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The Dangers of Sinning Undercover

June 5, 2005                                                                                          Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson                                               

Now as we go through this, one of the things I want to ask you to do is, notice the context of the story and in which it is told because that helps us in understanding the story itself and secondly as we go through I want to remind you that as you read stories like this we should try to put ourselves in the story and try to figure out which character we are supposed to be. Sometimes it is interesting to play different characters, be different people in different stories; in this particular story there are only two people so you have a pretty easy choice. It is a story of Jesus being invited to the house of a prominent Pharisee. I want to tell you this story is very sexy; you’ll see what I mean in just a minute. I’m telling you that if I were to imagine this story to happen, I could just see the headlines because it is about Jesus going to this Pharisee’s house. As He was reclining at the table – in those days they laid at the table and ate so their feet were kind of stuck out behind them – a woman of the evening comes and anoints his feet and cries all over His feet and wipes them dry with her hair. Can you imagine the headlines? “Preacher has his feet massaged by prostitute.” You can just see it. I had a friend of mine who once told me not to do anything I wouldn’t want printed in the headlines of the New York Times. This is what is going on and not only that, you see what Jesus does with this woman and with the Pharisee. And he tells a parable…well you’ll see what he does. Let us hear God’s word.

Luke 7:36-50 Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar full of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.” Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little. Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

What are we to do with this story? How are we to understand it? As I said earlier, I encourage you to in these stories to place yourself within them. I don’t think this one is too hard actually. Who were you in the story? Well I doubt many of us would identify with the prostitute. Most of us would have to identify with the Pharisee. We might say to ourselves, “Well not me, I’m not that judgmental. I couldn’t be like that.” But I want you to imagine this for just a minute. You are throwing a dinner party; maybe you invited someone somewhat well-known. This person is at your party. You want to make sure they have a good time. But then someone comes in dressed like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman – in Jesus’ day, prostitutes dressed a certain way. When the Pharisee later judgmentally looked at Jesus and wondered why, if he was a prophet why he didn’t know who this woman was, well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what she was. She dressed a certain way; everybody knew her. She comes in and in those days when they were eating, they did lie at the table, and she does these amazing things. She is so overwhelmed by emotion that she comes initially to anoint his feet but she cries so much that she has to unbraid her hair (we’re not told that, but her hair is braided) and begins to dry Jesus’ feet with her hair. She’s crying so much. If you had a person like this show up at your party what would you do? I think if we were honest with ourselves, we would wonder why that kind of woman showed up at our party. In those days, you have to realize, when a prominent person threw a party everybody could come, but not everybody could eat. They would sit around the table, in some ways it was a community event. Someone would throw a party and they would sit around the table and eat and converse and the whole village would show up and listen. It’s not quite like that today, but that’s what they did. It isn’t unusual for this woman to show up, but when she does, the Pharisee wonders why. We would have done the same thing.

There’s another similarity between him and us. He is a law-abiding citizen; he tries to do what is right. We tend to look at the Pharisees and think they were terrible people, and in some ways they were, but they were trying to keep the rules. They were the people trying to do what was right; they were trying to be good people. Aren’t we like that? Most of us are not law-breakers, we haven’t committed adultery, we haven’t robbed, we don’t steal, we don’t do drugs…we’re the good people. I want to draw a distinction that Jesus draws in the scriptures. Jesus makes a distinction between what one might call overt sinning and covert sinning. We understand those words; overt means what you do out in the open, covert means what you do in hiding or in your thoughts. Jesus would say stuff like, “You might think it’s okay if you don’t commit adultery, but if you think about it, it’s not okay either.” Or he’ll say things like “You may think you are all right if you don’t kill somebody, but if you have that kind of rage in which you want to kill someone, it’s not okay either.” Of course Jesus would say that really killing somebody is worse than not killing them, but sin is sin. You see, I think there is a danger for those of us who are the good people, there’s a danger of sinning under cover, if you will. And it’s a good thing not to be an overt sinner, but let’s not fall into the dangers that happen to us when we compare ourselves. We are just a comparing bunch. We are a competitive bunch; everything we can do, we compete about it. I was reading about a football game that took place at an upstate university in New York called Colgate. Actually I played there once when I was a sophomore college. At half-time the band of the opposing team was playing their music and went over to the Colgate side and formed a letter so they could read it. Do you know what it said? It said, “Crest.” We’re always comparing and it’s not always bad to compare but when we think of our relationship with God, we should never compare ourselves because it is not about that. Certainly there are worse things than others, but we are full of sin in our hearts. We’re full of thoughts and of things we do and don’t do and a lot of things we do we are good at hiding. We should never compare. It is good to not sin. It’s good to try to keep rules but when it comes to God and our relationship with Him those things don’t apply. I never watch NBA basketball really until the playoffs because that is when they really get good. It’s amazing how high these guys can jump, they are incredible athletes. I don’t know what the record for a standing high jump is for these guys, maybe about five or six feet. You think of us…some of us can’t get up two inches in the air, or if we did, when we came down we would hurt ourselves. But these guys can go five feet. But it’s only five feet. Morally, God’s standard for us is a mile. So when you are judging a person, whether it be two inches or five feet, when the standard is a mile, what’s the difference? It’s better to be able to jump higher but even so, we shouldn’t compare because we still can’t meet the standard. God is perfect, we are not. We need help. And so the danger for those of us who are the good people is to compare ourselves and we shouldn’t do that.

