The sermon for week July 25, 2010
Sermon - July 25, 2010
It is great to be back in Ohio, although it's different to be in Toledo Rocket and Bowling Green Falcon country when you're an Ohio Bobcat. When I learned Reverend Bill was a Miami Redhawk, i almost called this whole thing off... okay, maybe not. I have had a great time meeting and speaking with both Bill and the members of the search committee. I have enjoyed learning about what God is doing through the ministry of this church, and I hope to be a part of it. Thank you for sharing your worship time with me, and I hope to be doing a lot more of it in the near future.
Upon reading the Gospel story for today, I was transported back to my college world religions class. I remember sitting in a lecture about the Hindu Cast System and being appalled. I felt so bad about the “untouchables” at the bottom of the cast. I scoffed at the notion. People who are deemed unworthy or lower than others based on who their parents are. Like in the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, where the main character works as a coffee-guy, yet somehow everyone knows he’s of a lower cast and thus shouldn’t know the answers to the questions or have any special destiny at all. “Ugh,” I thought. “What a barbaric religion. I am happy we don’t have this in Christianity.”
But we do. Maybe the Hindus have it right, as they are at least honest with their untouchables… We Christians could learn a thing or two from them, we call our untouchables “sinners.”
The woman we meet in today’s Gospel lesson is a sinner. This identity is the third thing we learn about her: she is a woman, she is from the city, and she is a sinner. How does the narrator, Simon the Pharisee, and Jesus all possess this information? What leads them to a share assessment? What has she done? Is she wearing some scarlet letter around? What does a sinner look like?
People back in Jesus’ day would know a sinner on sight. Today, some would equate “sinner” with bad people. What pops into your mind? Someone who looks like they belong to Hells Angels? A goth, dressed all in black with too much mascara on? How about a turban? How about someone who is poor, dirty, and dressed in obvious hand-me-down clothes? Are they young, or old? Male or female? Do they have the same color skin as you?
Sinners are commonly understood as people who routinely do bad things. In the case of the woman who anoints Jesus, her wicked deeds would have been public knowledge. When Luke tells the story, we do not know exactly what the sins are. The behavior we see, however, makes it hard to think she’s a bad person. She is shameless and elaborate in her adoration of Jesus, much better than Simon the Pharisee’s treatment Simon’s treatment was indifferent toward Jesus. She is not malicious, antisocial or cruel. But she is still labeled as a sinner, not only by the Pharisee, but also by Jesus. So what exactly is a sinner?
Paul and many other biblical writers are convinced that all people have sinned and thus are sinners. Think of Paul’s words in Romans 3:23: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So the woman is indeed a sinner, like you, like me, like everyone. This approach does not help us understand the story. No one in the story, including Jesus, does anything but reinforce the impression that the woman’s many sins mark her as different from her neighbors. Why would Luke identify her, and in other parts of his gospel as well, as a sinner, if the category did not set her apart?
Another approach, advocated by Greg Carey, Marcus Borg, and other historical theologians, introduced a resolution to the question. The sinners in ancient Judaism were simply the ordinary people, the am ha’arets or “people of the land.” Because they were uneducated and unconcerned about religious or philosophical things, one could not expect commoners to observe the basic social etiquette of the times. In this view, the woman is not a sinner because she is mean or cruel, but because she does not live up to the highest standards of her religious culture.
People of the land… this makes me think of my own prejudice. I confess that I have struggled with a prejudice against rednecks. Let me give some background. I was raised in Appalachian Ohio by my single mother who was a mechanic. My grandpa was a bee-keeper and brickyard worker. I was blue-collar through and through, yet my family were artisans. They were a curious tinkering lot, they questioned, they knew what was going on. This made me curious and that curiosity made me different from those I grew up around. They seemed content with the answer “Because we have always done it this way” and saw no need to change. That never seemed to satisfy me.
So I began to really resist and rebel at my surroundings. I viewed others as unsophisticated. Lacking etiquette. Ignorant. I even developed a name for them, popularized by Jeff Foxworthy, rednecks. I was prejudiced against rednecks, and while I really can’t describe what one looks like, I know one when I see one. Maybe you know what rednecks are… people who think the last words of the Star Spangled Banner are “Gentlemen, start your engines.” Or have a gun rack in their sedan. Or they think a quarter horse is the ride out in front of WallMart.
But maybe back in Jesus’ day, all a sinner was, was the first century equivalent of a redneck. Certainly I’m not that. I am totally different from them, there are no commonalities shared between me and a redneck and it is just and right that I do not like them.
I used to think this until I met Rewster.
Rewster was a customer of mine back when I was working in construction sales in Washington D.C. He was a foreman to the company I was assigned to because if I had my way, I wouldn’t have put up with him. He was extremely demanding. He was a scruffy little guy who loved to pick a fight and get in your face which is why he got the nickname. He loved NASCAR, country music, the Baltimore Ravens, and being politically incorrect; four things I didn’t like at the time and being a Browns fan, I still don’t like the Ravens. But over the years, I grew to like Rewster. He became my favorite customer for many reasons.
