Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/645726118000725 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe4VXVrGOqg

Here’s how I imagine the story went. Jesus had been traveling around teaching and healing, doing incredible things, making a name for himself, and also there were whispers about how he partied too much and he drank too much and he definitely hung out with the wrong people. Many of the things that Jesus was teaching were not all that different then other rabbis and teachers of the time. I wonder if Simon the Pharisee, absolutely no relation to Simon Peter the fisherman, I wonder if Simon the Pharisee heard about Jesus teachings. Maybe he heard Jesus teach when Jesus would stop at the local synagogue. Maybe he agreed with a lot of what Jesus said. Maybe he thought he could lend some legitimacy to Jesus if he invited him into his home, had a meal together, could talk about the weird things Jesus was doing like partying too much, keep them on the straight and narrow.

See, I think Simon the Pharisee thought he was doing fine. He was doing okay. He was doing a good job. In a couple of weeks, a few chapters down, Jesus is going to meet a man who asks him, “What must he do to inherit eternal life?” The question assumes that there are things you can check off, that there is a list and if you complete all of the things, whether it’s everyday or once a year then you are okay. I think Simon had a list. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do and he did it. He was righteous justified. He was good. HE was doing JESUS a favor by inviting him in, inviting him to recline at table with him, letting Jesus share a meal with him.

And I’m sure generations of preachers before me have claim and accused the Jewish community, or the Pharisees in particular, of about being all about the rules. I think that might be unfair, I think that we do that too. As if to say: I have to read a chapter of the Bible everyday and then say a prayer every night to be right with God. You have to say this one particular prayer or you will never get into heaven. You have to believe this particular way or these particular things. Otherwise, you’re not a real Christian. And there is a place for spiritual, some would say disciplines (which might sound like a dictation) or actions like prayer and reading the Bible, the problem lies when the disciplines give you a sense of certainty and independence like, Simon. The: I am good. I have done all the right things and I don’t need anyone. Don’t need a savior. Probably don’t even need God. I got it handled.

It was also common in Greco-Roman meals for other people to come and hang out on the sidelines while the dinner guests are eating. There was no TV. No mass printing books. Low literacy. There wasn’t much else to do. So they would go listen to these rabbis, Pharisee, teachers discuss, debate, and have deep thoughts together.

Our second character is one of those people who wandered in while the meal was going on. Another nameless woman perhaps because her name was never spoken above a whisper as she walked by. We know a few things about her. She’s a sinner. Now generations of European, male, mostly German scholars have made clear and decisive arguments that she was a prostitute.

There is this group online that I’m a part, the members are preaching on the same text. Someone in the group invited the members to post answers for what else sinner could mean besides prostitute.  One person in the comment section it was suggested that she HAD to be a sinner so that we can hold her in contrast to Simon, who is so good. Seems like the commenter, like generations of European, men, mostly German could only think of or only assume that the worst thing a woman could do would be related to sex. Worst thing you could call a woman or a girl is a whore. And true or not the kind of name and the whispers about it follow you. It leaves a mark.

If that’s true then Simon is thinking well, the woman is there at Jesus’ feet, Jesus might not be a prophet because he doesn’t seem to know what kind of woman this is. That’s the argument for prostitute.

You should know the community came for him and I learned a lot. We always talk about women going into prostitution because they were widowed without children because that’s the what often comes up in our Bible stories; but in the Greco-Roman world was more likely girls or teenagers would be sold into slavery by their family because of poverty and the life expectancy of someone in that work was 5 years.

If it were true, imagine if it wasn’t just the job of prostitution that you carry with you but also the poverty and the horror of your family being the ones putting you in this position.

Some of my favorite responses to the question of what other things sinner might me were: assassin, bartender, or watched the next episode on Netflix without her husband.

There are a million ways in the ancient world to be considered a sinner. Several chapters back, Jesus healed a man who was named a sinner and no one accused him of being a prostitute but recognized that a sinner might be one who didn’t observe the ritual sacrifices that needed to be observed at the temple. Maybe she just didn’t practice their religion appropriately. Maybe she married a Roman soldier, the wrong kind of man. Maybe she was in a relationship without a man. Maybe she was an herbalist who mixed potions or was a fortune teller. Maybe she’d been married multiple times. Maybe she stole to survive or to get that alabaster jar. Maybe she worked in a pig farm. Maybe she had an addiction. Maybe she had some illness like the woman who menstruated for years or the madman who lived among the tombs.