The second danger is that we forget about what it’s all about. It’s about forgiveness. It’s about faith. And how do we get that forgiveness? We’re not forgiven by keeping the rules. It’s interesting in modern society we hear a lot about accepting people and that’s okay but acceptance is sort of a shallow thing compared to what God actually gives us. I don’t think Jesus said to the woman, “I accept you and all that you are doing, I know you are a prostitute and that you just can’t help it…” I don’t think he said that. I think he looked at her and said, “I offer you forgiveness.” The only way we are healed is being forgiven, not just accepted. He offered her forgiveness. We don’t get that on our own. A few months ago I was watching one of those half-time shows and this guy had won one of those contests where he could take a football and throw it through a large hoop and if he did, he won a lot of money. But he also had the opportunity, if he didn’t want to do it himself, he could have some famous quarterback do it for him. The guy chose that way. I could imagine myself doing this and I want to tell you, I would never let anyone throw it for me. I could do it just as good…yeah, right. I would be a fool if I didn’t let the quarterback throw the ball, a person who could do it a hundred times better than me. That’s the concept behind the cross. Jesus was righteous for us. Jesus died for us. Jesus provides forgiveness for us, we can’t get it ourselves. But we forget that. We want to do it ourselves. That’s what Simon thought, that was the theology of the day…we do it ourselves by keeping the rules. That would be just like me trying to throw it through the hoop. We forget that as good people.

Last but not least – I actually think this is the most important – we forget what it is to really love God. What we were thinking when we came to worship today? Maybe, “I need my coffee” or “How long is this service going to last?” All kinds of things come into our minds but how many of us come with the specific purpose of thanking God for what He did for us and wanting to grow in our love for God as we contemplate all He does for us. I doubt a lot of us did. I’m not trying to condemn you. We are all this way. We are all distracted. My encouragement to you is to simply not fall into this trap of not remembering what it is all about. What it really is all about is learning how to love Jesus more…how to love God more. That’s why this woman was crying so. Not many of us would be willing to make a fool of ourselves like this woman did. We’re too worried about what we look like in front of everybody else. She was so overwhelmed by the thought that Jesus would forgive her sins. She must have heard him preach before. She came in converted and she was reacting to the love she had experienced. She came in with her perfume to anoint His feet; she wasn’t trying to bother him that much but she got so overwhelmed and cried and had to wipe the tears away. And Jesus said, “Your faith has saved you.” And it wasn’t just faith and believing in something, it was putting her trust in Jesus – like me giving the guy the ball to throw, trusting someone to do it for me – and the love overwhelmed her so. I encourage you today, most of us are covert sinners but we all have things which we need to confess. I’m not going to ask you to do that publicly, but what better time than today as we come to the table. Before us is a representation of the love of God who loves you and me. You are forgiven. But grow in your own love by realizing how great that forgiveness is. We are so busy comparing ourselves and thinking that we are just a little sinner (like the person who just owed a little bit) compared to the big sinners, but I suggest that we are really the people who inside are pretty far out. Let God love you and as you do, love Him. Learn to love Him more, grow in your love, and walk out of here more in love with God because of what He has done for you. Let us pray together.