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Proper 6C
June 13, 2010
1 Kings 21: 1-10, 15-21a* Psalm 5: 1-8* Galatians 2: 15-21* Luke7: 36-8:3
The Rev. David M. McNair

This past Tuesday evening, my nine-year-old daughter Sadie was on a mission. Wednesday was her last class with her teacher,
Ms. Threlkeld, who taught her weekly “Problem Solver’s” class and she wanted to give her a gift. First, she decided she wanted to plant a pretty flower in a pot for her. Then she asked me to help her gather art supplies so she could make her a card and decorate the gift box. On the card she wrote a list of things she loved about Ms. Threlkeld and the class. Ms. Threlkeld has obviously made a connection with Sadie, has believed in her, nurtured her, and inspired her – she’s been a gift to her. And Sadie, bubbling over in gratitude, was determined to say thanks and give her something in return.

In our New Testament reading, we encounter another who was on a mission: a woman bubbling over in gratitude and determined to offer a gift to the one who obviously had shown her mercy and love that had moved her at her core.

She took advantage of the social custom that permitted the needy to visit village banquets so they might receive some of the leftovers. As soon as she entered the room in the house of Simon the Pharisee and saw Jesus, her tears began to fall. Undeterred by the smug and  disdainful stares of the guests, she moved to where Jesus was reclining and knelt. Her tears spilled down her face and wet his feet. Then she let down her hair and dried his feet with her hair, kissed them, then anointed them with perfume.

Before we allow this scene to be overheated with romanticism, we should remember that this woman is described as a “sinner”—a “woman of the city”—which probably means what it sounds like. If a prostitute, her life in the sex trade had probably taken its toll physically, emotionally, spiritually. This is no cheap Hollywood romance – Julia Roberts as the woman, Richard Gere as Jesus. One writer has pictured this woman with a cleft palate. The romance of the gospel is God coming to love, not our perfect skin or sculpted bodies, but our cleft palate.

To help us further grasp this scene, let’s draw a map of first century Judaism. Theologian Marcus Borg calls this map “the purity map.”(1) It shows the geography — the borders and boundaries of salvation — as designed by the Pharisees’ program of salvation through holiness. Imagine it like the old maps, before computer graphics, which came with transparent plastic maps that could be overlaid on top of one another to reveal various features of the land. One map shows the geographical boundaries, the next topography, the next population density, etc.

Israel had its own set of purity maps. On the surface were the geographical boundaries – kosher and non-kosher zones. Kosher as in Judea. Non-kosher as in Samaria and Sidon. Then there is the map we can lay on top that delineates circumstances of birth. If you were born a Levite or an Israelite, you were pure. In the impurity zone were those of illegitimate birth and those not born anatomically whole:  the maimed, the eunuch, the hunchback, the leper, the mentally challenged, the chronically ill.

nother map had to do with ritual behavior. Did you follow all 613 laws of Moses?  All the codes of conduct – all the rituals of purification?  Did you make the required sacrifices in the temple?  On this map there were the observant and non-observant Jews, the righteous and the sinners.

Of course, if you were poor you couldn’t afford to be observant. So there was a map having to do with wealth or poverty. If you prospered you were considered blessed. If you were destitute you were considered cursed by God.

There was another map contrasting gender. Women may have been anatomically intact, but they were not anatomically correct. Males in their natural state were thought to be more pure than females. Their very femaleness rendered them impure during the most female of their days: childbirth and monthly menstruation. If they had a female baby they were unclean longer than if they delivered a male baby. They could never be a priest or a rabbi.

There were parts of the temple that were forbidden to any woman.
Your profession could make you unclean:  tax collectors, prostitutes, perhaps even shepherds (which provides perspective on the shepherds at Jesus’ birth).

And there was the racial map: Jews, clean; Gentile, unclean; and Samaritan the most unclean of all because they intermarried. They knew better and did it anyway. Such was the purity map of Jesus’ day – and it governed every aspect of people’s lives.
But Jesus, himself a devout Jew, was filled with the Spirit, and challenged this map with another map. He proclaimed that God’s map is different. Instead of the “politics of holiness” with its slogan from Leviticus 19:2, “Be holy as I the Lord Your God am holy,” Jesus brought “the politics of compassion”:  “Be compassionate as your Father [in heaven] is compassionate,”  “be merciful as God is merciful” (2)

Of course, we need to be careful here. Jesus did not banish holiness as a spiritual and moral goal. He redefined it. Holiness means wholeness, not perfection.  Purity and holiness according to Jesus is not a matter of external boundaries and observance — but of the heart. Holiness happens through compassion and it begins with letting God be compassionate to you.

Holiness without compassion does not lead to wholeness but to division within the self and within society. Holiness without compassion makes us hateful. It leads us to cast out, or dominate, or even kill those whom we designate as impure in order to stay pure. It baptizes our bigotries and fears and demonizes those who are different. The politics of holiness has lead to the Crusades and the Inquisition; the holocaust and witch hunts; Klan rallies and public lynching; hate crimes and the religious and political persecution of gay and lesbian persons; suicide bombings and wars based on self-righteous revenge.

Jesus preached the need for human holiness but not the external kind. Rather, the kind that flowed from the heart healed — transformed — by compassion. You can’t make yourself holy by a regimen of dos and don’ts. You are holy. Live out of your essential holiness. Holiness is a journey toward who you are, not a journey toward who you are not. It is the journey to the true self God made you to be.

Today’s story shows us the map of the place that Jesus proclaimed and enacted. It’s a map of the kingdom of God. Jesus was eating at the house of Simon the Pharisee (which should give the Pharisee in all of us some hope). A woman who was on the wrong side of the purity boundaries in almost every zone possible – a woman, poor, a sinner, a prostitute, probably sick in some way – came into the room. She entered the house about as welcome as Hilary Clinton would have been at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding last weekend. She entered the room and shattered many customs of the day and anointed Jesus’ feet. What must have happened in her life that prompted this kind of behavior? The Pharisee was scandalized that she would do such a thing and that Jesus would allow her to do it.

Jesus knew what he was thinking and told this story: A creditor had two debtors. One owed him $ 50,000 and the other $ 5,000. When they could not pay him, he freely forgave them both. Which would love him more? Jesus asked the Pharisee.

The Pharisee answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the greater debt.”

“Is this your final answer?” asked Jesus.

“Yes,” said the Pharisee.

“Then you have answered correctly.”

But, next, Jesus proceeded to drive the point home:  “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume… She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful.” (3) The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.

Then, he turned from the Pharisee (who probably had nearly choked on his lamb chop) to the woman and repeated the words she had already heard — words which had brought her there in the first place because they had split her heart wide open, words which were to her freedom and life: “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has made you whole.” Jesus said. Not purity maps, faith.

Then he said, “Go in peace.”

I hope you can hear Christ’s words to her as Christ’s words to you. And I hope that you can hear his words, “Go in peace,” not only as a personal blessing but also as a challenge to us, the church, called to embody Christ and his peace and compassion.

Only when we cross over the defined purity lines of our day — our world, our culture, and our own psyches can we move towards wholeness — which is true holiness. Ironically, those on the other side of the boundaries of our purity maps hold the projected and denied parts of our souls, the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, that we hate or deny – that we’re afraid of in ourselves.(4)  When we — God’s People —welcome the stranger (the one who is strange), the foreigner, the impure, the one who is not like us and hits all our buttons  — we are converted. Then, said Jesus, our faith has made us whole.

Come Spirit, come, make and remake us, shape and reshape us into such a people.

Notes: