Other sermons.            Comments for Jim Sunday, June 17, 2001 Rev. James A. Todhunter "An Outsider’s Hospitality " Psalm 5:1-8 Luke 7:36-8:3  There is one fundamental religious question that we each ask. It is asked by different people in different ways in different eras, but it is essentially the same question. The question is "How do I find eternal life?" or "How do I get to Heaven?" or "How do I discover meaning?" or "How do I experience healing?" But I think it is all the same question. It is the question lurking beneath the seemingly more immediate question? (How will I make it through this day? Or where will I go to college?) The question is how to I find and live life in abundance? That is what everybody is asking and always has been. And to that primary question, Jesus’ answer is always the same (though his answer gets phrased differently). Jesus’ answer is "Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Or Jesus will say "Follow me." Or Jesus will say, in what I believe is his most beautiful expression of it, "If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink." It’s that simple. "Come to me and you will receive everything you need." And we are not talking about a journey of a thousand miles or a lifetime. One short baby step and you are there. That’s it. That’s it. Our question is fundamental and it is simple. And so is Jesus’ answer. Now, however, our response to Jesus’ answer is, unfortunately, usually the same. Our response is "Yes, but…." The word "but" indicates that there is a problem. The problem is that something seems to be in the way. Something is blocking our path. That "something" may take many different forms. And Jesus understands this, too. Because he will say, to the rich young ruler, for example, who asked him this very question – "Give away all you possess to the poor, and then follow me." Or Jesus will say "Take up your cross, and follow me." What Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "the cost of discipleship:" that, whatever it is for you, which is preventing you from taking that one short baby step into the arms of Jesus. Let us now, briefly, look at the story about Jesus in Luke’s Gospel this afternoon, to see how this works, for I see it as a kind of case study. One of the Pharisees, a man named Simon, invites Jesus to dinner. Why? To give him the benefit of the doubt, Simon the Pharisee, was a decent observant Jew who took his religion seriously. Which means that in his heart he was asking that question. He had heard about Jesus and wanted to know more. He wasn’t dismissing Jesus and his teachings out of hand – he was curious. He was also cautious. Let’s say he was simply checking this new teacher out for himself. And he sought to do it with a dinner invitation. Well, no sooner do they get settled at the table, than someone crashes the party. In comes a woman of the city, whom Luke describes simply as "a sinner." We don’t know for sure what that means because we are not told. We could speculate that she is a prostitute, or a non-observant Jew (whom Jews regarded as sinners), or a madwoman, or some kind of homeless street person. Luke suggests only that she was in need of salvation. In other words, she was asking the same question that Simon the Pharisee and everybody else, including you and me, are asking" "How do I get life in abundance?" Before anyone can say or do anything, she is standing behind Jesus and kissing him and weeping and bathing his feet with her tears and anointing him with the precious ointment from the alabaster jar she has carried in. The host is shocked. Not only is he offended (as would be you or me) that someone has crashed the party, someone clearly unacceptable by any standard. Not only that, what really shocks him is that Jesus is warmly and gratefully receiving her attentions with gratitude. That is the scandal here. And Simon says to himself, "Well I guess that answers any question we might have had about whether this guy is a prophet or not." That observation is a tip-off for us, as it was for Jesus, as to what was getting in the way for Simon. The barrier between him and his salvation was that he had already made up his mind as to what acceptable religious behavior was and who acceptable people were. He concludes that Jesus is not one of us. The rest of the story is a rebuke of Simon by Jesus. A rebuke. Invited guests usually don’t, in polite society, rebuke their hosts, but that is what Jesus does. He tells a brief parable about a creditor and two debtors. (I’d like to linger over that, but I will keep going here). But essentially Jesus is setting Simon up for what is coming. Jesus turns to the woman and points out to Simon exactly what she has done. She bathed his feet with her tears, she kissed him, and she anointed him. Now it is important to understand here that the bathing of a guest’s feet, a kiss of welcome, and anointing with oil, are the three traditional signs of hospitality in the Hebrew tradition. Jesus then pointedly notes that Simon did none of this upon Jesus’ arrival. In other words, Simon did not extend true hospitality at all, whatever his motives for inviting Jesus. He was not really interested in encountering Jesus. Perhaps Simon was asking that important question in his heart, but the barrier was his insider/outsider mindset. This mindset dictates that before you really welcome and accept someone, you carefully check them out to see whether they are really like you – one of your own. Hospitality then means "Welcome to our in-group." By invitation only. After all, why squander such a valuable and limited resource as your love on someone who may not be worthy of it. The woman in the story is the person who shows true hospitality. The outsider has butted into the insider’s party and shows the insider up. Why does she show hospitality to Jesus? Because she is thirsty and knows it: she feels the pangs of spiritual hunger; she yearns for life and healing; and she believes that if she throws herself into the embrace of Jesus, she will be saved. Her recognition of her need, enables her to recognize Jesus. It doesn’t matter if she is ten times the sinner that Simon is; she is the one who is saved. Not him. In fact, Jesus teaches, so much the better. She is saved because she knew unmistakably how thirsty she was, and she rushed to Jesus making it as clear to him as possible what she wanted. She wanted to love him and receive his love. And she did it by showing hospitality – by washing his feet, not with water, but with her tears. You cannot come into the presence of Jesus, you cannot take that baby step to eternal life and the kingdom of God, unless you know how to weep. Unless you know what a mess you are. The mess you are must grieve you to the utter depths of your soul. Unless you know how thirsty you are, you will forever be simply "checking religion out" instead of throwing yourself into the loving arms of Jesus. Compare the passion of this woman, to the detached curiosity of Simon. Look at your own relationships in life. I would suggest that how you relate to your family and your friends or your groups is a barometer of how you are relating to God. I really like that song that Mary Chapin Carpenter sings, called "Passionate Kisses." It is a song about someone who yearns to be in a relationship of depth and surrender and emotion and trust and risk. I said earlier that we are each one little baby step from that sort of relationship with God. Also, we are each only one small baby step from that kind of relationship from each other. Yes, I know, there is always a kind of careful checking out that we go through before we can get close. I know, intimacy must grow and deepen over time. But you can’t live your whole life that way. Why does the Gospel tell us to welcome the outsider with hospitality? The reason is not simply because it is good to be nice and welcoming. The reason is that we need the outsider for our own salvation. The outsider in this story showed true hospitality. The outsider stirs up and judges the "in-groups" of which we are all a part. Groups are good. We need them. In-groups are bad. In-groups are bad, not because they exclude others and that isn’t nice. In-groups are bad because they kill your spirit. In-groups thrive on the illusion of intimacy. In fact such groups, wherever they are, are unconscious conspiracies against the kind of intimacy that this woman models for us. When Jesus says her sins are forgiven, he is not saying that he did it. He is saying that in her act of unselfconscious abandon to him, grace came to her. She took that one short step available to each of us. So can we. AMEN. Back to Table of Contents.