(a sermon for St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Ada, VA, June 13, 2010)
The Readings for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6, Lectionary Year C):
1 Kings 21:1-21a, Psalm 5:1-8, Galatians 2:15-21, Luke 7:15-21
Pondering these readings, I was struck by all the people behaving badly. First we have the story of Ahab and Jezebel conspiring to steal the land of hapless Naboth. Naboth just wanted to keep his family’s land. And when Jezebel saw her husband Ahab all petulant and pouty and depressed at not getting what he wanted, she conspired to have Naboth killed so Ahab could have what he wanted. Talk about people behaving badly!
In the reading from Galatians, Paul is talking about justification coming through faith and not through works of the law. And why did he have to remind the Galatians of this? Just before this passage, Paul tells us that Peter has been refusing to eat with Gentile believers so that Jewish believers won’t take issue with him. Peter has gotten particular about following the eating requirements of Jewish law – with doing “works of the law”. Paul’s discussion of faith and works is inspired by Peter behaving badly towards fellow Christians in order to comply with the law.
And then we come to the Gospel reading. Simon, a Pharisee has invited Jesus into his house for a meal, and even respectfully addresses him as “teacher,” yet he fails to offer him the basic hospitality of the day, and hospitality was a big deal at this time. He fails to provide for Jesus’ feet to be washed, and when a sinful woman steps up to do the job the Pharisee has overlooked, all he can think about is the woman’s sinfulness. His own oversight in hospitality never comes to mind.
Yes, the Bible is filled with stories of people behaving badly, and doesn’t that line up perfectly with our own experience of the world? We live in a world filled with sinners, and the news headlines are always brimming with the latest in crimes and bad deeds, large and small. And this despite the fact that, as our Psalm this morning says, “you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, and evil cannot d well with you.” Thankfully for us all, God is willing to tolerate our wickedness and evil ways for a time, or we would all be in big trouble!
Yes, our world and our readings this morning are filled with “people behaving badly.” But what about the one person in our readings who is explicitly labeled as bad, the “sinful woman”? When we look at the purported sinful woman, we find a very different sort of behavior. The “sinful woman” in the gospel reading provides the personal service to Jesus that has been overlooked by his host. She washes his feet, not with water, but with her own tears. And she dries them not with the towel, but with her hair. And she anoints his feet with expensive perfume, which may well have cost all that she had.
It embarrasses me even thinking about the scene. This woman holds nothing back, spares no dignity for herself. She is unreserved and unabashed in her lavish service to Jesus. Why? Why this extravagant gift of her person and her resources to Jesus?
Jesus later says to her, “your sins are forgiven.” And why is this sinful woman forgiven, when the Pharisee is not? We often give the Pharisees of the Bible a bad rap because most of them oppose Jesus. But they’re not bad people. They very much want to follow God’s rules. They spend their lives studying the law and trying to live it out to the most minuscule detail.
So I’ll say it again: why is the sinful woman forgiven and the Pharisee is not? It’s because of their attitude of heart: the heart of giving versus the heart of getting. The Pharisee is operating out of a “getting” heart. The Pharisee is focused on his own actions. He looks to himself and what he can do in order to earn his salvation from God. The Pharisee follows the law to be right with God, and since the Pharisees were the best law keepers around, they were pretty confident that between them and God things were pretty good. They may have a few small stumbles here and there, but in general there’s not much that God needs to forgive them for. That is the mindset of the Pharisee: intent on “getting” his own salvation from God.
The sinful woman, however, is operating out of a “giving” heart. She knows she’s an outrageous sinner, and that she can never do enough to get right with God. She’s done so many sinful things, it’s too much to think about. There aren’t enough sin offerings in the world for her to get right with God. And so when she hears the Good News, believes in Jesus and finds herself forgiven and made right with God, she is overwhelmed with love for her unexpected Savior and wants to give him all that she can. And this is the mindset of the sinful woman: overwhelmed by God’s grace and intent on “giving” to the one who saved her.
Jesus’ little story of the two debtors, one with a small debt and one with a large debt, perfectly illustrates the difference between the Pharisee and the sinful woman. As Jesus says, “the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” And that one who loves little is the Pharisee, which reminds me of a book I just read called “The Prodigal God,” by Tim Keller.
Tim Keller takes a close look at the story of the prodigal son. I’m sure you’ve heard of this story. A man has two sons. The younger son demands his inheritance from his father, then goes off and squanders it on high living. When he finally decides to come home, destitute, and prepared to beg for a place as a hired hand, the father welcomes him back with great joy and restores him to the family as the son. The elder brother who stayed at home is offended by both his brother and his father.
