Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 12 2016
Reading 12 SM 12:7-10, 13
Nathan said to David:
“Thus says the LORD God of Israel:
‘I anointed you king of Israel.
I rescued you from the hand of Saul.
I gave you your lord’s house and your lord’s wives for your own.
I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.
And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more.
Why have you rejected the LORD and done evil in his sight?
You have cut down Uriah the Hittite with the sword;
you took his wife as your own,
and him you killed with the sword of the Ammonites.
Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house,
because you have looked down on me
and have taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife.’”
Then David said to Nathan,
“I have sinned against the LORD.”
Nathan answered David:
“The LORD on his part has forgiven your sin:
you shall not die.”
Reading 2GAL 2:16, 19-21
Brothers and sisters:
We who know that a person is not justified by works of the law
but through faith in Jesus Christ,
even we have believed in Christ Jesus
that we may be justified by faith in Christ
and not by works of the law,
because by works of the law no one will be justified.
For through the law I died to the law,
that I might live for God.
I have been crucified with Christ;
yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me;
insofar as I now live in the flesh,
I live by faith in the Son of God
who has loved me and given himself up for me.
I do not nullify the grace of God;
for if justification comes through the law,
then Christ died for nothing.
GospelLK 7:36—8:3
A Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him,
and he entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at table.
Now there was a sinful woman in the city
who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.
Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment,
she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears.
Then she wiped them with her hair,
kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself,
"If this man were a prophet,
he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him,
that she is a sinner."
Jesus said to him in reply,
"Simon, I have something to say to you."
"Tell me, teacher," he said.
"Two people were in debt to a certain creditor;
one owed five hundred days' wages and the other owed fifty.
Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both.
Which of them will love him more?"
Simon said in reply,
"The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven."
He said to him, "You have judged rightly."
Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon,
"Do you see this woman?
When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet,
but she has bathed them with her tears
and wiped them with her hair.
You did not give me a kiss,
but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered.
You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she anointed my feet with ointment.
So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven
because she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."
He said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
The others at table said to themselves,
"Who is this who even forgives sins?"
But he said to the woman,
"Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
Afterward he journeyed from one town and village to another,
preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.
Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others who provided for them
out of their resources.
If you look at the parallel versions of this story http://sites.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-4g.htm you'll read of a woman who came in while Jesus was reclining at table and anointed him with precious ointment. Matthew and Mark place the event in the house of Simon the leper, while John has it occur at Bethany in the house where Lazarus lived with his sisters, Martha and Mary. Luke however makes an entirely different story of it.
Perhaps the way one person's gesture is used differently in the gospels shows us that the editors did not feel obliged to report historical events accurately for their own sake. Their purpose was a practical one: to teach a significant truth or to underline some moral imperative. We should have the same approach, looking for ways to apply the essential 'gospel' in our time.
Most commentators say that Luke is teaching about forgiveness, or 'justification' which, as Reginald Fuller points out, is the message of the second reading, recalling the protests of the 16th century reformers. The St Louis website has four short essays that could be helpful as background and interpretation of this passage: http://liturgy.slu.edu/11OrdC061216/theword.html
Today, by contrast, I'm inclined to focus not on the woman, nor on the subject of forgiveness, but on the fierce attack Jeshua makes on the pharisee. Luke's account is outstanding especially for this. First he has Jeshua bait the pharisee with a little story. When Simon gives the expected response, Jeshua takes him apart limb by limb.
When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet...
You did not give me a kiss...
You did not anoint my head with oil...
One might think that Jeshua was deeply hurt by the insult. He had been invited as an equal [J. Pilch] and then experienced a deliberate put-down. Pilch even suggests that, since it is not explained how the woman gained entrance, Luke leaves open the possibility that her presence could have been prearranged by Simon. Another of the many traps the pharisees set for him.
Hurt Jeshua must have been, enough to make him see how insidious was the superior, self-righteous attitude of the pharisee class, but from the moment he noticed his host's supercilious sneer at 'this woman' and heard the remark, 'what sort of woman', his hurt turned to anger. Abandoning courtesy and throwing caution to the winds, he tore strips off his host, humiliating him before the whole company at table.
Why would Jeshua have done this?
