"Hungry and Humble" June 17, 2007 Pentecost 3

(First, read the passage for this sermon: Luke 7:36 – 8:3)

It is our hunger that draws us here.

For some, the hunger is acute. Some of us are suffering with loved ones through their illnesses. We hunger for healing. Some of us are journeying through the grief of a miscarriage. We hunger for restored joy. Some of us are frightened and confused, hungering to know God’s direction for the future.

For many of us, these are not days of crisis – and so you know how, when things are going well, you just go onto automatic pilot? Then the hunger is underneath the surface. It’s something you can ignore on many days.

But the hunger is there, however acutely we realize it. It is a desire for God.

With that in mind, let’s look at this morning’s story in the gospel of Luke. What are the characters’ hungers? For instance, there’s the Pharisee, whose name, we find out, is Simon. Why, does he invite Jesus to his house?

The Pharisees were one of the three major groups of religious leaders of God’s people at the time of Jesus (along with the Sadducees and the Scribes), and the gospel stories tend to portray them as knee-jerk villains who oppose everything Jesus says and does. But, in fact, there were members of these leadership groups who were at least interested in what Jesus was bringing into the roiling religious mix of the day.

I am thinking that Simon the Pharisee is more than just interested. In that culture, inviting a guest into one’s home for a meal bestowed honor on the person. We read that Jesus “took his place at the table,” and that sounds simply enough. But there is much that’s easily missed. In fact, the Greek words indicate that Jesus reclined. That was the custom of lying on one’s side, supporting oneself on an elbow and reaching for the food with the other hand. This was done during ceremonial banquets. And there was an elaborate order of honor involved in taking one’s place at the table. (Do you remember the parable about humility where Jesus teaches a person to take a humble place at the table; that it is better to be invited to a higher place than to be asked to move down to a more humble seat?)

Can we assume that Jesus is a guest of honor at this banquet in Simon the Pharisee’s house? We learn later in the story that Simon thinks Jesus is a prophet. I’m thinking that Simon is hungry to hear more of what Jesus has to say. Simon the Pharisee is hungry for more about God. He’s at least open to how Jesus might lead him to God.

But then something happens that is shocking and offensive to Simon’s sensibilities as a Pharisee. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that [Jesus] was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him -- that she is a sinner."

We do not know why this woman is branded to be “a sinner.” But what hunger she has! And it must be a hunger for God, because that is what Jesus is bringing, and those interested have grown into crowds of people, according to the gospel of Luke. This woman’s hunger drives her past the point of humility, to humiliation! She is impure. But she has the audacity to burst into the house of a Pharisee – one who is charged to maintain the religious rules of purity! She intimately touches Jesus – which, according to those religious rules of purity makes Jesus immediately dirty. Jesus is being touched by a woman (which itself was not allowed, unless the woman was one’s wife), and by a woman who is dirty! Jesus should recoil at this, and jump up from his reclining position, horrified over this violation of God’s holy laws of cleanliness!

It is good to remember that the Pharisees are the custodians of those religious laws out of the best of intentions. They believe themselves to be serving God during a precarious time in the peoples’ faith history. How else are the people of God to keep themselves pure and devoted to God, unless they separate themselves from those who are not clean?

Of course, that concern is not limited to the Pharisees’ time and place. It’s potent today, for instance, when religious traditions exclude gays and lesbians by quoting anti-homosexuality Bible passages, because those passages come right out of the ancient religious purity and cleanliness laws. In the Bible, homosexuals are considered to be dirty and impure.

But the same is true for women throughout the Bible! That’s part of the Pharisee’s horror over what Jesus is allowing this dirty woman to do to him. And notice, as the passage ends, that not only are “the twelve” following Jesus at this point, but so are some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and [in fact] many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

That new, unheard of activity of Jesus – of welcoming those who were considered to be unclean, but who were drawn to him in their hunger – was one of the reasons why Jesus simply became intolerable to the religious authorities who were charged with enforcing what they understood to be God’s laws against dirtiness. Jesus could not be allowed to continue with his “ungodly” actions and his teachings, and so he was crucified.

But the Word of God is Jesus. Jesus reveals who God is. And so it must be that it is displeasing to God to exclude those in our culture considered to be unclean and impure, if they are hungry for God! All who are hungry for God are being drawn by God the Holy Spirit, and are welcome! All are invited to turn towards the life that God has created, and to live by the practices of the faith.

In the story, in her profound hunger, the woman is drawn to Jesus. And Jesus contrasts this unclean woman’s love with the grudging hospitality that Simon the Pharisee has been exhibiting! Jesus tells a parable, making the point that the one who loves more is the one who is forgiven more. But doesn’t it take humility to ask for forgiveness? Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.” This is shocking, shocking stuff that the woman is doing and that Jesus is allowing! Then Jesus furthers the outrage by saying this: “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."

God is grace. God is compassion. God reaches out to you and me with forgiveness. There are no hoops for us to jump through first. In the story, Simon the Pharisee hungers for God, but it is on his own terms, and according to his own rules. There is great pride in that attitude! Much different is the woman who is drawn to Jesus with hunger so deep that it drives her to shocking humility. Her great love arises from her forgiveness.

The woman is hungry and humble. And she is presented to us by the gospel writer as an example of someone saturated with the love of God, someone who is welcomed by God.

In the name of God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, VA