Sermons
17th June 2007 - Trinity 2
Christianity is a religion based not on a book but a person, it is not a religion of law but of grace supplied through that person, and that grace brings with it a central message of divine love and forgiveness for humankind. Which is all very well when dealing with today’s gospel; Jesus crosses social and religious boundaries to reveal God’s love and forgiveness for the sinful woman who has bathed his feet with her tears, but it is a rather more difficult exercise to reconcile with our Old Testament reading which has God acting to punish a child vicariously for the sins of its father. What accounts for the gulf between these two very different visions?
One of the most exciting things about leading confirmation classes is having the opportunity to open people’s eyes a little to what an odd sort of thing the Bible is, or, I should say, an odd collection of things, for though it has a unity its variety is astonishing. Realising this can be quite an alarming process for those new to Bible study, but it nearly always leads to a deepening of faith. One of the great challenges is holding together some sense of theological unity between the Old and New Testaments. There are, of course, what we might call structural links. We can see the Old testament as the story of God’s engagement with a particular people, his calling of them into relationship through prophecy and through physical sufferings in preparation for his full revelation in the person of Jesus the Jew, and then there is the huge amount of reaching back into the Old Testament that happens in the writings of the New Testament, where again and again what is happening in the revelation of God in Jesus is seen as the fulfilment of what has gone before. But there are real difficulties as well in holding the whole thing in theological unity. The writings of the Old Testament, collected together over perhaps a thousand years do not have theological unity, and they also contain a large amount of law that is utterly irrelevant to our lives today, but perhaps most uncomfortably, they reveal an understanding of God at times, which is very far removed from the vision of love and forgiveness that we find in the person of Jesus.
In today’s gospel we see that fully divine and fully human person going to Simon the Pharisees house to eat with him. Simon, though well-versed in his duties, has failed to greet Jesus properly, neglecting even the basic of hospitality, a kiss of greeting and the opportunity for foot-washing. This would have been rather like arriving at a present day English household and not being offered tea or a chair to sit on, basic stuff. Jesus patiently accepts Simon’s neglect and when a notorious woman enters he doesn’t protect himself from her defiling touch or challenge her actions. And her actions are lavish and not a little erotic, bathing his feet with her tears of repentance, drying them with her unloosed hair and then anointing him not with water but with expensive ointment. It seems likely from the text that the woman has already received some divine intimation of forgiveness and that she comes into this hostile environment to give thanks. And of course Simon is scandalised by her improper intrusion and by her much more improper ministry to Jesus.
In answer to Simon’s outrage Jesus adds to this physical demonstration a story of forgiveness and love, of things being made well by the touch of God’s love. And these two themes intertwine in the sinful woman’s approach to Jesus. Does she love much because she is forgiven much? Or is she forgiven much because she loves much? The story illustrates that the two are bound together, they lead to one another, forgiveness leads to love, love leads to forgiveness.
So what about the striking down of the child of David? How can this be the same God? Let me return to where I started. Christianity is a religion based on a person, not on a book. There is one ultimate source of revelation in Christianity and that is Jesus. He is the source and corrective of the scriptures and he is the source and corrective of Christian tradition down the ages. So the understanding of God revealed in the story of Uriah the Hittite has to be interpreted in the light both of the times and conditions in which it was written but also under the light of the full revelation of God in Jesus. Does God inflict suffering as a punishment for sin, might he even inflict suffering vicariously? Of course not, nothing could be further from the Christian vision. But if you were living in the time that the two books of Samuel were brought together you might very well have thought of God along those lines. David’s sin had been great indeed, not only had he stolen Uriah’s wife he had then arranged to have Uriah moved to the frontline of battle to cause his death, Uriah carrying the order to his commander, carrying his own death warrant. That David’s actions would lead to disaster was inevitable and that working out of the consequences of his sin is pictured in the books of Samuel rather like the action of Nemesis is in the Greek drama. It might be added that story comes to us in through a very poor Hebrew text full of omissions, repetitions, and contradictions.
So how might we hold these two different visions together in creative tension? First there has to be a priority to the texts we have about what the Jesus did and said, there is a light that shines from these texts that illuminates all the rest of the texts in the Bible. Secondly, we hold on to the human desire for God expressed through both stories we have heard today, desire which issues in repentance and forgiveness. Nathan’s prophetic story reveals to David the extent of his sin and the great need he has for repentance (and his repentance is real), and Jesus’ prophetic story to Simon and his welcome of the sinful woman reveals that the story of divine interaction with humankind is driven by love and forgiveness not by law and punishment.
Christianity is a religion based on a person and that person reveals that God is always holding out to us a hand that will touch us with divine love and forgiveness. Our duty as Christians is to imitate that action of God, in our own lives.