Our Gospel
reading for today
comes from
Luke
chapter 7,
verses 36-50:
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.
37And a woman in the city,
who was a sinner,
having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house,
brought an alabaster jar of ointment.
8She stood behind him
at his feet,
weeping,
and began to bathe his feet
with her tears
and to dry them
with her hair.
Then she continued kissing his feet
and anointing them with the ointment.
39Now when the Pharisee
who had invited him saw it,
he said to himself,
‘If this man were a prophet,
he would have known
who
and what kind of woman this is
who is touching him—
that she is a sinner.’
40Jesus spoke up and said to him,
‘Simon,
I have something to say to you.’
‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’
41‘A certain creditor
had two debtors;
one owed
five hundred denarii,
and the other
fifty.
42When they could not pay,
he cancelled the debts for both of them.
Now which of them
will love him more?’
43Simon answered,
‘I suppose the one for whom
he cancelled the greater debt.’
And Jesus said to him,
‘You have judged rightly.’
44Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon,
‘Do you see this woman?
I entered your house;
you gave me no water for my feet,
but she has bathed my feet with her tears,
and dried them with her hair.
45You gave me no kiss,
but from the time I came in
she has not stopped kissing my feet.
46You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she has anointed my feet with ointment.
47Therefore, 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.’
48Then he said to her,
‘Your sins are forgiven.’
49But those who were at the table with him
began to say among themselves,
‘Who is this
who even forgives sins?’
50And he said to the woman,
‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Good morning!
Thank you so much for the honor
of inviting me as a guest
to your lovely house
of worship
to bring a Sunday message.
It was so good
to hear from my friends […]
about your faith community here,
and to learn a little more about you
from Pastor K.
Pastor K. had mentioned that you all
Have been doing a deep dive, reflecting over the summer
on the heart of Matthew 25,
…What it means to tend to
and care for our siblings
Who may be feeling
–Or who may be treated in our society–
like the least,
The last
the lost.
I’ve learned that there are ways that you
are living out Jesus’ love
as a faith family together.
For instance,
I see that many of you
are going on a border visit
even this very morning.
Pastor K. had mentioned that during her sabbatical
The leadership team was asking speakers to come
who work on the frontlines
of offering care to others
Especially to those who sometimes feel like
the least,
the last,
or the lost.
She asked me to come preach from that perspective
I have to confess that it took me a few moments
in prayerful consideration
to explore what the Holy Spirit
might have for me
to share with you
along those lines
In that Matthew passage,
Matthew 25: You remember that The Son of man
comes separating people
on his left and right,
The way a shepherd
might separate her sheep and goats
Saying, to the sheep at his right side:
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father,
Come & inherit
the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundations of the world,”
(Whoa, right?)
And why would they so inherit? “Because,” he said
“You fed me,
You gave me something to drink,
You welcomed me,
You clothed me,
You took care of me,
You visited with me,
…when I was down and out”
But the righteous answer,
‘Lord, when…?
When did we see you? When did we do those things for you?”
The King said,
“ANY TIME
you did it for
even the littlest (or the least) of my siblings,
you did it for me.”
I have to tell you that
this week I’ve asked myself
“Lord, when…?” “When have I…?”
You may be asking yourself the same question.
You wouldn’t be alone if you are.
Even Mister Rogers, –the Reverend Fred Rogers,
when the end of his life was drawing near,
asked his wife,
“Do you think that I am a sheep?”
It’s good, I think,
to be asking that of myself
on a near-daily basis.
In my day-to-day life,
what I do, is that
I’m a therapist (a psychologist)
Some days I think to myself,
“How exactly am I ‘suffering for Jesus’?”
When I get to sit in a comfy chair all day long
and listen to people share stories
from their lives with me?
I mean, That’s pretty great.
I love that that’s what I get to do with my life.
But there’s a gravity to it too
(gravity and glory—heaviness and glory, actually
are the same word in Hebrew — Kabod)
And there is a certain holy gravity
to sitting with people
who are in their deepest pain.
