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April 1, 2001
Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
Luke
7:36-50
Preaching
professor, Tom Long, shares the following story: “One day last winter I
happened to be watching the skaters on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center in New
York. The music was playing over the loudspeakers, and most of the skaters were
doing the usual thing - gliding in time to the music, staying in sync with the
other skaters as they traced again and again a large oval on the ice. There
was, however, one skater who was different. The crowd went round and round, but
he skated freely, first this way, then that. He made figure eights and
curly-cues; he lifted his hands up over his head, then stretched them gracefully
out to his side. He glided forward, then backward, more dancing than merely
skating He was clearly responding not to the crowd or the expected route, not
even to the taped music blaring over the speakers, but to another song, another
pattern, another source of direction. He was strange, but beautiful…of all the
skaters on the ice, he was the one who captivated the eyes of all who watched.”
“Just
so,” concludes Long, “Jesus listened to different music, responded to another
source of direction, traced a different pattern on the world’s ice.” Nowhere is
Jesus’ different pattern, different source of direction, any clearer, any more
startling, than in our text today - Luke’s account of a little dinner party at
the home of Simon the Pharisee.
At my
house there is a picture of me and my daughter, Becky (we were much younger)
with our backpacks and big smiles on our faces. We were preparing to go on our
first back pack trip. It must have been fifteen years ago. We went with a group
from Wellspring Renewal Center in Mendocino County. I actually rented her a
little kid’s pack just for her. We were so excited, ready to go and away we
went.
We were hiking to a
base camp, so we had a long hike on the first day. We went down a canyon
following a creek. About 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon, Becky just hit the wall.
She was in gymnastics and in pretty good shape, but she just could not go any
further. We had slowed down (now she hikes faster than I do!) and the others
had gone ahead. She just sat down, took off her pack and started crying. I
thought I might start crying because I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. So
we just sat there. But after awhile (which seemed like a year) three of our
fellow hikers came back. They had reached the camp, taken off their stuff and
come back to get us. They brought fresh water, picked up Becky’s pack, picked
up Becky, even took some of my stuff, and away we went. The rest of the week
was just great. They had come and literally lifted a burden off our backs.
Has this
ever happened to you? Has someone ever intervened in your life to lift a
burden, physical , mental, or spiritual; ever had someone pick you up, dust you
off and help you back on your way, helped you let go of past failures, past
shortcomings, so that you can pick up your life again and make a fresh start?
This is what happened to the woman whom we meet in our text.
She
comes prepared with her jar of ointment. She knows where Jesus is and she is
coming to see him. She knows what she wants to do. It would seem clear that
they have had some kind of previous encounter - perhaps she heard Jesus speak,
heard him teach. Clearly she has been deeply moved by what he said. Through
Christ she has experienced God’s love, God’s grace, God’s forgiveness. Through
Christ, she has been given a fresh start, been given back her life.
Now she
seeks to make some response. And what a response it is. As she bends down to
anoint his feet, she is overcome with emotion. She begins weeping. It probably
surprises even her since she has no towel So she let’s down her hair to dry his
feet, she kisses them, and then anoints them with the ointment. It is an
extravagant act of love and caring, and a very risky one.
All who witness it
are outraged. What does she think she is doing? Get her out of here! You need
to know that in the Middle East then, and probably today, a woman would only let
down her hair in the privacy of her own home - only in front of her husband. It
is a very personal, a very private, a very intimate act, letting down your
hair. And so for a woman, particularly this woman - everyone knew what kind of
a woman she was - to do what she did in public was unheard of. No
self-respecting male would stand for it. She shouldn’t even touch Jesus. She
has brought shame on herself. Worse, she has brought shame on Jesus and on the
house of Simon. Remember, this was very much an honor and shame society and you
avoided shame at all costs. So the only thing for Jesus to do was to throw her
into the street, maybe even beat her. It was the only way to deal with people
like her. Everyone would understand. My goodness, everyone would expect
nothing less. She was way out of line.
But,
Jesus does the unexpected. He goes against the demands of conventional wisdom.
He traces a different pattern on the world’s ice. They all see a sinner who is
behaving in a most disgraceful manner. Jesus sees only an extravagant
outpouring of love, a sacrament of thanksgiving. They want to throw her out; he
tells a parable about great forgiveness leading to great love.
