A New Future

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

June 17, 2007

Text: Luke 7:36 – 8:3

The two most remarkable actions in this story are the sinful woman’s extravagant display of love and gratitude, and Jesus’ reception of this love and gratitude. We do not know what happened before this encounter, but the incident, even now, makes us squirm a bit

Picture it. A dinner party with Jesus as honored guest. A woman from off the streets, begins to wash and kiss Jesus’ feet and anointed them with oils. She is out of control.

If Simon knows that the woman is a sinner, most everyone else does as well. Surely Jesus’ knew. We do not know what kind of a sinner she was, though the lack of knowledge has not kept people through the centuries from filling in the blanks. The best guesses, based on the fact that “tax collectors and sinners” was a common epithet, is that she was a prostitute. It has been suggested also, she could have been be married to a man who was notorious sinner--- guilt by association. (Many vocations were considered unclean---un-holy--- including physicians, traders, shepherds.)

Jesus’ action is really, at first, a non-action: he doesn’t tell her to stop. As an “unclean,” person, her touch would make Jesus’ unclean. Being holy, dedicated to God and the Torah, was the essence of faith. Any rabbi would know better than to allow such an invasion of personal space. Holiness required distinctiveness---being set apart from those who did not walk in the ways which God had set forth.

So often, Jesus reached out to the sick and those who were sinners. In this story, the woman reaches out to Jesus, and he does not turn her away.

Jesus’ regard for, compassion for, and mercy to sinners and the sick of body and mind, was truly revolutionary. Lepers, the blind, cripples----people regarded by others as untouchables, as having been punished by God for their sins---found Jesus’ to be their friend. And, people who were truly the rejects, thieves and murderers, cheats and swindlers, adulterers--- they found in him a friend and savior.

If it is her love which drives her to make this extraordinary gesture, it is surely her faith that enables her to take the risk. And it is her hope that Jesus will not reject her.

Of course, Simon saw life differently. He saw the woman differently. There was a path back into the fold after living a sinful life. Until she proved herself to be turning around, she was an outsider to God and to those who would follow in God’s ways. People must pay their debts.
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This story reminds us that there are different kinds of sinners. (When it comes to sinning, we are very creative!)

Sin is best defined as “missing the mark,” or, a life lived in perpetual and deliberate missing of the mark. It is a condition, living in rebellion against God, or separated from God.

Our sinful condition is best described by Paul in Romans, chapter 7:

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…..I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do…..For I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand….Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

There are those who major in sins of the flesh. They live what Martin Marty called “unzipped” lives. These are those who are cruel, malicious, violent; predators, thieves, assassins, murderers, adulterers, among others.

Then there are those who specialize in sins of the spirit. They may not act out in ways which are so clearly obvious. They are those who are self-righteous and prideful. C.S. Lewis calls pride, or self-conceit “the utmost evil”.

“Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” If you mix in religion with pride, you really get something demonic. Lewis writes: “How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say that they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means that they are worshipping an imaginary God. They….admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of God, but are all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks of themselves as far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him in order to get out of it a pounds worth of Pride toward their fellow men.” (Mere Christianity, Chapter 8)

The opposite of pride or self-conceit is humility before God, born out of an honest self-knowledge.

Simon may have a bad case of self-conceit. But let’s not be too hard on him. He was following the rules which kept God’s people holy, in all sincerity. And we all can recognize him in ourselves---- how we can fall into self-conceit. Expressions of being holier than others, better than others, not sinners like others----these looks and words can jump out in words and facial and body language in spite of our best intentions.

So, Simon and the woman are both sinners and subjects of God’s love, in need of forgiveness. The difference is this: she knows it and he doesn’t---yet.  Her over the top expressions of love and thanks reveal her need and her humility. She is humble. Simon’s thoughts (which Jesus can see!) reveal his hardness of heart and his pride. (One can imagine the next day, when Simon may have asked Jesus to come back, so that he could ask Jesus more about his words and actions.)

The woman has caught on to the Good News: the reign of God has comes and is coming in this man Jesus; a time of jubilee----the forgiveness of sins---has begun!

Jesus knew Simon’s heart and the woman’s heart. He loved them both. One was ready to receive a fresh start; the other was not.

It seems to me that Jesus had a sense of peoples’ “bind,” their caught-ness in self-defeating behaviors, long before we had psychological names for them.

People are “wounded wounders.” Yes, we are all responsible for our actions and attitudes within our differing capabilities. And we need forgiving and healing of what one has called our primary wounds. I believe the woman sought both healing and forgiveness. Jesus lifted people from their dejection and punctured the balloons of their self- congratulation. He brought them back into their right minds. He freed them to be authentically human, offering them redemption, reconciliation.

The difference is relationship: The chasm between us and God is just too great for us to build a bridge across. So God has come to us in this man Jesus. He is the bridge, the mediator.

Have you had an experience of hitting rock bottom, of coming to the realization that only a deep love can save you? Have you known just how off - track you were and reached out for someone to lift the burden? Have you known yourself as lost and wanting to be found?  The good news is that, as Jesus loved, so God loves.

As Bishop Martinez said last week, “It doesn’t matter what your past is, you have a new future in Jesus Christ.” Jesus knows our hearts. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a contrite heart. “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”

You and I may have a nagging sense of short-fall, an abiding sense that there is unfinished business between us and God. The good news is that God is like Jesus, even now. Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them there.

This is not cheap grace. To redeem us from our own captivities, God sent his beloved Son. In Jesus’ life of self-giving, culminating in the cross, the powers of evil were de-fanged, once for all. We are saved by grace. And we must risk the vulnerability of admitting our fallenness, our trappedness, and come to Jesus and be forgiven and healed in our inmost hearts.

When you and I get into our Simon the Pharisee mode, we may want to play out the story again and see ourselves as he was; and ask, “Is this the person I am? Is this the self I want to project to others?”

I hope that you and I and the church do not appear to outsiders as modern day Simons! Can we have the mind of Christ? Is it possible that people who know Jesus can live more like he did? Can we be the kind of people in whom others find the love of Jesus? I am dismayed sometimes when people respond to the knowledge that I am a pastor with obvious embarrassment or hostility, as if my main vocation is to judge and condemn. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, as outsiders perceive us, we come across more like Simon the Pharisee than like Jesus!?

Jesus had the gift of being able to touch the lives of people who had given up on religion. If we can imagine Jesus receiving us in friendship and forgiveness, we can begin to be freed to be his representatives, offering to those ready to receive it, abundant life with God.