And we might not call those sins today. We don’t equate illness or disability with actions or that someone’s parents had sinned against God. But we know people whisper and say things. You wouldn’t be in this situation if you had just married the right person, if you were in a normal marriage, with your own kind. Why should fast food employees get paid a living wage? It’s an entry-level job. There must be something wrong with them if they keep running off spouses. They could get better if they just tried to go to the doctor/to take their medication/to put down the bottle.

I can really only speak from my own experience, although some of you have shared with me your own stories, we carry stories and baggage and unmet expectations, shame guilt, things that were said to us or implied or done to us.

Did you even try? You could do so much better. Implicitly says you’re not good enough.

Good thing you’re pretty because you’re kind of… a just telling another Middle School girl her value is in her looks.

We would never try and date you. We respect your boyfriend too much. So did they respect me or just associate my value with a man.

You really need to settle down, find yourself a man because your value is decreasing as you get older. I was 25.

Several ways in which things went catastrophically bad, which ultimately mean I am a failure at everything, and will always fail.

Abuses and violations that were not my fault. Someone thought they were.

And these don’t go away easily. They follow you everywhere mostly because we have picked them up and move them with us. Especially if you’re like this woman who doesn’t seem to have anyone to talk to. So in our isolation she would ruminate on her life on The whispers around her until every story she tells about herself is that it’s her fault. She’s a failure. She’s too old. She has no value and she’s not good enough. And with every step she takes, she is convinced she is unworthy of love.

Jesus tells the parable and asks the question who would love the money lender more, the one who’s forgiven a year and a half worth of wages or the one who’s forgiven a month and a half worth of wages and they think it’s very obvious it’s the one with a year and a half, although both would be life-changing. He tells the story because for those who’ve been forgiven a lot there would be an outpouring of love. See, I think when we meet this woman she’s no longer carrying all of that.

Something happened before this dinner party. Did she see Jesus teaching? Did he say something about love and forgiveness and freedom? Did she see the healings; that the blind could see, and the deaf could hear, those whose hands were withered were made whole, those who hadn’t walked for years stood up? Did she see life given to those who were dead? Did she wonder if life could be given to her, who felt that dead?

Did he see her as they were passing each other on the street and he made eye contact and saw her body hunched as if it were carrying the weight of the world? Did he smile at her? Did he say something about the heavy burden that she carried–something about how she could take on his burden that is so much lighter and about love and forgiveness?

Did he whisper to her, because no one else needed to hear or would understand, “Just try playing one down. That one. It’s not true”?

Maybe she did, took a step and felt how much lighter it was. Maybe then she couldn’t stop. And Jesus helped her stand tall and lift her head and then he kept walking, offered her a blessing and moved along on his way to dinner.

Can you imagine what it must feel like to be liberated of all of the names and the whispers said about you behind your back and in your own head? Can you imagine being seen worthy of love for the first time in years?

She didn’t show up crying at the dinner at Jesus feet because she was guilty or ashamed or begging for forgiveness. She did it because her body and her mind were so overwhelmed with the feeling of lightness and liberation and forgiveness that she didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t know how to express how she felt, how to show that love back.

One of the many differences between Simon the Pharisee and the woman with the alabaster jar was Simon was so certain of all that he did that he didn’t think he needed a lesson on forgiveness. He had nothing he needed to be forgiven for, and that ego itself probably implies that he did. She who carried her vulnerability everywhere she went.

One of the reasons why we have a prayer of confession every week is to hold on to a bit of that vulnerability, to name and acknowledge where we have failed to love well, where we have failed to live wholeheartedly, to give us a chance to put down that bag before it gets too heavy, and offer ourselves the grace to try again another week.

Beloveds, if none of what I said felt like anything you’ve ever experienced in your life, if on a scale from Simon to the woman, you fall closer to Simon; the invitation this week is to find a way to be vulnerable, to find a place where you need to ask for help, to ask for help even though you’re certain you don’t need it, to try something you might fail at, or something you will fail at. Kelly and I did one of those sip and paints and she describes them as one of us studied the humanities, and one of us went to business school, and they hang side by side in our living room.

And Beloveds, if you walked in today carrying that baggage, whether it’s brand new or the one you picked up when you were a kid, you can’t seem to let it go.

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes if you want. Imagine Christ seeing you as you pass each other on your street and he stops and smiles and whispers to you, Why don’t you put that down? That burden that you are carrying it doesn’t define you. It’s not your fault. It isn’t true.

Beloveds you are all ready forgiven. You are worthy of love. You are loved.