A Thousand Thanks
Text: Luke 7:36-8:3
This is the second week in a row that we’ve celebrated the Sacrament of Baptism. I have to admit that it’s the first time in my career that I’ve ever had that happen. Timing wise it would have not been able to work out that we would have both on the same day. In retrospect, that’s not a bad thing at all… if anything it keeps the gift of baptism front-and-centre quite literally for a bit longer than it normally would be for us. It speaks to the gift that God gives us, and when we celebrate it together, serves as a reminder as to what God does for us… plus it’s a reminder to us that God’s gift comes first. Everything else we do as a part of our faith flows out from this sense of gratitude of what God has already done.
I think that’s often something we forget. An awful lot of time and energy is invested in trying to earn our way into God’s good graces… and conversely, looking down our noses at those that don’t measure up to the standards that we begin to create. The encounter that we have with Jesus in the gospel of Luke is one of contrasts… showing us that sense of self-righteousness that comes when we believe we need to earn God’s favour, versus the kind of unbridled expressions of thanks that can come when we realize that it’s already there.
In Luke’s telling of the gospel story, there is this encounter where a Pharisee by the name of Simon invites Jesus into his home for a meal. We have no information as to what the occasion might have been, whether it was a large-scale social event, or a simple meal and conversation. Regardless, there is this disruption, where a woman arrives… she doesn’t sit at the table, but brings a jar of ointment, and begins giving Jesus the ancient equivalent of a Pedicure! While this may seem a little strange or out of place, the concern over this woman is not for her behaviour, or even for the appropriateness that this is happening at the dinner table. Simon’s thinks to himself “doesn’t he know who this person is? She’s a sinner… she’s unclean… If he were truly a prophet, he’d know that” his look of disgust is obviously written all over his face. Jesus picks up on it, and the lesson begins…
It’s a short story about gratitude and forgiveness. Not really a parable, as there is no major twist. The answer is obvious… and yet the Pharisee seems to miss out on the point. He’s more concerned about the social status of the woman, who is touching and caressing Jesus feet. In fact, she’s actually showing the proper respect and custom in washing this traveler’s feet, rather than the Pharisee himself. Simon is also concerned with the fact that this woman is actually touching Jesus. She is unclean… a sinner… her very touch defiles her… as children, we called this “cooties” –but in ancient Hebrew culture, it was called it clean and unclean… and was far more ingrained into the social fabric of the day.
Maybe to get a sense of the Pharisee’s mindset, we need to back up just a little bit… because this attitude is still there in society… perhaps just not as obvious. This past week, I was reading an article in a recent issue of Time Magazine that noted something about human nature. A psychologist did an experiment with his class. It was rather simple, but its effects are profound.
In front of his university class, a psychologist took a cockroach that had been completely sterilized, and showed it to his class. He then dipped the cockroach into a glass of orange juice, and then offered the juice to the class to see if anyone wanted to take a sip. Nobody did.
The fact that probably most of us just went “ewwwww… yuck!” means that his experiment still works. We have this built in sense of what is clean and what is not, despite whatever information we might have to the contrary. Despite being completely sterile, the presence of this cockroach had somehow “infected” the orange juice. Nobody was willing to touch it. The time article shows that this finds it way into how we organize our lives… it explains why baby food that is shelved directly beside diapers never seems to sell. Think about this… How many of us will consciously put a bag of apples beside a bag of cat litter in the shopping cart?
But what does this have to do with the Pharisee, Jesus, and this woman cleaning his feet? Plenty.
Take that feeling of what is really an irrational sense of clean and unclean, and you might get a sense of the Pharisee’s point of view. As far as he was concerned, this woman’s presence would infect everything she touched. It would be no longer pure… or more specifically, no longer pure in the eyes of God. For him, the fact that Jesus was allowing this woman to touch him was not only scandalous, but risked the soul of anyone she touched precisely because she was a “sinner.” Of course, we think that’s nonsense… but for the Pharisee and for many at that time, this woman was the cockroach in the orange juice.
The question is, how often do we treat others like the cockroach in the orange juice?
