Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 17, 2007
Luke 7:36-50
This week as I was thinking about the women in this text, my thoughts went back to a relative, an aunt of mine, named Glee. She was actually my great aunt, my grandmother’s sister and because she never had any children and my mother was an only child, my mother and myself and my sisters were Glee’s family. At any family gathering, Glee would be there. This was a woman who could fill a room. She was tall, a large woman and she dressed large – beautiful expensive dresses, big jewelry and as we were in Arizona, she loved the turquoise and wore bracelets and necklaces that seemed they must have weighed five or ten pounds. Big earrings, big makeup, with her drawn in eyebrows, and big lipstick. Each family gathering started with a big kiss and for the rest of the day you were always trying to wipe that kiss and the lipstick off your cheek. But she was ours! She lived over the top, kind of an Auntie Mame character. She was ours and we loved her and she was always there at the family gatherings. We loved her, but believe me, we kids did not necessarily want any of our friends to meet her… she was kind of our secret Glee. And maybe you know someone like that or have someone like that in your family, or maybe you are like that. Everything so exaggerated, everything so dramatic and everything over the top.
Which brings me to our text and to this nameless woman of the streets. In describing her, Luke gives us a description of some over the top behavior. First she crashes the party, just barges in and goes straight to Jesus. Now, since houses opened out onto the street, it was actually not unusual for there to be a lot of coming and going during a banquet, but she does far more than simply pass through. First, as she makes her way through the undoubtedly all-male banquet, she is weeping uncontrollably – that alone would be distracting and unwelcome. Then she stations herself behind the reclining Jesus – men always reclined at table with their feet, which were always dirty, pointing out away from the table - and she starts to bathe his feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair. This means that she had to take down her hair – in public surrounded by men – something no self-respecting woman would do nor any self-respecting man would ever tolerate outside of the bedroom or I suppose a brothel. But she isn’t finished. She concludes by anointing his feet with perfumed oil and kissing them – kissing them there in front of God and everyone. For a woman in first century Palestine, this was behavior so unacceptable, so over the top, that no one would have blamed Jesus if he taken her out into the street and beaten her within an inch of her life. Such behavior was not tolerated in public and certainly not in the home of a respected religious leader. Why was she acting like this? They had to wonder about such scandalous behavior. What was she thinking?
Let’s let the question about her state of mind linger over here for a moment and move to the host of the banquet, Simon the Pharisee. As he observed these rather unexpected events unfolding at his party, what was he thinking? And let’s not immediately jump to the conclusion that he might be some kind of a bad guy. To tell you the truth, I have some measure of sympathy for Simon.
This past week I visited my father in Southern California for a few days at a time-share he and my mother purchased many years ago on a golf course in Escondido. He continues to go but he never likes being by himself, so I went down for a couple of days and actually attempted to play golf. I play golf every 18 months and this was one of those times. The first day was kind of slow going. I am not a good golfer, but there were people on the course who made me look like a good golfer. There was a three-some in front of us that included an older woman who was really struggling. She would hit the ball ten feet, then hit another shot and it would go another ten feet. On the second nine, her husband must have lost patience with her, because right in the middle of the fairway, at about the 12th, he hole, starts to give her a lesson. He puts a couple of balls down and hits one and then has her try. People are now backing up behind him watching him give her a lesson in the middle of the fairway! You don’t do this! You go over to the driving range! But he just stopped right there, as if there was no one else on the course. He did it again when they got up to the tee box and I just wanted to hit a ball right at him, in a loving and helpful sort of way, but wiser voices intervened. His behavior was rude, it was inconsiderate, it slowed everybody down – it was as if they were the only ones on the course that day.
Just as you don’t stop and give a lesson to somebody in the middle of the fairway on a public course, so you don’t crash a private party, go the guest of honor, and use your hair as a washcloth for his feet. Was it rude and inconsiderate? Well, yes, if you were the host, you would say it was. Think about it. Simon, a well-respected and solid citizen, has heard about this itinerant rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. Out of curiosity, out of the desire to learn more about this Jesus and his work, he invites him to a dinner party at his house. One can suppose that other Pharisees and people of substance were also there. Maybe Simon was even hoping for some kind of a rousing theological discussion after dinner. But everything changes, all his plans are shattered, when that woman of the streets, that sinner, walks in with her jar of ointment and quite literally lets down her hair.
