Sermon for 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time First Congregational Church, UCC, Boulder Christina Braudaway-Bauman Gratitude Overflowing Luke 7:36-50 Our Scripture reading for today comes near the end of a series of stories in the 7 th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is traveling, the crowds are following him and the disciples are by his side. The stories on this journey are filled with surprises. Over and over again, Luke says the people are amazed by what they see and experience. At one point, Luke even says that Jesus himself is amazed. In each scene, Luke calls our attention to the way Jesus sees people who are often overlooked in his community, how he reaches out to them in unconventional ways, and how they respond to his presence, reaching out to him with unexpected faithfulness. First, Jesus receives a message from a Roman centurion who expresses his confidence in Jesus and then humbly requests and receives healing, not for himself or for a member of this family, but for his servant. Everyone, even Jesus himself, is surprised by the humility and the faith of this Gentile, this outsider, this enemy. Next, Jesus notices the grief of a woman, a widow, who has also just lost her only son. He has compassion on her. He touches the ritually unclean coffin and restores her son to life. Immediately, this dead man sits up and begins speaking, and of course, the people are surprised again. In today s reading, Jesus encounters a woman who is considered so unworthy it seems to be a scandal that she is in his presence. Instead of turning her away, as others would expect, Jesus receives the gift she offers him, commends her generosity, and lifts her up as a model for others to follow. At every turn, over the course of this long chapter in Luke, Jesus draws the circle of compassion and community wider. Outsiders become insiders and Jesus makes the message clear. The presence of God with us means good news for everyone: the powerful Roman solder and his powerless slave, the suffering widow and her restored son, the sinful woman who meets Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee. This is her story: Luke 7:36-50. 36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 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. 39 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. 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. Teacher, he replied, speak. 41 A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more? 43 Simon answered, I suppose the Christina Braudaway-Bauman Page 1
one for whom he canceled the greater debt. And Jesus said to him, You have judged rightly. 44 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. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 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. 48 Then he said to her, Your sins are forgiven. 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins? 50 And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you; go in peace. Do you see her? That s the question Jesus asks Simon the Pharisee. Well, of course, he sees her, or at least he thinks he does. There are her tears and the oil and that long hair, all of them spilling out, her whole body on the floor at the feet of Jesus. How could he miss her? But what he sees most of all is her nametag that says, Sinner. What he sees is the sullied reputation that precedes her, the notoriety that weighs her down and makes others shun her. What he sees too is the way she is now completely overcome, her behavior a display so lavish, it s embarrassing really. Tradition has it that she is a prostitute, and the intimacy of this exhibit might lead even us to believe that this is so. There is nothing, however, in the Scripture text to show that this is true. In fact, her sins are not named at all. We re told that she has many sins, (and who doesn t?), but we have no idea what they are, because really to Jesus, they do not matter. What matters here is the grace with which Jesus regards her, and the way he sees her, truly sees her. What matters is the forgiveness she is given, the acceptance received, the life changed, the circle expanded and the generosity she now extends. Jesus looks at her and cannot help but contrast her hospitality with that of his host. Simon has provided no water to wash him, no kiss to greet him, no oil to anoint him. But this woman as soon as she enters the room, she bathes Jesus with her tears, and she keeps on going. She blesses him with her kisses and she does not stop. She pours her costly ointment from the precious alabaster jar onto his feet. It pools on the floor around him and its perfume fills the air. Simon has done nothing wrong in welcoming his guest, but his etiquette, which is merely polite and perfunctory, only draws more attention to the extravagance of the woman s gifts. Simon judges her for her lavish gestures and he judges Jesus for accepting them. Jesus, however, praises her for them. He sees that her unrestrained generosity is born of boundless gratitude for the forgiveness she has received and the freedom she has found. She is so grateful she cannot contain herself. She drinks and drinks and drinks in the grace Jesus gives. She fills up to overflowing until we see her gratitude pouring out in worship, in praise and thanksgiving. Holding her in the light of love, Jesus sees her gratitude and he lifts it up for us to notice all these centuries later. He sees her, he sees her faithfulness and her freedom. He sees her as she is meant to be, and he invites us to do the same, to rejoice in her joy and to join her in expressing our gratitude for the extravagant grace God gives to her and to us. Christina Braudaway-Bauman Page 2
Do you see your baby here? The doctor asked as the expectant parents looked at the ultrasound screen. Do you want to know now if it s a boy or a girl? No, they said, we want to wait and be surprised. Boy, girl, it didn t matter. Just healthy. So the doctor looked and said, Everything is perfect. That s what the doctor said at the end of every visit, and the parents hung their hope on that reassuring word. When their baby boy was born, the parents saw that the doctor was right. Tiny toes, exquisite fingers. His soft bald head gave way in time to beautiful, wavy curls. He was a sweet child, affectionate and funny and curious. When he was still a toddler, his mom came across this bit of wisdom that rooted itself in her understanding of parenting. Try to see your child as a seed that came in a packet without a label, it said. Understand that your job as a parent is to provide the right environment and the nutrients and to pull the weeds. But know that you cannot decide what kind of flower you will get or in which season it will bloom. The boy s parents drew on this sage advice to guide them as they endeavored to keep turning their little