Our word for “therapy”
comes from the Greek word,
“therapeuein”
Jesus’ very own word
in the New Testament
for tending to others
for caring,
for healing them,
One thing I’ve learned,
In talking with people who feel like their lives
are in broken pieces
is that healing and wholeness
can emerge
from YOUR attentive and loving presence
with each other.
How we see one another
(“Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks in today’s scripture)
How we see one another
And how we listen
can transform lives,
and bring wholeness and restoration.
When I went to graduate school to become a therapist,
I was excited about a new set of lenses
that theology and psychology was going
to give me,
A new orientation to help me understand
people and the challenges they face;
difficulties that they have with their own mental health,
or in their relationships,
or in their families
…Lenses to help me see them more clearly
And it certainly did that.
I remember our first academic quarter in graduate school,
of intensively learning
the basics of family systems–
its complexities,
dynamics and dilemmas…
It was a lot of theory to study and take in.
My whole class of fellow students and myself
went on our first holiday break to go back home
and celebrate our first Thanksgivings,
with our families of origin
since starting school.
I’ll never forget how we all returned
wide-eyed
and astounded to discover
Our families have ISSUES
WE have issues…
that we never knew were there before.
We all do!
Because It’s hard to be human!
I was given a set of lenses to see people more wholly,
–The good and the bad;
The beautiful and the brutal
The gravity and the glory
All mixed-in together.
Theory did give me a set of lenses.
But as a student, I got scared
and intimidated because I realized
I would never be able to take these lenses off again.
But as I got older,
I realized that
what my job really requires of me
is to show up,
To be present,
To listen,
bear witness,
and hold space
for whatever pain
or broken pieces that people bring to share with me.
I have to be aware enough of my own issues
that I can put them aside, in the moment
to be more fully present to others.
When I get intimidated by the moments of gravity,
or by walking through someone else’s valley
of deepest darkness,
I try to hold on to how Jesus looked at
and listened to others.
Our scripture passage for today is a good reminder for me:
We know that Jesus
was asked to be a dinner guest
at the house of a Pharisee
Named Simon. (Not the disciple
whom Jesus called “Simon Peter”)
But a different man
who was part of
a more religiously conservative group
the Pharisees
who took the Jewish law to heart,
valued cleanliness,
and observed a kind of purity
with respect to religious rules and propriety.
I would imagine
that the others around Simon’s table
were a part of his pharisaic circle.
These days we might imagine them sitting at a table,
But back in Jesus’ day & culture,
People were inclined
To REcline at dinner.
They would lie down
Around the table
I imagine that everyone around the table
knew Hebrew
and would automatically know
that the host’s name,
Simon,
in Hebrew
literally means
“Someone who listens” or “hears.”
The name Simon sounds related to
The word shema in Hebrew
As in “The Shema”
that Jews still recite even to this very today:
“Hear O Israel”
…The Lord our God, The Lord is One,
Love the Lord Your God
With all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your strength.
Basically, love your
whole and integrated God
with all that you are,
and everything you’ve got.
But how well did Simon listen?
No matter how devout Simon was
Or how sincerely
he was attentive and attuned
to religious rules,
purity, and propriety,
it seems that Simon
wasn’t hearing or seeing rightly
–not perceiving things
quite as deeply
as Jesus would have wanted him to.
Because something quite improper
happened at dinner that night.
A woman showed up
unannounced
and uninvited
And she definitely
wasn’t a part of Simon’s inner circle
of Pharisaic friends and associates
To them, she was just a city-girl
with a bad reputation,
Luke tells us
she was largely thought of as a “sinner,”
And people weren’t wrong
in thinking that about her.
Because there were a lot of systemic factors,
then as now,
that could drive a relatively powerless person,
— perhaps especially a vulnerable person,
maybe a woman in Jesus’ day–
into what society might have called
a “sinful life.”
What kind of woman was she?
“What was she wearing?”
I imagine them wondering and whispering
And I imagine that Jesus knew
There ARE some things
that women should never wear,
like the burden
of others’ negative societal projections
I imagine
She knew that
along with the alabaster jar in her arms
she carried
the weight and gravity
of others’ sense of shame in society
everywhere she went.
Unlike the contents of a jar
she couldn’t just pour out
the burden of shame that others
placed on her shoulders.