So I have some sympathy for Simon. When I carefully plan an event – or worship service, or wedding - I like it to go as planned. If I have guests in my home, I want them to be relaxed and comfortable. I try to be considerate of others and desire that they be considerate of me. So I have to wonder how much patience would I have had with that woman if she strolled into my dining room disrupting my party? And, like Simon, I might have wondered why is Jesus tolerating such behavior? Ah, Jesus…what was he thinking?
We don’t know much about the woman. A sinner, we are told, a woman of the streets. Does that mean she was a prostitute? Maybe, but we can’t know for sure. Some have linked her to Mary Magdalene who is mentioned right after this text, but really there is nothing concrete in the Bible to support that theory as much as many people like it. But what scandalizes Simon even more is Jesus’ toleration of, indeed seeming acceptance of, that behavior. In his presence, she lets down her hair, touches him, she caresses him. As I said, it is over the top behavior, in fact rather sensual behavior. Simon can only shake his head in disbelief and ask, “Don’t you know what kind of woman this is? Don’t you know how inappropriate and scandalous her behavior is? No man with any honor and self-respect would put up with this. What can you be thinking? Just what kind of prophet are you?”
And that is really the heart of this text. What kind of prophet are you? What kind of prophet, what kind of messiah, what kind of lord is this who would tolerate this kind of behavior? Just at the moment when everyone is sure Jesus is going to take this women by the hair and throw her into the streets, he turns to Simon and asks, “Do you see her? Do you see her?” “I’m not blind, she’s right here!” “But do you really see her?”
Simon sees the obvious – party crasher, sinner, inappropriate and rude and disrespectful behavior. Just what you would expect from someone like her.
But Jesus, always responding to a different tune, always following a different path, sees beyond and through all that. Instead he sees someone who, knowing she has received great forgiveness, now finds her life filled with nothing but love, perhaps even more than good taste would allow. He does not stand in judgment of her. He simply receives her love, is thankful for it, knowing that it comes from her own thankfulness, her own sense of new life.
“Simon, do you see her? Do you see that she is not the person she was? Can you get out from behind your labels and stereotypes and see a disciple, a woman of great faith, someone who knows she has been given a whole new life? To tell you the truth, Simon, instead of judging her, perhaps you should consider how you might be might be more like her, more open to grace, forgiveness and newness in your own life.” Ouch, that one must have hurt.
A story told by Peter Gomes, chaplain at Harvard University. “I remember many years ago an Easter Sunday sunrise service in Plymouth, when we stood looking out to sea from the hill overlooking Plymouth Rock toward the horizon, where it was still cold and gray and dark. We all stood huddled, the minister before us, singing hymns and saying prayers, waiting for that resurrection sun to come over the dark horizon. If any of you have ever watched a sunrise you know that the sun does not rise gradually, it pops over the horizon. So we sang our hymns and said our prayers, and knew we were waiting for the first glimpse of resurrection sun, when it would pop up over that dark, straight line far out at sea. But just at that crucial moment, the minister leading the service turned toward the sun and said, ‘Christ is risen!’ and held out his hands…thus blocking our view of the rising sun! We all missed it. He had got in the way, and the rest of us could not share in that glorious instant of resurrection sun. We didn’t see the sun until it was up there shining as if it had been there all the time.”
I think Jesus is telling Simon, Gene Nelson, and all of us…don’t get in the way. Don’t get in the way of grace, of forgiveness, of new life. God is always moving toward us in tender and insistent ways with that love divine, all loves excelling. But how are we going to know that if we, like Simon, are obsessed with bookkeeping; always keeping track of all the rules, all the proprieties, of everybody else’ sins and how they don’t measure up to our high standards? And so Jesus says, “Simon, let down your guard, let down your defenses. Do you see her? Do you see the difference love and grace have made in her life, do you see the difference I have made in her life? Dare to open the well-defended door of your heart. What happened in her life can happen in yours. You give so little of yourself; she has given so much. Wouldn’t you really like to go a little over the top in the name of love? This is no time for a cold, miserly, cautious faith. Don’t get in the way. Get out of the way, indeed dare to become the way, allowing the light of my extravagant and over the top love to shine through you and on you and in you. And remember, no matter what, you are always welcome at my table.”