The texts for this sermon and Sunday are as follows:
1 Kings 21:1-21a
Psalm 5:1-8
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3
You can read them in their entirety here.
———-
Let me paint you a picture.
It is the Sabbath,
and you and your friends and all sorts of important Jewish officials have gathered at the home of Simon the Pharisee for Dinner.
You have just come from the synagogue,
where you heard for the first time a young Rabbi named Jesus proclaim his own brand of gospel.
This Jesus is beginning to have quite a following and so it was natural for Simon to invite this Jesus over for a bite to eat.
You see, Simon is one of those collector of celebrities.
Anyone who was halfway important,
even a little famous or infamous as the case may be,
sooner or later ended up at Simon’s house.
And it was natural that Jesus would accept Simon’s offer.
It was widely known that Jesus, like many preachers,
would never turn down a dinner invitation.
Part of the problem,
as far as the religious officials were concerned,
was exactly this.
Jesus ate with anyone and everyone -
tax collector or priest
sinner or saint
it seemed to make no difference to this young rabbi.
The dinner is being held outside in the courtyard of Simon’s home.
Here the guests reclined at low tables,
and the meal was a leisurely affair.
It could last for hours.
It was the custom at this time and place that when a Rabbi was at meal in such a house as Simon’s,
well, all kinds of people would come,
whether they had been invited to eat or not.
They would mill around the outside of the table and around the courtyard,
and they would listen for any pearls of wisdom that would fall from the Rabbi’s lips.
There was more than a few of these people here at Simon’s.
Jesus was good at attracting a crowd.
There was quite a bit of hub-bub and racket.
And perhaps because of this Simon forgot to play the part of the host when Jesus entered.
It was the custom of the time for the host to give the invited guest a kiss of peace.
All Simon did was wave a hurried hello.
Simon also forgot to bring out the basin and water to pour over Jesus’ feet.
The roads of the day were just dusty tracks,
and the shoes were open sandals -
no more than soles held in place by straps.
So cool water was always poured on the guest’s feet to cleanse and to comfort them.
But not today.
Simon even forgot to anoint Jesus head with oil, as good manners demanded.
But Jesus didn’t seem to mind these things,
and the meal was progressing rather nicely.
It was going real good, as a matter of fact,
until that woman dared to show her face.
You know who I mean.
It was that woman.
That notorious woman of the town.
Everyone knew who she was,
Everyone knew what she did,
and no one could believe that she had even dared to come to this dinner.
and absolutely no one would have ever believed the things that happened next if they hadn’t been there themselves.
The woman moved through the crowd,
closer and closer to where the young teacher was seated.
She had heard him speak this morning.
She had stood outside the synagogue and listened as he taught from the Holy Scripture.
She had heard rumors about this man,
about how he was different than the other religious leaders and authorities.
And as she listened, she knew that the rumors were true.
She had felt many things in her life.
Hatred, great sadness, depression, a sense of hopelessness.
These she knew all too well.
Men claimed to know what she wanted.
We know what you want, they would sneer,
as they did their business with her.
The men claimed to know what she needed.
They’d mouth their words and tell their lies,
and she had gotten good at ignoring them,
acting as if what they said did not hurt.
acting as though she felt no pain.
But this man’s words rang true,
and they cut through the pain and the hate and the hopelessness,
and although men had told her countless times that they loved her,
for the first time in her life she felt loved as she stood listening to this Jesus speak.
And so she had come to Simon’s house.
She noticed that several of her clients had come as well,
although they tended to turn their faces from her in the daylight.
She thought she would just go up to Jesus and thank him for his words of that morning.
That’s all she wanted to do.
But when she got to where Jesus sat,
she began to cry.
It was as if something inside her,
some barrier to feelings and emotions, broke.
The tears came without her wanting them to.
And she noticed that they fell upon Jesus’ feet.
She was a little embarrassed,
and being caught up in the moment she knelt down and unbound her hair and began to dry Jesus’ feet with it.
Maybe she momentarily forgot that it was an immoral act for a woman to loose her hair in public,
maybe she had forgotten this long ago.
Or perhaps the moment was all that mattered,
and she knew that what she did was good and right.
She took the phial of perfume,
that every woman at that time wore around her neck,
and in her business one had to smell good,
and she poured out the perfume on his feet.
Filled with gratitude and love she began to kiss his feet over and over and over.
Well,
You can imagine what a stir this scene caused.
It was embarrassing to say the least.
And what self-respecting rabbi would let a woman like that get within two steps of him.
She was not just a prostitute,
but because of this was also unclean.
