Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke’s scenario is a masterpiece.  A Pharisee named Simon is entertaining Jesus at dinner.  Not just an informal, last-minute, come-as-you-are potluck; this is a banquet for a “teacher” who just might be the finest of the prophets.  All of a sudden, enter a woman, unannounced, uninvited.  Not some stranger; this woman is a well known sinner in the city.  What sort of sin?  Luke doesn’t satisfy our curiosity.  At any rate, in she comes.  She stands behind Jesus, who is reclining at the table.  And she cries.  Not only that: with her tears she washes his feet.  She loosens her hair and uses it to dry his feet.  More than that: she kisses his feet, then anoints them with expensive perfume.

Simon is surprised.  Not so much that a sinful person should dare crash his party.  His surprise is the guest.  His problem is Jesus.  Here is the man of the hour, the man all Galilee is talking about.  Some say he is “the prophet.”  Now a prophet should sense the character of the men and women with whom he is dealing.  And then one crucial sentence.  Simon thinks to himself, “If this man were really a prophet, he would know who this is, what manner of woman is touching him: She’s a sinner!”  If Jesus doesn’t know who the woman is, he’s not a prophet.  If he does know, yet lets her touch him, he’s still not a prophet: a prophet doesn’t allow such intimacies – certainly not from a sinner.

No reason to think Simon was an evil man.  He was simply ignorant.  He did not know who Jesus really was.  Had he known, he would have sensed that the woman bathing the feet of Jesus with her tears was not a rude intrusion.  She symbolized the whole reason for his existence.  You see, the Son of God took our flesh not to make contact with angels.  He took flesh to be with us.  And not because we were nice folks who deserved a visit from our Creator.  He took our flesh because that flesh had been infected by all the world’s evil ever since Eden.  There was no way for us to reach God unless God reached out to us.  And from the moment Jesus touched our earth, he literally reached out to us.

Not only to his mother and the arms of his foster father, but to a dead twelve-year-old girl and Peter’s fevered mother-in-law, to the blind and the deaf, to lepers and an epileptic, to Peter sinking in the sea and children his disciples tried to keep from him.  He even let Judas betray him with a kiss.  Jesus was reaching out to a sin-scarred humanity.  The elder brother of the prodigal son.  The Pharisee praying in the temple.  Jesus reached out to these as well.  He ate with Simon because he was reaching out to him too.  He could dine with a simon-pure Pharisee and be hugged by a notorious sinner for the same basic reason: he was the point of contact between sinful humanity and a forgiving God.

In any age or situation we tend to shape Jesus to our own image, make him over to our needs.  In a foxhole Jesus is a rescue squad; in a dentist’s chair, a painkiller; on exam day, a problem solver; in an affluent society, a clean-shaven middle-of-the-roader.  If we think of Jesus as the friend of sinners, the sinners are likely to be our own kind of people.  Let’s put ourselves in Simon’s place.  It’s Eucharist.  Suddenly, in comes a woman, unannounced, uninvited.  She puts her arms around Jesus, thanks him with tears for the grace of repentance; a new life is hers, the life of Christ.  “I came,” he said,” that they may have life, and have it in abundance.”  All of them.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor