Given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, June 16, 2013.
“HOLINESS, SINFULNESS, CONDEMNATION, FORGIVENESS”
(Homily text: Luke 7:36 – 8:3)
(Homily text: Luke 7:36 – 8:3)
Today’s
gospel reading, which recounts for us the occasion when a sinful woman anointed
Jesus’ feet during a dinner party which had been given by the Pharisee named
Simon, is all about holiness (God’s holiness vs. our conceptions of it), human
sinfulness (ours), condemnation (God’s and ours), and forgiveness (God’s).
As we look
at the account that Luke provides for us, we might not ask remember to ask ourselves
just how it was that this woman had access to Jesus’ feet. (I can’t resist saying, in connection with
this aspect of the incident, that oftentimes when we read Holy Scripture,
details that might startle us if we were to witness them in person sometimes
“flatten out” when we focus on the text alone.)
If we imagine the scene in our minds, and roll the imaginary tape of the
event across the eyes of our minds, we can see the scene pretty clearly.
Taken that
way, the woman’s actions seem bizarre, don’t they?
Indeed, in
our culture, and in the culture of the Jews of Jesus’ day, the woman’s actions
were not only bizarre, but socially unacceptable. Her actions were nothing short of scandalous.
Since the
two cultures (ours and theirs) are different in this respect, we ought to unpack
the social customs a bit.
First of
all, when a prominent member of the community threw a dinner party, it was
customary for people in town to “crash the party” by standing around the
diners, either outside in the courtyard, or inside the room where the meal took
place. Being present allowed these
gate-crashers (in actuality, they weren’t regarded that way in the customs of
the time…these observers were quite welcome to be present) to observe the
diners, to listen to the conversation among the diners, and to hear the riddles
that were posed, one person to another, as Jesus did with the riddle of the two
debtors.
Secondly,
the diners reclined on pillows, on their left sides, and ate with their right
hands. Their feet would have extended
outward from the area where the food was served.[1] Since it was also customary for people to
remove their sandals when they entered the house, it was easy for the woman to
gain access to Jesus’ feet.
Now, we
must note the ways in which the woman’s actions were regarded in the first
century…..two aspects of her behavior would have caused great distress: By letting down her hair in public, she was
bringing shame to herself and to her heritage.
A woman didn’t uncover her head in public, period. Then, by touching, caressing and bathing
Jesus’ feet with her tears, she is acting in a way that would have been
interpreted with sexual overtones.[2] So, her actions on these two points
constitute an affront to her, to the person who is the receiver of the actions,
and to all present who witnessed them.
And, we
must note, Jesus becomes ritually unclean by virtue of having come into contact
with this sinful person. (Remember that,
in the Jewish culture of the time, in order to remain ritually clean, a person
stayed away from all contact with persons and things that were unclean.)
At this
point, we ought to turn to Jesus’ host, Simon, and his apparent disdain for the
Lord.
Notice,
first of all, that Simon privately assesses Jesus’ character and capabilities
as a prophet by thinking that, if Jesus only knew the lifestyle of the woman,
he would not allow her to get anywhere near Him.
Secondly,
as Jesus delivers His “slam dunk” response to Simon by contrasting the woman’s
actions with Simon’s lack of hospitality (showing proper hospitality was a
major concern of the culture of the first century), we can see that Simon had
little regard for Jesus. Moreover, Jesus
destroys Simon’s ideas about His true identity by disclosing to him the fact
that Jesus knew exactly what Simon had been thinking privately. So not one, but two “put-downs” are present
in Jesus’ response to His host.
The two
main persons in this account stand before us as stark examples of human
attitudes toward sin, holiness, condemnation and forgiveness.
Simon, the
Pharisee, is all about being ritually clean, and about following God’s laws
(the Torah) down to the last little
detail. He is also all about looking
down on persons who don’t measure up to his ideas of what cleanliness and
adherence to the law are. It is easy to
suspect that Simon probably thought that he was a pretty successful, self-made
man, religiously. The prevailing view
that the four Gospels present to us of the Pharisees and their allies is that
unclean persons will always be unclean.
By this view, unclean and sinful persons could never be regarded in any
other way, no matter what steps to amend their lives were taken, no matter what
actions were taken with regard to the requirements of the Torah to come into an acceptable state with God. The view given to us by the Gospel writers of
these Pharisees is one of total and complete hard-heartedness.
The
unnamed, sinful woman has little to lose, religiously, and much to gain. She’s already an outsider, a person to be
avoided, a person to be scorned. No
wonder she risked further scorn and disdain by taking the actions that she did….she
had little to lose.
Each week,
we ask ourselves the question, “What does this reading have to do with my life
and how I live it?” After all, Holy
Scripture doesn’t stand in isolation from the concerns and challenges of living
in the day and time and place that we do.
Put another way, what happens in Church on Sunday morning is intended to
make a difference in our conduct and attitudes, Sunday through Saturday.
So what
lessons arise from today’s Gospel?
Perhaps the
most obvious answer to this question is the possibility that Simon’s attitudes
about holiness, sinfulness, condemnation and forgiveness are much more
prevalent among God’s people than are the attitudes of the penitent woman.
This
observation might deserve a bit of unpacking.
As human
beings who are created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1: 26), we
are blessed with “reason, memory and skill” (as the Prayer Book puts it). We have capabilities to think, to observe, to
apply lessons learned in life to the living of that life, and to create. All of these gifts are wonderful, God-given
blessings, given to each one of us.
It’s
tempting, therefore, to think that, because we can imagine, think and create,
that we can bring ourselves into favor with God by our own actions. “Pulling ourselves up by our own spiritual
bootstraps” might be a good way to frame this attitude.
And, like
Simon the Pharisee, we might direct our focus away from God’s concepts of
holiness, sinfulness, condemnation and forgiveness toward our own conceptions
of those values.
We might
imagine that, because we go through all the right motions, and do all the right
ceremonies, that we have earned God’s favor.
Remember that doing the right “stuff” was the main focus of the
Pharisees of Jesus’ day. (I can’t resist
adding that, for Christian who worship using liturgical forms, it can be a
temptation to think that participation in the liturgy itself earns spiritual
merit….of course, the truth is that the liturgy rightly serves the purpose of
pointing beyond itself to the God who stands within it.)
Alas, for
the Christian community, notions like these have presented challenges before…in
the fourth and fifth centuries, the Pelagian heresy confronted the Church as
its followers maintained that they had no need of God’s grace in order to
receive God’s favor. Pelagians thought
of themselves as self-made Christians.
The Church rightly condemned those ideas.
However, if
we set aside our human ideas and notions of what holiness and sinfulness are,
then we can see that, from God’s perspective, we are – none of us – holy. There is nothing we can do – except to ask
for God’s forgiveness – to become righteous in God’s sight, and to receive that
forgiveness. For the truth is that, even
our pride in our own accomplishments constitutes sin and creates a barrier to
God’s mercy and grace.
May we see
ourselves as God sees us, as persons who fall short of God’s standards of
holiness in thought, in word, and in deed.
May we, like the anonymous woman in today’s Gospel account, seek
forgiveness, setting aside our pride and our concern for what others might
think as we do so.
AMEN.
[1] So the famous painting of the Last Supper is
culturally incorrect. Most likely, at
that Last Supper, Jesus and His disciples would have reclined in a similar
fashion, much as Luke describes in today’s Gospel account.
[2] Because the woman’s actions had sexual connotations, she is often characterized as being a prostitute. The text does not explicitly name the nature of her sins, however.
[2] Because the woman’s actions had sexual connotations, she is often characterized as being a prostitute. The text does not explicitly name the nature of her sins, however.