One should avoid contact with an unclean person.
And here Jesus was letting this woman cry all over him,
letting her wipe his feet with her hair.
Allowing her to kiss him.
All this was too much for Simon.
He wasn’t used to his little get-togethers turning out so badly.
And he thought to himself,
“If this fellow was a prophet,
he would know who this woman is and what this woman does.
He would know that this woman is a bad woman.”
Perhaps Simon muttered this to himself,
or maybe Jesus knew what he was thinking,
for he turned to Simon and told him a parable.
“Simon,” Jesus said, “there was a moneylender who had two debtors.
One debtor owed him over five hundred denarii, over a year’s wages.
The other debtor owed him fifty denarii, over a month’s salary.
Since neither of them could pay him back,
the moneylender graciously canceled both of their debts.
Now which of them should love him more?”
Well that was easy.
Simon knew the right answer immediately.
Like many Christians, Simon was an expert at right answers.
“Well,” he said,
“I suppose the one who owed the greater debt would love him the most.”
Jesus said to him, “Yes, You are right.”
Simon swelled with pride,
but what followed soon deflated his ego
for Jesus continued.
“Do you see this woman here at my feet?
I came into your house as a guest,
and you offered me no water for my feet;
yet she has bathed my feet with her tears and wiped them dry with her hair.
You gave me no kiss of welcome;
yet ever since I arrived she has not stopped kissing my feet.
You did not anoint my face even with cheap olive oil,
yet she has anointed my feet,
and with expensive perfume.
Her sins were many,
but it is easy to see that they have been forgiven,
for she loves greatly.
But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.
And then Jesus spoke for the first time to the woman,
“Your sins are forgiven.
Your faith has brought you to salvation;
go in peace.”
And this is exactly what she did.
My friends,
this story in Luke drives home in a special way the relationship between the forgiveness of sins by God and the place of human love and the giving of one’s self to another.
Simon is a righteous man of sorts.
He has little to be forgiven for,
and so he shows Jesus only a little love.
The woman had sinned much,
she had been forgiven a great deal,
and so the love she showed was also great.
Forgave…..Forgave…..forgiven……forgiven…forgiven…for-gives.
Six times some form of the word forgives occurs in this story.
With repetitive frequency,
Luke jackhammers home to us that this story is about divine mercy.
It is a strong contrast:
the woman,
probably a prostitute,
lavishes on Jesus acts of thankfulness;
while Simon,
a Pharisee and religious leader,
smugly assumes that Jesus is ignorant or naive about the facts of the matter.
But Jesus does know,
and it does not matter that the person kneeling at his feet is a woman,
or that she is a known prostitute,
or that she has come unwelcome to the party,
or that she is ritually unclean,
or anything else.
What matters is that God’s grace and forgiveness is offered to all,
with no strings attached;
and so run of the mill sinners,
known prostitutes,
and even smug Pharisees and church-goers,
can receive it.
What matters is that the woman shows Jesus love,
and in doing so she shows that her sins have been forgiven.
Jesus tells the woman at the end to “go in peace.”
It is the same peace that the psalmist spoke of when he once wrote:
Happy are those whose transgressions are forgiven,
and whose sin is put away.
And I am here to tell you today that God has not changed.
God’s mercy is here for us today as surely as it was there for the woman and the Pharisee.
And it is up to us to decide which of these two people we want to emulate.
Jesus has linked together for us forgiveness and loving.
Both are related to our salvation.
After all, what else was Jesus doing on the cross but forgiving, loving and thereby saving us?
I do not know about you,
but I know at least three things about my life:
I know that in my life I have sinned much.
I know that I have been forgiven much.
And I know now that I must therefore love much.
Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche has said that “God reveals himself to us by revealing us to ourselves.”
When we really look in the mirror, in the presence of our loving God,
and really see who we are - what we have done and what we have failed to do - how dishonest and self-serving we have been -
then, and only then, do we discover our need for a Savior.
If there is one thing I know it is this:
I need a Savior.
I need a Savior to save me from myself,
from my selfishness and self-centeredness.
I need a Savior to help me forgive as I have been forgiven,
and I need a Savior to help me love as I have been loved.
Technorati tags: 1 Kings 21:1-21a, Psalm 5:1-8, Galatians 2:15-21. Luke 7:36-8:3, sermon, lectionary, forgiveness, love, Jean Vanier, L’Arche, preaching, Pentecost 3, Proper 6, Ordinary 11
Popularity: 3% [?]
Audrey Clements wrote,
mr1sy93wb58r3gta
Link | November 12th, 2008 at 11:20 pm