Ron
Sider is a minister, author and social activist from the more evangelical side
of the Christian church. He shares this story: “One Sunday an interracial
group of young women from Teen challenge visited my inner-city church. One
beautiful young woman shared a wrenching story of incest, physical abuse, and
the terrifying bondage of drugs. Regina felt worthless. She was deathly afraid
of God because she thought God would treat her the same way that all men had.
She felt she was nothing. After a wretched life all she wanted to do was die.
Again and again she tried to commit suicide.
“Then
she met Jesus. In Teen Challenge’s marvelous Spirit-filled drug rehabilitation
program, God began to put her life back together. She feels clean again,
hopeful again.
Sider
concludes, “What an awesome gift. It would be silly, to be sure, to suppose
that Regina’s struggles are over. But her relationship with God has brought a
new sense of dignity, worth and hope. Her other relationships are also
beginning to change.”
Regina’s
story is the story of the woman in our text. She has experienced grace; she has
experienced forgiveness. She is changed. In the words of the parable, she has
been forgiven much and now, with the tears and hair and ointment, she seeks to
love much. Jesus knows this. And he graciously receives her offering of love.
But
Simon can’t see it. “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and
what kind of a woman this.” He is a Pharisee, an upholder of the law, a
defender of the law. He is a man of respect and position in the community.
Everybody knows he is a righteous man, a decent man, a law-abiding man. He
knows it about himself. His judgment on the woman is not cruel. He is not the
bad guy here. He is behaving just like he is expected to behave. But that can
get you in trouble when you are skating with Jesus.
Jesus
tells a parable and then asks, “Now which of them will love him more?” And
Simon knows he has walked into a trap. “I suppose the one for whom he cancelled
the greater debt.” The trap is sprung, “Therefore 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.” Sound like anyone you know, Simon? The
tables are dramatically turned on Simon and on everyone in that room. The
accuser becomes the accused.
Robert
Capon once wrote, “Bookkeeping is the only punishable offense in the kingdom of
heaven. For in that happy state, the books are ignored forever, and there is
only the Book of life. And in that book, nothing stands against you. There are
no debit entries that can keep you out of the clutches of God’s love.”
The
woman knows this; Simon doesn’t. He is so busy being a bookkeeper, keeping
track of everyone else’s sins, that he fails to see his own need for
forgiveness, for grace, for a fresh start. She has accepted forgiveness and
responds with great love. He is so closed to forgiveness, to grace, that he has
little love to give. And where do you find yourself in this story?
More
often than I care to admit, I fear I am very much the bookkeeper who think of
God as a bookkeeper, keeping tally of all the good things I do and all the bad
things everyone else does. I live a fairly routine and harmless existence. I
try to do a few good things. I haven’t done anything really bad, haven’t
purposely hurt anyone, haven’t scandalized my family. My life is structured,
balanced, controlled, constructive. All in all I’m a pretty good fellow and
figure God knows that.
But of
course, that is precisely what Simon thought about himself. And so in this text
we hear Jesus challenging us to think of ourselves less like Simon and more like
the woman; to think of ourselves as people who, in spite of all our fine
bookkeeping, just might stand in need of a little grace, a little forgiveness, a
little hope, some new possibilities. Oh, I am so tightly bound to my delusions
of self-sufficiency; so conveniently blind to those moments when I refuse to be
who I was created to be, when I have cherished things more than relationships,
when I have failed to love as I have been loved, when I have been so darned
judgmental of just about everybody else. Jesus knows this. And so he asks,
“Are you ready to let me in; to open the well-defended door of your heart, even
just a little? What happened for that woman can also happen for you.”
A
colleague shares this true story: “I know a man who died, but not in the usual
way. He was dead for a few awful moments during his heart transplant
operation. On the operating table, as one new heart was being exchanged for his
older diseased heart, he died. When he eventually recovered and was sent home,
back to family and friends, people often commented to him, ‘You’re different!’
‘Of course I am different,’ he would tell them. ‘For one thing, I died in that
hospital. I had to be brought back to life. For another thing, due to my
surgery, it’s like I have been given a whole new life.’”
Imagine
that. A whole new life. Did you hear it? I did. I just heard a woman shout
“Amen!”
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