AS WE FORGIVE THOSE. don t quite know why this is the case. It s not as if I don t know myself to be in need of

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1 AS WE FORGIVE THOSE 2 Sam. 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Gal. 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3 I ask your forgiveness for not preaching more often on the subject of forgiveness. I don t quite know why this is the case. It s not as if I don t know myself to be in need of forgiveness or that I don t think forgiveness is an important spiritual concern. Nor is it that I think that everything has been taken care of once we have said together the words of public confession with which we begin our service. Public confession is a moment in our order of worship to remind us of our need for forgiveness as well as the promise of God s forgiveness. It is a ritual that stands for something real in our lives. But there is more to forgiveness than our order for confession. There is also the Lord s Prayer forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us which both appeals to God for forgiveness and calls upon us to be forgiving. The petition is interesting. If you think a bit about it, it s not clear in the petition that we are forgiven if we are not forgiving ourselves. Anyway, I ask for your forgiveness. Last week we observed in our lessons a strong parallel between Elijah and Jesus, involving bringing dead sons of surviving widows back to life. This week we have a parallel between the prophet Nathan and Jesus, concerning the matter of forgiveness. The story of David and Bathsheba is great melodrama with all the makings of an HBO series the young and favored king whose lust for another man s wife leads him to engineer the man s death. David, we are told, has everything anyone could want, but he still wants more and he takes what he wants for himself. The prophet Nathan is sent by God, who has been observing David s shenanigans, to charge David with his sins. I don t get much sense from the 1

2 story that David feels much remorse for what he has done, but Nathan gets in David s face so that at last David admits that he has sinned against God. He doesn t say anything about sinning against Uriah the Hittite or Bathsheba or the child he and Bathsheba have together or against the people Israel who look to him for leadership. David does seem concerned that he will be publicly humiliated when Nathan predicts that his wives he has lots of them will have relationships (presumably sexual) with other men. Though this seems to me a good story of human frailty and corruption in high places, it does not do much for our spiritual enlightenment. In the end, David is forgiven by God who will punish David by humiliating him and causing the child he has with Bathsheba to die. Nathan also tells David that the violence he has unleashed in killing Uriah will never depart from his house, which if you read on in Second Samuel is the case. The forgiveness David receives actually seems more like a deal that Nathan brokers to keep things going for the House of David the King. But there is in the story the notable point that the forgiveness of God does not eliminate the bad consequences of wrongs done, which is not an insignificant lesson. What is lacking in the story, though, is a feeling of remorse that cries out for forgiveness. Not so in the case of the woman who crashes the party at the home of the Pharisee whom Jesus is visiting. It s more than weird that she should have gotten into the Pharisee s house at all, let alone that she has access to the Pharisee s guest. How could such a thing happen? Be that as it may, she gets in, and she is identified as a sinner, which makes it all the weirder that she got into the house. What was her sin? Dollars to donuts it was something sexual, perhaps prostitution, probably not shoplifting or stock manipulation or setting up a bogus university and encouraging students to go into debt to pay their tuition. The holier than 2

3 thou Pharisee is appalled by the woman s behavior, and he questions Jesus behavior as well as out of her despair she literally pours herself out to Jesus, not in words but by her actions that show the depth of her distress. Jesus says, Therefore I tell you, her sins which were many have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. (Might I interject here that the woman is not Mary Magdalene, who in church lore is often remembered as a reformed prostitute. Whatever was wrong with Mary M., there is nothing to indicate that she was a sex worker.) The fact that the woman who shows up at the Pharisee s house was so free in displaying her emotions, including touching Jesus feet and letting down her hair, which would have been considered immodest, might lead us to believe that she is a sex worker. There is, of course, no mention that women who are sex workers are exploited by men and economic circumstances that may leave them with no alternative to the oldest profession. And what about the men? How many men are raped and molested by women? How many men are reduced to being sexual objects? There s not much detail in the story about what exactly is the source of the woman s distress or what Jesus knows about her besides that her sins are many. If she was a sex worker, this would have been especially offensive to the Pharisee whose religiosity was premised on keeping himself from contact with the unclean according to Jewish law. Jesus doesn t seem to care much about this. What is important is that the woman shows great love, and that is enough as far as he is concerned for her to receive forgiveness for whatever it is that she regrets. Allow me to pause here to ask what s bothering you? From what do you need to be forgiven today? What has been weighing on your conscience? What is your trouble? Our 3

4 Gospel illustrates that the forgiveness of Jesus is all about love. It is not about the fear of punishment for wrongs done. It is not the audit of an accountant god who is keeping score of our pluses and minuses. According to Jesus it seems our need for forgiveness lies in our failure to love; and the means of our forgiveness is love. It is for our lovelessness that we must be forgiven, and the gospel of Christ is that love is freely given to accomplish our forgiveness. In his Letter to the Galatians, St. Paul goes on and on about his discovery that the law will not make him right with God and how only faith in Christ can accomplish this. The letter is often confusing, but I think we understand Paul best if we hear him saying that our relationship to God is like a personal relationship rather than a legal relationship. Or to put this another way, it is a relationship of the heart. The Christian life is not a matter of making ourselves acceptable to God by keeping the law, but rather it is about living freely in the confidence that we are beloved creatures of God. The weight of conscience is surely significant in telling us when our relationships have gone wrong, which again, according to our faith, occurs when our relationships are loveless. The repair of relationships gone wrong is love. We do not need to make restitution to God, who has no need of any such thing, but if we want to have a godly peace with one another and with ourselves, we must do what love requires. The Christian life is a life driven by love, not by fear. Jesus tells the woman at the Pharisee s house to be at peace. Love has made her well. That is the good news of Jesus. It is for her and for us to make something of this good news. Amen. Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 12, 2016 Emanuel Lutheran Church 4

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