flowering plant toward the sun so that he could flourish and unfold in the light of love, all the time becoming more fully who he was meant to be. As he grew, from a child into a teenager, he came to recognize that he was different from his peers, boys and girls. In adolescence, he let the truth about who he really is dawn on him. He recognized that although his body was a boy s body, he actually, internally, identified himself as a girl. This child I m speaking about could be any one of our children. This particular one, however, happens to be mine. About a year ago, as Nicki was preparing to enter the last year of high school, she decided she was ready to come out, to tell us, her parents and her brother, the truth about her life. One night, she explained her desire to begin the process of transition from male to female. She told us she wanted to apply to college with her real identity, not as a young man, but as a young woman. Nicholas, Nick as we d known him all his life, became Nicki, with an I at the end, a feminine derivation of the name we had given at birth. Some time ago, Nicki asked me, Will you tell the church about me? It s not my news to share, I offered. No, Mom, she said, would you please tell them? I don t want them to be surprised, and I want them to see me as I really am. So here we are and here I am, telling you a few weeks before my family arrives to join me here, trusting you with this tender truth. It s taken me a while to tell you partly because I needed time to see that in this particular case something other than my usual reticence to speak about my children in the pulpit might be called for. And I will also confess to you that it has taken me a while to absorb this new reality in my family s life, to understand it, let alone speak about it. They call Nicki s experience gender dysphoria it s a kind of disconnect, when the outer body and inner reality for a person don t match. I have had my own confusion to work through too, and my own grief. There is sadness in recognizing that that this child of mine, who sits at the heart of my heart, wrestled on her own, alone, for a long time without telling anyone what was going on in her inner world. Christina Braudaway-Bauman Page 3
And there is fear too, my fear that she will be judged and misunderstood and that the world may not always be a safe place for her. Just last night, there was mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. So far, the count is 50 people dead. Jesus is weeping. And, the suicide rate for transgender teens is a terrifying 40%. That number drops dramatically, thank God, when parents are engaged and supportive. We are. Let me also tell you, however, that this journey we have been on has not been all confusion and grief and fear. Nicki, and our whole family really, have also been the recipients of extraordinary grace. For starters, we have become well acquainted with the clinic at Children s Hospital in Boston that specializes in helping children and families navigate the interesting world of gender identity. It s called the Gender Management Service, GeMS for short, and we realized quickly that it is aptly named, affirming as they do at every moment that the children with whom they work are gems, precious, perfect, infinitely valuable, and treasured, even if the world is not always kind to them. And then last fall, when Nicki decided it was time to come out at school, my husband Phil, and Nicki and I set up a meeting with her guidance counselor, the school social worker, and the school nurse. When Nicki told them her story, the first word out of all their mouths was this one: Congratulations. And then they offered to tell Nicki s teachers so that they can start using the correct pronouns, and then offered to change her name in her official school record. Her high school diploma, awarded just a week ago, has the name Nicki Bauman on it, not Nicholas. Two days after our meeting with them an email message came to us from the high school. This year and from now on, it said, instead of maroon graduation gowns for girls and gray gowns for boys, there would be only one color gown. Although this was a change the administration had already been considering, this notice s arrival just after Nicki expressed concern about which color gown to reserve, made the school s decision feel like a personal gift. And then, every college to which Nicki applied and was accepted has explained to her how they are ready to take her in. The one she ended up selecting has a faculty member who is also transgender. Much to our surprise, and our relief, at nearly every major turn, Nicki has been met with gracious acceptance and generous support. But here s what really gets me. Here s the thing that fills me up to overflowing with gratitude and makes me want to join the woman at the feet of Jesus. It s the thing that I believe has made everything else possible. It s the thing that will, eventually I believe, make unconditional love and acceptance possible for every child. It will make the whole world a safer place, where differences are embraced and lifted up and celebrated. It s you. It dawned me recently that Nicki s whole life, her entire life, has been lived in the midst of an Open and Affirming congregation. All 18 years, 19 before summer s end, has been lived in a church that really means it when we say, Whoever you are or wherever you are on life s journey, you are welcome here. Whoever you are, whatever your age or skin color or gender or sexual orientation, you are welcome here. Gay or straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, you are welcome. You are loved. You are safe. Christina Braudaway-Bauman Page 4
Almost 30 years ago now, this congregation was one of the first churches to say you claim this openness and affirmation as part of your identity. Nicki is a member of the first generation who has never known it to be any other way. So as a grateful mother, I say thank you. As a grateful pastor, I say thank you because it means that all our children, all of them, no matter who they are, or who they turn out to be, get to grow up never, ever, having to question that they are loved by God and the church. They get to grow up knowing that are fully accepted, treasured for who they are, embraced by Jesus who keeps drawing the circle wider and by a God who says, I ve got really long arms. And I don t know about you, but me, I m with the woman sitting at the feet of Jesus, batheing them with tears of joy that well up in me and will not stop. I am with her, anointing them with the oil of gratitude, pouring it out until it pools on the floor and fills the air with perfume in thanksgiving for this lavish love of God that Christ came to reveal, this limitless love, this love that has no limits, this love that welcomes everyone in, and turns no one away. Christina Braudaway-Bauman Page 5