Forgiveness and Grace

Jesus is having dinner at Cornell President Skorton’s house, and in slips a woman in fashionably ripped jeans, black boots, preternaturally black hair, a Jack Daniels tank top, visible red bra straps, a nose ring, a few brightly inked tattoos, and a bunch of silver jewelry.  She kneels down, splashes some Chanel “J’Adore” on Jesus’ feet and sobs while she washes his feet and dries them with her hair.  The other, invited guests, in their Brooks Brothers suits and dresses, shift uncomfortably.  Jesus starts talking about forgiveness and grace and gratitude.  When he looks up from the woman, he looks up past the guests in that room, and looks at us.

By the way, except for the brand on the shirt, that description is pretty close to the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, a prolific, powerful writer and preacher at dozens of youth events each year and a Lutheran pastor.  She goes by @sarcasticlutheran (you should follow her).  She spent a lot of her life being uncomfortable in church because she made conventional churchgoers uncomfortable.  Mercifully, she found a church that accepted her for who she was… really… and she found her voice and her vocation.   A congregation saw the real her— beaten up by life, needing help, finding forgiveness so she could let herself off her own hook, sharing that forgiveness with others.

That Gospel story for this Sunday confronts us with our need for forgiveness and grace and invites us to feel forgiveness for ourselves and to celebrate when others experience it, not to evaluate others as more worthy or less worthy.  Worthiness turns out not to be about us.  It has everything to do with God.  By definition, grace comes to us as a free, unmerited, unexplainable gift from God in Christ. Yay!

Some of the crowd mutters about “if only Jesus knew what sort of woman this was…”  What they didn’t grasp was that Jesus actually knew exactly what kind of woman she was… and exactly what kind of people every one of them were!  And the biggest problem? That he didn’t care! He was ok with the woman, with Simon, with everyone there, with all of us.  He accepts people as they are, whole or broken, staid or notorious, visibly damaged or internally damaged, tired, lost, seeking forgiveness, feeling forgiveness.  Even more, he asks us to accept other people as those he loves.  And even even more, he asks us to accept ourselves as loved by him.

Come Sunday to hear how Jesus speaks to the woman in Luke 7… but listen how he speaks to you.

                                                                                                            In Christ,
                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                David

Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Epistles        Galatians 2:15-21
From the Gospels       Luke 7:36-8:3