just church. This familiar, blue-walled building is just something along the line I felt obligated to attend, and, honestly, not that it really matters, I've made a habit out of it. And the habit here for some is cut and dried. It is cut in that you're cut off from experiencing the living, vital, invigorating Spirit here, and it's dry because you bring neither a tear of joy nor of pain here with you. You're the content of a seed without water or a place in the earth. You will not grow.

For three weeks now I have said that the only way we will grow physically is if we first grow spiritually. Last Sunday I was challenged to uphold my end of the deal.

It's a challenge I welcome and feel called to do, and that said, I was being kind when I said some are like the Pharisee. The truth is we are all like the Pharisee in some way. Guarded, distant, unfeeling, predictable, safe, uninspired, customary, stoic, clean, neat and tidy, at least here in worship, that's us. Immediately someone may be thinking, "Well, I don't want to be a holy roller. That's not who I am, and that's not what this church is."

If we stay on that trajectory, if we hold to that person's thinking, we shouldn't invite Jesus into our hearts. Instead, we should invite the Roman centurions who nailed Jesus' hands and feet to the cross to come here and nail us in our own coffins because we, like 1,500 other churches our size here in the Commonwealth, are dead.

Are you dead, or is your heart beating? If your heart is beating—or if you decide, dare, delve, discover and dedicate yourself to having your heart beat perhaps for the first time in a long time—listen carefully. Are you sharing all you can with Jesus, or, like the Pharisee, are you removed, distant, and maybe even disgusted with those who do touch? Are you distant to those who weep, and are you disappointed in those who, as ridiculous as this might have sounded ten-minutes ago, do kiss the Savior? In other words, are you ready for spiritual growth, or are you content in your grumbling about what you see is a lack of spirit which is not here in this sanctuary but there in your closed heart?

Spiritual growth begins, disciple, when you discard any thinking you have that likens you to Simon. Nail that old thinking in a coffin and send it down because there is a way for you to find your Savior as that woman of the city found her way to the Savior and it starts when, as cool and as controlled as you'd like to be, realize today what you may have incidentally or accidently buried, your need for the Savior. Whether you are five or ninety-five, realize you have sins to share with the Savior. Be humbled to be in the Son of God's presence. Weep with him. Touch him. Be close enough to Jesus so that, in your heart, you can kiss him.

That's our second point this morning. I'll repeat it. Be humbled to be in the Son of God's presence. Be close enough to Jesus so that, in your heart, you can kiss him.

How deeply real—how ultimately human—it is to weep with, touch, and kiss our Savior, Lord Jesus. Be humbled that Jesus knows who you are as he knew who that woman was, a prostitute. She sold herself as you sell yourself to other things. What we sell our souls to are things like material wealth, hobbies or pastimes that do not praise God. We sell ourselves into thinking we need recreation like secular books, music or oh-so-needed road trips. We sell ourselves into thinking hours with baseball or boating, lawn care or cool glasses of lemonade with lame or uninspired conversations are truly soul-satisfying, instead of time at the table with Jesus.

Disciple, do your homework this week. Realize we do sell ourselves into other things. And Jesus knows this. As he knew this woman, he also knows us personally. He knows you profoundly. Do you, in turn, know him? Point one: open your heart, as messy and confusing as it is, to Jesus. Point two: be both humble to a Savior who takes you as you are and, in his perfect love, makes perfect love possible for you.

Yes, open your heart. Yes, be humble. Also, be real. That's our third and final point this morning. They are just two words. Be real.

Let me explain what it means to be real with an illustration. With all of this talk about Simon and the weeping woman, and in mentioning caskets twice now, I'm reminded of a scene in the HBO prize-winning series, Six Feet Under. In the first episode, Nate, one of the main characters, flies home to California from Washington State to spend Christmas with this family, who own a funeral home in the Los Angles area. No sooner does Nate's plane touch down when Nate learns his father has been instantly killed in a car accident. The funeral, of course, is a few days later.

Well Nate, dressed in the dark funeral suit, is the only one rattled by how placid and impersonal—maybe even how perfect—the graveside service is. The priest, who is presiding at the head of the casket, shares the typical, tranquil words and Nate, whose heartbeat you can almost feel accelerate as you watch him, won't let this human event be canned.

See, what's happening is each of Nate's immediate family members, one by one, is taking a metal can and shaking it over the casket. Inside the can is earth. When Nate's passed the dispenser of canned earth, he says, "No!  I refuse to sanitize this anymore."

Nate's brother David, who is in the family business as a funeral director, says, "This is how it's done."

Nate explodes in front of David. "Well, this is wacked," the older brother says. "And what's with his stupid salt shaker? Huh? And this hermetically sealed box? This phony Astroturf around the grave? Clean. Antiseptic.  Business.

"He was our father. And he's gone. You can prop him up for a nap in the slumber room, but the fact remains, David, the only father we are ever going to have is gone. Forever.  And that bites. But it's a part of life, and you can't really live life without getting your hands dirty."

Nate curses, throws dirt, and walks off some distance.

Wanting to restore normalcy, the priest self-righteously declares, "Ah, amen."

David and Nate's mom, who had been stone says, "No, wait." And she moves to the foot of the casket and does what Nate did. She grabs dirt with her ungloved hands, throws it on the coffin, drops to her knees, and wails. She wails! Her heart is open.

Open your heart. Open your heart to Jesus. Be humbled to be in the Son of God's presence. Be close enough to Jesus so that, in your heart, you can kiss him. And be real.

Be real. Nate's right. To live life, to be in life, to have a real spiritual life with Jesus, you're going to get messy. You're going to get your hands dirty. There will be tears of joy as well as tears of sorrow and sacrifice. In all of this, you have a shoulder to cry on, so let those tears fall.

On your road toward discipleship, let yourself and others cry in the real presence of Jesus. Let yourself be heart-to-heart with Jesus, and tears, good, cleansing God-driven tears will flow.

And, of course, because of this, stock in Kleenex will invariably go up.