Interpretations of this parable usually focus on the loss and restoration of the younger brother, even though Jesus was also telling this story of the prodigal son to an audience of Pharisees, and the Pharisees are likened to the older brother. What Tim Keller points out that both of the sons were lost, and that both of his sons just want what they can get from the father.
The younger son goes the way of outrageous sin to get “stuff” from his father. He demands his inheritance, and blows it. But when he returns, he is forgiven.
The older son goes the way of conformity to get “stuff” from his father. He follows the rules and expects to get his inheritance in due course. Why does he follow the rules? In order to get the inheritance. But unlike his young brother, the older son feels no need of his father’s forgiveness. Instead, he is self righteously angry about his brother’s bad behavior and his father’s generosity with the estate he expect to be his one day. The older son is more lost than the younger, because he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong…
Keller’s point here, is that we need to repent of the very reasons we ever do anything righteous. If we are righteous in order to get things from God - things like a promised inheritance, a blessing, even salvation itself – then we are lost.
Love is the only motivation of true righteousness. But we humans so easily take the Pharisee’s path of righteousness - righteousness in order to earn salvation. The Pharisee’s way puts us in control. We follow the rules. We think we’re good with God because we’ve done what we think he wants. But the Pharisee’s path makes it very hard to see our sin. We focus on how well we are following the rules instead of how far we are from God. But it’s the very knowledge of how sinful we are that breaks our hearts and changes us – changes why we do thing.
The sinful woman knows her sin and does her works of service out of love for the unmerited salvation she’s been given. The Pharisee does his works of service to earn his own salvation. And there’s a huge difference of heart between those two.
Consider for a moment this bit of scripture from our Galatians passage. “A person is justified (counted as righteous) not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” Now let’s add this saying of Jesus from the Gospel of John (6:44): “no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Take these two together and we get this fact: it’s faith in Jesus Christ that saves us and that faith itself is a gift from God! God grants us faith – we don’t create it in ourselves. The Father draws us.
If God gives us faith as a gift, then the works that we do in response to that faith is our contribution. That's our part. The faith itself is God’s – choosing to respond is ours. A devotional book I’ve been reading put it well, from the perspective of God speaking to us: “You have faith in Me; this is good but faith without works is dead. Faith I can give you as a gift, but the works I can do through you only when your ego moves out of the way. For they are not your works, but My works, just as Jesus said, ‘I must work the works of Him who sent me.’ (John 9:4)” (from “Come Away My Beloved” by Frances J. Roberts)
“Faith without works” is like a two-part epoxy glue that hasn’t been activated. If you go to the hardware store and buy some epoxy, you’ll get a package with two tubes of chemical, tube A and tube B. If you make the mistake of trying to use either tube separately, you’ll find that the glue will never harden. It stays soft and runny and isn’t much of an adhesive. It’s only when the two ingredients are mixed together that the epoxy is activated and can form a strong bond.
God gives faith. God gives opportunities for us to do his works. Unless we accept his gift of faith and use that gift to do the works he’s given us to do, unless we mix tube A and tube B, there is no glue! Either one alone is insufficient, but together they are powerful!
The things we do out of love for Jesus Christ are strong epoxy. The sinful woman has that kind of epoxy. She was given faith, and accepted it. And the intimate and extravagant service she gives Jesus in response is the activated glue, and it is powerful indeed.
The Pharisee will never “stick” – he’s missing faith. He keeps trying to get saved, to get things from God, by his own actions. The Pharisee needs to “let go and let God.” He needs to let go of trying to pay his own debt – whether it’s tiny or huge – and accept and only Jesus can pay it, and in fact has already paid it!
We need to accept the faith we’ve been offered, AND RESPOND TO IT, and stop trying to glue our lives together with ineffective unmixed epoxy. We need to give up our own efforts, and accept the salvation that Jesus has already provided for us, let His love save us – let God save us!
And when we give up our own efforts and let God save us, then we will respond by doing God’s works in the world. Like the sinful woman, we will freely give loving, selfless service to God and others. Instead of working to save ourselves, we will do works that flow out of the sure knowledge of Jesus Christ’s saving love.
Will you pray this prayer with me?
“Father, give me the grace to accept that no matter how hard I try, I cannot save myself. Help me to let go of the ways of heart and mind I use to try to earn my own salvation, and to accept instead the gift of faith you freely offer. Activate that faith with works of love, and show forth your power to change the hearts of your people. And please, Lord, start with me, an outrageous sinner. Amen”
