A New Regime
Luke
7:36-50
February
19, 2017
Rev.
John M. Caldwell, PhD
First
United Methodist Church
Decorah,
Iowa
Since
I graduated from seminary some thirty-three years ago, our
understanding of the New Testament has deepened immeasurably.
Knowledge of the past advances
in one of two ways: either we discover new information or we look at
the information we already have in new ways. When it comes to the New
Testament, barring the discovery of ancient manuscripts that would
settle some puzzles about the text, the only way to make a great deal
of progress is to use new methods for understanding what we already
have. And this is what has happened in the last third of a century or
so.
What
scholars have done is to use the findings of anthropologists and
sociologists. Sometimes these findings have deepened and enriched our
view of the Bible by providing a more detailed background. At other
times these findings have taken what we thought we knew about the
Bible and stood it on its head. Or the result has been a little of
both, as with our reading for today.
Social
sciences have taught us to pay close attention to what we used to
skip right over. For example, Jesus' encounter with the "woman
who was a sinner" is set within a dinner party at which Jesus
was the invited guest. It was a meal. Meals were incredibly important
to ancient society. What seems to us to be the simple act of inviting
someone to dinner for an enjoyable
evening of conversation and food was
loaded with meaning. It was
bound up with questions of status, honor, prestige, and power. Think
of a dinner party as one episode in a long-range competition for a
place in the community.
Normally,
to accept an invitation to a dinner was
to become indebted to the host. Jesus was in Simon's debt. Among
people of equal status this indebtedness wasn't normally a problem.
People invited each other. Today's guest would be next week's host.
It all worked out in the long run. This social debt was part of the
glue that held an ancient community together. Of course this assumes
that the players of the game were
roughly equal to each other.
If
they were not, the game got a little more complicated. Jesus was a
wandering wonder-worker and preacher. He didn't have a house. He
didn't have any money either. There was no way he could repay Simon's
invitation with an invitation of his
own. Simon knew that; he wasn't looking
for a return invitation. He was looking for something else.
When
I was in Suchitoto on sabbatical three years ago, I was invited to go
out to dinner by Sister Peggy. It's a rule you might tuck away in
case you need it sometime: When a nun invites you out to dinner, you
will be picking up the check. But there are other forms of currency
than money and I came away from the exchange far richer than I was
when I started. Of course, I also learned that while Sister Peggy
travels on an American passport, after thirty years in El Salvador
she has un estómago salvadoreño,
a Salvadoran stomach. And I do not. But,
that, really is a story for a different time and place.
Anyway,
Jesus could not repay Simon with a return invitation, so what was
Simon looking for? Well, the mere fact that Jesus ate in his house as
his house-guest added to Simon's prestige and honor in the community
and especially among his peers with whom he competed for these
things. After all, Jesus was something of a celebrity.
None
of these things had to be said to the early readers of Luke. They all
understood the game and they understood its rules. They followed the
plays like die-hard fans
of Manchester United follow a soccer game.
The
scene is set when an uninvited
guest showed up: a woman, described by the text as "a sinner."
She didn't say anything. In fact she is both nameless and
voiceless in this story. Instead she came up behind Jesus, wept over
his feet, wiped them with her hair, and perfumed them with oil kept
in an alabaster jar. Her hair was "down," otherwise she
couldn't have used it to dry Jesus' feet. Women with their hair
uncovered and down in public advertised their sexual availability.
Simon recognized her as a "sinner," in this case, a
prostitute, not because he knew her on sight or even by reputation,
but because she was wearing the uniform.
Jesus
didn't
object to what the woman is doing even though Jesus, like Simon, knew
what her social status was. Simon was scandalized. "What kind of
holy man is this who lets a prostitute
touch him?" Simon's shock was written all over his face. Jesus
didn't have to be a mind-reader to know exactly what he was thinking.
So
Jesus told a story. Since we were paying attention to the setting
of the story, we are not at all surprised that it is a story about
debt. This time it isn't social debt. Instead it's the monetary kind,
the kind with signed loan agreements and credit checks and specified
terms of repayment. Debts were
all too familiar to the people of Jesus' time and place. A system of
revolving credit that had allowed peasants and artisans to smooth out
their cash flow problems had been transformed into a predatory loan
system designed to extract as much wealth as possible from the people
with the least amount of wealth to begin with. Peasants who had
borrowed money against the harvest found themselves unable to payoff
the whole amount even after the harvest had been gathered. They were
on their way to losing their farms altogether to creditors who would
then sell the land to landowners who wanted to produce luxury goods
like wine and olive oil. Credit systems that had allowed peasant
farmers to weather years of drought and blight, now became systems to
strip them of their land and status as peasants. If they had no craft
or trade, men in peasant families who lost their land faced bad
choices: selling themselves into slavery, begging, or banditry. For
women the choices were even more stark: selling themselves into
slavery or becoming--guess what?--prostitutes.
So,
with the woman who had most certainly
not grown
up dreaming of becoming a sex worker bathing his feet in tears and
perfumed oil and his host looking on in disdain and blaming the woman
for the disaster that had befallen her, Jesus told a story about two
debtors. One of them owed about $3000 dollars 4and
the other about $30,000. Neither, Jesus tells us, were able to repay
the loan. The banker decided to write off the
loans. He marked them as "paid in
full" and returned the loan documents to the borrowers. Jesus
didn't say why the lender decided to do that. I'd venture to say that
this behavior would have been as unusual then as it is now. Bankers
just don't do that.