First off, he was extremely loyal. He threw my competition out on their ear anytime they visited his site, unlike some of my other customers who felt it was only fair to throw the competition a bone and prove that I am delivering all that I say I am.
I learned that he spent his vacations building houses for Habitat for Humanity and when Hurricane Katrina hit, he was among the first down there.
He rescued racing greyhounds and inspired me to do the same.
He took in recovering addicts and people who had fallen on hard times. Not just his friends, but friends of friends and sometime complete strangers. I found that behind his gruff exterior, was very giving and a much better person than I was. He exterior was a defense mechanism, and if you stuck around long enough to find out who he really was, you would find one of the best people would ever know. A loyal friend with a warm and generous heart.
I didn’t like Rewster initially because he wasn’t respectable. He didn’t dress, act, or do anything that polite society does. He also taught me that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
Just like Jesus taught Simon the Pharisee, just like Jesus is teaching us today. Sure, maybe the woman looked like a sinner, maybe she fell into that category, but she is welcomed by Jesus. She, like Rewster, does not conform to some expectations of her particular cultural environment. Yet we should notice that it is SHE not the Pharisee, that finds favor with Jesus. This is a common trait of Jesus’ ministry. Not only does he allow sinners into his company, but he joins and affirms them.
Simon, and I, were blinded by our assumptions, by our desire to be respectable. And maybe that’s the problem.
In many respects, mainline Christianity of which you and I are a part, clings to respectability. We want to be viewed as respectable. However, Jesus and the first generations of Christians were viewed as unrespectable. They frequently violated conventional social norms. Moreover, they provoked hostility, sometimes violence, as a result of their actions. The cross stands as a sign of a publically sanction execution, our primary symbol, is akin to an electric chair: a very unrespectable and unpleasant symbol. Jesus and his earliest followers stepped across the normal lines of propriety and elicited responses ranging from suspicion to outright resistance. And if we fancy ourselves as Christians, if we want to invoke the name of Jesus and history of our tradition, we are called to be unrespectable.
And we are in a tradition that has a very unrespectable past. The United Church of Christ has many firsts. Our ancestors in the Congregational, Christian, Evangelical, and Reformed churches have left a mark on U.S. religious and political history.
Congregationalists are among the first Americans to take a stand against slavery, and they laid the foundation for the abolitionist movement.
Both the Congregationalists and Reformed churches take park in the First Great Awakening in the period before the revolutionary war. One of the great thinkers of the movement, Jonathan Edwards, says the church should recover the passion of a transforming faith that changes "the course of our lives."
We have ordained the first African-American, the first woman, and the first openly gay pastors.
These actions were considered radical, unrespectable in their time, but we have come to view them differently. We think these radical actions were correct and just.
What can we do? What issues face us today?
Environmental issues, racial issues, immigration issues, LGBTQ issues, sustainable food practices, issues of class, wealth and power, global poverty, all of these face us… But all it takes is a small group of committed people to spark a revolution. A small group of Galilean fishermen follow a rabbi around the backwaters of the Roman Empire. This movement will change the world. And that my friends is good news!
How liberated that woman must have felt, having her sins forgive just like that. How shamed the Pharisee must have felt. How shamed we feel. We often play the role of the Pharisee. So easily we evaluate others’ worth with no real appreciation for their stories, their histories, their context, call them things like “redneck,” dumb blonde, foreigner, welfare mother and dismiss them. So easily we encounter people whom society has pushed to the margins, and we do nothing. Whether they are a redneck, a different skin color, or speak a different language. I never ask what brought them here, what caused our paths to cross. And that’s a shame. In our constant need to feel worthy, to feel better than others, we miss the common humanity we share with those who are different, who we deem insufficient. When we become aware of this, we are suddenly grasped by the certainty that we are okay, that we are forgiven of whatever we are feeling guilty about, and the fire of love begins to burn. That is the greatest experience anyone can have. It may not happen often, but when it does happen, it transforms everything.
Let us go out and search for that spark that will ignite the fires of love. Maybe it’s through reading another’s story. Read some African-American Literature like the classic “The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. DuBois or a piece of fiction like “The Color Purple” or the book everyone seems to be reading these days, “The Help.” Watch “Maria Full of Grace” about a young woman who is an illegal immigrant, running from an oppressive Columbian drug cartel. Check out some feminist literature by Margaret Atwood or Gloria Steinem. Get informed about other people’s stories… and you may be surprised to find that their stories have a lot of parallels to our own.
What I make of this story is that Jesus manifests God’s radical hospitality even to the sinner and the self-righteous alike. Jesus shows the well-off and respectable people what radical inclusion and hospitality really is. Let us go out and be unrespectable, offering hospitality to anyone we meet. Letting anyone, the sinners like this woman in today’s Gospel and my friend Rewster, attend our church. Be friends with people who look, act, and live different from us. For our sake, and for Christ’s sake. May it be so. Amen.