Old Dogs and New Tricks
Luke 7:36-8:3 (story of the woman of the city, washing Jesus' feet with her tears, drying them with her hair and then anointing them with ointment.
Main thought – Forgiveness leads to great love.
Malady – we don't need to be forgiven very much if at all. OH REALLY!
I have something to say to you. It's important. So, how I say it matters. I hope and pray that you will be able to hear it. I count on God's Spirit for that to be able to happen.
I would like to begin with a quote from Mark Allen Powell who is a professor of New Testament studies at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus Ohio. He writes about an experience he had:
" Basically, I thought the good news revealed in and through Jesus Christ was that 'God accepts us just the way we are.' A lot of Lutherans think that.
Then, I encountered liberation theology. I remember a seminar I attended in college. A large African-American man had two big signs up front. One read, 'Jesus Christ accepts you the way you are.' The other said, 'Jesus Christ will change your life.' Both are Biblical and both are good news, the speaker affirmed. 'So, why is it that you Lutherans equate the Gospel with one sign and not the other? You say, 'Jesus will change my life? Well, that's nice but the really good news is that he accepts me the way I am!' You get so excited that Jesus will accept you the way you are that, after a while, some of us begin to wonder whether this isn't because you plan on staying the way you are – whether Jesus will change you or not. Now, where I come from, in the inner city, I know some folks who – if you tell them, 'Jesus accepts you the way you are' – will respond, 'Well that's nice of him, but the fact is I don't really like being the way I am. My life isn't so good. It's nice that Jesus loves me even though I'm poor and hungry and my life is a mess, but you know what some really good news would be? Really good news would be if he'd change my life so that I don't have to be this way." (Chasing the Eastern Star, p. 181).
Sometimes I wonder if we want our lives changed? I wonder if we think or feel, if we are convinced THAT WE NEED GOD TO FORGIVE US?
When I was a child I thought and felt that forgiveness was about someone being able to let go of something bad or wrong that I had done. When I had said hurtful things to my parents – and they still loved me, or told me that although my words had hurt them, that they forgave me – that was forgiveness. When I was practicing my swing with my bat in the living room and accidentally broke my mother's long mirror – and she didn't whale on me or continually remind me of how I broke it, well that was surely forgiveness. Then when I lied about rafting in a slough my parents had told me not to raft in – and confessed my lie many years later, my dad told me that he had known I was lying from the get go, but had decided to forgive me anyway. Surely that too was forgiveness.
But as I have been growing older, as I have been reading and studying the Bible, as I have been blessed with so many wonderful gifts in my life from God: friends, family, growing up in such a beautiful and wealthy as Canada, and as I am growing in understanding and experience of God's Son, Jesus, suffering and dying that all may be reconciled, I have begun to think of sin very differently. Sin is no longer just what I do that is wrong. Nor is sin simply what I don't do that I should have done. My wrongs both of commission and omission are symptomatic of, indeed evidence of my sin. Sin is part of who I am. My attitudes are so often different even at time the opposite of what God intends. When I think poorly about someone because of their weight or the way they are driving, or because of the way they express their faith or don't (from my limited perspective) practice any faith – there is evidence of my sin. When I cast malicious waves towards someone because they don't acknowledge me when we walk by each other, when I just write them off in my mind without any desire to get to know them or to try to understand why they are the way they are, or speak to them, that is a complete disregard for God's command and Jesus' command to love my neighbor as myself.
Or, when we worry about or hoard money and things, we are trying to function as if we are independent beings totally responsible for "our" survival. Then I am not thinking of others or God, but only or at least primarily of myself. How futile that is! Then, we are forgetting that God is God, the One who gives us breath, who loves us, all people and all creation SO MUCH!
We refuse to trust God when we close our hearts and minds, our wallets to God's love. I mean is the house, the apartment, the car, the kids, any of it, mine or yours? Or is "it" all God's? Can't we see that it is only by God's grace that we are blessed to experience any of these?
Nevertheless too often I am afraid, unsure, selfish. Like the little child we reach out to grasp, all the while thinking, "mine, mine, mine". This too is sin. For this I and we need both forgiveness and transformation.
Nor is this sin of ours only personal. Sin is also collective. When we forget or disregard people in other nations, and the impact our actions have upon them, we are refusing to love them. You see I like my car, our two cars. I expect to have my convenience. I've had such convenience for a long time now. I like to be able to go where I want when I want. I don't want to think about the massive amounts of carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere and the impact that is having on the glaciers, the polar bears and all sea creatures. . In the last 100 years we have put back into the atmosphere what it has taken thousands if not millions of years for God to create.
The consequences of our actions are unfolding. The seas are rising. The poorest nations of SW Pacific are being affected first. But our time is coming, faster than we think. Watch Richmond having to build the dikes higher and higher in the next decade. Are we remorseful? Do we see the need to change our behaviour?
In today's Gospel, a woman of the city enters Simon the Pharisee's house. She has not come to see Simon. In fact it is unlikely that he would have welcomed her. Rather, she has come to see and thank Jesus. She realizes that she is forgiven. Her sins have been removed by Jesus and God. Now she has a new life, a new way of thinking and being.
She is consequently moved to great gratitude. She is no longer enslaved to custom, limited by what others think of her. Her resultant joy will not be, cannot be self-contained. So, she enters Simon's house, weeping for joy. As her tears cascade onto Jesus' outstretched feet, she begins to dry his feet with her hair. And then, she anoints Jesus' feet with ointment.
Many look askance at her. Simon is one of these people. He observes the externals thinking to himself, If Jesus really were a prophet, a truly religious figure, he would not allow such a sinner to touch him in any way, let alone in these scandalous ways. But Simon isn't experiencing the power of Jesus' forgiveness.
Jesus then tells both Simon and us a story. It has to do with being accepted, forgiven. But even that isn't all there is. Forgiveness, loving us as we are – the letting go of others especially by God of that which has been set in motion by or through us will never leave us the same. In being forgiven we will be changed. We will see others and ourselves in new ways. We will then treat them differently. We will be filled with joy and gratitude that overflows like an artesian well calling us to joyfully give ourselves away.
Is this the way we are living our lives? Or do we think or feel, that I really don't need forgiveness – I don't need much change in my life?
May God help us!
The forgiveness birthed in Jesus' life, death and resurrection results in the transformation of our minds, hearts and lives. May it be so among us and through us, for Christ's sake, Amen.