Sunday, 13 June 2010 19:22
“Forgiveness”
Luke 7:36-8:3
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time C / Season of Pentecost
13 June 2010
Last week in their faith presentations several of our confirmands cited the retreats as one of their most memorable parts of the Faith Thinking confirmation experience.
Certainly our last retreat – on the Lord’s Prayer – stuck with me, in my thinking about our Gospel text for this morning.
The part – in particular – was looking at the petition “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Pastor Jane and I do almost all of Faith Thinking on PowerPoint now … the visuals really help reinforce what we’re discussing … and the image which I settled on for forgiveness was one which had been seared into my mind nearly 30 years ago.
You may remember it … It was a picture of Pope John Paul II, meeting with his would-be assassin, Mohammed Ali Agca, in a prison cell in Italy … talking with him, and forgiving him for what he had done. That image, on the cover of Newsweek magazine, was the one I used to illustrate the kind of forgiveness which the Lord’s Prayer calls forth from us.
It’s a strong, powerful image. But the action behind it … forgiveness … is one which comes to us with increasing difficulty these days.
For most of the time, the action which comes easier to us, is pointing the accusatory finger at others, to point out their sinful behavior. We do a lot of finger pointing, away from us and towards others, sometimes each other. We like to rank each other according to sinful behavior, all the while making sure that we come in well toward the bottom of the rankings. “Well, sure,” we might say if we’re caught doing something we shouldn’t, “sure, I did do that, but I didn’t intend to do it … or I only did it one time … or I didn’t do it meaning any harm to anyone. Not like him or her over there … and what they did … now that is really wrong, really something bad, and here’s why.” We are very good at pointing the finger of blame at others, and moving them far up on the “worst sin” list, while our own misdeeds consistently come in near the bottom, as we constantly try to justify ourselves and our own behavior at the expense of others … trying to prove how much more righteous and closer to God’s gold standard we are than that sinner or those kind of people over there.
So our Gospel text for this morning is very current, very appropriate for us, in our day and time. What may be very surprising about it is that that same kind of sin-ranking, finger-pointing behavior is as present in this story from two thousand years ago as it is today.
Jesus had accepted an invitation from a Pharisee to eat with him. As he sat down to eat, something strange began to happen. A woman, known to the people of that city as a sinner … one they pointed their fingers at and said, “there she goes …. that woman again” … that woman came in among Jesus and the Pharisee and his other table guests, and began crying and wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair, and rubbing the ointment she had brought with her onto Jesus’ feet.
Now, putting our cultural differences aside … people came and went from others’ homes, even those of strangers, with much more ease in that time than today … but, putting that aside, how does the Pharisee reactsto this?
He was not happy – big surprise – but not because of the woman being there. Rather, it’s because Jesus didn’t dismiss her, tell her to go away, stop doing what she was doing. “If this man were a prophet,” the Pharisee, whose name we soon learn is Simon, said, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.”
But Jesus didn’t send the woman away. Instead, he called Simon to task for his thoughts. He told a little parable about canceled debt that is really a thinly veiled story about forgiveness.
This woman, Jesus said, indeed is a sinner; but she knows she is forgiven of all her sins and is therefore acting out her thankfulness and love here before you. You, Simon, on the other hand, you are also forgiven of your sins – not as many as this woman, but you are still forgiven – but you have done nothing to show your thankfulness and praise.
And then … then Jesus did an amazing thing … maybe not so much to us, but certainly amazing to those seated around him. “Your sins are forgiven,” he said to the woman washing his feet, and he set the dinner party on end.
For only God can forgive sins, those “righteous ones” around the table with Jesus thought when they heard his words. Who is this Jesus, then, thinking that he can do something that is only reserved for God? they thought. And speaking these words to this, this woman, this sinner, one of those kind of people we have no business associating with, because we are religious and they obviously are not … well, this is just plain wrong! they surely said among themselves.
But in their anger, their frustration at having their “sin scorecards,” their tiny-brained concept of what and how sins are to be ranked, totally thrown out by Jesus … they failed to notice that this woman, once lost in a hellish downhill spiral … maybe some of her own bad choices; maybe, placed on her by others for being who she was, nothing more … and being labeled as the community outcast … this woman was now doing that which God had called her to with her life … that which God was calling each of these at the table to do, except they were too blind to notice … she, forgiven of her sins and healed from her past, was worshipping her Lord, and now going in peace to live a new life.
