Homily for the week of June 13, 2010

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2010

2 Samuel 12:7-10, 13

Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 7, 11

Galatians 2:16, 19-21

Luke 7:36—8:3 or 7:36-50

What do you do when you know you have hurt someone deeply or when you become aware that your patterns of life choices cause great harm to others? Sometimes you can kiss and make up with the hurt person. But at other times it is not possible to repair the damage to the ones directly affected. Even when the person you hurt forgives you, you still search for how to express the love and joy that come from being freed from guilt. Each day the newspapers tells us the story of someone who smashed a window, dropped a baby, took a gun, or broke someone's neck because they were angry at someone. Forgiveness seems so uncommon. But it always was. Today’s Gospel captures a scene in which a woman who was known as a sinner, and who had experienced forgiveness, pours out her joy and gratitude toward Jesus in a elaborate demonstrations of love.

We do not know her name or where she came from or any other details of her life. We do not know what kinds of sins she had committed, nor how she met Jesus. We do not know when or where it was that Jesus had forgiven her sins. St. Luke presents just enough information to allow us to hang ourselves with our tendency to assume and to judge. She was unescorted. She had let her hair down in public. Because no “proper” woman of Jesus’ day did these things, they suggest sinfulness in the area of sexuality. But we must remember that we don’t know the sin.

We have only one small slice of her life, a moment in which she takes advantage of the open door, and she enters the home of Simon to find the one whose kindness and love had set her free. Jesus and his friends had been invited to Simon’s house for dinner. As was the custom for dinner she finds the guests reclining on cushions, reaching into the center to partake of the food. She spots Jesus, and in an extravagant gesture of love, she mingles her tears of joy with precious perfume and anoints his feet.

This act is open to misinterpretation. Simon, the host, immediately harbors judgmental thoughts. He is certain in his knowledge that the woman is a sinner, and he is unaware of the forgiveness she has experienced. He is just as certain in his judgement of Jesus. Jesus cannot be a who he says he is. Jesus tells Simon a parable aimed at getting him to repent of his false judgement and to open himself to the forgiveness Jesus offers.

Jesus offers Simon a little story about two persons who owe money to demonstrate what exactly is going on here. Jesus forgives her and sends her away to her dignity by being forgiven for who ever she had been in the past. He sends her back to living without regret or shame. Of course the others at the table want to shout out about “justice!” The point of the parable is easy to grasp: great love flows from having been forgiven much.

Jesus offered forgiveness without even being asked for it! How are we to deal with this kind forgiveness? Something stirred this woman to seek out Jesus. In doing only this she came to experience a sense of forgiveness. When she found Jesus, she didn’t have to ask for forgiveness. She already had gratitude to express, something entirely different from having to beg for forgiveness. Simon and his friends were not pleased. They would have rather like to see the woman on hr knees begging for forgiveness. They just did not understand the true feeling of forgiveness. Instead, they got a lesson in how to love and how to show respect for human dignity.

We so often misunderstand God’s desire to forgive that we even think we hear the misunderstanding at Mass. At the beginning of Mass we hear and say, “Lord, have mercy!” Sometimes we hear it differently. We will hear instead, “Lord, we are sinners in need of your forgiveness. Lord, have mercy.” The two are very different and reveal our difficulty in understanding and responding to God’s forgiveness. The “Lord, have mercy” is an act of praise, and it is about God. We are to give praise and show gratitude for God’s forgiveness and mercy.

Almost everything around us challenges our notions of God’s mercy. We set up standards for others that are designed to make them failures. We destroy our heroes. We prefer to condemn them for their sins rather than admire their achievements. We won’t give others new chances in life. We judge and either don’t give others a chance to change or don’t allow ourselves to see that we were wrong. Yet, God forgives before we ask — and even when we don’t ask. In our first Bible reading we are told of how Nathan ask God to forgave an adulterous and murderous king David. This is the same David that gave us the 150 Psalms we use at every Mass.

This week ask Jesus to stop judging, and to expand your capacity to forgive.