Proper 6 (11)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton, VA
Luke 7:36-8:3
36 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. 37 And 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. 38 She 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. 39 Now 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." 40 Jesus 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. 42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?" 43 Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly." 44 Then turning toward 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. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 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." 48 Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" 50 And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." 8:1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
It wasn’t until I was in Seminary, a full 16 years after I made the decision as a ten-year-old to place my trust in God and become a follower of Jesus Christ, that I came to the adult realization that, except for Christ’s presence in me through the Holy Spirit, I was no different from your average, run-of-the-mill, garden variety heathen non-believer.
Janet Hale and I were walking through the door from Broadus Lounge into the hallway that led past the upstairs mailboxes to the rest of the main academic building on campus at Southern. I worked with Janet and her parents my first year in Spain as a Journeyman, and we hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks. We were catching up on each other’s personal life, and something in the conversation, I think it may have been something that had become known on campus that struck me as more reminiscent of my days at Western Kentucky University than as something I would encounter in a place of theological study such as Southern.
There was an atmosphere at Southern at the time … something like a circling of the wagons, but it was disconnected, it was uncoordinated. There were students who were sympathetic to the movement in the convention, but at the time there were more students who were either indifferent to it or were against it. Most were simply focused on getting through the schooling and getting out and into what they felt God calling them to do.
That having been said, Southern, at the time, was not unlike any other institution of higher learning in the country, which is to say, there was a mix of people from all walks of life who were attending. There were young students who came straight out of college, idealistic and fresh-faced. There were second-career students, mature adults who had already been ‘out in the world’, making a living in a secular field, and somehow ended up there. There were professional students who had their eyes set on professional academia, gunning for their PhD and consumed by the esoteric minutiae of the translation and interpretation of a particular passage or the understanding of a single issue. Others were focusing on comparative religion degrees, spending their time at Southern learning of the Christian faith as an academic exercise.
In short, Southern was and had always been pursuing it’s stated purpose of equipping and preparing men and women called of God for ministry. What made it messy were those same men and women, because not all of them were clean-cut, called-out, right-living, wanna-be ministers. They were much more like a group of people picked at random out of the aisles at Wal-Mart on any given Saturday.
I began referring to the Revised Common Lectionary a few weeks ago, and have found it to be really helpful in following a structure in terms of sermon preparation. The lectionary is basically a list of scripture readings that, for any given Sunday, has a reading from the Old Testament, the Psalms, The Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament.
It struck me, as I read the passage for today, that the text selection included the first three verses of the chapter following the end of this particular story. Usually, chapter divisions were determined by what would be the normal process – the end of a story, the conclusion of an idea or an argument, the beginning of a new theme, a relatively logical stop and start. It doesn’t seem to be any different in this instance: verse 50 of chapter 7 is a concluding thought:
“And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to then pick up at what appears to be the beginning of the next ‘scene’ for the end of the text selection for today –
“Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.”
But is it really all that nonsensical? Think about it. Jesus goes to the house of a Pharisee, Simon, and sits down to share a meal with him. Typical customs of the day would call for the host to greet the guest with a kiss, to offer oil to anoint their heads, and water with which to rinse their feet, since they would have traveled on foot the vast majority of the time, and dust has a way of getting everywhere, doesn’t it? But neither of those things happens. Instead, we find that a woman comes up behind Jesus, he would have been reclining at a low table, with his feet extended out from under him, and she is crying a river of tears. Have you ever found yourself uncontrollably crying? Crying even when you knew you wanted to stop, but you were unable to? That was what she was doing.
Although the custom was to anoint the head, she’s chosen to let her tears fall on his feet, and then proceeds to anoint his FEET with the perfume. The commentary on that section of scripture that I read said that the motivation for the woman’s anointing Jesus’ feet instead of his head is uncertain.
I couldn’t help but wonder about what possibly would have motivated her to wet his feet instead of his head. My first thought was actually logistical. If Jesus was reclining, let’s say he was reclining forward from the waist, with his legs half-stretched out behind him, or fully extended on his stomach, with legs behind, it would have simply been too awkward a move for her to try to get to his head, so she just stood at his feet and her tears naturally fell on them.
But the second thought is one that, for me anyway, speaks more to where she found herself. How often do we speak about sitting at the head of Jesus? No, we speak so much more about sitting at the … feet of Jesus. The position carries with it so much additional information … the connotation, the suggestion, or subtext that goes along with sitting at the feet of someone speaks more of where we see ourselves in relation to them than anything else. I think that would have been the case in first century Palestine as well, and in particular, at the house of Simon the Pharisee, with this woman. Assumptions have been made that it was Mary Magdalene, but she is not actually named in the passage in Luke. Only in John is she named, and there she is identified as Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Oddly, the same story appears in all four Gospels. In all the other gospels, the event is framed in a way that it makes a statement about the poor, and Jesus concludes each telling of the scene with words to the effect that ‘the poor will always be with you, but I will not always be with you.’ … In Luke, the take, the spin, is different “why are you criticizing what she is doing, since what she is doing, you were supposed to do, but didn’t?” is basically what Jesus is telling Simon and the others who are there.
A point worth noting is that, in all the other accounts of this event, Simon is identified as a Leper, not as a Pharisee, as he is in Luke. I imagine some scholars would point to the fact that Luke’s purpose and intended audience was different from what the other Gospel writers were trying to do, and I’d have to agree. It just seems odd that 3 out of the 4 instances of a gospel account of supposedly the same event would change a somewhat critical piece of information about one of the main characters in the story. Perhaps Luke was trying to convince Theophilus, the recipient of his letters, that Jesus didn’t ALWAYS end up arguing with the Pharisees, and consequently wasn’t always persecuted by them, but that it was a tense coexistence.
I have to think that the choice of changing the profession, as it were, of Simon says something about what Luke thought might be comparable to a Leper, on a level beneath the superficial. Does the fact that he made a diseased man part of the religious establishment of the time speak to how he may have viewed them? As individuals who were so … afflicted with the desire for holiness, they were not even able to recognize the Son of God when he was staring them in the face? What can that say to us today, here, as members of the current religious establishment? Do we limit our understanding of where God can be? Who God can speak through? Where God can be found? Who God can use?
Who can God use? Who DID God use? We know he used a tax collector, some fishermen, and some political zealots, but here we find others he used. The text says;
(Jesus) went through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.
It also says the twelve were with him – those tax collectors, fishermen and zealots … it goes on, however, to name some names … but what is a marvelous coloring of the text is the way the people are identified:
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
In those last 6 verses, we have a full process of call and commission. The woman’s sins have been forgiven, she responds in a very natural way – she is overwhelmed with gratitude, evidenced by her tears and her extravagant gift of ointment.
“Hence she has shown great love.”
So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? What does this mean for us?
I would hope it means we have an opportunity to find ourselves in the story – as part of the story. The question is which part? Is it easier to put ourselves in the place of the woman, whose sins, which were many, and were forgiven found herself following Christ, accompanying him in his proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God, and being used by him in that. Or do you more easily identify with Simon, the Pharisee, who was welcoming Jesus, but on his own terms? Do we limit what Jesus can do with us and through us? Do we impose our expectations, our sense of propriety, our cultural norms on him, in an attempt to make him more palatable, more acceptable, when if we look at Jesus closely, we find that on some level, he is offensive – in the sense that he is on the offense against those human inventions that keep us separated from each other, unwilling or unable to break down the barriers which separate the sinners from the saints?
We find the truth in Paul’s words to the church in Rome:
ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
But hear the Gospel of Grace:
Our sins, which were many, can be or have been forgiven through the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Let’s pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment