No Longer I

Luke leaves little doubt as to the sin this woman has committed. She’s the town’s prostitute, a profession that has had poor press in the history of the Jews. I wonder if the story would have had quite the same impact if she had been an attorney! That Jesus would so easily forgive her is as shocking to the Pharisees as it is gratifying to the rest of us who might think “if that sin can be forgiven, surely mine can be, because God knows I’m not that bad.”




But be careful. When you start to compare sins, you’re on shaky ground. This parable is not about sexual misconduct, it’s about forgiveness, and more to the point, whether Jesus over-stepped his bounds when he forgave this woman. Who was he to forgive sins? Only God could do that!



There’s another sin here, one that is not so obvious, yet perhaps even more destructive than fornication. Jesus’ brief parable points us to this truth. “Simon”, Jesus says, “there once were two debtors”. Two. The woman is not the only sinner in the room, the Pharisee is the other. One owes fifty denarii the other five hundred. One debt is ten times the size of the other. The woman’s sins is obvious and universally despised. But what about Simons?



A religious man. A man of good reputation in the community. Apparently generous: he’s hosted a feast for Jesus, hasn’t he? What is his sin? Someone this righteous can’t have much on his conscience. We might conclude his was the fifty denarii debt while the woman’s was the five hundred. But I believe that conclusion would be dead wrong.



You see, the one sin is basically one of breaking a moral law. The other is against God himself. It isn’t just breaking the great commandment of loving God and loving our neighbor. It breaks our relationship with both. Laws can be mended, they can be out of date, they can be just plain wrong. Relationships are another matter. God is love - so says John in his first epistle. Refuse to love and you refuse God. Refuse to love your neighbor and you become the impediment for God’s love. For the love of God is not some invisible force that drops out of the sky willy nilly, it is transmitted to us through others. We are the channel of God’s love, forgiveness, mercy.



Jesus’ parable is of two debtors, not one, and rightly understood, it points to Simon much more than to the prostitute. Jesus elaborates this by reminding Simon that she has washed his feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, poured perfume on them, kissed them. Simon has done none of these things. At first glance, such extravagance is a bit bizarre for our modern eyes. I daresay most of us would be uncomfortable with such attention. But you see, this isn’t about our feet, it’s about her gratitude and love, her instinctive understanding that something about Jesus transcends a casual meeting. Any man could possess her body, only Jesus relates to her inner being, her soul. It is the one who can be comfortable with our souls that is our truest friend. A favorite saying of mine was voiced by a woman I knew who said of a friend, “I love her, not for what she is, but for what I become when I am with her.”



We see this kind of love in this woman, and her gift of perfume and tears flows out of this instinctive sense of gratitude in her. Clearly, Simon the Pharisee does not know what Jesus’ is talking about here. In his world, obedience to a law is all that is required of him. Such obedience guarantees him good standing in God’s eyes. It begins and ends with him.

For Jesus, the important point is how open we are to the searching eye of God and God’s forgiveness. The sign of such openness is the gratitude we display for the good grace of God, a grace we never thought we’d deserve. That is the alchemy of love, the transforming power of God’s spirit that takes on life and meaning in human relationships. And the fruit of such forgiveness is the way we make ourselves available to God to extend that forgiveness and love to others.



When Paul was writing his letter to the Galatians, he was dealing with a similar issue: new Christians being required to obey the Jewish Law rather than experiencing the liberating grace of love. He dismisses his credentials as worthless compared to his story, his experience of unearned love. Such a shift in emphasis is tricky. It can so easily look like boasting, and Paul knew it. If you concentrate on the ecstatic experience of being loved and broadcast it to all the world, you can become obnoxious. You’ve met such people I’m sure.



So Paul tells the story of what happened to him and then explains that the Saul he once was is now no more. The transformation is so total he even ceases to be Saul and is now called Paul. The difference is so marked he thinks of his old self as dead and a new self has emerged. And the remarkable sign of that new self is that he has become totally committed to Christ, so much so that his new life is only an extension of Christ. He lives now so that Christ can live in him.



Forgive me for being confessional here, but I can’t find any other words for it. Today marks the anniversary of the transforming moment for my life when I was released from the tyranny of my addiction to alcohol. That was 37 years ago. I mention this, not because I am proud of my sobriety - after all, it is rather foolish to take pride in not doing something, especially when others can drink without harm to themselves or anyone else. On the contrary, the miracle in my case was the way I was freed to serve others and be an extension of hope in a loving God who never gives up on us. Paul says, “I no longer live, now it is Christ who lives in me.” Those who have experienced release in AA discover early on that the key to their sobriety is in their efforts to help others. We call it “Twelfth stepping”. The miracle was not something we could keep to our selves, we had to pass it on.



I recall Jimmy whom I met briefly when he was in the throes of DT’s waiting for transportation to the alcoholic ward of the state mental hospital. There was little I could do. Newly sober myself, not even a full year, I had very little wisdom and virtually no experience at all in “working the steps” as we call it. But I could sit with him and keep him company until his ride came. It was Good Friday - how symbolic! - and as it would happen, Easter Sunday I would be in the same town as the hospital, so I decided to drop in on him to see how he was coming along.



He was still shaky, but the monsters that had been coming at him through cracks in the wall were gone, as was the look of terror I’d first seen in his eyes. His words were beginning to make sense. And he told me, “When you saw me Friday, I was so scared. I hardly knew what was happening to me. Today is the first day I could start to make sense out of anything. When I woke up this morning, I knew it was Easter and I missed my family. They don’t even know I’m here. I felt so lonely. And then you walked into the room, and when I saw you, you looked just like Jesus Christ!”



I have no mistaken notions about being Jesus, and no desire to compete with him as the savior of the world. But I understood what he was talking about. I remembered the night I had sat in an AA meeting feeling so desperately lonely and unforgivable, a “man of God” who had sinned grievously, and when a total stranger sat next to me, keeping me company and treating me as a human being deserving of compassion, understanding and love, the miracle of new life began for me. He had been my “Jesus Christ” even though I hadn’t called him that.



As the years have gone by, I have been learning more and more the lesson Paul was trying to teach us, that we are all extensions of the Christ to one another, and that where we will love, God loves, where we will listen, God listens, where we will care, God cares. But we must first be broken, our pride cracked open, our need for acceptance of love and healing ourselves revealed.



You see, Jesus not only described Simon’s sin, the sin of self-righteous and moral superiority, he told him both debtors were forgiven, not just the one. Think what you will about who was the greater sinner - in the end it really doesn’t matter. Both were sinners and both forgiven. That is the good news. The question is, which will show the fruits of that forgiveness - Simon or the Prostitute? The evidence is pretty conclusive, isn’t it?



Gratitude is the sign of the New Life, and service its hallmark. I love the prayer of the old slave, who said to God,

Oh Lord, I ain’t what I oughta be.

Oh Lord, I ain’t what I wanta be.

Oh Lord, I ain’t what I’m gonna be.

But Thanks Lord, I ain’t what used to be! Amen.