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Grace Won the Day!June 17, 2007 Third Sunday after Pentecost "Do you see this woman?” [1] That’s what Jesus asked Simon, the man who had invited him to dinner. On the face of it, the question is pretty obvious. Of course Simon saw the woman. After all, she had just made a spectacle of herself by joining the party without an invitation, then anointing Jesus’ feet with a sensuous mixture of perfume and tears, and wiping them with her hair. Quite a scene. No one could have missed the drama. Simon saw the woman for sure – and would not soon forget her, either. We’re told she was a “sinful woman of the city,” whatever that means. A prostitute perhaps? That’s been a traditional tag even though her sin remains undisclosed. Still, we’d have to admit there’s something of an erotic charge to the story which complicates the interpretation for the pious; the notion of her tenderly touching Jesus, for instance. That’s what Simon said to himself: “If this Jesus were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.” The Greek word for touch here is haupto, which can mean and may mean here, “to caress, to light a fire, to fondle.” [2] Evidently some scandalous business took place that upset the host of the party, who was obviously troubled by Jesus’ response to the woman. Sensing this, Jesus asks his question: “Simon, do you see this woman?” And of course, what he’s implying is that Simon thinks he sees her, but he does not see her the way Jesus does. We quickly infer that, if Simon were to look into a mirror, he would not see in his own image who Jesus sees either. “Do you see this woman?” Take a good long look; do you really see her? A good question for Simon, and I’m thinking a good question for us. Of course, it’s easier from the distance of 2,000 years to have a kind of dispassionate appreciation of Jesus’ point, which seems to have something to do with religious hypocrisy, something to do with grace, and something to with forgiveness. The religious hypocrisy piece appears simple on the surface: we conclude Simon held to a self-righteous religion in which he had created a hierarchy of moral rectitude, with himself at the top and persons like this woman near the bottom. No doubt he had Jesus to dinner believing him to belong to the higher order, but here Jesus has allowed himself to be touched in a scandalous way by a woman who dishonored Simon’s home and table. Simon is ticked off. Of course, hypocrisy is very tasty when we see it in others, because we believe ourselves somehow the better for the seeing. But I think we would miss the point here if we didn’t consider whether we’re more like Simon than not. After all, here we all are sitting in church. We’ve supposedly chosen the religious path. And this morning, we sense that hidden behind Jesus’ question concerning Simon’s ability to see the woman lies another question: Simon, can you see yourself? Can you see your own situation clearly? I’ve come to your home, but your hospitality is cramped by your arrogant self-regard. So cramped, that you can’t see how forgiveness and grace actually work. This cramped and arrogant self-regard is a fundamental problem for most humans – probably for all humans. I know it is for me. I know it lies somewhere near to the originating point of the spiritual pilgrimage, and seems a touchstone at every major intersection along the way. Despite the fact that the church has for centuries told and retold stories like the one we read today, it wouldn’t take us long to list an extensive catalogue of people who have historically been deemed unworthy of a loving reception by the church, and it wouldn’t take us much longer than a nano-second to list the top one or two sorts of persons the church has a problem with today. Persons who genuinely, even passionately want to be Jesus’ friends but who are nevertheless barred at the door. And then, if we really got down to it, each of us would have our own idiosyncratic list, completely congruent with our own patterns of biased hypocrisies. I can confidently, if not proudly, tell you I sense this within myself. Surely the great English Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton had it right: asked to submit an essay on the theme, “What’s Wrong with the Modern World?” Chesterton sent back a two-sentence article: “What’s wrong with the world? Me.” [3] I’m not certain how you might feel about this, but I’m hopeful that, as a kind of extended family with Jesus at the head of the table, we increasingly come to this same realization. Now, I know it’s not a particularly popular church marketing idea today, this sort of truth-telling about ourselves, but in fact it holds the key to the very best of outcomes, not unlike the relief, love, gratitude and freedom the woman experienced when Jesus received her. Part of the discipline of doing the church thing, the Christian thing, doing it with integrity, is