The Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13, 2010
1Kgs 21:1-10[11-14], 15-21a
Psalm 5: 1-8
Galatians 2: 15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. AMEN.
This week on NPR I heard a piece about the Bank of America. It had been penalized for something about banking, lending, and mortgages. The report ended saying that Bank of America had been fined whatever the huge amount of money it was, but "had not admitted to any guilt." Guilt is not the same as wrongdoing.
The lessons of 1 Kings and Luke are about evils and sins-wrongdoings-and forgiveness, but speak little of guilt. Guilt is a feeling or a sense that some people have in response to sins, some in response to success, some in response to happiness, some in response to other actions or inactions, and some in response to their own psychological programming for that feeling. These lessons are subtle but are not primarily about guilt, but are about sin and forgiveness.
Also this week I listened to the Presiding Bishop's address to the US Propagation of the Gospel group. I've sent its link around, so I hope you will pause to take the necessary time to listen to it. Part of what she said that Jesus did, and we are to emulate in mission is: "to show up, pay attention, speak the truth, and let God do the rest of the work." These seem like good guidelines to look at the 1 Kings and Luke stories about sin and forgiveness.
King Ahab of Samaria was summering in the lovely Jezreel Valley, between Mounts Tabor and Carmel, which stretches across Galilee, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley. He looked out and saw a beautiful vineyard nearby and summoned its owner, called Naboth the Jezreelite. "Give me your vineyard, so I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house." Outrageous. What a demand from a powerful king to a farmer.
A vineyard is a long lasting, much nurtured and cultured family enterprise and heritage. Naboth is identified with the valley as part of his name, in even mentioning him, so it was a key reality in his being, his family lineage. To demand that vineyard from someone so identified with the Jezreel Valley demonstrated not listening. Ahab didn't offer a purchase or swap to provide Naboth with enough for him to give in to the king. He demeaned Naboth and the land itself. The king says he wanted the valuable vineyard for a kitchen vegetable garden, dishonoring the land's worth, as well as the man. Ahab wasn't paying attention. Naboth said "No," and his refusal with no negotiating room made the king angrier even than the plain refusal. Naboth could only refuse.
Ahab's wife schemed to help the king get even, get the vineyard, and get Naboth. Her plan effectively got Naboth killed.
However, the Lord was paying attention, and sent the prophet Elijah to make clear to Ahab what he'd done wrong and its consequences. "I will bring disaster on you. I will consume you," and more.
If Ahab had planned to have a pleasant summer in the Valley, he blew it. He did show up, but he neither paid attention, nor told the truth. The Lord showed him definitively that he'd missed the mark in behavior, in understanding, in leadership, and the Lord did not forgive him for his long list or wrongdoings.
The Psalm after all was with the Lord. This Lord was not one to take pleasure in wickedness, and evil cannot dwell with a person. Braggarts cannot stand in the Lord's sight, and the Lord hates all who work wickedness. The Lord destroys those who speak lies, and abhors those who are bloodthirsty and deceitful. The one speaking the psalm prays that the way ahead be straight.
Ahab and Naboth' story is then paired by the lectionary text selectors as foreshadowing Jesus' having dinner with a Pharisee, another story about sin and forgiveness. This pairing, and ones like it, have given rise to the oft cited difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. The difference cited is that Jesus showed a loving God, while the God of the Old Testament was harsh and judgmental. In these two stories there are contextual differences, as well as ones of date. One is far earlier and societies had continued to work out within existing laws, codes, best practices, commandments, and lived out results, what worked and what didn't for a land longing to be one of milk and honey, a land where righteousness and peace would kiss each other. Also Ahab's colluding to destroy Naboth is quite different from a conversation by self-acknowledged sinners about their sin.
The woman at the Pharisee's house, a known sinner, anointed Jesus' feet with rare anointment and stroked them with her hair. (Again, please note, a woman washes someone's feet and not only does she not get a special day forever remembering her act, she also doesn't even get a name. I digress.) Jesus asked his host Simon, "A certain creditor had two debtors. He forgave one 500, the other 50. Now which one will love him more?" "The one he forgave more," was the Pharisee's correct answer.
Then Jesus thanked him for his hospitality and observed that the woman who'd walked into the dinner was indeed a great sinner: "her sins, which were many have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love." He added to her, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace." Then some named people followed him, and also "many others, who provided for them from their own resources."
