Lectionary Texts for Sunday, June 17

A Parable of Grace

Faith-Love-Salvation-Peace

The Bible passages for next Sunday, June 17th are

Psalm 5:1-8
1 Kings 21:1-21
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3

I'm focusing on Psalm 5 and Luke 7/8 at our church.

Reflecting on them this morning I'm struck by the themes: listening, pleading our case, counting on God's justice, love and faith, grace and salvation, hospitality and grace, forgiveness and love, hearing and speaking to oneself.

The Psalm is a prayer poem, asking for God to not forget the poet who is pleading his case. Surrounded by ennemies, badmouthing and threatening him, the poet is counting on God's justice, and hoping that God is in heaven, that God is just, that God hears our prayers and that God is due time will return a gracious answer of peace and deliverance.

The gospel lesson is about the woman who comes and washes the feet of Jesus with her tears and hair, and the parable Jesus then tells to the folks sitting at the table horrified by this woman's scandalous actions and Jesus un-prophetic or un-professional way of responding to her.

Jesus is invited to a meal by an at-first un-named Pharisee Simon, undoubtedly eager to learn more by having a tete-a-tete with the great teacher to discuss his questions. He invites his friends to join the celebration. While they eat an un-named lady enters the house, sits behind Jesus and starts washing and cleaning his feet (what Simon or his servants should have done to welcome the special dinner guest) with her tears, hair and ointment in an expensive alabaster jar. Only women of the street would most likely carry such ointment around for professional use. And everyone at the dinner party seems to not only know who she is but what she does. They mutter to themselves their disapproval and disappointment in Jesus who seemed to be a prophet, but must not be since he's too dense to realize what's happening and who this woman is and then to let her touch him in public. Prophets are always in control of what's happening, not victims of circumstance.

Ironically Jesus responds to the muttering and negativity with a parable story, told to Simon and his friends, although Jesus seems to be looking at the woman. It's meant not for her but for them. Both debtors are in debt to the creditor. It's the creditor who takes the initative, pardonning both debts, giving new life to both of his own free accord. So who then will, or should, be the most grateful?

Do they get it? Jesus asks Simon some interpretive questions, seeking to open his eyes to the transformative meaning of the parable - all of us are debtors, equally wether we think we're more reighteous, more equal, more pure, more "good" than others, or not. For those of Jesus' day it was about keeping the law of God without failure, about what you did (prostitutes and tax collectors weren't in the 'in' crowd). Righteousness, or favor from God, was often about race, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status. Jesus challenges such stereotypes about who is "in" with God and who is "out." I think Simon got the parable, the implication that he too was a debtor before God just like the woman, just like all of us. But his dinner guests....seems to be another story.

Jesus pushes their buttons by saying that the woman's debts (sins) are forgiven because of her love and faith. WHAT? Only God can do that. Who is this uppity carpenter turned teacher from Nazareth, they most likely mutter to themselves. I find myself wondering....WHAT? I thought that the Biblical vision of Salvation was about Grace...a gift freely given by God, by faith alone. Jesus seems to imply that the woman is saved, forgiven, made new because of her actions....that she earned God's love.

Like all of the gospel - it has a message inviting a transforming response to the original hearers (destinatairs) of the word, to the early church for which the gospels were written down, and then also for us today. How is it that the parable is opening my eyes - our eyes - to the way that we treat others, the way that we might assume that we are more loved by God, or even more worthy of God's love - of who is in the "in" crowd and who is "outside?" Maybe our actions are more important than we seem to admit in our Reformed tradition...maybe her faith was already present well before she came to the house (why else would she seek out Jesus like she did, ready with the ointment, tears on the verge of flowing?) So maybe in a sense her actions are simply her visible demonstration of her acceptance of God's grace, power of love, resurrection-giving forgivness and inclusion in her life, which happened long before she bust into this dinner party. In Christian circles we talk a lot about faith alone, about the impossiblity to earn God's love which we can only receive. In non-Christian circles often there is talk that we don't have to earn love, that we all deserve it; we don't have to receive forgiveness, we're already all-right. Yet maybe both sides are off. It doesn't seem to me that we're all-right. When I look at the world I see that we seem to be lost, and lost in even more radical ways thanks to our industrial powers, technological developments, and penchant for warfare, jealousy, and violence. Oftentimes it seems that people of Christian faith talk a lot about salvation, faith, inclusion and grace...yet their actions don't communicate the same message.

Something I read basically said that, forgivness is received, should provoke in us a love of the other, of our neighbor, that such inward trasnformation can only be translated and communicated through outward action.

What do you hear in the scriptures? What does such a message of love, hope, forgiveness and grace mean when we'll gather for Christian worship on Father's Day - a day in which we celebrate Fathers...yet many of us cringe at the thought of celebrating relationships that are non-existant or possibly the opposite of what Jesus is talking about at this dinner party?