Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
September 11, 2005
Luke 7: 36-25
The farmer’s shovel was missing and he knew what had happened.
The boy next door looked like a thief, walked like a thief, acted like a thief. Two days later the farmer found the missing shovel in a dark corner of the barn. The next time he saw the boy, he looked, walked, and acted like any other boy. How easily our view of the world and each other is shaped by our fears, our stereotypes, our preconceptions.
Barbara Brown Taylor, author, preacher, teacher, shares this story: “A couple of weeks ago I rode the subway to the Atlanta airport. It is not a proper subway since much of the track is above ground. But now that I live in the country it is my favorite mode of transport when I go to town…in the first place because I have lost the nerve to drive a car in the city, and in the second place because I like to look at the people. More than that I like to be with the people…Riding the subway, I belong to a larger body for a while, I see more, hear more, feel more, sense more. To be honest, this is at least partly because of the fear that heightens my alertness.
“I read the news after all. Every now and then someone gets robbed on the subway, fights break out and people get shot. Plus, anyone who wants to can sit down beside me, no matter how drunk, how fragrant, how talkative or disturbed they might be. For all of these reasons, at least one metro Atlanta county has declined to be part of the subway system. I own up to the fears. Without windows to roll up or doors to lock, my own defense on the subway is to remain exquisitely aware of the people around me.
“A couple of weeks ago, as I waited for the train to arrive, I saw a man with a boy’s haircut walking toward me on the arm of a pale woman. He moved like a loosely strung puppet, all of his actions were exaggerated, as was the volume of his voice. As he exclaimed about something or another, the pale woman gazed straight ahead with a half smile on her lips. She was clearly used to the routine and phased most of it out.
“The train arrived. We boarded through different doors, and it was not until we were under way that I realized the man, woman and I had ended up on the same car. ‘All aboard!’ he shouted, not just once but every time the train stopped and started again. After the third stop, he let go of the woman and began moving down the aisle toward my end of the car. Along the way he dove between people’s legs and rummaged around on the floor under their feet, talking the whole time. It was not until he was halfway down the aisle that I heard what he was saying. ‘Picking up the trash!’ he shouted. ‘I’m cleaning up this place.’ The remarkable thing was how kind everyone was to him. Like a friendly conductor, he greeted people as he went and the majority responded to him. ‘You’re doing a great job,’ one woman said.”
Taylor concludes, “Whatever I expected, it was not that. I thought people would ignore him or tell him to shut up. I thought I would witness something cruel. I read the news, as I said. I know that the world is a dangerous place. But what this recent subway incident did was to make me question the world I have constructed in my mind. We carry such a wad of fear inside of us. We expect the worst of other people from whom we withhold the best of ourselves.”
“One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman of the city, who was a sinner, having learned that Jesus was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair…” And the host and everyone else at the dinner party are shocked, angered, embarrassed. They want to run her out of town on a rail, and they can’t believe that Jesus, this famous teacher, has even allowed such behavior.
They don’t know her, they’ve never seen her, but they know her – this sinner, this rule-breaker, this woman – they know all about women like her. And, to be fair, based on the standards of first century contact, I suppose you can’t really blame them. Look at what she does! She is forward, she is uninvited, she is outrageous. She breaks all the rules about how women and men are to relate to each other in public. She wipes his feet with her hair? Such intimate public contact between men and women was not allowed or tolerated. Indeed, no public contact was allowed or tolerated. She touches him right there in front of God and everyone. Who does she think she is? They know what to do with her kind. But so does Jesus.
I remember Sister Margaret, James Baldwin’s central character in his play, The Amen Corner. In the drama’s final act she says, “I’m just now finding out what it means to love the Lord. It ain’t all in the singing and shouting. It ain’t all in the reading of the Bible. It ain’t even – it ain’t even – in running all over everybody trying to get to heaven. To love the Lord is to love all his children - all of them, everyone! And to suffer with them and rejoice with them and never count the cost!” At Simon the Pharisee’s dinner party Jesus shows us what such love looks like.