So the message of this text for us today, is that we are all in need of forgiveness, and God through Jesus calls each of us to turn around, repent, and follow him. God keeps no “sin ranking,” except in those words about the sin against the Holy Spirit … which will separate us from him … as well it should … as we by our behavior, our words and our actions, say that someone or a group of people is beyond God’s forgiveness … even thinking that of ourselves … raising up walls between ourselves, trying to destroy the work of the Holy Spirit as God’s Spirit works among us to build us into Jesus’ body in the world. For God’s forgiveness indeed is for all, equally, freely … and God’s forgiveness will bring us to healing, just as it healed the unnamed woman in this story … bringing us to healing of ourselves, healing of relationships with others, and healing of our relationship with God.
Forgiveness is a big deal. It certainly was for Jesus, as it got him into trouble, perhaps more than anything else he ever did. For forgiving sins in the Judaism of his time, was something reserved only for God. And by forgiving sins, Jesus was seen as putting himself into the place of God …something we know is true, but something those religious leaders of his time either refused to see, or denied.
And Jesus forgave because he knew what a healing thing it is to be forgiven of your sins, to have that burden lifted from your shoulders. A story from a little earlier in Luke points this out so clearly … in chapter five, as Jesus heals a paralyzed man.
While Jesus was in a house teaching, a paralyzed man was lowered on a board, through the roof … the size of the crowd prevented carrying him to Jesus. Jesus saw the man – but didn’t do what we would think he would do first … that is, tell him he’s healed. No, instead … he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Which gets the same reaction from the religious leaders present: “Blasphemy! Who does this guy think he is … God?” And Jesus, knowing their disgust, asked them which is easier, to forgive or pronounce healing … and then, proving that he has the power to forgive because he is God, Jesus healed the man physically anyway.
Jesus forgave the paralyzed man first because he knows how much our sin and guilt can paralyze us, keep us from living as the people he would have us be. Forgiveness loosens the bonds that years of guilt and shame may have placed around us … guilt over the way we’ve lived, or haven’t lived … things we’ve done or said that keep us up at night, keep us from relationships with others. Forgiveness brings healing to years of physical sickness, or sick hearts and spirits.
Now, I don’t believe that Jesus believed that the paralyzed man had behaved in such a way as to bring on his paralysis, and that he especially needed forgiving because of how rotten a life he had lived … like we may struggle and try to find reasons for a person’s sickness or death … well, he or she drank too much, or smoked too much, or drove too fast, or lived recklessly, or so on. Certainly our behaviors can contribute to illness and death, but pinning down blame can do little to promote healing, or comfort us after our loss. It’s the old finger pointing routine again. And Jesus doesn’t get into this “pin the blame on the paralytic” routine either. He just forgives him his sins, and then heals him. Forgiveness brings healing.
Forgiveness brings healing. It did for the paralyzed man. It did for the woman in our story today, as she went on to live a new life. It does for others. Maybe you have seen it in others. Maybe you have seen it in yourself.
Jesus knows us. Jesus knows the burdens we carry around with us … the guilt, the shame, the brooding over past events, the “could woulda shouldas” … anger at others, anger at ourselves … he knows how these can eat at us, can paralyze us, can sicken and even kill, kill our relationships with others, kill our relationship with him, even kill us, spiritually, or physically. And so he gives us the gift of forgiveness … having our burdens lifted … picking us up like the once paralyzed man and freeing us from our pasts like the unnamed woman … allowing us to show him our purest praise, pouring our ointment on his feet, being saved, going in peace, living in freedom and love with each other.
It all sounds too good to believe … to us in our finger-pointing, sin-ranking way of life, justifying ourselves at the expense of others … or locked in our rooms of guilt and shame over what we’ve done, how we’ve treated others, how we’ve lived our lives. Who would care that much about them… him … her … those kind of people … you and me?
For the pointed fingers always come back around to us in the end. Who will care … who will heal … who will save?
In Jesus’ name, and for his sake, your sins … and my sins … are forgiven. And so we go forth … not to rank, not to point, not to raise the walls of separation … but to take them down, and live that forgiveness with each other … the ointment of forgiveness which will heal us, which smells so sweetly to God, the way we best show him our thanks and praise … living lives of forgiveness and reconciliation. Amen.