regularly taking stock of how we’re seeing things. For instance, seeing people, and by implication, seeing ourselves – and the level of humility we bring to the task. When our better angels hold sway, we know how routinely we prop ourselves up in self-serving ways. We need look no further than our relationships with those closest to us. Our spouses and children, partners and close friends. So often I find in my work that very many problems people tell me about could be said to be issues of sight – what one actually sees, or not, and the sort of humility one brings to the task of seeing. Very often when one finally sees the larger truth, like the woman in our story today, it leads to the possibility of forgiveness and renewal. Grace wins the day when that happens. But I tell you its not uncommon for people sharing the same roof and food to lose track of one another, to create and maintain fictional accounts of one another and their actual circumstance. They might speak to one another, but they’re unaware of who’s actually in the room. Sometimes this occurs by a very conscious set of decisions, sometimes it occurs by years of habit of pretending they’re something they’re not, like Simon did, for instance. I suppose this has psychological ramifications – sociological and political, too – but at root this is a spiritual problem. A deep rot at the core of thngs. For some reason, it seems that we humans are prone to maintaining a pretense; I don’t know why this is, why we are so insistent on creating false identities. Even the very best of us suffers this condition, which is what Jesus spent the better part of his life trying to pierce. That’s the lesson in his question: Do you see the woman, Simon? Do you see what’s what and who’s who? Can you see me, Simon? Can you see who you’ve invited into your home? Now friends, I think this lays out some of our most difficult work; that is, if we’re really up to walking the spiritual path Jesus maps for us. I’ve thought a lot about this over the years. In fact, I doubt there is much that I have thought about more. Early on, I sensed this matter of seeing was at the heart of the work of the church. Well, I sensed it was very much at the heart of my own personal work, really. When I looked into the mirror, who did I see staring back? When I looked into the face of Melissa, and my children, who did I see? How about my friends? Or my neighbor? Just a short distance ahead in Luke, another man will confront Jesus with the question, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus will tell the famous story of the Good Samaritan. You remember how it was the despised Samaritan that came to the aid of the man beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. This, too, continues the theme of who sees what. It’s a story about true sight. Time after time after time, this theme recurs in our scripture. It is, in fact, the grand theme of the gospel. Who is this man Jesus? is the question our New Testament screams at us. Who, what do we see when we look at him? At one point Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and then he ups the ante, “Peter, who do you say that I am?” Again, he might have simply asked, “Who do you see when you look at me?” Simon, do you see the woman? There’s a sense that every week this sort of question lurks in the shadows of our worship here. It comes in a variety of translations and languages. For instance, you hear it said repeatedly how we are all beloved children of creation – we say this in a thousand different ways. Yet, I know that at root this is really a question about seeing. We mouth the words, yes, but then what do we actually see when we look around this room, just this one room full of people? The stakes are greater when we go home, go off to work tomorrow, and at some point, hopefully, consider the state of the world and our role within it. As a nation we have a lot of decisions ahead of us. But as a regular discipline – call it practice training – it’s very good to take a long look around this room each Sunday to see who’s shown up, and to ask yourself the question whether or not you really see the truth of it. It’s also good to ask yourself a version of this question, as in, “Well Steve, which Steve has shown up here today? Is it the cramped, self-righteous, arrogant version? Maybe the scared, insecure person? The one who wants to pretend one thing or another? Or can I simply be me, offering myself as I am, receiving whoever happens to cross my path as yet one more person Jesus has welcomed home?” That’s what happened for the unnamed woman in our story. She wept for joy and gratitude as she offered her thanksgiving in freedom and abandon. Grace won the day for her. That’s what I long for, too. That’s the sort of community we’re building. Previous sermon: Jesus, Healer of Our Every Ill • Next sermon: Edgy Friends All past sermons |
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