June 16, 2013 – Luke 7:36-8:3
Luke 7:36-8:3
A Community of Forgiven Sinners
4th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 11] – June 16, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Okay: the last time I preached on forgiveness, one of you came up to me and said,
“Pastor: I just don’t think I can do that.”
So, okay: let’s try this.
Think of the worst thing you’ve ever done.
Not the worst thing other people would say you’ve ever done, but the worst thing you’ve done.
The thing you carry around with you that has maybe even come to define you,
or that you think has come to define you.
Well: God forgives that thing. It’s over, okay?
This is what has happened to the woman in the story.
Presumably she has met Jesus before the story begins, and has unburdened herself to him,
and has been forgiven by him.
And in being forgiven, she is restored to a certain amount of dignity, and pride, and worth.
She is, as Luke notes, “saved” by her confidence in Jesus’s ability to forgive her sins,
saved into dignity, and saved into worth.
To Simon, the host, she is simply “a sinner,” as he says.
To him, that is what defines her.
But not for Jesus. For Jesus, there is more to her than that.
Simon doesn’t want her in his house: she’s a sinner.
And probably, prior to meeting Jesus, entering Simon’s house would have been the last thing
that she would have wanted to do.
She would have known what Simon and his kind thought of her.
She would have known that she was unwelcome.
But now, having been restored by Jesus to dignity and saved into worth by his forgiveness,
she discovers enough chutzpah and enough daring to barge in to Simon’s house,
crash his fancy-pants party, and do a loving deed.
Because she now, thanks to Jesus, knows what God thinks of her.
God loves her. And God forgives her.
To Simon though, this woman is a sinner.
And her sin – whatever it is, we don’t know precisely – her sin, to him, defines her.
And he doesn’t want her in his house.
Well: who are the people you wouldn’t want in your house?
When I was growing up, there was a person neither my siblings nor I wanted in our house.
His name was Mr. Carlson.
He was elderly and he lived in a very disreputable hotel in downtown Regina.
He wore old clothes and he had thin, grey hair that often needed cutting.
He usually smelled funny and had trouble walking and talking –
he was an alcoholic.
He showed up to worship in our church once in a while,
and every now and again my mother would invite him to Sunday lunch after worship,
which was our fanciest meal of the week.
To me, as a child, maybe that was my idea of what a sinner looked like – I don’t know.
He certainly didn’t fit in.
But to my mother – and I should add that it did make my mother very uncomfortable to
have him in our house – to my mother – and to Jesus – he was a forgiven sinner:
I mean we had just come from church where we’d all confessed our sins and
received forgiveness.
To my mother – and to Jesus – Mr. Carlson was a beloved child of God,
who was just as welcome at our dinner table as he was at
the communion table we’d just come from at church, where he’d also received
the gift of forgiveness.
I have come to see that my mother and Jesus didn’t define Mr. Carlson by his sinfulness –
instead, they defined him by his belovedness to God and his welcome at God’s table.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Carlson thought my mother was the greatest person on earth.
And he would cry at our table, where he found some acceptance,
a measure of restoration to community, which
the death of his wife and his alcoholism and his poverty had cut him off from.
Mr. Carlson didn’t think he fit.
But at my mom’s table, he found that he did.
And then some of his old dignity would be restored, and so
he would pull out of his wallet the old tattered black and white photo of himself as
a young, handsome boxer – a picture, as would proudly tell me,
of him in “his prime.”
I think this is what the woman in the story this morning finds, too.
Like I said, I think she’s met Jesus before this story begins and
has experienced his forgiveness and grace.
I think she’s experience that, for Jesus, her past mistakes and her past misdeeds don’t define her.
I would wager that Jesus has already fed her at some table where he’s been the host,
and not Simon.
See, her sinfulness would have cut her off from community, from fitting in,
from being welcome in homes like Simon’s.
But in Jesus – in his forgiveness, in his acceptance, in her place at his table –
she has discovered that she does indeed fit in.
She discovers that she has a place in his new community – a community of disciples,
a community of the forgiven, which, as we discover at the end of the reading today,
includes other women as well, as well as men.
And so, to her, Jesus is the greatest person on earth.
And like with Mr. Carlson, the tears flow, at a table that no longer really belongs to Simon,
but to Jesus.
So many tears. Enough of them that she’s able to wash Jesus’s feet with them.
And you think: that’s a lot of tears.
And then you notice that in Greek, it doesn’t use the normal word for tears her,
but the word for rain: it doesn’t say she bathed his feet with her tears:
it says she bathed his feet with her rain.
The forgiveness and grace of Jesus now define her – not her sinfulness.
She can now fit in and find a place to fit in,
in his new community, his new community of forgiven sinners,
who all find a place at his table.
Forgiveness defines this new community, the church: it’s what makes the church a community.
It’s what makes us a community.
This is why we begin so much of our worship with confession and forgiveness.
For to one another – and to God – we are not defined by our sin.
We are defined by our belovedness, to one another, and to God.
So we can cherish one another, and regard one another as the true gifts we are to one another.
That’s why our community – a community of disciples of Jesus – is so special, and so rare.
This community we call the church defined by forgiveness and grace.
And just when you think we’re oh so great and isn’t this lovely –
you turn, and your gaze shifts from the woman and Jesus to Simon, off to the side now,
standing there open mouthed at what is happening and at what
Jesus is allowing this woman to do to him.
Poor Simon!
The poor sap doesn’t realize whose presence he’s in,
or the depth of his own prejudicial sin.
He’s sees the proverbial speck in his neighbour’s eye,
but is completely unable to see the log in his own.
It’s not like Jesus doesn’t give him the opportunity, right?
But let’s not judge Simon too harshly, or we’ll fall into the same sorry trap as he’s fallen into.
The trap of defining people by their sinfulness.
No: let’s not judge him.
Let’s pray for him, and let’s invite him to Jesus’s table along with the woman and hope
that they both find a place there.
And while we’re at it, let’s pray for ourselves.
That we might recognize clearly our failings – but let’s pray that they might not define us.
Let’s pray that we might recognize that each of us has a fear of not fitting in,
but let us also pray that each of us might find a place at this table where we really do.
Let’s pray that the Mr. Carlson’s of this world might not be defined by their tragedies and
their addictions, but by the love God has for them,
and let us pray while we’re at it that that love and acceptance might be
borne to them by us.
Let’s pray that those whom our world defines by their sinfulness, their mistakes, and
their misdeeds might not be so defined by us, but instead seen in and treated with the
dignity that is the birth-right of all people created in the image of a loving God.
Let us pray that those whom we have wronged might find it possible one day to forgive us and
that God might restore us to relationship with them.
And let us pray that those who have wronged us might find that we have forgiven them,
even as we ourselves find that we are forgiven every moment of every day by a God who
constantly need to reach out in grace and forgive us our sins of apathy and
judgment and pettiness.
For this God is deeply desirous to restore us to relationship with God’s self and to one another.
This is a God who deeply wishes, in short, to save us from a world that is defined by sinfulness,
and seeks instead to restore us to a world defined by grace and inclusion and by an
open invitation to fit in at God’s table of grace.
Let’s pray all this confident that Jesus can manage in the power of the Spirit,
confident that Jesus can forgive us, confident that Jesus can forgive even his enemies – even from the cross – confident that Jesus can forgive our enemies and
welcome us all – forgiven sinners –
here at his table and make a loving community of us.
So together let us say, “Amen.” Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
