a lawless blog

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11th Sunday Year C

June 16, 2013

 Reading II: Galatians 2:16, 19-21

We acknowledge that what makes a man righteous is

not obedience to the law,

but faith in Jesus Christ.

We had to become believers in Christ Jesus no less than you had,

and now we hold that faith in Christ

rather than fidelity to the Law

is what justifies us,

and that no one can be justified by keeping the Law.

In other words, through the Law I am dead to the Law,

so that now I can live for God.

I have been crucified with Christ,

and I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me.

The life I now live in this body I live in faith:

faith in the Son of God

who loved me and who sacrificed himself for my sake. 

I cannot bring myself to give up God's gift:

if the Law can justify us, there is no point in the death of Christ.

It seems the hardest thing of all is to accept a free gift. I'm not talking about a win in the Lotto or getting a bonus from some trader. I mean a genuine personal gift that we know we do not deserve. "No," we say. "I must pay you for it."

If the other still insists, or if payment is quite impossible (take the refugee who arrives with nothing and once citizenship is gained finds himself with access to undreamed of opportunities), we wake at night thinking, "I've got to do something in return. I'll work harder, I'll be kinder, I'll forego complaining for ever - I'll show I'm not unworthy of that gift."

And forever we are humbled by our indebted status. A generation later, refugees are still 'proving' their gratitude to have been given the  chance of a new life.

This is the point of today's gospel reading, robustly supported by Paul's mystical reflection on the gratuity of grace. There is division in the community of christians that appears today more acute than ever since the time of the Puritans. Within the Catholic Church one group insists that we find our justification through absolute obedience to the formulated teachings and the detailed laws of the church, while another group is moving forward in authentic freedom, reliant on the gift of godliness that is freely given without any merit on our part, and to be received with simple gratitude.

Curiously the Pharisees of Jesus' time were not  his enemies. They were the group he most identified with, for their ideal was to live their godly life to the full, to go the whole way. This was exactly in the spirit of his sermon on the mount, except that their focus was limited to observance of the prescriptions of the law and Jesus said you musn't stop there, you have to go beyond that. The Pharisee of today's gospel passage invited Jesus to a meal, as an equal, anxious to get to know him better. Jesus accepted the invitation.

Luke's story is one of the most graphic in the New Testament, as the story of King David's dirty deeds is among the most gripping episodes in the Old. The intriguing question as to the identity of the woman cannot be avoided, even though it is not relevant at all. Scholars insist there is no evidence whatever in the gospels to identify her as Mary of Magdala from whom seven demons had gone out. That is good because we don't need then to waste our time on romance novels about the Magdalene. I find it disappointing, however, because it would only enrich the story if this real woman who displayed such love was identified as the one who stood by the cross with Mary at the end and waited by the empty tomb for the new beginning. It is wise however to stick to what the scholars have to say.

The pharisee thought Jesus should have known "who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner." It is silly to say this means she was a prostitute. Only last week we read of the plight of women in that society. (http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=135001) A widow had no standing. What the pharisee would consider as a sin in her might well have been a lack of attention to the Law, a careless disdain for his esoteric distinctions between clean and unclean. At the other extreme, she may well have been the envy of the town; her husband could have been getting rich and influential from trading with the Greeks, or consorting with the Romans for that matter. Her name and standing remain unknown. The gospel deliberately excludes her identity from the story for it is not the point. Denied any distracting information we are forced to focus on her gratitude, and yet still we dodge around it.

Her entrance provided Jesus with an opportunity to illustrate how the pharisees' understanding fell short of the ideal he had in mind for the reign of god in society. The little story of two people in debt to a businessman placed the accent squarely on their response to being let off rather than on the debt itself. The woman's tears were not tears of sorrow but of gratitude, and it was immense gratitude because an immense debt had been forgiven her.

This is the discovery that turned the over-zealous pharisee Paul into an apostle of free grace, of for-giveness. Jesus showed how it works when he went forward to his death not to make payment on our behalf, nor because the law demanded this of him, but because the truth of his commitment to his friends demanded that he go the whole way, that he walk the walk to the end of the road. If we don't get it, says Paul, then all he did, even in the example of his dying, must be seen as wasted effort, for we are unteachable.

Pharisees of every age, or should I say, the pharisee in each of us, finds the hardest thing of all to learn is that god's love comes for free. 'What am I worth if I cannot pay my way?' he asks. And there's more. So strong is the pharisees' conviction that we must, each and every one, work with all our might to gain our place in heaven that they will push and pull and even bully others into obeying every detail of the prescriptions of the Law.

Pause for a moment to feel the confusion Simon felt as the penny dropped: He who has been forgiven little, loves little. And just what such poor mean love entailed Jesus had spelt out in embarrassing detail: you did not give me water for my feet, you did not give me a kiss, you did not anoint my head with oil - ordinary courtesies to an honoured guest. I wonder did Simon ask himself: Why didn't I do these things? What is wrong with me? I hope he did, for that is the purpose and goal of this whole affair. The self-questioning that brings us to the moment of metanoia.

It is astonishing that, whether you take it as history or myth, the roots of god's 'chosen people' are sunk deep in human sinfulness. David, the charismatic leader, the visionary, was also a mean little adulterer and hard-hearted murderer. Amazingly this major lapse did not put a stop to the divine plan. I wonder was it even a stumble or diversion. To the contrary it might be seen as a necessary stage to be undergone if we are ever to see the divine initiative in the right light, the way Jesus saw it. 

We, pharisees all, would so love to be proud of our past - to have a past we could be proud of, and that's where we just don't get it. I have been crucified with Christ, and I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me. 

"Crucified": humiliated, cursed, reckoned among sinners, disdained as a turncoat, ridiculed two thousand years later as a fanatic. The way to be endowed with grace is not to stand aloof from the unclean but to take one's place, as Jesus did, among the so-called "sinners"? 

Tony Equale makes the point somewhere in a current string (http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=135081). As sinners, we are not in breach of contract: we are family members who hurt our parent and our entire family by our willfulness. In spite of that our father loves us still and always will because that is the way he is. Can a mother forget her children? Neither will I forget you, says the Lord.

One final word: How did she do it? This woman, I think, may have been well-known in the town, perhaps she was a person of such commanding presence that she could face-down the servants at the door and walk into that gathering of men, drop to her knees at the feet of Jesus and burst into tears of joyful gratitude. But what moved her to this display? I don't know, because this is not something any man would think of doing. I want a woman's view of this, and I hope someone will contribute her insight as to what it means to show tears of extravagant joyful gratitude in such touching ways.

Tony Lawless