June 16, 2013
© 2013
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| Banquet in the Home of
Simon the Pharisee Bernardo Strozzi (1581 –1644) |
Candy and I are delighted to
be with you today and to begin our interim journey together. You are just
starting down the path that will bring you not only a new pastor but new
opportunities. After over 35 years of long-term ministry with congregations in
Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Texas, we are engaging in interim
pastorates in this stage of life in which we, too, are making transitions.
A congregation’s interim
time between pastors is not for marking time with minimal loss until the new
pastor comes but is about accomplishing some very important tasks to prepare
not only for the new pastor but for new opportunities for ministry. During our
months together we will focus on your heritage, your mission, your leadership,
your connections with the larger church, and preparing to welcome a new pastor
with enthusiasm.
My approach to preaching
during our time together will not be to pick out Scripture passages to clobber
you with. Rather, I will work with the selections from the Common Lectionary
with a view to helping us all listen for the voice of God together as a
community of God’s people.
I certainly am not ready to
prescribe anything specific today. However, as I have spent time with Luke
7:36-50 this week, I realized it speaks to the challenges of every congregation
who wants to reach out to spiritually hungry people in our pluralistic, secular
society, more and more of whom have little if any church experience. I
recognize them in the woman who tearfully anointed Jesus.
One
of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s
house and took his place at the table. 37And a
woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the
Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38She
stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her
tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and
anointing them with the ointment. 39Now
when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man
were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is
touching him—that she is a sinner.” 40Jesus
spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,”
he replied, “Speak.” 41“A certain creditor
had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42When
they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them
will love him more?” 43Simon answered, “I
suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him,
“You have judged rightly.” 44Then
turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered
your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with
her tears and dried them with her hair. 45You
gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my
feet. 46You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my
feet with ointment. 47Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been
forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is
forgiven, loves little.” 48Then he said to her,
“Your sins are forgiven.” 49But those who were at
the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even
forgives sins?” 50And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in
peace.”
All four of the Gospels
report a woman anointing Jesus. Matthew 26 and Mark 14 clearly tell the same
story, set between Palm Sunday and Easter. Before reporting Jesus’ Triumphal
Entry, John 12 tells of Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus,
anointing Jesus. I suspect this is the same incident as in Matthew and Mark
that John tells out of chronological order (as he often does) with other
details for effect. The story Luke tells seems to be set in Capernaum early in
Jesus’ ministry. Though not all agree, I believe this is a different woman, and
the story makes a different point.
This woman’s behavior
telegraphed her acute awareness of her many sins and her desperate plea for
forgiveness.
Yet, Jesus used the past
tense when he said her sins were many
and the perfect tense when he said they have
been forgiven. The forgiveness was already accomplished before he said to
her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus interpreted her extravagant expressions of
love as a response to having been forgiven, not as an appeal to be forgiven. With
our linear thinking, we want to find the point at which she wasn’t forgiven and
then was forgiven, but Jesus makes penitence and forgiveness simultaneous, not
sequential.
If we are serious about
introducing spiritually hungry people to Jesus, many of them will be drawn into
the community of faith with no understanding of church etiquette or vocabulary.
The transition from not trusting to trusting Jesus may be blurry and uneven. To
love them as Jesus would means we need to understand them, not that they need
to understand us and how we do things.
Simon the Pharisee was
already skeptical of popular opinions that Jesus might be a prophet. When he
saw that Jesus let this notoriously sinful woman contaminate him by touching
him so intimately, he was convinced Jesus was no prophet. Either he lacked
discernment or he lacked holiness.
But Jesus not only saw more
deeply into the woman than Simon did, he heard Simon’s thoughts. In good
prophetic tradition, he exposed Simon, not with confrontation but with a story
in which Simon convicted himself.
Simon’s problem was not that
he didn’t have enough sins to be forgiven to evoke extravagant love for God.
Simon’s problem was that his self-righteousness blinded him to the gravity of
his sin from which God desired to liberate him and thus deprived him of the
well-spring of love.
Spiritually,
self-righteousness is doubly dangerous. By blinding us to our sin, it deprives
us of the love that flows from forgiveness. And self-righteousness telegraphs
to spiritually hungry people that we think they are unworthy and so unwelcome
among us.
Jesus said to the woman,
“Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” Paul’s explanation that we are
justified by faith in Galatians is the theological analysis of Jesus’ gracious
word.
Paul wrote, “I have been
crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me.” This kind of faith is not agreeing to correct
theology. That’s just mental works righteousness and another source of
self-righteousness. To live by faith is the confidence that you have been
forgiven and Jesus is living through you.
We lived in Mt. Holly, NJ
for 17 years which was the home of the great Quaker saint John Woolman who
lived from 1720-1772. In his Journal, which I read several years before having
any idea we’d be going to Mt. Holly, he described his own experience of being
crucified with Christ and its implications for those who don’t know Jesus. He
wrote of a dream he had during an illness.
I then
heard a soft, melodious voice, more pure and harmonious than any I had heard
with my ears before; I believed it was the voice on an angel who spoke to the
other angels. The words were, “John Woolman is dead.” I greatly wondered what
that heavenly voice could mean.
I was then
carried in spirit to the mines, where poor oppressed people were digging rich
treasures for those called Christians, and heard them blaspheme the name of
Christ, at which I was grieved, for his name to me was precious. Then I was
informed that these heathens were told that those who oppressed them were the
followers of Christ, and they said among themselves, “If Christ directed them
to use us in this way, then Christ is a cruel tyrant.”
All this
time the song of the angel remained a mystery, and I was very desirous to get
so deep that I might understand this mystery.
At length
I felt divine power prepare my mouth that I could speak, and then I said, “I am
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,
and the life I now live in the flesh [is] by faith in the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20, KJV). Then the mystery was opened, and
I perceived there was joy in heaven over a sinner who had repented, and that
the language “John Woolman is dead” meant no more than the death of my own
will.
With his interaction with
the woman and Simon, Jesus turns upside down our whole understanding of
outreach. We want spiritually hungry people to know and trust Jesus. But if we
are the givers of the Gospel, not only will we push people away, we miss out on
the joy and love that comes from complete awareness of our own forgiveness. But
when people who we thought of as outsiders overflow the love of being forgiven
on us, we receive grace that releases the love of Jesus through us.
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