June 17, 2007 – Third Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 7:36-8:3
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I want to share a parable with you this morning, a story based on an old rabbinic tale. It’s the story of Adam’s first day in Creation. He has been walking with God, surveying the wonder of the garden and all the creation, and hearing all about the awesome work that God has for him to do in the days to come. As Adam tries to take it all in, God leaves him to enjoy the garden, which Adam does throughout the day. Early in the evening, however, Adam feels the beginning of sunset, and the lengthening of shadows, and in fear he curls up at the base of a tree. With the darkness gathering around him, slumber overtakes him, however he awakes with a start once night has fallen and tries to fight off his panic by running to one side of the garden and shouting “Let there be Light!” Of course, the night remains. Adam - having been created in the day and fearful of the darkness - is terrified that the sun will never return. So he runs to the other side of the garden and shouts “Let there be Light!” to no avail. Finally, exhausted, he crumples into a heap to surrender to whatever fate might await him in the darkness. Until at dawn the first flicker of sunlight crept into the garden, and the sun arose to proclaim another day.
Now, although this tale was told originally to reinforce the fact that “God is God and we’re not,” it also reminds me that there are two kinds of folks: those who know they are in darkness and are simply seeking the light, and those who might suspect that there is darkness, but are angry when they realize they cannot make it light. And that is what the two main characters in today’s gospel lesson illustrate: hypocrisy and humility – Simon, the Pharisee and “the woman of the city.”
First, let’s meet Simon. He is a Pharisee, and is the stand-in for all those who believe they are righteous. You know - the ones who believe that deep down they really are good people, that they believe in “live and let live” and that their hearts are in the right place. And Simon was right! He was righteous, based on the formula of “Keeping the Law equals Righteousness,” and who would do any better, since the Pharisees were interpreters, the teachers of the Law, and Simon was simply doing what he had been raised and trained to do. And because he kept the Law, he was reckoned as righteous, and could walk through the town receiving the honor and respect due a righteous man.
But Simon couldn’t see beyond the rules and regulations to the people all around him. He didn’t see that there was economic and class inequity, nor care much about those of little value. He didn’t feel the need to protect or provide for the very people for whom God had given the benefit of the Law. Simon the Pharisee seems only to have cared about being the first on his block to host the exciting new rabbi, the one who had caused the commotion around town, the one who might actually be the Promised One.
And then there is “the woman of the city,” unnamed, as so many of the women in the Bible are. She is the stand-in for those who know they are sinners. She was probably so poor that she couldn’t have afforded to keep the Laws even if she had wanted to, because for her, the path to righteousness through the Law was closed, and so tradition holds that she was a prostitute. Although the Bible does not state this as fact, it is probable, since she is depicted with unbound hair (not appropriate for upstanding women of the time,) and she brought with her an alabaster jar of ointment, the “tools of the trade.”
This woman, this sinner, apparently knew something about Jesus. We don’t know if she had actually heard him teaching, or seen him heal or just heard the gossip in the streets, but somehow she KNEW that she needed to be with him. And now Jesus was in her town, just down the street at Simon’s house. And so she entered and approached Jesus from behind as he reclined at table. For a moment she was overwhelmed, brought to tears, and her tears wet his feet. Perhaps she was embarrassed, and thus proceeded to dry his feet with her hair, then kissing and anointing them as if she were the host at this party. It was an unsettling, inappropriate and completely innocent intimacy.
With which one of these characters do you relate? With the woman? Assuming tradition is correct, she nonetheless trusted in the existence of an unconditional divine love when most, if not all, of what she had experienced was the opposite of love – fear, hatred, violence, and abuse.* She was well aware of her sinfulness, because no one would let her forget it.
Or do you feel most often like Simon? He believed he was righteous…and everyone else seemed to agree. And yet, I hope that Simon, later that night, struggled with what he had seen at dinner. I hope that he was unsettled by his experience that the one he had thought might be the Messiah had not acted in any way, shape or form like the One they had anticipated. I can imagine his thoughts, “Grace laid on someone beneath you is unfair…! She was unclean and he let her defile him! She was a sinner! Then maybe, just maybe, Simon heard the echo of the prophet Nathan’s words to King David which cut him to the core, “You are the man!” Hopefully, Simon recognized that he and she were of the same cloth…sinful natures, both of them.
But I would like to add an additional character. At our Monday night Bible study, the group sometimes gets completely out of hand and we imagine the story’s details that are not clearly stated in Scripture. We compiled an “alternate portrait” of the woman of the city. Perhaps she was not a prostitute at all! Another reason for unbound hair was as a mark of grieving. Perhaps she was a widow, and not destitute at all. Perhaps she was not poor, but wealthy, with a husband, and was actually quite “cheeky!” Perhaps she was walking by Simon’s house that night, peeked through the open courtyard and saw Jesus there with Simon and his friends and she marched right in to give him a piece of her mind. Perhaps she had been to the temple every day for the past four years, sacrificing and praying and being absolved of her sins – but everyone in town was still pointing and calling her “sinful.” And she was fed up! Fed up with the religious system and unhappy with the church (what was it good for?) So she planned to boldly sweep past Simon and get in Jesus’ face, (so to speak.) But when she got there, she saw in his eyes only one thing - complete and unconditional acceptance and nothing but love - and she melted. She was moved to the core and did something she hadn’t done for years: she wept.
After an experience like that a life changes. After that day, that woman could not be stopped from going out into every part of her town and witnessing to the Light.
So which came first, the grace or the gratitude? Which comes first, the night or the day? Did you notice that there appears to be NO REPENTANCE in this story? This woman does NOT come into the dinner and throw herself down at Jesus’ feet and beg for forgiveness. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a “cause and effect” here at all, but some sort of ongoing grace/gratitude/grace cycle. In verse 47, Jesus says, “her sins, which were many, have been forgiven, hence she has shown great love.” Somehow, it seems as if this woman had already seen the glimmer of dawn when she arrived at the party; she already knew grace. So when Jesus says in verse 48, “Your sins are forgiven” I can almost hear her respond with a brilliant smile, “I know.”
Do you hear that Jesus is announcing forgiveness that already exists? And isn’t that what we proclaim about the cross? Don’t we believe that is what Jesus had accomplished when he shouted, “It is finished?” He was speaking grace into existence, just like God spoke Light into existence at the beginning of Creation, “and it was so.”
For us, forgiveness is a tool of merit – we must earn it, or be worthy of it, or, ask for it. But in God’s hands, forgiveness is a tool of mercy. And when God speaks a word of mercy, who are we to argue? So whether you are like the woman seeing the dawn after a long night of darkness in your life, or like Simon, watching the sun set and feeling the yearning for something more, but fearing the dull ache of a very dark night ahead, we are all a little of both at different points in our lives. But whichever you are, your point between one sunset and another does not affect God’s dawn. So go out into your worlds, and testify that the Light has come. Amen.
*from Henri Nouwen’s Daily Meditation for June 14, 2007
