Luke 7:36-8:3
June 16, 2013
Over
the last year-and-a-half I’ve become a huge fan of TED talks. TED is a conference that is held at different
places around the country. Although I am
unclear as to the origins of TED, I embrace its motto: “Ideas worth Spreading.” That’s essentially what each conference is –
a collection of speakers who have ideas worth spreading. Speakers discourse on every topic you can
imagine – arts, science, medicine, technology, creativity, innovation, personal
experience, family, children – the possibility for ideas are as endless as the
speakers who speak and the audiences who listen.
A
few days ago I watched a recent TED talk by author, Andrew Solomon. I’m currently reading one of his books so I
was intrigued to hear what this talk titled “Love, No Matter What” was all
about.
Solomon
has written a book about parenting and the line between unconditional love and
unconditional acceptance, especially in the context of parents who have
children who are different from what we think of as the norm. This includes children who are deaf,
autistic, children with dwarfism and Down’s Syndrome, children who are
prodigies and children who are criminals.
In
his talk Solomon tells his story of interviewing the parents of Dylan
Klebold. If that name sounds familiar,
it’s because Dylan was one of the two young men who perpetrated the massacre at
Columbine, then turned his gun on himself.
Solomon says that at first Susan and Tom Klebold were reluctant to speak
with him, but once they did their story just came pouring out. He recorded 20 hours of conversation over the
course of several weekends he spent with them.
At one point he asked them what they would most want to ask Dylan if he
were with them. Tom said he would want
to know what Dylan was thinking in doing this horrible thing. Susan thought for a moment, and then said, “I
would ask Dylan to forgive me for being his mother and not knowing what was
going on inside his mind.”
Forgive
me for being your mother and not knowing what was going on inside your
mind.
Forgive
me.
I
may have titled this sermon “Overwhelming Gratitude” but in reality this
passage from Luke is about forgiveness.
Jesus has been invited to a dinner by one of the Pharisees, a man named
Simon. I’ve read various commentaries
speculating as to why a Pharisee would invite Jesus to dinner, since we tend to
think of Jesus and Pharisees as being fundamentally opposed. But whatever his reason, he invited Jesus and
Jesus accepted. Jesus went to the
Pharisee’s house and “took his place at the table.”
Then
we hear of this woman. We know nothing
about her, other than she is labeled as a sinner. I’m sure that hearing that label applied to a
woman conjures up one particular sin, prostitution. But I’m going to go along with the
commentator of this passage on WorkingPreacher.org this week and say it’s
unfair to assume that the only sin a woman was capable of at that time was
prostitution. So we don’t know why she
is considered a sinner. We just know
that she is. But when this woman hears
that Jesus is breaking bread at the home of Simon the Pharisee, she brings an
alabaster jar of ointment, stands behind Jesus at his feet, weeping, bathing
his feet with her tears, then drying them with her hair. But she doesn’t stop there. She kisses Jesus’ feet and anoints them with
the ointment.
We
might think this is strange for a number of reasons. One, how did she get into the party in the
first place? I suspect Simon the
Pharisee’s home was much more open than ours are. There would have been walls, obviously, but
it’s possible that Jesus and the others were dining in a courtyard that would
have been easily accessible to anyone outside of it. It’s also possible that there were others
standing outside looking in, watching the festivities as we might watch
celebrities on a red carpet.
Yet
what’s most surprising to me is not that this woman intrudes upon the dinner,
but that when she begins to weep over Jesus and touch Jesus and anoint Jesus,
Simon nor any of the guests do or say anything to stop her. Perhaps they were paralyzed with shock at the
sight of it, because what she was doing was scandalous. Her actions toward Jesus are intimate. They are rife with innuendo. A woman touching a man’s feet carried an
implied message of physical relationship.
However here is this woman, this sinner, touching the feet of
Jesus! She’s crying over them. She’s bathing them with her tears, using her
hair to dry them. She’s kissing
them! She’s using an ointment from a
costly jar to anoint him. But no one
tries to stop her. No one hustles her
away from Jesus. All we read is what
Simon is thinking.
“If
this man were really a prophet, he’d know the kind of woman she is, he’d know
the kind of sinner she is.”
Jesus
does know. He also knows what Simon, and
probably others, were thinking. He
doesn’t belligerently confront Simon.
Instead he tells him a story about two debtors. One owed the creditor five hundred denarii,
the other fifty. Neither one could pay,
so the creditor forgave the debts of both.
