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Sermon: Third Sunday after Pentecost (C) - 13th June 2010
St Albans Anglican Church Epping 10:00am
Readings: 1 Kings 21:1-21; Psalm 5:1-7; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:7
Do you like art? Do you like spending time in Art Galleries? My favourite gallery is the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Its only a few years old. But it is filled with both paintings and photographs of famous Australians. People we all know, people from politics, from sport, from TV. It’s a beautiful new building and the paintings are very entertaining.
Up until the time of Oliver Cromwell it was customary for the walls of churches to be covered in paintings. They would be pictures of well known Bible stories. Today we still have stained glass windows. But years ago the walls also were covered with pictures. Just by sitting in church and looking around the walls you would be reminded of so many Bible stories. But there was one painting that was very popular. One painting that was repeated in many churches. So important was this story that it covers one whole wall in the Cistine Chapel. There we have Michelangelo’s version of the Last Judgemt. More commonly, it was known as the Doom. It was based on Matthew 25, and the story of the Last Judgment where some were permitted to go into paradise while the rest were condemned to hell.
There was this idea that all humanity would be divided into two groups - one enjoying God’s blessing and the rest experiencing God’s curse. Yet it was not an idea unique to Jesus. The Pharisees had an end time belief that is always popular. There is the “In” group and the “Out” group. there is the acceptable group and the un-acceptable group. Usually we give it an “-ist” name. We have racist, or sexist or ageist. It is easy to identify this behaviour in other people. We like to see this sort of attitude as a problem for others. He is a racist, while I am just selective with my choice of friends. Hitler made racism unpopular for a while. We are careful not to be anti-semitic these days.
Yet racism doesn’t go away. Look at the current controversy over the muslim burqa. People get so upset because certain Muslim women want to cover up. Back in the 70’s women hit the headlines because they were taking too much off. Its hard to believe that women are now being criticized for doing just the opposite. Fred Nile is running a campaign against the burqa. Is he concerned that these women are expressing a stricter standard of modesty than his? But people object because they perceive some level of danger in it. But how many crimes have been committed in Sydney by people wearing a burqa? None at all.
Some people say wearing the burqa is un-Australian. But this is a free society. People should be free to wear whatever they like so long as they are decently covered. In the end, we have the same human tendency of assigning people to groups. Our group is acceptable. Their group isn’t. No doubt you will remember the hostility in Australia between Catholics and Protestants. My parents knew the religion of every person in our street. We had Anglicans and Catholics and Jews, and we were the poor Methodists at the end of the street. And that had an impact on whether we spoke to our neighbours or not. My grandmother shocked the family by befriending her neighbour of fifty years. The neighbour was a Catholic. After fifty years they found friendship. We couldn’t believe it.
But this is the same attitude in our reading today. The Pharisee believed he was better than everyone – more devout, more holy, better educated, richer, better connected socially. The Pharisees believed in an end time judgment. If anyone was going to be blessed it would be them. No doubt many Pharisees lived good lives. Many Pharisees were good people. But look at how religious arrogance perverted this man. Hospitality has always been taken very seriously in the Middle East. It is almost a sacred trust. The Pharisee had invited Jesus for a meal. Yet he had not provided a welcoming kiss nor water for his feet, nor oil for his head.
Imagine inviting guests for dinner but not showing them where to sit or where the loo was? Its easy to make a guest feel unwelcome. And its easy to see when our behaviour is going wrong. When you don’t speak to your neighbour because of their religion something is wrong there. When you criticize women for wearing too much – that is very strange. Several years ago a friend of mine had a muslim family move in next to her. She felt quite nervous about it. Then during the winter she got a very bad dose of the ‘flu. She was off work for several weeks. The muslim family next door noticed she wasn’t going to work each day. So each day they provided all her meals for her. They nursed her until she was well again. Afterwards she felt guilty for the racist thoughts she had had towards them.
In this story of Jesus you would think it would be easy to pick the good guys and the bad guys. We have a contrast between the Pharisee and the woman who had lived a sinful life. Surely God would approve of the Pharisee and condemn the woman. Even the Pharisee wondered what sort of a prophet Jesus must be if he couldn’t see how bad the woman was. Yet she was the one who washed his feet with her tears and kissed them and then poured perfume on them. She was under no obligation to do that yet she did it anyway.
The Pharisee was so obsessed with being right he had forgotten to do right. Jesus clarified the situation by telling the parable of the two men – one owed a huge debt while the other owed a small debt. But either way, neither could repay their debts. The debts of both were cancelled so who would love the money-lender more. The obvious answer was the man who was forgiven the larger debt. When we read it like this, it all makes good sense.
But so often Jesus teaching is the reverse of what we might expect. We might expect the Pharisee to be commended and the woman condemned. But it is the reverse. And so often in Jesus teaching we have a reversal of our expectations. It is even there in the Magnificat – he has filled the hungry with good things but the rich he has sent away empty. The fact that Jesus came from Nazareth was enough to single him out as an outsider. There was no expectation in Israel that their messiah would come from Nazareth. Galilee was on the very edge of Israel. It was a marginal community. Jesus and his disciples spoke with a Galilean accent which caught Peter out at the time of Jesus’ arrest.
So when we look at those Judgment paintings – who is it that is being blessed? Who is it that faces the judgement? It is not necessarily who we might expect. And why is that? Why do we get that wrong? Probably because we forget the other side of the picture. It is comforting to look at pictures of the judgment if we believe we are the ones being blessed. But then we forget about God’s forgiveness. If God wanted to he could condemn us all. But he has chosen the much harder road, the road of forgiveness and reconciliation. He has chosen to be the peace-maker between heaven and earth.
It was so easy for the Pharisee to condemn this wicked woman. But Jesus saw her repentance and chose to forgive her. Notice the reaction of the crowd. For them, there is no place for repentance. We know that Jesus has a unique authority to forgive. That is his special role. But I think the crowd are thinking in a general sense. That is, this woman should not be forgiven by anyone under any circumstances. But who could tolerate a society like that. It fails to acknowledge that all of us are fallible humans. We all make mistakes. We all have our weaknesses. None of us is perfect. Yet we are on dangerous ground when we believe in our brokenness that we are better than others, that God prefers us to others. We are more deserving than others.
As we look on those paintings of the judgment we can be sure we will not face condemnation but not because of our own inherent goodness but simply because we trust in a God who does forgive, who does restore, who does reconcile us to himself, who makes peace with his enemies. We are all like the man who owed the debt he could not repay. But the good news is, we have put our trust in the God who forgives, who heals, and who makes us whole again.