God's Kind of Community - June 17, 2001

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Amen.

 

She’s got no name, but boy, does she have a story.

Have you ever noticed how in the scripture

 that there are plenty of women - plenty of sinful women -

 running around without names?

Well, sure they have names. 

 To their friends and neighbors and mothers and fathers and partners,

 these women are not unnamed sinners,

 but they are loved ones with whom they laughed and cried

 and suffered and rejoiced and shared their life and their love.

Nonetheless, in scripture they go about without a name,

 perhaps because it was forgotten by the author or, more likely,

 it was deemed not necessary to the story.

We have one such unnamed sinful woman in our gospel story today.

And while it was a slight of justice

 to rob this woman of her name and her identity,

 her namelessness serves the purpose of highlighting not only her story,

 but that of thousands of others in her day and ours.

For when we look at her we are looking at the unnamed thousands

 who are labeled as sinful outsiders,

 who are pushed aside,

 and whose presence makes many of us nervous. 

Today’s unnamed sinful woman -

 the unnamed and outcast sinful woman whom we find

 at the feet of Jesus and whose presence makes the host nervous -

has a story to tell, a story that we need to hear, a story that we need to tell.

 

This story begins in community,

 in the home community of our unnamed woman at her birth.

Although we hope that she was fully and completely loved by her parents,

 she was surely a disappointment to some in her family,

 and perhaps to her parents,

 by nature of her gender,

 for after all, women were powerless in this ancient society,

 and the birth of a female represented a potential loss of

 wealth and prestige for her family.

Regardless of the attitude of her parents and family about her gender,

 as a young girl she would grow into her role as a woman,

 subservient to any brothers or male cousins that she might have.

Furthermore, as she physically grew as a woman she would find herself

 ritually unclean and ceremoniously ostracised by the community

 on a monthly basis because of her biology.

As if this were not bad enough,

 at some point along the line she was labeled a sinner.

 What was her sin?

 Theft? Prostitution? Picking grain on the sabbath?

Luke doesn’t share that with us. We don’t know.

 Whatever her unnamed sin was she was set apart,

 separated from the community because of her sin,

 and her name was replaced by the descriptive pronoun, “sinner.”

 Not just a sinner but an outsider,

our unnamed woman could no longer be a part of the community of her birth,

 and was forced to occupy the margins of society,

 and denied community, except for the community of the outcast.

And it was there,

 as a resident in the community of the outcast,

 where Jesus found her.

For just one chapter prior to today’s gospel reading

 we find Jesus preaching on the plain to the outcast,

 “Blessed are you who are poor,

 for yours is the

kingdom

of

God

.

 Blessed are you who are hungry now,

 for you will be filled.

 Blessed are you who weep now,

 for you will laugh.”

And as the text a chapter before tells us,

 a great multitude of people from all

Judea

,

Jerusalem

 and the coast of

Tyre

and

Sidon

came to hear him. 

 They came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;

 and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.

I can imagine that our unnamed sinful woman was among that multitude

 hearing the Good News of the

kingdom

of

God

,

 that the

Kingdom

of

God

is hers,

 that authentic community with God and her fellow sufferers is hers.

And perhaps, too, she was there to witness the healing

 of the Centurion’s slave,

 a fellow outsider,

 or the raising to life of a widow’s dead son.

Perhaps she not only heard the word but saw in these miracles

 the hope for her own redemption,

 that this man of God who proclaims Good News

 to the marginalized,

 who heals the unclean and who raises the dead,

 could heal her uncleanliness and raise her from her social death.

Indeed, what she heard in his words and saw in his miracles

 was the

kingdom

of

God

, and it was good news.

Out of gratitude for his message

 she seeks him out and offers him the ritual of hospitality -

 washing the feet and annointing -

 for he has come into her life.

But she does this not with clean water, but with tears of pain,

 for this is where Jesus entered her life -

 in the pain, at the margins, as an outcast.

And it is precisely this interaction between Jesus and the outcast

 which makes the host nervous,

 for it turns his world upside down.

“If this man were a prophet,” he says to himself, “he would have known

 who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him -

 that she is a sinner.”

But the host has it all wrong,

 for it is precisely because Jesus is a prophet (and much more)

 that he touches and is touched by the outcast, the sinful, the unclean.

In our host’s understanding God comes into contact only with those

 who behave in prescribed ways,

 and who follow certain rules.

Indeed, perhaps we think the same way.

 How many people have been denied the good news because it was

 hidden by church codes of behavior and dress and

 de-facto assigned seating?

 How many teens with alternative fashion taste

 have been turned off to church because we tell them

 that blue hair, male earrings or baggy pants are unacceptable?

 How many gay and lesbian people have been denied the good news

 because they have been told that God hates queers?

Yet Jesus himself tells us earlier in Luke that he has come

 not for those who follow the rules

 but for those who are cast out because of those rules -

 for the sinners and the poor and the outcast

 and all those rejected by a regulated society.

By reaching out to an outcast and a sinner,

 Jesus violates the host’s sense of propriety and justice,

and offends those for whom love and compassion take a backseat

 to human reason, rules, order or tradition.

Jesus reaches out to the kid with blue hair,

 to the person who looks, acts or even smells different than us,

 to the person who has been told over and over again that

 God hates them because of their sexual orientation.

Jesus is on the other side of those lines that we draw,

 forming community out of those who are rejected by our communities.

 

And so as we begin our summer together,

 and as we begin to look at the

Kingdom

of

God

together,

 our first impression is one of a community of outcasts and sinners,

 gathered in opposition to and at the discomfort of many

 who find comfort in rules and regulations

 that clearly define who’s in and who’s out.

Yet we also see in this kingdom a guiding principle,

 one of forgiveness and mercy.

 The act of love that our unnamed woman has shown to Jesus

 occurs as a response to the good news of forgiveness,

 the good news of freedom from sin

 and restoration to community with God and others.

This unnamed woman’s story,

 and thus the story of so many other unnamed men and women,

 is one of death through sin and isolation and oppression,

 and new life through the love and mercy of Christ.

Brothers and sisters,

 that is the story of the

Kingdom

of

God

and of Christian community,

It is our story,

 for in our baptism we have each died and been raised again,

 restored to God and to each other by the mercy of Christ.

The Good News is that the

Kingdom

of

God

,

 the community that God gathers us to be,

is one marked by the radical and irrational love of Christ,

 and which destroys all that would divide us.