It’s how they saw her.
Their own set of lenses.
What was in her jar?
Well, the Greek tells us that the ointment was Myrrh
the very perfume and fragrance of Queen Esther herself
In my imagination
this woman carried a lifetime’s accumulation
of that perfume with her that night.
Did she sometimes wear it
to pretend that she too was a Queen?
Or did she use it primarily
to make herself more appealing,
to her many visitors?
–none of whom were
like a loving husband.
The ointment she carried
was the Myrrh of Kings
used to anoint royalty,
It was the incense of priests & tabernacles.
Expensive as it was,
She poured it all out
like she poured out her heart
and as she outpoured
her tears
onto Jesus’ feet
And though a woman’s hair
might only be let down among intimates and family members
in her culture,
She let her hair
fall
to wipe Jesus’ feet clean
with the torrents of her tears.
“Quite improper!”
The table guests likely thought to themselves.
She dared even to touch him!
They imagined if he were a righteous person
he wouldn’t invite her to touch him.
The word for “touch” here
is the word in the Septuagint (or the Greek Old Testament)
used to mean “to touch in order to know”
It was the kind of touch
that blind Isaac
used to tell
his twin sons apart;
It was the kind of intimate touch
by which family members
would come to know one another more deeply;
It was the kind of touch that once was forbidden
At God’s Holy Mountain
in the days of Old,
wherein the people would surely die
if they dared touched the Mountain
For God’s Glory was much, too much for them
to come to know.
But yet, it was a touch that Jesus would later
invite from his disciples
when he reappeared to them,
in resurrected form,
standing in their midst,
like some kind of holy mountain.
When they couldn’t believe what they were seeing,
he invited his disciples to
touch his wounded side
showing them a wound not unlike
the wound of Adam’s side,
when God made Eve (as the Creation story goes),
The very site from which God first created
human family;
A wound through which
God first created friendship
Jesus invited His disciples
to touch him,
to know that it was indeed
truly himself
who was present with them.
So daringly did this woman
reach out to touch Jesus.
But Simon missed the courage
He missed the beauty
by attending only to how “improper” it all seemed.
Jesus saw her differently than the others did.
Because here she stood.
Luke tells us she was “standing behind” Jesus.
In New Testament scripture
throughout the Gospel,
to say that someone “stood behind” Jesus
seemed to connote their willingness to be a disciple.
In a call to discipleship,
Jesus’ words in the New Testament Greek
are to “stand-“ or “get behind me” (opiso mou)
So, it has a pop-out effect, for me,
Here in this passage,
As Luke uses those same words.
She “stood (opiso)” Jesus – she stood “behind” him.
If any of you are to “stand behind me”
It will mean saving your life by giving it up.
I wonder what her perfume represented to her.
If in fact she wore it to appeal
to some kind of clientele….
was she giving that life up,
surrending it,
and leaving it behind
in order
to anoint a king
…an act of sanctification
of a priest or a temple?
What life was she leaving behind that night
to go find Jesus?
Everyone has a story
and everyone a past.
Good and Bad
Beautiful and brutal.
It is not our job to judge in condemnation
like a self-righteous religious pharisee,
But ours is simply to see
and to hear each other,
Because it’s hard to be human,
And we all have issues.
We all have pain,
and places of brokenness that need healing
When Jesus turned to the woman in today’s story,
And said to her, “Go in peace,”
it meant so much more
than a kind of inner calmness
or tranquilty.
The Hebraic sense of peace,
or “Shalom”
is one that suggests an enactment of justice,
Shalom-Peace is a just and a reconciling wholeness;
A restorative kind of healing.
She loved Jesus, Son of Our Whole and Forgiving God,
with everything she had–
with her whole heart
with all her tears,
with all her hair,
with all her Myrrh and perfume.
because she was made whole,
by how he saw and heard her.
If we can go through the world and do likewise,
to the most vulnerable of God’s children,
we will be anointing Jesus as King with our actions,
and loving God with everything we’ve got.
That’s my prayer for all of us today:
Make us brave enough to love You boldly,
by seeing and hearing,
and loving each other well.
Amen.