by Rebecca M. Taylor,
Director of Children's, Youth & Family Ministries
All Saints Parish, Brookline, MA
June 12-13, 2010
Lectionary: 1 Kings 21:1-10; 15-21a Galatians 2:15-21 Luke 7:36-8:3 Psalm 5:1-9
If you have ever hosted a dinner party, especially one for a special guest, or if you have ever been invited to a dinner party for someone special, you can imagine how awkward and off-putting it would be if someone burst uninvited into your dining room and start fawning over the guest of honor.
The portion of Luke"s gospel appointed for today is, at first blush, a story about a dinner party that goes completely awry – that is, if you are the host, Simon the Pharisee. If you are the "sinful" woman who arrives unannounced, the story describes a moment of pure joy, unconditional love, and forgiveness.
What this story means depends completely on who you are in it.
So what about us 21st century Christians? Where are we in this story? What relevance does this story have for us?
I think this gospel reading invites us to reflect on the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, because, in its essence, this story describes who shows up and what happens when the table is set and Jesus is invited.
This is what I want to explore with you this evening/morning.
First, let's look at the cast of characters in this story.
We've got Simon, the Pharisee, a Jewish leader who, no doubt, was well known in his community. As a Pharisee, Simon's life was devoted to the study and interpretation and enforcement of Jewish Law. Pharisees believed that the best way to be and stay in close relationship with God was to obey all of God's rules, especially the purity codes of the Torah. These were a set of rules and rituals established by God and delivered by Moses generations before. They were designed to keep God's people from being corrupted by all the things in their world that were not of God. Simon would have been someone that the Jewish people in his community knew. He was a learned man, a living example of a pious life style. He was someone who knew what was right and what was wrong, and he probably would have made sure that others knew it, too.
We don't know anything about Simon's reasons for inviting Jesus to have dinner with him and his friends. The passage seems to imply that Simon wondered whether Jesus might be a prophet. Maybe he was curious about this itinerate carpenter from Nazareth, and wanted to see for himself what all the buzz was about this guy. Clearly, Simon didn't see Jesus as a peer or a colleague because, although he invited Jesus into his home for a meal, he didn't extend any of the common gestures of hospitality that would have made Jesus feel truly welcomed. Everyone at the party that evening would have noticed this. Jesus was, after all, the reason for the gathering. As the meal got underway, I'm sure there was tension in the room even before the woman showed up.
Then she bursts in on the party and starts bathing Jesus' feet with fragrant ointment and her tears. She breaks so many social conventions! She is uninvited. She is a single woman at a party of men. She lets her hair down in front of all of them. She touches one of them. She cries and cries and cries. She's got to have been Simon's worst nightmare!
Although we don't know her name, we do know a couple things about her. First of all, by someone's assessment, she hadn't led a very righteous life: she is described in the scripture as "a sinner." And secondly, she must have had what she felt was a significant and meaningful encounter with Jesus at some point before she came to Simon's house, because she shows up not just with a expensive jar full of ointment, but also with the intention to engage intimately with Jesus.
I wonder if maybe this "sinner" might have been in one of the crowds of people who were showing up in growing numbers to hear Jesus teach and to be healed by him. In the chapter previous to this one in Luke's gospel we are told,
"A great multitude of people ... had come to hear Jesus' [sermon on the plain] and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out of him and healed them all." (Luke 6.17-19)
And in the verses in chapter 7 immediately before this story, there are four separate references to the growing number of people who were being healed by Jesus, who were talking about him, and who were beginning to follow him (Luke 7.9; 7.11; 7.16-17; 7.21).
Maybe this woman was one of the people who had been healed in some way by an encounter with Jesus, and that experience of grace completely transformed her life, leaving her with a sense of having a new chance at life, and filling her heart with gratitude. That would explain her tears and the ardent way she attended to Jesus that evening.
So we've got Simon the Pharisee, and we've got the nameless "sinner."
Finally, we have the rest of the dinner guests. They witness everything that transpires at Simon's banquet, and then they turn to one another and ask what I think is a pivotal question: "Who is this guy?" It's right towards the end of the reading:
"Those who were at the table with Jesus began to say among themselves, 'Who is this who even forgives sins?'" (Luke 7.49)
"Who is this Jesus?"