Jesus is showing us something more. Of course he knew that this woman was a sinner. The Pharisees often derided Jesus for hanging out with the wrong kind of people. They were right, of course, he did… because Jesus knew that the ideas of clean and unclean when it came to people were false. In so doing, Jesus demonstrates that he has come to free us from all bondage, even the bondage of our narrowly conceived religion. He has come to destroy all the barriers that we erect between “sinners” and “righteous.” Jesus sets himself at odds with tradition and with the religious establishment of his day. But he also reveals a new and revolutionary kingdom, a kingdom in which all the old values, the old standards of insiders and outsiders, right and wrong, welcome and unwelcome, sinners and righteous, are turned upside down and set in a new light.
In this story, oddly enough, the woman who was washing his feet already knew this. Her action was not out of a sense of groveling for forgiveness or begging for mercy. She was showing great respect and gratitude for Jesus in washing his feet. Grace and forgiveness was already there, and so she was doing this as a way to say thank-you in a very tangible way.
Quite often within churches, we hear the question “are you saved?” Provided that we give a particular response, provided that it’s phrased in a certain way, we might give the right answer. Yet really, when we think about it in light of this story, I’m not sure if that’s the right question. In fact, that might be the question that the Pharisee might ask. Jesus proclaimed the forgiveness of God. Grace… it’s a gift from God… and it comes from God first. It’s not something we can earn or achieve. It’s already there, and it’s up to us to simply accept it.
Perhaps the question is better phrased, “You are saved… God has saved you… so what are you going to do about it?”
It’s the lesson that the woman who washes Jesus feet teaches us. Gratitude. Her presence at the feet of Jesus shows us the sense of gratitude that she feels for having received this gift of forgiveness. She is so filled with thanks that she is now able to ignore the judgmental establishment and respond in a way that she is able.
That’s what it is for us, really. Instead of trying to earn our way into God’s good graces, we need to be reminded that God has already forgiven us. Whatever we do as part of our faith is in response to what God has already done for us. There is no earning at play here… it is all gratitude… everything we do as part of our faith –be it coming together in worship, getting involved in mission projects, teaching church school, singing in the choir– everything is in grateful response to what God has already done for us. The woman in Luke’s story reminds us of that… Baptism reminds us of that… that the expression of faith in our lives is not for a selfish self-preservation, but a life of expressing our thanks for what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
This is the second week in a row that we’ve celebrated the Sacrament of Baptism. I have to admit that it’s the first time in my career that I’ve ever had that happen. Timing wise it would have not been able to work out that we would have both on the same day. In retrospect, that’s not a bad thing at all… if anything it keeps the gift of baptism front-and-centre quite literally for a bit longer than it normally would be for us. It speaks to the gift that God gives us, and when we celebrate it together, serves as a reminder as to what God does for us… plus it’s a reminder to us that God’s gift comes first. Everything else we do as a part of our faith flows out from this sense of gratitude of what God has already done.
I think that’s often something we forget. An awful lot of time and energy is invested in trying to earn our way into God’s good graces… and conversely, looking down our noses at those that don’t measure up to the standards that we begin to create. The encounter that we have with Jesus in the gospel of Luke is one of contrasts… showing us that sense of self-righteousness that comes when we believe we need to earn God’s favour, versus the kind of unbridled expressions of thanks that can come when we realize that it’s already there.
In Luke’s telling of the gospel story, there is this encounter where a Pharisee by the name of Simon invites Jesus into his home for a meal. We have no information as to what the occasion might have been, whether it was a large-scale social event, or a simple meal and conversation. Regardless, there is this disruption, where a woman arrives… she doesn’t sit at the table, but brings a jar of ointment, and begins giving Jesus the ancient equivalent of a Pedicure! While this may seem a little strange or out of place, the concern over this woman is not for her behaviour, or even for the appropriateness that this is happening at the dinner table. Simon’s thinks to himself “doesn’t he know who this person is? She’s a sinner… she’s unclean… If he were truly a prophet, he’d know that” his look of disgust is obviously written all over his face. Jesus picks up on it, and the lesson begins…
It’s a short story about gratitude and forgiveness. Not really a parable, as there is no major twist. The answer is obvious… and yet the Pharisee seems to miss out on the point. He’s more concerned about the social status of the woman, who is touching and caressing Jesus feet. In fact, she’s actually showing the proper respect and custom in washing this traveler’s feet, rather than the Pharisee himself. Simon is also concerned with the fact that this woman is actually touching Jesus. She is unclean… a sinner… her very touch defiles her… as children, we called this “cooties” –but in ancient Hebrew culture, it was called it clean and unclean… and was far more ingrained into the social fabric of the day.
