This Week's Sermons

Sermons for the Month
Much Love
DATE: June 14, 1998
SERVICE: Pentecost II
TEXT: Luke 7:36-8:3
"To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

Anybody here need a sabbatical? You know, time off from having to deal with stubborn clients, noisy kids, boring parents, bean counters and irritating co-workers? Increasingly business is following academe's lead in offering long-standing employees a period of renewal and refreshment. The concept of a "sabbatical" stems in part from the Old Testament tradition of a "Jubilee Year." According to the Bible, every fifty years a Jubilee Year was to be announced, a declaration that canceled all outstanding debts. The jubilee tradition allowed debtors a chance to get back to a blank slate, to start over again fresh. Now I bet you didn't know just how much you needed a sabbatical, did you?
In theory this Jubilee Year sounds great. But in practice it promotes all manner of difficulties -- not least of which is what all the owed creditors are supposed to do in order to obtain any income at all. Despite the fact that ancient Israel operated with only the smallest of credit bases, activating a Jubilee Year tradition proved impossible for the young nation to implement. Although there are clear scriptural prescriptions about granting jubilee years, there is no evidence that a genuine debt-forgiving jubilee year was ever celebrated during Israel's independent existence. Of course, there is one slight flaw running through the "Jubilee Year" concept: With human nature the way it is, how do you get debtors to pay up when they know a Jubilee is approaching? Colleges and universities close their fiscal year at the end of June instead of the end of December. Now just suppose July 1, 1998, has been declared the beginning of a Jubilee Year. How many of us would be rushing to settle up our kids' spring-term expenses by June 15 if we knew that come July 1, any outstanding debt would be forgiven?
You see what I mean by "human nature being the way it is." Instead of writing checks, I suspect it is far more likely that too many of us would be lined up at the nearest ATM maxing out every credit card we owned. After all, if our debts are going to be canceled doesn't it make sense to be really over our heads in hock, instead of just owing a few bills here and there? How much more would we have to celebrate in a Jubilee Year if the debt we were released from was an enormous crippling weight, not just a monthly annoyance?
In today's Bible reading from Luke, we find Jesus in the home of a well-to-do Pharisee by the name of Simon having dinner. While eating a woman, a bag lady from the streets, enters uninvited and falls down at Jesus' feet weeping, drying the tears the fell on his feet with her hair. Although, the Pharisee to his credit did not want to create a scene, nevertheless, was disgusted not only by the woman's public display of affection, but also by Jesus' toleration of her touches. Jesus, ever the teacher realized he had a teaching moment.
Jesus knew that Simon, as one well-trained in matters of the Mosiac law, understood the notion of jubilee debt cancellation. With that in mind, Jesus tells Simon our parable of the two debtors. Jesus was obviously hoping Simon might come around and interpret the presence of that out-of-place, uninvited woman as an opportunity instead of an intrusion. Simon easily reasons that in Jesus' parable, the man who is forgiven a debt of 500 denarii would "love" his creditor more than the man forgiven a debt of only 50 denarii. Receiving great forgiveness elicits great love, not only from the forgiven one, it would seem, but from the one who forgives as well. The forgiving creditor in Jesus' parable has enough compassion for those who owe him to cover a large amount of debt.
What can we learn from this? A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the "heir apparent" of a family. In most families there is also one member who is designated the "wild one," the "troublemaker," the "challenge." To be sure I am not talking about the extreme case. Rather, this is the child who is always causing mischief, getting into trouble, breaking treasured heirlooms, wearing out the parents' nerves and patience. A book called Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More (HarperPerennial, 1991) even helps us give positive names to negative behaviors. Mary Sheedy Kurchinka says that instead of seeing these children as "demanding," we should see them as "holding high standards." They're not "whiny"; they're "analytical." When they throw supper on the floor, we are not to think of them as "picky," but rather "selective." Here are some more (20):