I think that was the question on everyone's mind as they gathered with Jesus around the table that night. And I can't help but wonder if that question isn't also on the hearts and minds of each of us as we gather each week with Jesus around this table.
"Who is Jesus?"
That question is not just about Jesus' identity. As I'm sure you know, it's about we are, too.
At the heart of this story is the forgiveness of Christ that filled Simon's dining room that evening. Jesus' teaching about the two debtors sheds light on the sins of both Simon and the woman. Certainly Jesus knew that the bad choices the woman had made had taken her down a life path that God would not have chosen for her. But Jesus also saw how Simon had fallen short of true relationship with God. Jesus saw how Simon's devotion to the letter of the law had hardened his heart to the human suffering all around him, including his kinship to the woman at his table. Simon's arrogance and self-righteousness had made him blind to his own brokenness, to his own need for forgiveness. He was so busy loving the Law and his obedience to it that he had forgotten how to love, truly love, anyone else, including Jesus. The woman, on the other hand, knew exactly how messed up her life was, and how much she needed the love of God working through Jesus to give her another chance. She could love extravagantly because she had experienced extravagant love.
A bit of writing from Herbert O'Driscoll, the Anglican priest, scholar, and Irish storyteller, speaks to this point. O'Driscoll says,
"We are not accepted by God on the basis of some calculated sterile perfection. We can never achieve it anyway. The ultimate criterion by which we will be judged is whether we have loved or not. If we are capable of loving, then we are capable of knowing we are loved by God. If we are loved by God, then we know we are forgiven."(1)
That evening in Simon's house, Jesus was the real host of the dinner party, and everyone at the table was in his debt because none of them – even the woman, as grateful as she was – could love the way Jesus loves.
This evening/morning in this house, Jesus is the host of the meal to which we are all invited. Soon I hope each of us will come to this table with a thankful heart because whether we realize it fully or not, each of us is indebted to Christ. He loves us unconditionally. He loves us in spite of who we are and how we may have fallen short. Let's face it: we do our best every week to live the way God wants us to. But we always stumble, in large and small ways.
And thank God that Christ's table is set for us week after week! For the Eucharist is not just "a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,"(2) as the woman in our gospel reading so beautifully illustrates. The Eucharist is also "the way by which the sacrifice of Christ is made present, [the way] he unites us to ... himself."(3) The teachings of the Episcopal Church are that at the Lord's Supper "we receive forgiveness of sins, the strengthening of our union with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet"(4) that awaits us. What could be better!
If you notice, looking back at today's gospel story, Jesus didn't banish either Simon or the woman from the table that evening. Instead, he taught about love (verses 41-43, 47). He offered forgiveness of sins (verse 48). And he extended peace – the shalom of God (verse 50).
That's what happens when we set the table and invite Jesus to it. Jesus gives himself to us. With his forgiveness, he nourishes and rejuvenates us. With his love he empowers us, as our collect says this morning, to proclaim God's truth with boldness and minister God's justice with compassion in the new week that lies ahead. This is true for all of us: however broken or self-assured, or skeptical, or just plain curious we may be.
Let me close with an invitation that Leslie Sterling, our former assistant rector, used to offer at the Sunday evening worship at which she presided. Whenever I attended that service, these words always moved me deeply. Maybe they will have the same effect on you.
The table of bread and wine is being made ready. It is the table of those who love Jesus and those who want to love him more. So come to this table, you who have much faith, and you who have little; you who have already made a decision to follow Jesus, and you who would like to do so for the first time; you who have been faithful in following your life commitments, and you who have failed. Come. It is Christ who calls you. It is his will that those who seek him, should meet him here.
AMEN.
(1) Child of Peace, Lord of Life: Reflections on the readings of the Common Lectionary (Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, Ontario, 1989), p.125.
(2) Book of Common Prayer, p. 859.
(3) Book of Common Prayer, p. 859.
(4) Book of Common Prayer, p. 859-860.