Maybe to get a sense of the Pharisee’s mindset, we need to back up just a little bit… because this attitude is still there in society… perhaps just not as obvious. This past week, I was reading an article in a recent issue of Time Magazine that noted something about human nature. A psychologist did an experiment with his class. It was rather simple, but its effects are profound.
In front of his university class, a psychologist took a cockroach that had been completely sterilized, and showed it to his class. He then dipped the cockroach into a glass of orange juice, and then offered the juice to the class to see if anyone wanted to take a sip. Nobody did.
The fact that probably most of us just went “ewwwww… yuck!” means that his experiment still works. We have this built in sense of what is clean and what is not, despite whatever information we might have to the contrary. Despite being completely sterile, the presence of this cockroach had somehow “infected” the orange juice. Nobody was willing to touch it. The time article shows that this finds it way into how we organize our lives… it explains why baby food that is shelved directly beside diapers never seems to sell. Think about this… How many of us will consciously put a bag of apples beside a bag of cat litter in the shopping cart?
But what does this have to do with the Pharisee, Jesus, and this woman cleaning his feet? Plenty.
Take that feeling of what is really an irrational sense of clean and unclean, and you might get a sense of the Pharisee’s point of view. As far as he was concerned, this woman’s presence would infect everything she touched. It would be no longer pure… or more specifically, no longer pure in the eyes of God. For him, the fact that Jesus was allowing this woman to touch him was not only scandalous, but risked the soul of anyone she touched precisely because she was a “sinner.” Of course, we think that’s nonsense… but for the Pharisee and for many at that time, this woman was the cockroach in the orange juice.
The question is, how often do we treat others like the cockroach in the orange juice?
Jesus is showing us something more. Of course he knew that this woman was a sinner. The Pharisees often derided Jesus for hanging out with the wrong kind of people. They were right, of course, he did… because Jesus knew that the ideas of clean and unclean when it came to people were false. In so doing, Jesus demonstrates that he has come to free us from all bondage, even the bondage of our narrowly conceived religion. He has come to destroy all the barriers that we erect between “sinners” and “righteous.” Jesus sets himself at odds with tradition and with the religious establishment of his day. But he also reveals a new and revolutionary kingdom, a kingdom in which all the old values, the old standards of insiders and outsiders, right and wrong, welcome and unwelcome, sinners and righteous, are turned upside down and set in a new light.
In this story, oddly enough, the woman who was washing his feet already knew this. Her action was not out of a sense of groveling for forgiveness or begging for mercy. She was showing great respect and gratitude for Jesus in washing his feet. Grace and forgiveness was already there, and so she was doing this as a way to say thank-you in a very tangible way.
Quite often within churches, we hear the question “are you saved?” Provided that we give a particular response, provided that it’s phrased in a certain way, we might give the right answer. Yet really, when we think about it in light of this story, I’m not sure if that’s the right question. In fact, that might be the question that the Pharisee might ask. Jesus proclaimed the forgiveness of God. Grace… it’s a gift from God… and it comes from God first. It’s not something we can earn or achieve. It’s already there, and it’s up to us to simply accept it.
Perhaps the question is better phrased, “You are saved… God has saved you… so what are you going to do about it?”
It’s the lesson that the woman who washes Jesus feet teaches us. Gratitude. Her presence at the feet of Jesus shows us the sense of gratitude that she feels for having received this gift of forgiveness. She is so filled with thanks that she is now able to ignore the judgmental establishment and respond in a way that she is able.
That’s what it is for us, really. Instead of trying to earn our way into God’s good graces, we need to be reminded that God has already forgiven us. Whatever we do as part of our faith is in response to what God has already done for us. There is no earning at play here… it is all gratitude… everything we do as part of our faith –be it coming together in worship, getting involved in mission projects, teaching church school, singing in the choir– everything is in grateful response to what God has already done for us. The woman in Luke’s story reminds us of that… Baptism reminds us of that… that the expression of faith in our lives is not for a selfish self-preservation, but a life of expressing our thanks for what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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