Nosy => Curious

Manipulative => Charismatic

Explosive => Dramatic

Distractible => Perceptive

Wild => Energetic

Extreme => Tenderhearted

Loud => Enthusiastic

Unpredictable => A creative problem solver

It is this most difficult child, the one who is constantly in and out of his or her parents' good graces, who is necessarily the focus of "much forgiveness." Ironically, it is as the parents forgive and the child receives that, in the long run, a special loving, rewarding relationship is established, one that has been strengthened by the strain and stretches of time. Having received more forgiveness, having felt both parental love and judgment on a regular basis, this "wild child" um ... excuse me, "spirited child" herself loves the parents greatly -- although her essentially unconstrained nature may continue to get her into trouble. Jesus revealed to Simon that the weeping woman in the midst of this formal banquet had indeed many sins, but they had all been forgiven. The outpouring of loving thankfulness that bathes Jesus' feet with tears and then anoints them with oil demonstrates this woman's response to her forgiveness: "She has shown great love" he tells Simon (v.47). "Where little has been forgiven, little love is shown."
"Where much has been forgiven, much love is shown." Need another example of how the "Much Love" principle works? Let me mention to you three names: Marilyn, Jackie, Diana. Need I say more? There is no need for last names, or anything else. You know who they are. In those three names you have more images, impressions, feelings, sensations, than in almost any other three contemporary names I could give you. Each one of these names represents a person of almost mythic status in our minds, regardless of the facts.
Let's take Jackie as a case in point. What's your image of Jackie? A loyal, courageous, grief-stricken widow cradling her dead husband in her arms who maintained her silence for 30 years to protect and preserve the memory of the man she loved. Is there anyone here who hasn't seen at least a couple of times the Zapruder home movie footage of the assassination of her husband John Kennedy? Yet how many of us have registered what we've seen many, many times: that Jackie's first reaction when her husband was shot was to climb out of the limousine, even kicking the President's head as she tries to escape only to be pushed back into the limo by a Secret Service agent? As Joan Smith observes in her new collection of essays, Different for Girls: How Culture Creates Women (1997), 44-45, Jackie's reaction itself is not surprising. What is surprising is our inability to see her as a whole person, warts and gifts and all. The myth of Jackie, standing beside her man both before in the White House and then after at the funeral service, then standing beside Lyndon Johnson as he was sworn in as President, was too strong in our minds to be challenged or questioned by real-life facts or historical details, no matter how many times we saw her attempted escape from the limousine.
There are a couple of ways to look at our sanctifying of Marilyn, Jackie and Diana. One is to admit painfully that for a woman to be admired in today's world, we prefer her to be seen, but not heard. For example, in 30 years Jackie Kennedy Onassis gave only two interviews -- one to Theodore White one week after Dallas, where she gave him the metaphor of "Camelot" by which to interpret the Kennedy White House; the other to historian William Manchester. Today, most of Jackie's words are still not available. The are presently under a legal embargo that prevents their being known in most of our lifetimes. Perhaps that is also the reason, we prefer our First Ladies to be seen but not heard. Just this week we saw televised the opening of the First Lady's Museum in Canton. We learned that the much criticized Hillary Clinton was not the first First Lady to have her own agenda while in the White House. Ellen McKinley in 1914 prepared legislation to Congress to rid Washington of its slums to provide decent housing for its poor. She likewise received much antagonism for her effort.
One can make the same case with Marilyn and Diana: their relative silence becomes their public perceived strength. We like our women icons best when they work more behind the scenes, in distress, and known for their sacrifice -- "in blood or ambition and preferably in both" (Smith 47). To be "victimized" by life, by your man, by the press, by a role itself, is to play to the galleries.
But there is another way of looking at the global adulation and affection toward these three women (and this other way need not be mutually exclusive with the above). Marilyn, Jackie, Diana; all three did not hide from the fact that they had much for which to be forgiven. They had much in their lives to forgive. They admitted their brokenness and did not hide the cracks in their earthen vessels. In their vulnerability even more than in their victimhood, in their honesty and their openness about their need for forgiveness and help, they played right into our hearts. Each in their own way opened themselves up for our forgiveness, and we responded not by judging them but by embracing them.
Even if you agree don't with this analysis of the Marilyn, Jackie and Diana phenomenon, there are clearly some important distinctions that relate to our walk with God and our fellow human beings. We forgive Marilyn her excesses, Jackie her humanness and Diana her self-confessed adultery because of the candid honesty, their genuine humanness. In return we, as their adoring public, have been only too willing to shower our love upon them. Curiously, however, we never expected them to love us in return. But God does. God does expect us to love him in return. Yet, the beauty of the forgiven life is not that our love is an obligatory love, any more than the love of this woman anointing the feet of Jesus was duty-driven. It is a love which is naturally elicited by God's forgiveness. The mark of forgiven persons is their love for God and their fellow human beings. You say you can't love someone who is not like you? Who doesn't have the same values as you, the same social status as you, the same gender orientation as you, the same God as you. My friend, if that is the case, you haven't yet experienced God's forgiveness yourself. You have yet to accept Jesus as your only Lord and savior. You say can't love your coworker, your neighbor, a family member, the marginalized of our society, those who are different from you? Then let me say to you that you have been keeping God at arm's length. You have been playing church all your life. You have substituted piety for faith. You have been worshiping false idols. My friend, you need to experience forgiveness; not know you're forgiven, but experience that forgiveness by turning your life over to Jesus Christ, by letting him and only him take possession of your heart and soul.
Jesus did not provide a roadmap to conversion because there isn't any. The path to Jesus is different for different people. For some it is a gradual process; for some it's a moment in time; for some it will come only when there is nothing else left for them to hang only when its too late; for some it thankfully comes early in life making their whole existence a joy. All I can say is when you change you know it.
Let me suggest, however, a first step. Break out the alabaster jar of ointment and begin to pour the oil of love upon those around you, especially on those from whom you have withheld your love. It won't be easy at first because they will be suspicious of your motives particularly if you have been withholding it for years. But let me assure you, you can be, should be, and will be, a MUCH LOVE person for the effort. If you take this first step, I guarantee, sooner or later, you will be a much-forgiven person in return.
We know by heart Jesus' saying, "To whom much is given, much is required." We need to also know by heart Jesus' saying, "To whom much is forgiven, much love is required." By the love we return to God and the love we show to others, we demonstrate the depth of our own experience of God's forgiveness.
AMEN