by CCW | 16 September 2012 15:08
To my mind it is one of the most moving stories in the Gospels. In relation to our first lesson from Ezekiel[1] it challenges us about our hearts: hearts of stone or hearts of flesh? What Ezekiel envisions, it is not too much to say, is what is illustrated in this Gospel story, namely, the hardness of our hearts of stone and whether we can be moved to compassion and seek forgiveness.
Ezekiel is speaking about the condition of Israel, about God’s strengthening and providential presence with his people in the places of their exile, about a change in them by his grace and spirit. One heart and a new spirit; a heart of flesh in contrast to a heart of stone.
There is just that sense of contrast between a hard and inflexible spirit and a forgiving and compassionate spirit that is also brought out ever so personally and powerfully in Luke’s story[2]. It is not about being soft and wimpy; it is about something vital and living that moves in us if we will set aside the empty dogmatisms of our empty lives. In a way, this gospel story challenges us about what really matters and about what kind of hearts are actually in us. It brings us to some of the essential and central teachings of the Christian faith. Of course, that is the real challenge: to acknowledge and name the essential teachings which ultimately shape our lives.
It is this unnamed and unspeaking woman who teaches us so much. Jesus is at pains to show the importance of her action and its meaning. He knows what is moving in her heart. Her act, extravagant and moving, is an act of love in repentance. I cannot stress enough how powerful and important that is. I cannot stress enough the importance of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins of which this Gospel story is such a compelling witness. Jesus says to her, “your sins are forgiven.”
She says nothing. We do not know exactly who she is. There is the tradition that she is Mary Magdalene, named in the passage which immediately follows as someone from whom seven demons had been cast out, but how odd, if that is so, that the connection is not explicitly made. It seems to me that the reticence about her name and identity is part of the point. Luke simply describes her as “a woman of the city;” in short, a prostitute but even more simply a sinner, too, like you and me however individual our sins might be. In a way, she is a kind of everywoman or everyman.
Jesus is invited to the house of a Pharisee for a meal. This woman knows that he is there and comes in with an alabaster flask of ointment. She does something extraordinary. “Weeping,” she “wet[s] his feet with her tears, wipe[s] them with the hair of her head, kisse[s] his feet, and anoints them with the ointment” from the alabaster flask. A curious scene but most moving. What is she doing?
The Pharisee, in whose house this has happened, sees this and inwardly criticizes Jesus. If he is the holy hot-shot everybody says he is, how can he not know who this woman is? The point being that a holy man should not be in the company of, well, an unholy woman. There is the holy and there is the profane. The woman in his view is clearly the latter.
But then, the story asks us to consider, who is not a sinner? Does not sin, in one way or another, catch us all in its net? Have we not all “erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep”? Have we not all “followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts”? Have we not all “offended against thy holy laws, leaving undone the things which we ought to have done, and doing the things which we ought not to have done”? It is what we have just said. Do we mean it?
I know. This is exactly what our anti-religious and entitlement culture rebels against. We don’t want to face the idea of ourselves as sinners. We have despaired of anything beyond our own mediocrity and our own self-righteousness about our own infinitely exciting selves. From such a viewpoint, God is boring and so is Church but why people think they are themselves so endlessly exciting is itself quite a presumption! But, marvelous to say, in spite of our mediocrity and poverty of spirit, God seeks something more and better for us. One heart and a new spirit, as Ezekiel suggests, but one which is about nothing less and nothing more that love in repentance seeking forgiveness.
This unnamed, unspeaking woman’s action is exactly about that. In coming to Jesus she senses that the deep and longing for healing and wholeness in her very being has its fulfillment in him. She seeks forgiveness. Her act is an act of love in repentance. An act of love towards the one who is God with us, the one in whom alone there can be that overcoming of sin and the bestowal of forgiveness.
Jesus explains to those at the table and to us the significance of what she has done by way of a little parable about who loves more. The debtor who has been forgiven a small debt or the one who has been forgiven a greater debt? He uses this parable to confront our self-righteous judgmentalism. He then turns to the woman and explains the meaning of her extravagant actions and gestures. They are about worship and love. She has loved much, which is not the same thing as saying she has loved many. He emphasizes the matter of the quality of our loves. The woman loves the truth and the mercy of God which she senses and sees in Jesus.
Jesus knows what is in her heart. And what is in her heart is exactly what Ezekiel in his prophecy is suggesting must be in our hearts. Not the hard-heartedness of our judgments and criticisms of one another but the openness of our hearts to the transforming grace of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ. And, yet, how hard it is! “Those who were with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” The story points to the radical meaning of who Christ is. He is the forgiveness of sins. He knows our hearts just as he knows the heart of this woman whose heart is revealed in what she does and just as he knows the murmuring self-righteousness of the stony-hearted others who question, “who is this who even forgives sins?”
Only God who creates can recreate. Only God can forgive sins. Such is the Jewish understanding. And it is true. The point is that Jesus is God with us. Only so can he be the forgiveness of our sins. Thus doctrine – a teaching – informs and shapes our moral outlook and our pastoral care.
The real issue is our loves. This woman has loved much. Her sins, which are many, Jesus says, are forgiven but all because of her deep love of the truth and mercy of God. How wonderful and how hopeful for all of us.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XV, MP
September 16th, 2012
Christ Church
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/09/16/sermon-for-the-fifteenth-sunday-after-trinity-1030-service/
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