Grace and peace to you from the one who is and who was and who is to come.

We’re just about at the end of the spring graduation season.  I know there have been a lot of graduations here, and I’d imagine there have been some pretty good parties to celebrate them.  Having a big party is a lot of work – you have to send invitations, count the responses, and figure out what you’re going to eat.  And as if all that isn’t enough, there’s the matter of making sure your home is clean before you have a bunch of people over.  This is my least favorite part of having company – I’d much rather cook than clean.  But it has to be done.

I think about Simon the Pharisee from this morning’s gospel lesson cleaning his house, or, more likely, watching as others clean his house.  He’s paying a little more attention than usual, because dinner tonight is going to be a big deal.  There’s going to be a lot of people lying on the couches around his table.  They will be there to see and hear from the suddenly famous teacher from Nazareth.  Like a lot of his fellow Pharisees, Simon isn’t quite sure what to make of this Jesus character.  He’s heard about Jesus’ knowledge of scripture and his tour around the region, teaching about the kingdom of God.  Part of his ministry is casting out demons and healing the sick.  In fact, they say that over in Nain that he “pulled an Elijah” and raised a widow’s son from the dead.  But Simon has also heard that Jesus’ disciples had violated the Sabbath, and he let them get away with it.  He also healed the son of a centurion, a member of the occupying Roman army.  And right before he invited Jesus to come and eat with him, Simon heard the most disturbing rumor of all, that Jesus was, quote, “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”  With so much swirling around him, Simon was eager to have Jesus come for dinner, so he and the other Pharisees in town could make up their minds about him.

Like the other Pharisees, Simon was meticulous about keeping everything in his life clean, not just his home.  That’s what the Pharisees were all about – avoiding anything that was unclean, anything that would make them unable to worship God.  This included what they ate, but also what they wore, where they sat and on what, and, of course, who they associated with.  And that’s where the trouble started that night.

All the men were gathered around properly prepared food, with everyone in his proper seat, and the meal begun with the proper prayer.  And then…she was there.  Like Jesus, the woman who suddenly appeared in Simon’s dining room had a reputation that preceded her, though hers wasn’t open to debate.  Everyone knew her.  And here she was, sidling up to Jesus. 

Once again, the world had burst into Simon’s neatly-ordered, ritually-clean life.  Well, at least this would give Simon an answer to the question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind, “what would Jesus do.” 

Now, after four years of college and three years of seminary, I’m qualified to give you a pretty detailed explanation of dinner etiquette for a first century banquet in Palestine.  I hope it won’t disappoint any of you, but I’m going to skip the history lesson because what she did was pretty outrageous by our standards as well. 

Paint this picture in your mind. 

Everyone is gathered on couches around the dinner table.  Then she comes in and starts to weep, not a single tear going down her cheek, but water streaming down her reddened face, enough to soak a full grown man’s feet.  Then she grabs Jesus’ feet, pulls the pins from her hair, and dries the tears on his feet with her hair.  But she’s not done yet.  She opens a jar of expensive ointment, kisses his feet, and massages the ointment into them. 

We don’t know what the other guests were thinking, but we do know what Simon was thinking.  Not only has she come in here in all her uncleanness, but this so-called prophet can’t even tell a sinner when one is washing, drying and massaging his feet. 

As Simon is fuming about her being in his house and coming to terms with his disappointment in Jesus, we find out that Jesus knows exactly what he’s thinking: “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.”  I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that being able to hear people’s thoughts is a pretty solid mark of being a prophet. 

But rather than excoriating Simon for being judgmental, Jesus breaks the stunned silence around the table and says, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”  I wonder what Simon expected to hear from Jesus, but it probably wasn’t what Jesus told him.  Jesus responded to the situation as he so often did – with a story.  “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred days’ wages, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them.  Now which of them will love him more?” 

Given the gravity of the situation, this story is stunning in its simplicity.  And it’s even more remarkable for what’s not in it – there’s no explanation of how the people got into debt, no story of how the moneylender became so gracious, no explanation of how the two people love the moneylender.  But most importantly, Jesus’ question makes an important statement about forgiveness – being forgiven for more isn’t a sign of being loved more, it’s a reason to turn that love more outward.  Jesus makes Simon voice this fact as he answers the question, and then he points to the woman.  Jesus points out how the woman is showing great love – even great faith by counting on Jesus to let her touch him and let her approach him.  This is the mark of someone whom God has made clean, someone God loves. 

He tells Simon, in front of all his Pharisee friends gathered there, about how this woman has shown real hospitality, and how Simon, in his focus on his own cleanness, has not met even the basic standards of showing welcome.

The real difference, though, goes beyond welcoming a guest.  The real difference between this woman and Simon is the difference between knowing and living out of forgiveness, and living as if you have no need for forgiveness.  The Pharisee relies on his own ability to stay clean so he can be worthy of receiving god’s love.  Part of how he did this was to offer water and oil to guests so they could clean themselves.  But he can’t even depend on himself to do this.  If he can’t cover the basics, he will need forgiveness, he will have to rely on grace sooner or later.  But until he gets there, he turns the scrutiny he subjects himself towards others.

Rather than trying to push grace back through the things she does, the woman starts with grace.  She has realized she can’t get clean herself, and instead of relying on herself, she trusts God’s forgiveness, and God’s forgiveness is the ultimate cleanness.  It doesn’t just cover up the messes we’ve made with the kind of neat trappings Simon relies on – it does away with the whole dynamic of clean and unclean altogether.  It is the new currency in the relationship between God and us, and it is only God’s to give as a gift.  When we’re freed from worrying about clean and unclean, we can turn the love we feel in being forgiven towards others, just as the woman did in Simon’s house.

The way we turn the love and acceptance we feel in forgiven towards others replaces notions of clean or unclean as what guides our lives.  We probably won’t show our grateful love by washing feet with our tears, but we showed it yesterday working at Habitat for Humanity.  We will show it this week as we show hospitality to the children visiting us from the Lutheran Day Nursery, and to the students of Holy Family School as we help them with their picnic on the beach.  Next Sunday is the blood drive, and we can give thanks for the lives we live as forgiven people by giving something of ourselves to help others. 

I give thanks that the list of ways this community responds to forgiveness in love goes on.  But we don’t do any of these things, we don’t show our love in these ways, to earn forgiveness.  We already have it because Jesus offered us the water and oil of baptism when he welcomed us into his house.  And we can boldly join him at this table because we have firm faith in his forgiving welcome.

We have a long journey to go on with Jesus through the season of Pentecost.  He will share many more meals with people.  We will see Jesus perform miracles, tell parables and welcome so many whom those around him would call unclean – a way of saying they are unworthy of God’s love.  But we learn on that journey, along with the woman in Simon’s house, that we are only clean or unclean in each other’s eyes.  In Jesus’ eyes we are something far more precious – we are forgiven.  Thanks be to God.

Amen