Word to the Wise
Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Thursday in the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Timothy 4:12-16 and Luke 7:36-50]Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that [Jesus] was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.....
This is one of the most powerful scenes in any of four gospels and yet it appears very rarely in the lectionary! Perhaps there was a puritanical streak in the editors! For a sheer public display of physical devotion and humiliation, it would be hard to beat! The humiliation occurs both to the woman and to Simon the Pharisee, who would have been embarrassed that the incident occurred at all in his house! However, the woman showed to Jesus some fundamental hospitality that Simon had neglected (a slight against Jesus?) in addition to her self-humiliation! Jesus takes the opportunity to make a fundamental point. The Pharisee, by his neglect of certain basic rules of hospitality, had taken Jesus for granted. The woman says nothing but her actions speak louder than words. Jesus recognizes the love in the woman which becomes an acknowledgment of her own need for forgiveness. Thus, Jesus makes the very important comment: But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little. The connection between love and forgiveness is very clear. One of the greatest acts of love is to forgive someone. The "Our Father" which we say thousands of times in our lives places forgiveness at the center of our relationship with God along with our acknowledgment of that relationship. If we seek little forgiveness from God, we show that we are taking God and neighbor for granted. Our gesture of giving or seeking forgiveness may not have the dramatic quality of the woman in the scripture for today, but if we want God to recognize the love that is in us, we'd better find a way of showing it! AMEN
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