The answer is revealed immediately when Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness and the man can’t see the parallel. He can’t see that he is that man. The one to which little will be given.
The difference between shame and faith
Proper 6C | Luke 7:36-8:3
Jesus is a rulebreaker. I think of this every time we discuss our very important rules which we all must follow without exception. Jesus is a rulebreaker and he wants us to worry less about the rules and more about who we are becoming.
- Rules about Sabbath.
- Rules about who get to heal people.
- Rules about who we are to love.
- Rules about who is on the team.
- Rules about who is cast out.
- Rules about who is perfect in the eyes of GOD.
Over and over again Jesus says we’re playing by the wrong set of rules. Or more precisely, we’re missing the point of the rules.
You know how in Monopoly, whenever you pay a utility, you put the money in the middle of the board? Then when somebody lands on Free Parking they get to take all that cash. That is like, the most important rule in the whole game. Maybe it’s because it so like winning the lottery!
Only it’s not actually a rule. It never was. It was a local rule which every single person I know played by. But it wasn’t a real rule. It wasn’t how the game’s creator wanted us to play the game. She wanted us to see incidentally, like our creator does, how evil it is to drive our neighbors into bankruptcy.
This confusion over Free Parking is how Jesus seems to come at these types of moments. These rules we’re living by aren’t the real rules. They’re rules you play with because you like them and, let’s be honest, they benefit you. GOD, on the other hand, has a different approach.
Signs.
After commissioning his disciples in chapter 6, naming them “Apostles” and teaching them about love, Jesus began to show them what that love looks like. He healed the centurion’s slave, breaking a rule by healing a gentile. Then he raised a widow’s son from the dead to restore her to the community: because the rules turn a loving neighbor into an outcast. The rules, meant to protect her, let her slip through the cracks.
So then the lectionary skips over some really good text. Essentially what happens next is that Jesus goes on to heal some more people and he gets noticed by some other people. And John the Baptizer starts to get nervous because Jesus doesn’t seem like the messiah he thought he would be, so he sends some of his disciples to check on Jesus and essentially give him an ultimatum: Are you the man? Yes or No?
Jesus points to his work and essentially says the proof is right here in the stuff I’m doing. Watch. You’ll see.
Then Jesus turns to the people as John’s disciples go away and he starts to talk about John, but really it is an opportunity to point out how much people are missing the point: how they miss it, how John’s disciples are missing it, how John himself is missing it. Because they all think it is about one person, a single messiah sent out to care for everyone or to inspire them enough to lead them into battle. But those thoughts are proof they’ve missed the signs.
So then Jesus goes to this man’s house for dinner and proceeds to humiliate him at his own dinner party and raise up this disreputable woman, declaring her sins are forgiven.
Unseen.
Rules again.
Don’t you know what kind of woman she is?
To the Pharisee, she’s an outsider. She isn’t one of them anymore. She is to be cast out because of what she did. If not literally, then relationally, emotionally. Those are the rules. And she broke them. Even if GOD says to love her like a neighbor.
Of course, the question I’ve always had was how did she get in? Was there a rear door only she and the host knew about? For he certainly knows what kind of woman she is. What is she doing there?
She proceeds to touch Jesus (a word associated in the gospels with healing), weeping, tears raining upon his feet. This isn’t a quiet sniffling in the corner of a notorious woman who “knows her place” but the disruptive wailing of a woman seeking profound intimacy, begging to be seen and respected.
She sees Jesus. She knows him. And so she touches him and weeps upon him, wetting his feet with her rain-like tears. This is the image. At a dinner party.
So Jesus turns to the man and says to him, staring him right in the face, and asks do you see her?
Of course, he doesn’t mean literally, for her presence is driving the man crazy. He’s worried about his ritual purity and his social standing. He’s worried about what the people think of him and what they can do for him. Of course, he sees the source of his discomfort. She’s made herself impossible to miss.
But does he see her? Does he see the woman, the human being, the one pushed into the street by a system which earlier drove another woman out of the city and into the gutter because her son had died? Does he see her humanity?
What do you think?
Forgiven.
The answer is revealed immediately when Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness and the man can’t see the parallel. He can’t see that he is that man. The one to which little will be given.
Then Jesus lets the woman be the parable. For the host didn’t bother to give Jesus water, but she made it with tears. He didn’t greet Jesus with a kiss, but she wouldn’t stop kissing him. He didn’t anoint his head, but she anointed his feet. He couldn’t even treat Jesus like a decent guest, but she opened her heart to him like a lover.
So this man, so desperate to be respected, worried about how he is seen in society, is being shamed in his own home by Jesus. Shamed for being self-absorbed and demeaning this woman whose only crime in the story is to be “one of those people.” She is the kind of “other” spoken of in euphemisms and oblique language and not an insider given respect and dignity.
He can’t see her and he can’t see Jesus, either. He treats Jesus, not as an honored guest or a prophet, but calls him “teacher” and doesn’t even do those respectful things, those precious rules of respect Jews are commanded to even give to strangers.
But she is seen. By GOD; by Jesus; by his followers. In Mark’s parallel, Jesus says remarkably
Wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.
She is the model of the gospel. It’s vision and personification. She. So See her.
Then when Jesus leaves, the writer highlights the place of women in the movement, from the poor to the wealthy; as mothers and proclaimers, supporting and bankrolling. See them!
Seen.
Do we see her? The women of our world whose bodies are used like toys and are thrown away when emptied? The women who seek justice and yet greater sympathy is shown to the men who abuse them? The women who strive and suffer and weep for their babies and cry out in our streets and say not one more baby stolen from us? So many women in our country, our world, like Rachel, “weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” Do we see her?
Are we so afraid that we just do the easy rather than easily do the just?
Do we see her when she is building up the movement; when she is respecting the disrespected; when she is serving food in the soup kitchen and giving blankets to the homeless? Do we see her for her accomplishments and her gifts? Do we see her when she breaks the very rules Jesus commands her to break?
This is once again about the kindom. The beauty in this exchange is not only that the woman can see Jesus (that she knows who he is) but that her faith and witness to Jesus is proof that her sin — her separation from GOD — is already gone. That they can’t see it, thinking Jesus is just breaking rules shows how little of the kindom they see.
May we see these women and all of GOD’s work they are doing already, all the sin being forgiven, and all the hope they are creating in our homes and in our streets.
May we see the kindom and its work of forgiveness and new life, born to, supported by, and given in revolutionary love by women from all walks of life.
And may we see GOD’s handiwork throughout creation, welling up in those great wails for mercy, in hearts bursting with love, and through the touch of hands marked for healing with intimacy and respect. Amen.
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