Or why would Luke have thought it useful to adapt the account of a woman wiping the Messiah's feet with her hair, etc., to turn it into this most severe attack on the pharisee class? By the time of writing, the temple had been destroyed. Faithful Jews were meeting in the synagogues and the small christian communities also held their own meetings in their homes. Jewish pharisees would hardly have been a problem for the communities as they had been to Jeshua, but perhaps this corrosive spirit was alive and well among Luke's audience and it was time to confront it. Judging by the blunt force of this open attack, Luke must have considered the pharisaical spirit to be a deep-seated and poisonous attitude, to be unmasked at any cost. It still is.
There is a 'pharisee-in-residence' in all of us, often crouching under the cover of piety, devotion, studiosity, deep commitment or just plain loyalty. We would all remember going through stages when it seemed important to be correct - to fit in as a teenager, to be a perfect parent, to follow recipes exactly to make a perfect meal, etc., etc. Even to be totally free of sin/guilt by a good confession, or to be clear on where you stand in some issue like authority in the church, 'Humanae vitae', or marriage laws.
This is a normal stage of development, the fourth stage according to Lawrence Kohlberg's model, when our motivation is Law and Order: 'Do your duty'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development#/media/File:Kohlberg_Model_of_Moral_Development.png
Having confidence in what you hold as fundamental is not a bad thing, and it provides for the basic need of security, safety, certainty. But paradoxically, if we are to grow we have to let go of that security, opening ourselves to other values. In the situation Luke describes, the woman deserved respect from the pharisee, as did Jeshua. What was it made the genial host turn sour on them both?
Pride, I suppose, would be a start, a pride encased in status. Pharisees at the time were looked up to for their learning and for their observance of the law in its most particular detail. Status is very dangerous. You can be so conscious of your 'position' that you lose sight of other people, or you begin to look down on others as less worthy of respect, as inferior. You find nothing untoward in showing the same disdain for persons as you do for their faults. And yet you will lay down standards and rules for others to measure up to, and if they fall short or simply ignore you, you will condemn them for it.
Letting go, for our resident pharisee, is particularly difficult because the way forward is less than clear. To grow, we have to move into the next stage, going beyond rules to live more fully the values they embody. We will no longer see a woman such as this as a 'breaker of rules', even if she is of 'ill repute' or 'married' to someone not her husband, but as a person to be cared for and protected. We will no longer see faithful compliance with our standards as the measure of a person's worth, but we will see their need as the measure of our compassion.
There seems to be a conservative element in every population too, and sometimes they will fight against change. When they make a bid for control there is no way to avoid confrontation. The best we can do is ensure respect for every person even as their error is exposed. And it is an error to hold on to the worn out, the traditional way or the literal interpretation. Life works by continual renewal, shedding the old skin, last summer's leaves that served so well, even renewing blood and bone and tissue. To thrive, a society must do the same. It is distressing to see such a strong movement pulling against the tide in the church, trying to reinstate the old liturgy. If ever there was a case of something that had served its time it is the Latin performance. Participation has proven to be more complex than was first imagined, but that is no reason to go backwards, let alone proof of a wrong path forward.
'Launch out into the deep water' could be a primary motto for every christian because it speaks of letting go of security. We can do it because we believe, because we trust, and because we love. Those who can't let go need a good hard shake, and that's the point of Luke's story.
Then we come to 'love', that four-letter puzzleword. Clearly, 'love' in the question Jesus puts to the pharisee is not romantic love, nor is it the love of close personal friends. It arises out of a sense of obligation to be grateful for the favour, the forgiving of the debt: small debt - small favour - not much to be grateful for vs large debt - great favour - enormous life-changing gratitude.
It seems the pharisee, typically intent on doing the right thing and doing it exactly right is focused on self. He is blind to the free generosity of God's love and has little sense of gratitude. He serves God faithfully and expects his reward, but God is not an employer. He is a parent, wanting this man to flourish. God wants him to grow beyond Rules and Duty as in Kohlberg's level four, to expand into the 'post-conventional' freedom of loving the right thing, and doing the right thing for love of the person you do it for.
As in every item in the gospel narratives, if there is a lesson in it the lesson has to be assimilated first by the witness/teacher/preacher/apostle before it can be communicated to anyone else. Gospelling is not a heady sharing of ideas, but an osmosis-like, infection-like process of giving yourself to another and with that gift the Spirit enters the heart and mind and gives its own witness to the one who would listen.
We do, and we don't, all the while. Every day the pharisee-in-residence finds another way to draw us back into our security bunker. Every day metanoia is required, a change of attitude that turns me inside out so I can be sharing of the self, uninhibited by old habits or a thick skin of indifference.