Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, 10:30am service
“Her sins, which are many are forgiven, for she loved much”
It is hard to imagine a more amazing statement. It dovetails wonderfully with the lesson from Ezekiel which speaks about “one heart” and “a new spirit” within us, “a heart of flesh” and not of stone; in short, a living heart, a heart that is alive to the presence of God. That lesson along side of this gospel story of the unknown and unnamed and utterly silent woman about whom Jesus says, “your sins are forgiven” is astounding. We see something of what that living heart of God in us really means.
What it doesn’t mean is the end of struggle and persecution, at least in this vale of tears. The story in Luke’s Gospel is particularly poignant and real. The woman who came to the house of Pharisee came because she learned that Jesus was there at table. She is described in the most wonderful economy of language by Luke as “a woman of the city, who was a sinner.” She is, in other words, a prostitute. She comes to Jesus.
She says nothing, yet her silence speaks volumes. Her heart is fully on display, fully transparent, a heart of flesh, we must say, though it is Jesus who has to teach us, hard-hearted ones such as we are, just what her actions mean. Her action is, perhaps, even more extreme and extravagant than the action of the one leper who was a Samaritan about whom we heard last Sunday. She brings a precious alabaster flask of ointment; she weeps, wetting his feet with her tears, and wiping them with the hair of her head, kissing them and anointing them with oil. It is an amazing act of devotion and love, an amazing scene of love-in-forgiveness.
Yet, it is the occasion of scandal. Doesn’t Jesus know who she really is? What kind of a religious hot-shot is he if he can’t recognise the garden-variety example of a sinner in this common “woman of the city?”