Asked
to draw a conclusion about which of the debtors would love the banker
more, Simon answered that it would be the debtor who had had the
larger loan forgiven. And Jesus agreed.
The
began with
social debt. Then Jesus told a story about financial debt. And,
finally, he turned from financial debt to another kind of debt.
Anyway,
Jesus reminded Simon that the invitation to dinner had not been based
on gratitude. Simon invited Jesus to dinner but had failed to show
him the respect
suitable to a guest who was a social equal. Simon had not greeted
Jesus with a kiss. Simon had not provided water so that Jesus could
wash his feet. But the woman who was "a sinner" had been
kissing his feet and washing them with her tears since Jesus had
entered the house.
Now
there is a traditional way of reading this story. Within that reading
there is a traditional way of reading the woman's tears: they are
tears of sorrow, tears of contrition, tears of repentance. The woman
is aware of how much her life and behavior differ from what they
should be. She is overwhelmed with grief, overwhelmed with sorrow at
the choices that she has made and what it has cost her in her
relationship with God and with her community. She longs for
forgiveness and restoration and perhaps grieves because she does not
believe that it is possible.
Jesus
responds to her sorrow and shame by telling her that her sins have
been forgiven. Her tears touch Jesus' heart with pity and in pity he
grants her
the restoration she is looking
for.
Other
versions of this story and ones like it have been joined together in
traditional imagination so that this woman's story doesn't end here.
In fact, says the tradition, the woman is none other than Mary of
Magdala, Mary Magdalene, who became a follower of Jesus, was present
with him at his death, and was one of the first witnesses to the
resurrection.
That's
the traditional reading. Unfortunately for the tradition, that is not
what the story says.
Jesus tells a story about debt forgiveness. The amount of the debt
that is forgiven is reflected in the love and gratitude of the two
debtors. "The one who is forgiven little loves little," he
says. He's talking about Simon. But "her many sins have been
forgiven; so she has shown great love" is what he says about
this child of God at his feet. Notice the past tense: "have been
forgiven." She was not
forgiven when he said, "Your sins are forgiven." Her sins
had been forgiven before she arrived at Simon's house. They were
forgiven before she picked up the alabaster jar of perfumed oil. Her
tears were not tears of sorrow or contrition; they were tears of
gratitude and joy. She was not weeping because she hoped for
forgiveness; she was weeping because she had
been forgiven.
What
had the woman heard that brought her to this conclusion? Had she
heard something in Jesus' preaching? Was it something that he had
said? Possibly. After all, Jesus had begun his public ministry by
announcing Jubilee, which is a program of debt forgiveness. Jubilee
is connected to the
Sabbath. There is a weekly Sabbath from work. On the seventh day of
the week--Sabbath means "seven"--work ceases. All work. No
one works. Not even slaves. Not even animals. Every seven years
the land itself
rests. Whatever grows by itself is for the poor, but nothing
is to be planted. The land rests.
Jubilee
comes in a Sabbath of Sabbath years. Every fifty years, not only does
the land rest, but any land that has been mortgaged is released from
debt. It returns to the seller. If someone has had to be sold into
slavery and their families have been unable to buy their freedom, in
the year of Jubilee they are released and may return to their
families.
This
is what is said in the Torah. There are lots
of questions about the Jubilee. Among the really good questions is
whether the Jubilee was ever actually observed. In some ways it
doesn't matter if it was. The idea
of Jubilee is a powerful image and it worked in Israel's imagination
of what covenant life should
look like. Jubilee was an image that could be adapted. In Isaiah in
the portion that Jesus quoted in his inaugural sermon the Jubilee
could include the release of captives, the return of exiles, the
healing of the blind, and good news for the poor. Incidentally, a
part of Isaiah 40:18 is forged into a famously flawed bell housed in
Philadelphia. Jesus invoked all of that and more in his ministry.
Only,
if I read his gospel rightly, Jesus' notion of Jubilee is not
an event that happens twice a century, but a permanent way of life.
For Luke's Jesus Jubilee is an image of God's dream and the way of
life into which he has called us.
If
Jubilee means debt relief, then permanent Jubilee means the abolition
of the debt system altogether. We can hardly imagine what that would
mean in actual practice, but it would certainly be good news for the
poor!
And
it was good news for the poor woman who was "a sinner." If
sin is a sort of debt owed to God, then permanent Jubilee means that
we are always already forgiven. Repentance then means, not the sorrow
and regret that come before forgiveness, but the joy, gratitude, and
transformed outlook that come after
forgiveness.
We
are always already forgiven. Simon was always already forgiven. He
felt little joy and gratitude because he had experienced little
forgiveness. Maybe it's because he had so few sins. More likely it's
because he thought that forgiveness was
something he had to earn and deserve
and, while he tried his best, he wasn't getting very far. The woman
on the other hand has experienced the full force of the always
already forgiveness that comes along
with Jubilee.
We
are accustomed to saying that Jesus paid the debt for our sins, but
the image of Jubilee as Jesus seems to be using it suggests that we
are forgiven for the simple reason that God has decided to forgive
us. And, so that we are not misled into thinking that there is some
sort of religion that can serve as a technology of forgiveness
and--just as importantly--of the denial
of forgiveness to those who don't
meet our qualifications,
forgiveness--debt freedom--is given to all of us simply because God
loves us and wants us to be freed for joyful gratitude and a
transformed outlook. We are forgiven, set free from
this most awful of debts, and given new
life without price, without the possibility of payment, as a pure
gift simply because God loves us. Yes, God loves us, and there is
nothing we can do about it. Amen.
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