Forgiven Most
Luke 7:36-8:3

June 17, 2007


One day before my wife and I were about to head off for a family wedding and holiday, a police officer and member of my congregation walked into my office. He told that word was out on the street - and in an isolated town of 10,000 that wasn’t a big street - that there was going to be a party at our house when we were gone and we weren’t invited. Our son had a summer job and couldn’t come with us, so he was staying behind and working. He had inadvertently told some of his friends and they all decided it was time to hold a party at his place.

In the next week every one of his friends who came by the house were accosted by us that there would be no party. Not only do we personally intimidate half the teenage male population of the town, but our son reported after we returned that police cars seemed to drive extra slow by our house for that whole period on their way to the Law Enforcement centre two blocks away. We returned home from the wedding to an intact house.

The following week, however, I went into the garage out back and just happened to notice up in the rafters an empty beer keg. In the ensuing cross-examination about the origins of said beer keg, our son replied that he did not know.

The party at Simon the Pharisee’s house we do not know much about either. Jesus did have a reputation for going to parties and dinners, but how he ended up at this fellow’s house is bewildering. Jesus as a rule did not hang out at the homes of upstanding citizens, too stuffy, too dangerous. Simon was one of those kind of people about whom Mark Twain was reputed to have said, “a good man in the very worst sense of the word.”

Why would a Pharisee invite Jesus and his rabble company to eat? It depends, I imagine, on what kind of person you believe Simon to be and of course we have very little hint of his personality, though we can speculate.

There were a few other Pharisees and Jewish religious leaders who were intrigued by Jesus and his unique approach to faith. This faith stuff was Simon’s business so he wanted to keep up to date on the latest trend and right now that was Jesus. It could have been pure intellectual and spiritual curiosity, looking for some spiritual gems to enhance his search for God; or that he wanted to keep a close tab on the competition, to be knowledgeable about a potential heretic. Always a good way to get ahead in the corporation.

This is a party and a meal and Jesus sits at table, but there is no mention of food, no frivolity and happy banter, no exchanging of religious views and concepts one would expect Simon to lure Jesus into discussing. The talk is about hospitality instead.

There is one thing that always happens in a back-handed way: everybody knows that Jesus is here. It was impossible to hide Jesus’ presence in a community, no matter how quiet he tried to remain, no matter how alien a place into which he had descended. Still the situation today - you mention the name Jesus anywhere and heads pop up, some with scowls, some with angelic glee, some with puzzlement and bewilderment. Say the name Jesus and no one can turn away.

Therefore, it always happens: maybe not a party crasher, but someone enters the fray who in some way does not have a right to be there. So we don’t remember the food, we don’t remember the theological debates, we remember that “a woman of the city” came into the dinner - not by accident, but precisely because she had learned that Jesus was sitting at table at Simon’s. She has brought an alabaster jar with her full of ointment, but even more she has brought with her some kind of reputation. A woman of the city, one of those euphemistic expressions society has always been fond of using rather than saying the ‘p’ word or as Eugene Peterson calls her, the town harlot. There is nothing in the text that explicitly convicts her with this occupation, although Luke does call her a sinner.

She has oil and tears and standing behind Jesus at his feet begins to wet and wipe and kiss his feet, then wiping and anointing them with her hair. Every Gospel has a version of this event, different women being the one involved. This woman’s take is the only one whose actions are not tied in with anointing Jesus’ body for burial. She is not performing some solemn symbolic liturgy, she is deeply happy and rejoicing. I once was lost, but now am found. Yet the people around the table are looking at her in the strangest and less joyful of ways, certainly because the original Greek verb is one that denotes a kind of touching that caresses, even fondles. There is an erotic touch to this woman’s anointing of Jesus that is sensuous beyond most of our church imaginations. She is not mouthing her love for Jesus, she is loving him with everything she has. When we piously declare that we love Jesus, can we love that completely, wiping our tears in joy.

Simon the Pharisee wanted to wipe her out of existence and bellowed to himself, he is no prophet if he doesn’t know what kind of a sinful woman is touching him. Jesus heard the under the breath comment, meant to be heard, and had an answer. “Simon, I have something to say to you.” That is not usually the tone Jesus uses. The Pharisee answers according to polite protocol, but surely with a mocking in his words, “What is it, Teacher?”

Parable time, one of the simplest and easiest to comprehend - a no-brainer. Two guys owed money, one owed a fortune, the other missed one of his payments. When they could not pay, note well, the creditor forgave them both their debts - who has more investment in being thankful, who will love his creditor more, Jesus poses the legal case? The one he forgave more, of course, answers the Pharisee. This is Talmudic logic - except who loves a Crown Corporation?

Look, I know you see this woman - you have been outraged by her presence all this while. Yet she is the only one who has shown me any hospitality. I came at your invitation, yet you did not follow the usual customs of receiving an honoured guest. You gave me no water to wash my feet, you did not give me a kiss of greeting, you did not anoint my head with perfumed oil; but she did all these things and she wasn’t even invited. You wanted to keep me at arm’s length and see what stuff I was made of before you treated me with any respect.

Sure, she has racked up more than her share of sins, but because by her actions towards me it is apparent that she loves much with all of her heart and soul and mind and strength. Her sins are forgiven as a result of her great love, but the person who is forgiven little - or does not think he has anything to be forgiven! - tends to love little. It’s all that Talmudic logic, a kind of religious calculus.

Jesus turns to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.” The mumbling at the table reaches a roar, “Who is he that he can forgive sins?” Who are they who don’t know how to forgive? They were good at counting sins, not resolving them.

Now you have to pay attention to the fact that no one ever named the sins of this woman. The woman is always the sinful one in such matters; who knows, maybe Simon knows from personal involvement about the real content of her sins? The woman never asks for forgiveness and in the narrative never speaks. The point of this episode is not about forgiving other people, but in recognizing that you have been forgiven and how much that makes you love.

Among United Church people, I am unusual in that I am a Congregationalist and there are few others of that ilk lurking around here. Originally, we were Puritans, we wanted purity but were afraid to look at our own impurity. You know the definition of a Puritan? The dreadful feeling that somewhere, sometime, someone is having fun. But then we matured and lightened up and became Calvinists. Calvinists are variously defined as those who believe in the total depravity of the human being. Wow, have we lightened up! Lewis Smedes used to joke that for good Calvinists, “anyone who knew that he was totally depraved can’t be all that bad!”

Tie that one in with Mark Twain’s “a good man in the worst sense of the word” and you have the bookends of this story, the totally depraved woman and the man so good he makes you wince. The problem with many of us United Church folk is that we are convinced we haven’t done much wrong, we do not really sin or maybe that sin is in our past. You don’t have to be totally depraved to recognize that if we are not perfect - as everybody says in his or her defense - then we are imperfect and just about every day miss the mark in something we do or say or think. It is hard to love when you have never been forgiven. Perfect people, we often observe, are heartless characters without much character.

Every time I walk into this sanctuary, I walk in like this anonymous woman of the city, full of sins unnamed, not even knowing where to begin and how to define even one. But when I start to recognize and feel that irrationally I am being forgiven and am allowed to reinvent a new life from this moment on, then I am able to begin loving like there’s no tomorrow.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan