Do You See This Woman? based on the reading from Luke 7:36-8:3.

“Do You See This Woman?!” A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church Metuchen, New Jersey June 17, 2007

Text: Luke 7:36-8:3

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “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.” Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon an-swered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources. —Luke 7:36-8:3, NRSV

It was what some would call a “busman’s holiday.” It was Mother’s Day and the Associ-ate Pastor was preaching. So the Pastor took advantage of that rare opportunity and traveled several hundred miles to visit his mother that weekend and join her for the services in her church. Because one of their children had come down with a stomach upset at the last minute, the Pastor’s wife chose to stay home and provide the care.

So, she wasn’t there that morning when the Preacher in that distant church said, “The best years of my life were spent in the arms of another man’s wife.” There was a nervous kind of si-lence as people sort of glanced at one another out of the corners of their eyes. Then, after a deliber-ately extended pause, the Pastor repeated himself: “Yes,” he reiterated, “the best years of my life were spent in the arms of another man’s wife…my mother.” You could hear a rush of air being expelled from many lungs, and the chuckles that gradually grew into laughter, as the relieved con-gregation shared that wonderful image.
Well, the visiting Pastor thought that was just a great illustration. (You know, pastors are al-ways on the lookout for good and useable illustrations from their colleagues!) And he decided that the following year, when he would preach the Mother’s Day Message at his own church, he would use it. So, when the second Sunday in May came around the next year, there he stood in the Pul-pit…glancing out into the congregation as he began, “You know, the best years of my life were spent in the arms of another man’s wife.” As had happened a year before in that other church, there were some nervous glances, some audible intakes of breath, and the added feature of a scowl creep-ing across the face of the Pastor’s wife.

“Yes,” he reiterated, “the best years of my life were spent in the arms of another man’s wife…” And there was another long pause, during which the darkening countenance of the Pas-tor’s wife was becoming even more evident. “The best years of my life were spent in the arms of another man’s wife…” the obviously befuddled and increasingly desperate Pastor repeated, “but for the life of me, I can’t remember who she was!”

Thirty years ago this spring I entered into a delightful relationship with another woman, and over the course of the past three decades that relationship has deepened in ways I could not even imagine at its the beginning. I encountered her at a Faith at Work spiritual growth weekend in a Roman Catholic Retreat Center in Maryland. I was invited to participate in the event as a seminary administrator and faculty member, and I know exactly who initially introduced her to me. It was Dr. Walter Wink, a biblical scholar attached to Auburn Theological School, the continuing education division of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Quite an unusual set of circumstances, really. A seminary dean of students—an ordained United Methodist clergyman—getting involved with another woman at a spiritual growth event at a Catholic retreat center with the encouragement and blessing of a New Testament scholar. And I can tell you, I fell hard that weekend. Even though, like my clergy brother, I don’t even know her name. But then, neither does anyone else that I know of. Oh, you can relax…my wife knows all about her. She’s cool! After all, this unnamed woman would likely be approaching the second millennia of her birth.

She walked in off the streets to that house of Simon the Pharisee where Jesus had been in-vited to dinner. And this wonderful story of her tears of gratitude and love spilling onto the Mas-ter’s feet has captured my spirit and imagination ever since. And that weekend in Maryland Walter Wink—author of a lively book about The Bible in Human Transformation—took that group of strangers to one another—a multi-denominational amalgamation of clergy and seminary administra-tors and teachers from across the nation—and led us in an intense encounter with her story. We even role played it out one afternoon, releasing many of our natural (or assumed) reservations and inhibitions, so we could get inside of her experience and inside that of the men who shared such an incredible moment at Simon the Pharisee’s table. I left at the end of the weekend with a profound respect for Dr. Wink’s teaching style, but even more with growing admiration and yes, even love, for this gutsy woman of Luke 7.

Four or five years ago the sparks of that relationship were rekindled, so to speak, when I heard our former Bishop Alfred Johnson read this passage of Scripture just before he preached a brief homily at our Greater NJ Annual Conference session. You know how it is with very familiar passages of Scripture? Sometimes you think you know them so well that you kind of shut half your brain off while they’re being read, and you think about your “To-Do List,” or what you’re going to have for breakfast. Despite my profound love for this story, I probably was doing just that—“wool-gathering” my Grandmother would have called it—when I heard something entirely new emerge. Just the slightest change in the intonation in Bishop Johnson’s voice…but it sent my mind whirling. I’m not even sure I caught all of what he had to say in his homily, so engaged was my mind and spirit. He got to the point in the reading where Jesus turns toward the woman over whose presence in his home Simon the Pharisee is obviously upset, because he knows exactly who and what she is…and [Jesus says] to Simon, “Do you see this woman?”

That was it: “Do you see this woman, Simon?!” And I realized that he hadn’t seen her. Not really. He was looking at a stereotype. Simon saw a sinner and an outcast. He saw someone who simply by being in the room was destroying the ritual purity of his dwelling place. And what she was doing to Jesus over there…weeping on his feet, drying them with her hair, kissing them with her lips…it was a nightmare! To use Mark Twain’s apt description, Simon the Pharisee was “a good man in the very worst sense of the word.”

And it is all a little bit more than the Pharisee is able to take, disapproval writ large across his face as he thinks: “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” In other words, “If this Jesus were really religious, if he had prophetic insight, he would be able to tell what kind of woman this is.” After all, what is re-ligion for if not to enable one to discern between the good and the bad, the righteous and the un-righteous?
“Do you see this woman, Simon?!” I don’t think he really does. I suspect many of us might not. As the initial clues about her “professional” life emerge in the story, many of us are likely taken back and wonder what the heck Jesus can be thinking, allowing her to touch and mas-sage his feet like that. Few of us are going to stop and consider the desperate circumstances that drove her and other women of her day…and ours?…into the streets so that they could simply sur-vive.
“Luke goes to great lengths to show the scandalousness of Jesus’ defiling contact with this sinner. Luke paints her actions toward Jesus in the most sensitive, sensual colors. And Jesus has allowed this woman to touch him. The Greek word for “touch” here is haupto, which can mean, and may mean here, “to caress, to light a fire, to fondle.” Obviously, a kind of scandalous eroticism permeates this encounter, which adds to the general scandalousness of the episode. Is this any way for a real prophet to be behaving?”

There are sinners who know they are sick and need a physician and there are sinners who do not know they are sick, but they are both sinners. And Jesus eats with each of them.

Where would you be seated at that table, my friends? I surmise that some of us here today are like Simon the Pharisee—good at being good, religious and upright. Others of us identify with the woman…that publicly “sinful” woman. For some of us, our sin is in our lifestyle; for others of us, our sin is in our condemnation of others’ lifestyles. Some of us sin in our sinfulness; others of us sin in our righteousness.

And Jesus eats with both types of sinners. He receives the weeping penitent; he patiently, though honestly instructs the self-righteous Pharisee.

Therein is our hope, that every time this congregation gathers—to commune together at The Lord’s Supper or to eat together at a covered-dish supper—Jesus eats and drinks with sin-ners…only sinners. Thanks be to God!

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PRAYER
Lord Jesus, do this one thing for us: help each of us to remember that we were outsiders, we were sinners, far from the promises of God, lost and alone. And you came to us, invited us, called us, and embraced us.

Lord Jesus, help us remember your invitation and your embrace, and help us to do the same in our encounters with those whom we consider to be outsiders, sinners, lost and alone. Amen.
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