Jesus showed up where there were people, and so sinners. He didn't ask what their sins were or how many. He visited and listened to the people and often, then pleasant occasions ensued. He didn't hear or elicit lengthy conversations about guilt.
Jesus paid attention. He heard the Pharisee's complaints and self-righteous superiority. He saw and felt the woman's kind actions to relax and comfort his own tired, cut-up feet. She exercised her skills to make him feel welcome at the Pharisee's dinner. He understood the Pharisee's question, and explained his understanding of sin and forgiveness. Not only could the man and woman understand, but also so could all the people around. Jesus knew that each person understood and could name his/her own sins, and that the blanket forgiveness would fit everyone's own self-acknowledged sins. No -eye -for-an-eye formula would fit everyone's sins, whether few or many. "Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the Kingdom (or 'kin-dom' as the Presiding Bishop also named it) the kin-dom of God." That's when many people followed Jesus and his group.
The hardest part of this story, perhaps, for us, is that Jesus simply forgave all sins. As if he were following the Presiding Bishop's three instructions for mission, he'd shown up, paid attention, and told the truth. All sins were genuinely forgiven. There was not much palaver about guilt or who did what to whom, or why the sins might have seemed justified, or any other scrambled explanation, one, any of them or us, might have used or use to describe or explain our sins. Jesus simply forgave sins. He told the truth that sins were forgiven then and now: a huge concept, but one that has drawn people to Jesus and his conviction of God and God's realm ever since.
It's a different approach to bad behavior than Ahab's against Naboth, Jezebel's against Naboth to punish him for standing up to Ahab's authority, or even the Lord's against Ahab. Jesus forgave all wrongdoing. Done. The Presiding Bishop said that after the three actions, to let God do the work of mission, and indeed many, many people followed Jesus then.
We forget that Jesus met people, talked to them, and then they followed him. There was no structure, liturgy, handbook, canon, strategic planning committee, mission committee, radical welcome group, bishop, clergy, or any other advertising group to sell Jesus. He showed up, paid attention, told the truth, and God helped people know the living truth of what Jesus said. People began to hear and learn that a loving God knows that people who live lives, sin. God loves all people by God's nature, and wants God's realm to be filled with all people, so God makes it possible for all people's sins to be forgiven. Praise the Lord, Halleluiah. Done.
If our baptism is each of our own, personal, private invitation and call to mission, then we are each sent out to do those three things. Our way of showing up, paying attention, and telling the truth will vary as much as we do, one from another. How do we do this as individuals, as a small community, as part of a larger community?
Radical welcome takes many forms. Some have made our garden tidy, beautiful, and well tended. Some make beautiful music here. Some greet us each with warmth and sincerity. Some read clearly, and surely some are at home making breakfast for loved ones to demonstrate God's individual care, too. Some prepare our budget numbers, and some serve regularly at Saturday/ Sunday's Bread. Remember that it's the lay folk, the followers of Jesus, then and now, who have always paid the bills for all this mission work. The Pharisee paid for the meal where Jesus taught, and the woman had earned the expensive ointment she used to soothe Jesus. We all have basic work to provide a space, a place, a setting, an occasion, a relationship where Jesus can be known, and know people. Jesus was there and pronounced that sins were forgiven. His availability and attentiveness to all people and their sins is what keeps people following that call to eternal forgiveness with hope. The relationships Jesus made with both Pharisee and woman continue with each of us. It is that truth: that people sin and are forgiven, that has been the seed of mission from his world to ours. We are forgiven our wrongdoings, but guilt is left to us to sort out. Jesus promised us forgiveness, but it is our adult work to accept that and let go those times, places, relationships, and situations where we missed the mark. We may have substantial work to alleviate our own guilt, but fixing the wrongdoings are far more important, whether they're on the individual, corporate, national or other level. It's our work to understand when and where we miss the mark, which scale, whether rudeness, mistake, injustice, environmental, or other kind of sin, or where we fail to seek and serve Christ in all people. We do miss the mark, so we aim over and over trying to get closer. We use forgiveness to try again and to spread the news that forgiveness is always available. We make relationships to spread that word and to help our aim. However we do, God's forgiveness waits for us, and that is always Good News.
© Katharine C. Black 13 June 2010
