A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

jesus strangelove

Luke 7:36-8:3, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, June 13, 2010

In an interview several years ago, General Norman Schwartzkopf was asked whether there was any room for forgiveness toward the people who have harbored and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 11 Sept attacks on America. His answer was classic Schwartzkopf: "I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting."

The comedian Emo Phillips made a somewhat interesting, mostly quirky theological statement when he joked, “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.” But it sort of rings a bell, strangely enough, as we hear in this Pearly Gates joke: St. Peter and St. Paul are at the Pearly Gates. Paul is looking through The Book of Names, and he says to Peter, "There are more people in heaven than there is supposed to be! Go find out what has happened!" Peter runs off, and some time later he returns to Paul. Paul says, "Did you find out why there are too many people here?" And Peter says, "It's Jesus. He's helping people in over the back fence."

Yeah, that’s what Jesus does: He helps people in over the back fence. With him, those who can’t go in through the front door of standard religious operating procedure can get in by the back fence. Jesus Strangelove, strange love indeed. Then again, how many actually do get in by the front door?

Looking at our passage this morning, we recall that many meal times are rich with assumed, unspoken, expectations and customs. And meals with invited guests are even more so. What food will be served? What drink will be served? Who will sit beside whom? In what order will people be served? What will be "polite" conversation? What thanks are to be offered? To whom? By whom?

This lesson from Luke both reveals and takes for granted many such meal time customs in Jesus' day. In Jesus' day, there were no paved roads, no socks, and no running water. So it was an expectation that a host would provide guests with a servant to wash the guests’ feet on their arrival, and provide some scented ointment for their hair. Meals were served onto low tables, and the guests would lie on sofas, propped on their left side, taking and eating food from serving dishes with their right hands. Only men would eat together. Women would enter the room only to serve food, always with hair covered, never directly speaking to or touching a man in public.

Thus, when the woman in this story comes into the room where the men are eating, she is violating a huge standard of socially respectable behavior for a woman. The woman is, well, a woman, and a "woman of the city" at that. She is "a sinner" in everybody's estimation, finally even that of Jesus. And she's forward, uninvited and outrageous, breaking all the rules about how women and men are to relate to each other in this time and place. But then, she is already a woman with a reputation. She has no "good name" left to lose. What she continues to do continually shocks: Washing Jesus' feet with her tears; touching him with her hair; anointing him with ointment. Yet it is this woman, and not Simon the host, who offers Jesus the appropriate hospitality. Simon is parsimonious and guarded. He does not permit himself to welcome Jesus into his home. In the end, Simon the rebuker is rebuked, while the rebuked woman is named the perfect hostess and is forgiven her sins even though she seems never to have confessed them, at least not in words.

But what about Jesus? Any proper man would have reacted with outrage and anger at her behavior. Any proper man would have absolutely prevented the way she touches him in public. Allowing this behavior tars Jesus with the same reputation as the woman touching him. And if left unchallenged would bring dishonor on the host as well. And so just as the host is saying out loud, "Doesn't Jesus know what sort of person this woman is," Jesus tells a story to make plain that he does indeed know what sort of woman she is, and more than that, knows what sort of person his host is as well. I imagine Simon not as some stereotypical hypocrite, but as a man much like many religious seekers. He is bright and curious and interested in religious ideas. How pleasant, after all, to host this young rabbi of note who offers another interesting spiritual perspective in the wild diversity of first-century Judaism. Simon didn't need Jesus as Messiah or Savior; he was just interested in what he'd say. Thus his hospitality, such as it is, is really all about Simon and Simon's spiritual interests, just like many people today for whom Jesus is mostly, well, interesting.

The woman, in contrast, offers Jesus a hospitality that is all about Jesus. It is oriented toward him, not her. There is no theological dinner talk, only her act of utter, off-putting, self-yielding devotion. She needs Jesus not to round out her personal spirituality but so she can become whole, the human being she was created to be. The blessing she seeks is what Jesus gives: “Your sins are forgiven.”

 Only Luke reports this event in Jesus' ministry. I wonder why? Certainly Luke as a doctor was from the same social class as the Pharisee in the story. I wonder if this story was particularly poignant for him? Reminding him, and causing him in turn to remind us, that God's care, love and forgiveness is for all, without distinction. It is good news that my debts are forgiven, but it may be hard to hear that someone else's much larger debt is also totally forgiven. Few if any want to be the woman in the story; Jesus is telling us we don’t want to be Simon either.

Jesus shows us why some people have such great devotion and others don't. Some experience great forgiveness and so they love greatly, while others experience little forgiveness and so they love little. So what should we do? Become great sinners so that we can be forgiven more and love more? There is a story about a young man who was reading a number of testimony books so he could understand how to become a follower of Jesus. You know those books in which people tell how they came to the Lord. After reading a number of them, someone asked him if he had discovered how to become a follower of Jesus. He said, "Yes, first you get mixed up in drugs or drinking then you hurt all the people that love you and maybe even get involved in crime, then you turn to Jesus."

 You don't have to become a great sinner to become a great follower of Jesus. We don't have to become great sinners, because we already are! We're already great sinners and only human pride and sin keep us from seeing that. That woman did not love Jesus more because she was a greater sinner than the religious folk. She loved Jesus more because she had admitted her sin, because she had faith in Christ, not in herself.

 Most "religious people" think they have been forgiven little. They say in their hearts, "I never really did anything wrong. I never killed anyone. I never stole anything. I never cheated on my taxed or my spouse. I never took drugs or drank. I'm not like those sinners." But we are great debtors. The twist to Jesus' parable of the debtors is that the one who owed little is an illusion. When it comes to humans owing God there is no one who owes little. We are all great debtors. We all owe God more than we can ever pay, and our only hope and our one faith is that the Lord will forgive, wiping the books clean.

I read recently about a pastor who started something that I hope to also begin. He says that several weeks before the ceremony he asks the couple to write each other love letters. Write privately, I tell them. Don't show the letter to anyone, not even to each other. Just seal it in an envelope and give it to me. And then I ask them if I can select excerpts from their letters to read as a part of the wedding sermon. Invariably the letters are quite moving. When I read from them everybody in the family has a good wedding cry, and some break down and sob. A couple wrote a pair of especially unforgettable letters. When I read one of the letters, it was not just the family members who cried but also the cellist, a stranger hired for the occasion.

It was the groom's letter that did it. He wrote about how his wife-to-be loved him. Not knowing that he was penning Lukan theology as well as declaring love, he said that his fiancee's love was most amazing because she loved him as he was, imperfections, male foibles and all. That was amazing enough, he wrote, but even more wondrous was the fact that her unconditional love had this way of pulling him to grow to be more worthy of it. Her love did this without ever implying that he wasn't worthy of it. Her unquestioning love took him as he was, but somehow nudged him to be a better man without ever saying that there was anything wrong with him. Maybe that's why the entire congregation, including the couple, the family, the cellist and the pastor, were in tears.

We all need forgiveness. We all need love. We all need God, when there is no one else to turn to, nobody else will be there, nobody else to help. You see, this is who Jesus is to this woman, to each of us. No system, no religion, no Church can save us from ourselves. No good deed saves, just as no bad deed is final, no matter what others may say or want to keep their world rotating on its axis. God alone spins this world, and with the Lord there is love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, another day.

James Nayler, second only to George Fox in the history of the Quakers, spoke these last words after having been persecuted mercilessly by the Puritans. First published in 1660, they ring even more true today than when he first spoke them. “There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other; if it be betrayed it bears it; for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God.”

Or as Christ would tell you, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

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