June 17, 2007 – Third Sunday after Pentecost, at First Presbyterian Church, Schuyler, NE
Luke 7:36 – 8:3
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Forgiveness…Think back to your childhood days. Things that happen can create a lifetime lesson. A friend recently reminded about a story from her childhood where she had saved up almost enough money as a little girl to buy a prized possession. She had wanted a beautiful doll in the Toy Store. It had long flowing locks and she thought it was about the most beautiful one she had seen. So for her 7th birthday, she received enough coins that she could go finally buy the doll. It became her best friend. She played with it for hours and had a grand time playing and brushing her new doll’s hair. Well, one night after my friend was asleep, her younger brother who had grown quite jealous of the time she spent with her doll and NOT playing with him, decided to put an end to it. He secretly cut all of the doll’s hair off and placed the shorn locks and doll back in the little girl’s bed. You can only imagine the outcry the next morning when she discovered what happened. My friend still talks about how bad her brother felt and so he cut his own hair with a few big whacks! She still speaks about it with some difficulty about her brother… I have found that it can be so hard to forgive!
As we grow up, the stakes become higher. From the Old Testament story, we see the misuse of power and wanting something or someone unavailable …King David had Uriah killed in 2nd Samuel…it can be about husbands and wives or families not forgiving each other, maybe it is about betrayed trusts… It is so hard to forgive! From the Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness in the Lutheran Book of Worship, I am also reminded that we need to be forgiven for the things we have done…and for the things left undone…It says, “We have sinned against you in thought word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves…” I am reminded that I did not take the time to clean out a closet to donate clothing / food to the shelter that I meant to…or asked the elderly man next door who might need a ride to church next Sunday or maybe inviting him for the first time to our house of worship… or listened to a parent of a military family how one can help, feeding the neighbors’ family when the single mother is ill or being tolerant of another person’s life or color of their skin… We try and confess what we do…do we even know what else God has in God’s dreams for us to do in this world for each other? We can get so wrapped up in our own lives that we might not even think about doing for each other…
And I wonder if some times the hardest person to forgive is ourselves…In the quiet of the night when laying our heads on our pillows, do we ever wonder … I was so stubborn today, Lord. I raised my voice in anger to my children. Why didn’t I take the time to really understand a co-worker’s or spouse’s point of view instead of putting them down? Why did I spend the money that my spouse asked me not to? Why did I just do what I know would have been better to do? Why didn’t I do that years ago? Why is the shame / guilt or burden still with me? We live with these sins like shadows and we yearn for a way to remove their burdens…Oh, It is so hard to forgive!
And this reminds us of the type of action taking place as Luke wrote about it in the Scripture story about Jesus and the sinful woman! In fact, the other Gospels also include the story but they tie it to the beginning of Jesus’ Passion Week and the young woman anointing him before he goes to Jerusalem to die. But Luke casts the story from an earlier time in Jesus’ ministry and gives the focus on the act of forgiveness. He was still the new prophet on the scene. Others were interested in checking out what he knew…Let’s look at the cast of characters: The Pharisees, who were known for upholding the Laws of the Torah. One invited Jesus over (and as one New Testament scholar suggested) Jesus might simply be ‘entertainment’ to him and this Pharisee’s family and friends. After all, if this was earlier in Jesus’ ministry, then would you, too, want to perhaps be the 1st on the block to have Him at your table and see how he might respond…it is likely that this Pharisee didn’t even see Jesus as a real prophet, let alone the Son of God…Rather, someone to intellectually volley with…to argue and show off the Pharisee’s greater knowledge over this Jesus…
Then of course, there is the sinful woman…We are not sure how she knew of Jesus. Perhaps she had heard him teach, maybe others spoke about him. Had she encountered Jesus before? Now she decides to seek him out, to risk going into the Pharisee’s home…this could be her last chance to bring her alabaster jar and to open herself up for Jesus to change what is happening. So she is the one who approaches Jesus from behind, as a mere maid-servant. She would not look him in the eyes, for she was unworthy and the tears flowed and the sorrow swelled as she reached out to anoint Him. In that society, she would have also been wrong for her to touch him…had she been held accountable for her vile sins, according to the Law; she could have been literally stoned to death. If she would have tried to touch the Pharisee, he likely would have quoted Isaiah, “Stand by thyself, come not near me, for I am holier than thou.” The Pharisee probably thought Jesus would respond this way, too, if he knew his Laws…
And of course, Jesus was there. He is the boundary breaker who, with His own authority, meets her with her needs! He didn’t do what the Pharisee expected. Let’s further explore this sinful woman’s encounter with Christ. She knew he knew that she was a sinner. She sought Him out…and came to be in His glorious presence and to anoint Him. Her deep humiliation for these sins put her into a spiritual quest, willing to open herself up and endure the pain to encounter Christ, and confront her own life to live it more honestly, owning her own SHADOWS and to heal wounds…He understood her, he recognized that she was forgiven much and as an effect, that she loved much!
I recently finished a book by Sue Monk Kidd. You may have heard about Sue from her more recent book “The Secret Lives of Bees”…I was intrigued with “When the Heart Waits” because it is about a person who is on a spiritual journey in mid-life (yes, a sort of mid-life crisis/ NO real reason I’m reading it and absorbing every word! Ha!) 2/3 of the way through the she used a word that caught my attention: “EASTERING”. Easter is a noun, not a verb! But to Sue Monk Kidd, it is “out of love that we take up the tensions of our darkness voluntarily, for the sole purpose of emerging to a more genuine life…we endure it to find what is real…and it is the suffering that ‘Easters’ us…” She describes it as being able to willingly open up and endure the pain to encounter Christ and confront our own lives to live more honestly and own our own SHADOWS to heal wounds.
And I’d like to think there was something else IMPORTANT going on through this removal of her shadows…Her journey, akin to Sue Monk Kidd’s journey, reveals to us something new on that day…God was not far away in some defined space, where the Creator looked down on her from above, or even she wasn’t recognizing that God lived around her but certainly could NOT live within someone like her, as a sinful person (as the journey sometimes works), or even maybe there is a glimpse of God within on some good day…but more than that, I believe on that day at dinner in the Pharisee’s house, the sinful woman found one of the greatest gifts of forgiveness through grace, that she lives in the midst of God ALWAYS and that God is everywhere. And there was nothing that she could have done to make Christ stop loving her and so she wept, too, with jubilant celebration with a grateful heart. She adored her Christ.
Isn’t that how it is sometimes when we are under our own shadows? We want to beg, to justify ourselves, and see if we can negotiate back the forgiveness? Or maybe place a bet to see if we can win it? After all we are in charge of who gets forgiveness and who doesn’t – right – even when it comes to God? And we know it is so hard to forgive? In Greek, one of the words used to ‘forgive’ is “aphiemi” (a-fe-a-me) meaning to send away, to let go, let alone, to give up debt. Forgiveness is so hard but not when we turn to a power greater than us. It can ONLY be accomplished in Christ, the ONE who hears our cries in the night, who comes in our encounter, affirms our struggle for an honest life, surrounds us with steadfast Love, and ultimately laid down his life as a claim of our SHADOWS! The shadows gone & YOUR Shadows are lifted. And what about our Sins; they are “KEPT NO LONGER! And as Jesus proclaims, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace,” AMEN!
