The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 17, 2007
Preached at
by Pastor Dennis R. King
"Transforming Tears!"
Luke 7:36-8:3
The Grace and Mercy of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, be with You All. Amen
There is nothing in the world that will cause our hearts to be heavier than the knowledge of our own sin and its consequences. The woman who crashed the party in today’s Gospel knew that heaviness of heart. She had heard of Jesus and his reputation for being a fair and righteous man, and so she slipped into the room and stood behind Jesus. In those days people ate in a reclining position with their heads toward the table and their feet away from it, resting on an elbow.
She just stood there at His feet and wept. These were not the whining tears of self-pity, but the outpouring from an ocean-depth of a broken heart. She stood there with no illusions about herself. Her sins were many, but we’re not talking about them. We are talking about her sin. We are talking in this story about the profound sense of broken-heartedness in which even your very existence is cause for shame.
“Shame” – that the word which describes what the church has always meant when it used the term Original Sin -The shamefulness of abuse repeatedly inflicted on other people - The shamefulness of knowing better but not doing better - The shamefulness of a wasted life.
That is the source of this woman’s tears, and when she realized that her tears were falling on Jesus’ feet, she began to wipe His feet with her hair.
They came forth like a flood, and she wiped them from His feet with her hair.
There have been times in your life and in mine when tears like this have come. There have been times when the utter shame of your whole life and its twisted perversity arose from within you, and you could not hold back the tears. As you stood by the grave of a family member, and remembered lost opportunities and wasted time, and all the things you could have said and done, but kept putting off until later, the tears may have come. Or opportunities and wasted time, and all the things you could have said and done, but kept putting off until later, the tears may have come. Or, as you sat a table with friends, you suddenly realized how much a particular friend has meant to you, how faithful that person has been to you even when you did not deserve it, how genuine in listening to you, and how insincere you were in listening to him or her, and the tears may have come. Or, as you or someone you love very much achieved a remarkable success, and all at once you knew deep inside that you did not deserve it, that it was a sheer gift and nothing less, then your throat contracted and your eyes filled with tears.
When you are in the presence of a truly great person, you often know the shame of your own existence in a way that brings tears. Our worship rehearses that every Sunday when we begin the liturgy in the presence of God. Before God there are no illusions and we stand before the font of our baptism in shame, not daring to approach the symbolic center of our worship, the table of God. We confess our sin in words that are really verbal tears of shame. And then the Word of absolution is pronounced, the Word that covers our shame and invites us to burst into song and come to the Table.
When we stand for confession, we are standing with the woman at Jesus’ feet. Our hearts are heavy like hers, and our behavior is awkward and impulsive like hers. And just as Jesus received her, tears and all, He receives us. Our shame is covered and we are set free to move on into the life that God intended for us.
But there was someone else at the table with Jesus, a man named Simon, who was a Pharisee, a good man, a law-abiding man, a religious man. He did not shed any tears. He did not admit any sense of guilt or shame. At the moment he was not interested in these things. His interest was to find out more about Jesus, His ideas and His thoughts and His credentials. He wanted to discuss religion and not be interrupted by a sobbing woman. The only trouble was that Simon’s interest in religion also blinded him to his own failure to be a gracious host.
He had not offered Jesus water to wash His feet. He had not greeted Jesus with the traditional middle-eastern kiss when He arrived, He did not anoint Jesus’ head with oil. But Jesus was not planning to mention all of these things to Simon, because to Jesus they were relatively unimportant. Yet when the man, in a stage whisper, criticized the woman for being a sinner and Jesus for not recognizing it, Jesus brought up these other things.
What sort of man was Simon, anyway, we might ask? The answer is that he was a man just like most religious people anywhere. He was just like us. He had some pretty good defenses built up over the years to protect himself from his feelings. One of those defenses was to divide the world into two groups of people: the righteous and the sinner. (But as someone has pointed out, whenever you draw a line to exclude some people, you have to recognize that Jesus is often on the other side of that line.) Simon probably has not cried in years, except on those occasions when a polite tear was called for by the rules of social etiquette. His interest in Jesus was curiosity, rather than commitment. His dinner invitation was extended to Jesus as a matter of protocol and to prove to Jesus what a fine person he was.
Then when Jesus told the story of the two debtors and asked Simon which one would love the lender more the one whose large debt was forgiven, or the one whose debt was small, Simon gave a begrudging answer. He said, “The one, I suppose, to whom he forgave more.”
Today’s Gospel, then, is the story of a religious man and a sinful woman. It is the story of how Jesus dealt with both of them. And it is a story in which we can see ourselves, sometimes religious and defensive, sometimes overwhelmed by our own sense of shame. Yet, Jesus is in the midst of both sorts of people. He is the embodiment of the judgment of God… and the mercy of God. He confronts those who are hard of heart. He is merciful to those who are broken of heart. When we are proud and self-righteous we can expect to meet His judgment in one form or another. When we are overcome by profound shame and anxiety we can anticipate tenderness and forgiveness, and a full receiving of our life into the hands of God.
What is described for us here is a new style of life that is different from the style of life the world would have us pursue.
The new style of life begins with tears, the tears of humiliation and self-acknowledged shame. The new life is born out of the baptismal waters of weeping and the confession of our sin. When we have died to all claims of greatness, then the birth occurs which brings us into the welcoming presence of God.
The new style of life
is characterized by generosity. Karl Menninger once
said that giving money is a good criterion of a person’s mental health:
Generous people are rarely mentally ill people.
And finally, the new style of life is characterized by graciousness – the sort of graciousness that extends a welcome to others. The man in the story had not welcomed Jesus to his party, and the man had not welcomed the woman, either. And the man will never welcome anyone until he has come to grips with his own undeserved welcoming by God to the banquet of life itself. The woman, on the other hand, knows God’s welcome to her, and she will share that welcome with others without hesitation.
There is nothing in the world that will cause your heart to be heavier than the knowledge of your own sin and its consequence. But the Good News in today’s gospel is that there is, like wise, nothing in the world that can mend your broken heart and lift it up more fully and completely than having wept at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ and having heard him say, “YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN.” Amen.