Once again, as he always does, he sees the person behind the label, the stereotype, the fear. It’s hard to think of a social boundary that she hasn’t crossed; of a rule of contact she hasn’t broken. Simon is outraged, as any self-respecting male host would be. But all Jesus can say is, “Look at her great love.” Simon sees a sinner; Jesus sees a loving, thankful child of God, a woman whose great love has compelled her to take her own great risk in coming to Jesus and doing what she did. Simon and his friends suddenly find themselves face to face with the grace of a forgiving and loving God. Indeed, they see that graciousness showered on someone who is a sinner, an outsider, not one of us. And they are shocked. They see it but they don’t approve of it.
So where are we in this story? I don’t know how I’d like it if I were hosting that party. Dare we join Jesus in seeing below the surface, below the stereotype, below the fear? Dare we confront the truth that we cannot love God and despise one another? Reflecting back on her Atlanta subway experience, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “I wonder what would happen if we responded to the real people in the real places where we live instead of to the stories we have heard about what has happened to other people somewhere else? I wonder what would happen if we looked into each other’s faces expecting to see allies instead of threats? I suppose it would be a dangerous way to live. Then again, what do I know? I am the one who was afraid of the strange man lurching toward me on the subway, when all he wanted to do was throw away my pretzel bag.”
Following the attacks of 9/11 President Bush proclaimed, “We will not live in fear.” We then proceeded to attack Iraq, demonstrating that the way to not live in fear is to exert our power and destroy the real or imagined threats to our country. Now history will decide if this ongoing agony in Iraq has made us any safer, any less fearful. One colleague expresses his doubts when he writes; “Our age shall be known, not as the age of freedom, but as the age of anxiety. We are anxious about so many things: having enough money, having good enough health, being secure and safe.” Are we less fearful – these four years later?
A contemporary fable: “A seeker met Jesus on a lonely road. ‘Lord,’ he asked, ‘after all the people had been fed with the bread and fish, you said to your disciples: ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ What are the fragments that must be gathered up?’ Jesus gazed at this pilgrim a long moment, then answered: ‘The fragments are your fears, which multiply like the loaves and fishes and fill more baskets than you can carry by yourself. These must not be lost. Instead they must be brought to me, so that I may bear them with you.’”
What are we going to allow to shape us? Our fears or the One who taught that love casts out fear? Can we place our hands in Jesus’ hand with a hope that lifts us up from fear or will we give in to a fear that immobilizes love, strangles potential friendships and hardens stereotypes?
We are back to our text and Jesus’ extravagant and risky welcome of the woman who crashed the dinner party at the home of Simon the Pharisee, herself taking a great risk, overcoming fear in the name of love. And in his response to her, Jesus shows us what we need to do.
I think of Richard Nash’s play, The Rainmaker. Starbuck, the dreamer of dreams that almost never come true, complains to Lizzie about a world in which reality falls far short of a man’s vision. He says, “Nothing’s as pretty in your hands as it was in your head. There ain’t no world near as good as the world I got up here (angrily tapping his forehead) Why?”
Lizzie answers: “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you don’t take time to see it. Always on the go – here, there, nowhere. Running away. Keeping your own company. Maybe if you’d keep company with the world…”
“I’d learn to love it?” He asks, still not at all convinced.
Lizzie responds: “You might, if you saw it real. Some nights I’m in the kitchen washing the dishes. And Pop’s playing poker with the boys. Well, I’ll watch him real close. And at first I’ll just see an ordinary middle-aged man – not very interesting to look at. And then, minute-by-minute, I’ll see little things in him I never saw before. Good things and bad things – queer little habits I never noticed he had – and ways of talking I never paid any mind to. And suddenly I know who he is and I love him so much I could cry! And I want to thank God I took the time to see him real.”
Dare we do that? Dare we take the time, make the effort to do that, as risky and difficult as it is; dare we step from behind our fears and our preconceptions in order to see each other real – as Jesus saw that woman? As Jesus sees us? If we do, if we dare, then can healing and forgiveness and new hope, indeed a new world, be far behind?