Then Jesus asks Simon this question, “Now which of them will love him
more?” Simon answers with a certain
amount of attitude. “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the
greater debt.”
Jesus
tells Simon he’s correct. He’s judged
rightly. But Jesus doesn’t stop with
that. He then compares Simon to the
woman. Jesus came to Simon’s house but
was given no water for his feet. Simon
did not welcome Jesus with a kiss or oil for his head. But this woman, this sinner, has done all of
that. So this woman, whose sins were
many, has been forgiven. Because of that
she is showing Jesus overwhelming gratitude, great love. “But the one to whom little is forgiven,
loves little.”
Jesus
then says to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
This is the final nail in the shock coffin for the others in attendance,
because this man wasn’t just a prophet, he also forgave sins.
It’s
easy to assume that because Jesus tells her in that moment that her sins are
forgiven that this is the first time she grasps this. But Jesus’ words to Simon say otherwise. The woman knew she was forgiven, that’s why
she sought Jesus out. That’s why she
risked so much to show him so much love.
Because she knew she was forgiven.
We don’t have the back story to know how or why she knew this. But she did.
When Jesus reiterates that she is forgiven, everyone else knows this as
well.
She
was forgiven much so she loved much. Her
gratitude was overwhelming because she understood just how much she had
gained. As I said earlier, I may have
used gratitude in my title, but this story is about forgiveness. Even more it’s about being forgiven.
Forgiveness
does not always come easily to me. I
have a good memory about certain things and, sadly, I can’t always forgive
them. I’ve realized that forgiveness
isn’t a feeling. It’s an act of
will. You have to just do it in order to
feel it. But of all the things that I
need to forgive right now, and there are a few, the person I have the hardest
time forgiving is me. Whatever anger I
may carry for other’s actions toward me, I carry even more anger at my own
mistakes, my own shortcomings, my own errors in judgment. No one is harder on me than I am. The person I need to forgive the most is
me.
When
I was contemplating this sermon, I realized that I had tons of stories of
people forgiving other people.
Tons. And they’re beautiful and
powerful and moving. But I was having a
much harder time finding an illustration that would convey what it means to be
forgiven. What does it feel like in the
moment when you know that you are forgiven, completely, unconditionally?
I
think about Susan Klebold’s words to Andrew Solomon and I think about the
countless nights I’ve lain awake worrying about my kids, wishing I could undo
or redo something I’d said or a way that I’d responded to one of them; hoping
that one day they’ll forgive me. I can’t
fully relate to Mrs. Klebold’s pain and heartache at the tragedy her son
committed and died for, and honestly, I hope I never have reason to. But I can imagine it. I can imagine that she has been haunted by
it, and haunted by her need to be forgiven – not by the many people who
condemned her for being a bad parent, because bad parenting is our go-to
explanation for why these terrible things happen – but by her son for believing
she had failed him.
So
what stories do we have of being forgiven?
What does it feel like when we are?
In
honor of Father’s Day I changed my profile picture on Facebook to one where I
was about 3 and sitting on my dad’s lap, with his arms around me. I also have this picture, framed, in my
office. In the picture I’m not just
sitting. I’m sprawled out; my arms are
hanging to either side. My legs are in
perfect frog position, a position that only a very limber 3 year old can
maintain, and I am fast asleep. I joke
that my family liked taking pictures of me sleeping, not because I did it so
often but because I didn’t. They wanted
a record that I actually slept. In this
picture that is what I’m doing.
Sleeping. And I’m able to sleep
because I’m in the arms of someone who loves and accepts me without
condition. I’m able to sleep because I
have complete trust that I am cared for, protected, loved. I think maybe that’s what it’s like to feel forgiven. I have had moments, like this sinful woman,
when I have been so moved by someone’s love and forgiveness of me that I have
been overwhelmed with emotion, love, gratitude, joy. But I also believe that sometimes when we
know we are forgiven, we are able to trust, to sink into that forgiveness and
sleep.
So
if you are like me, and there are people you need to forgive, let’s commit that
act of will and forgive them. And if you
are like me, and you need to forgive yourself for whatever burdens you carry,
do that as well. Because as the familiar
words of assurance remind us, who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ.
And Christ lives and dies for us, reigns in power over us, prays for
us. In Christ we are new creations. In Christ we are forgiven. Let all God’s children say, “Alleluia! Amen.”
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