Grace and Peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I’m going to say a word. The moment I say the word I want you to see a face, to recall face, and a name, someone who comes to your mind when I say the word. Ready? The word is ashamed. Ashamed. Do you see a face? I see a face. I see the face of a young 18 year old who enlisted in the army right after high school. He was a little unstable and couldn’t make it through basic training. The army let him go. That fall, the attacks of 9-11 happened and the whole country was awash in patriotism and he felt ashamed to his inner core.
Do you see a face? I see the face of a man in his mid-fifties. He was a business manager for a factory that employed hundred of workers. He made an error in judgment, took too great a risk and as a result nearly half of the people who worked under him lost their jobs. People avoided eye contact with him in the grocery store or on the street. He felt ashamed.
Do you see a face? I see the face of a teenage girl. She has a baby, but she has no husband. While this isn’t the 1960’s she always has the feeling people talk about her behind her back or when she passes them. She adores her baby and thinks they ought to move someplace else, someplace where her little one will never have to feel the shame she feels.
Do you see a face? I see the face of a man, a policeman who took a bribe and was found out. He shouldn’t have done it, but he’d run up credit card debts through his own foolishness. Someone he’d stopped for speeding and pleaded with him that he’d lose his license and held up three hundred dollar bills. Someone had seen it and reported it, along with the tag number of the briber and his squad car number. He’d lost his job and was in disgrace. He personified shame.
Will you look at one more face? Her face is in today’s gospel lesson. She is a woman of the streets and she comes in to Jesus filled with shame and self-loathing. She is the one whom Jesus forgives, and forgives in great measure.
Let’s focus on her. We know almost nothing about her except that what she does to make a living causes her great shame. How did she get to that spot? Perhaps she was a spoiled rich kid who turned to that life to hurt her parents for some perceived slight or insult. May be she ran away from a wealthy home because her parents imposed limits on her for her own good. Such things happen.
More likely though is that she was an orphan whose father had died and left the family with no means of making a living. Or, perhaps she was one of six children and her parents had given her to a wealthy merchant to work for on the promise that they would take care of her. Maybe she was exploited in that situation as so many children are even today.
We can speculate all we want.
What we know from the story was that her shame drove her to Jesus. The story has its own incredibly tender beauty. Jesus is eating. They sat around low tables reclining on pillows. She slips into the house. Kneels at his feet and tears flow from her eyes.
What do her tears say?
Her tears say, “I am not worthy to touch you. My whole life is a mess. My heart is filled with a shame so toxic that I can hardly breathe. Please do something to heal me. Please forgive me so that I can return to life and sleep in peace. I am desperate”.
Her tears and the costly ointment are not a bribe, they are an offering. They are her liquid love. They are her entreaty to Christ to save her and restore her. As we say in English, “She has a debt to pay”. She offers her tears, her ointment and her hair used as a towel to redeem her, to pay her debt.
Now, Simon the Pharisee becomes very uncomfortable. If we had been there we would have too. Simon was a good guy. All his life he strove to be righteous, to obey God, to love God. He was good. He was righteous. He would be they President of the Church Council, or the Sunday School Superintendent, the Service Committee Chair. Please don’t write him off as a hypocrite or a bigot. You too would have been shocked at this scene. It was embarrassing. When she let her hair down to wipe Jesus’ feet no one would have missed the inappropriateness of that, the improper intimacy of it. Remember her profession; Simon is justifiably shocked.
But then, Jesus, the greatest of all rabbis begins teaching. He teaches not just Simon but everyone. He says,” I know what you are thinking. You’ve been taught to hate sin and separate yourselves from it. But I tell you love the sinner, even as you hate the sin”. “Come”, Jesus says “reason with me”. If God really is love, and love really does forgive in the hope of reconciling, then even objectionable behavior and the people who practice it have to be forgiven. Otherwise, God stops being God”.
Fundamentally, Simon committed his own sin. He became judge over Jesus. Jesus taught, “Judge not! For the measure you give will be the measure you get. Take the log out of your own eye before you take the piece of dust that is in your neighbors. Do no take the place of God”. Jesus graciously reminds Simon that God expects us to take our own inventory before we play prosecuting attorney with the misdeeds and sins of others.
Was Simon a bad guy?
No, Simon was more like us than the woman at Jesus’ feet. If we want to become like Jesus though, we have to become humble and set aside our judgment.
This past week, a rather remarkable human being died. His name was Allen Tibble. Allen became a paraplegic in midlife and then he did some remarkable things. He moved to Sandtown one of the most drug and crime infested ghettos in Baltimore; he got Habitat for Humanity in and helped organize the community. He adopted as he own, foster children, sons of drug addicts and raised them as his own - educating them at his own cost. He set up day care centers, community centers, drug treatment centers and lived as resident missionary to some of Baltimore’s worst basket cases. At one point, some drug crazed fiends came into his house and threatened his life. He calmly replied, “You cannot hurt me, I belong to Christ”.
His faith was awesome, mine dwarfs in comparison.
So may you trust in this Jesus who has the power even to take away sins.
May you take risks in love and service to redeem those you might other wise judge.
And may you receive in humility the peace that faith in Christ brings.
Jesus loves you – no reservations, no exceptions.
In Jesus’ name Amen.
Who We Are