Who is worthy?

It's an odd little story that comes from the Gospel of Luke and it asks many questions.  Here is where I want to start:  Who is worthy of Jesus?  Who is worthy of Jesus' life giving forgiveness?  Who is worthy of the transformation that comes from the love of Jesus?  [I know, that comes to 3 questions, but they are all really just versions of one another.]


She is a known sinner.  No one ever explains that because it seems to everyone who reads the story (I'm talking really knowledgeable biblical scholars here) that what she does to make her a 'sinner' is fairly obvious.  She is a woman who sells herself: she is her own commodity.  Sex for money.

Now I think it is important to point out that women who take this path  have few if any other options open to them.  They need money in order to survive.  There is no man: husband, son, even father, who will take her into their household and protect and provide for her.  She has few options for making the money she needs to survive.  You need to understand her cultural context before you go making assumptions.

She functions in a culture which values her for her fertility.  Without the ability to bear children, she has no value.  She may be able to give pleasure, but she is not valued as a person.  If she is lucky/blessed, she has given several children to a husband before she grows old.  If she is really blessed she has given her husband a son.  If God is looking favorably upon her, her husband has actual affection for her.  If all the stars align right, she will die before her husband so she isn't faced with the possibility of having no son who will include her in their family.  Daughters don't count.

So, on about 6 different counts, this anonymous woman has no value; she is a known sinner.

Is she worthy of Jesus' attention?  forgiveness?  love?  inclusion into his social circle?  By the standard rules of society, Jesus owes her nothing.  Nothing.  At. All.

Yet, there she is, touching !!!!! him in a gathering of important men (for who else would the Pharisee have invited to a dinner that had Jesus as a guest?)  She is making a regular spectacle of herself, crying and washing his feet and anointing him and kissing !!!! his feet.  Too much drama by half.

Then the story gets itself all twisted up.  She has shown great love because she has received great forgiveness.........that's what Jesus says.  But then Jesus says, "Your sins are forgiven.  Your faith has saved you."  So were her sins forgiven before she began this dinner outing or did she anticipate the forgiveness of sins or did she bring the ointment so that Jesus would forgive her?  What exactly is the sequence here?

What if I said the answer to all those questions is "Yes?"  She was forgiven before she arrived whether she had seen or heard Jesus or not.  She was forgiven as she anointed Jesus.  She was forgiven after she anointed Jesus.

Here's the key:  she was forgiven.  A child of God.  Worthy of Jesus' love, attention, and life giving forgiveness.  She was worthy: with or without the ointment and the tears and the uncertain Pharisee.  She was forgiven because Jesus was/ is in the forgiveness business.  She is forgiven because Jesus is forgiveness, and at some moment she knew this to be true.  It moved her to tears.  

I'm not surprised.

The preaching life...a spiritual journey

Now, this may be of absolutely no interest to you, but if we are going to be talking about spiritual growth then perhaps it has some pertinence.  Many folks will ask, "How do you do what you do?"  and generally they mean 'stand in front of a lot of people and talk.'

But the larger, and to me more important question, is how to tap into the Spirit's guiding, how to find a message in ancient stories about the faith and help folks see the connection to the conundrums of present day faith. And that gets at the spiritual life of the preacher.


A recent quote posted on facebook got me to thinking about this when contemplating the parable of the Tax Collector and Pharisee (Luke 18). The Pharisee was arrogant, self-serving and self-congratulating when presenting himself before God.  The tax collector couldn't even look up to the heavens and begged "Lord have mercy on me, a poor sinner."  We all know that the Tax Collector gets it and the Pharisee doesn't.  We know there is a tendency among people of faith to ground our relationship with God in 'right behavior' instead of in God's mercy and grace.  The preacher's job is to re-align folks and to do that, the preacher must put away her own self-serving and self-dependent ways first.  Some thoughts..........

It is called the parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee.  It’s at the very least a parable about prayer, but of course, there is much more at stake here than prayer.  It’s one of those scenarios where the words spoken reveal so much more than was intended.

Jesus sets it up for us with a point by point polarization between these two men, standing their ground in the temple. In the end it is the humble outcast tax collector who is standing in the light of God, for he went home justified.  My fear is that I am the Pharisee.  How do I become the tax collector?

How do I strip away my alb, stole and collar….my fancy prayers and professional liturgy and advanced education…How do I strip away my place at center stage and an office of my own so I can get all the way down to my underwear…and stand in humility before God?

Because humility is not the place I regularly inhabit.  It seems so easy to get lost, to lose track of the radicalness of following Jesus – the emptying and filling that comes by God’s hand.  I am not overwhelmed with my need for reconciliation with God....and I’m not talking about the large betrayals that are truth in my life, but those hidden moments of quiet despair: when I must face the fact that my skills, and gifts and experience are not enough for the task before me…..and they will never be enough. 

Not enough to serve as I’d hoped to serve – both the people of God and the good news of Jesus Christ. Or perhaps more truthfully, not enough to perform the way I had hoped to perform.  And with that I fall into the great chasm of right behavior and religious sensibilities, losing hold on the kingdom of the cross…. and I am no good to myself or God’s people.

Joel Green in his commentary says that the Pharisee is a man who depends on himself, stands before God without need of God’s mercy and who uses his holiness to exclude others who he disdains.  This is a man whose life is set in opposition to the Kingdom of God. I do not want to be that man.

Yet I know that somehow I want to be the one who in humility receives compassion and restoration from God while retaining all the prerogatives of station and office. So I know that these are the very things that need to be stripped away – these are the things that stand in my way, that keep me from the God I seek to serve. 

To have any kind of integrity, this is the truth I must carry into the pulpit and into the world….along with these words

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

And for a moment, I can step into the pulpit, to pass on – as one broken person to another - the words of grace I have first received, and the healing I have found in the one called Jesus.

For this and all mercies you grant us O Lord, we give thanks.  Amen