She's Broken, He's Broken
Luke 7:37
And behold, a woman who was in the city, a sinner; and when she knew that he was sitting at meat in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster cruse of ointment, (ASV)
Sometimes it is good to leave familiar routines and try something new. Last Saturday, as a result of a garage ordering a wrong replacement part for Lina's Passat, her car was not able to be fixed and inspected. So, we went to pick up her car at the garage as she was to be out of town for 7 days. The Passat was supposed to drivable but it made more noise than a broken rickshaw...then all of the noises ceased. Lina was hoping that the car had fixed itself--like a lizard grows a new tail after a badger bites off the previous one. I am not very mechanical but I am pretty skeptical that mechanical objects have self-regenerative capacity.
On Sunday morn, she needed to fly out of Harrisburg International (International? That's a stretch...probably one flight to Canada a year like Geese) and she wanted to drive her Passat there. The idea of Lina driving ("Air Lina" I call her) up to Harrisburg International then the car mechanically imploding then exploding (O-Ring-like as the Space Shuttle Challenger) on 283 was not something I felt was worth taking a risk about.
I insisted that Lina not drive her car to Harrisburg International. Despite her mild protestations that her car was drivable (she didn't want me to have to change my plans), I prevailed. Well, for the sake of efficiency, I went to Hershey E-Free for Church rather than drive back to Lancaster. I needed to be back up at Hershey by noon anyway to attend a buddy's graduation ceremony from Penn State University's Med. School.
At E-Free, I heard a sermon on Luke 7:37. I really thought about the sermon as it reminded me again that pastors (like this one did) need to continuously reinforce to us of the grace and forgiveness extended through Christ--why preachers don't pound this home every Sunday and instead address interesting but hardly as crucial (the crux or cross) matters puzzles me. The Gospel never gets old.
In the context of the story, a sinful woman (her sin is thought to be sexual but the text does not prove this...instead one can surmise), Jesus, and a Pharisee, are the main actors. The Pharisee is indignant that forgiveness is extended to the woman by Jesus. The Pharisee sees himself as a guardian of public morality. But, like Lina's Passat, he may sound OK yet he is deeply flawed inside. He thinks he has fixed himself. Moreover, he also believes that he knows how to diagnose others....the ASE service technician of souls. Through his condemnation of her, he believes that others will drive right. But, being broken is the universal human condition and is the result of the Fall and crash in the Garden. He can no more fix himself than the Passat. He is woefully blind in terms of his own need, self-righteously diagnostic of her sin, and entirely blind of Jesus' deity and righteousness.
The Pharisees hated Jesus so comprehensively because He exposed their sin, forgave others' sins, and threw their whole moral universe upside down. These are pretty obvious derivatives from the text. Also, some Pharisees and other religious leaders, clearly were on the take, making money on the religious enterprise. Guilt was the consumer need and they had a monopoly on the remedy.
Yet, I think that the larger group of Pharisees actually had other motives besides only perpetuating such a self-serving monetary scheme and the like.
Their animus I believe, instead, arose from the fear that Jesus attitude towards sinners and His willingness to forgive the repentant in the present, actually made the reality of sin more likely among individual sinners, and the people on the whole, hence. It wasn't primarily about her past...it was about her and others' futures. The Pharisees wanted "sinners" to die in their sin...to have their past be a prison of no escape. I don't know where they drew the line on who was "a sinner" and who merely sinned and could be forgiven but they clearly saw themselves as the latter and the woman as the former.
This, they thought, would keep the other potential rabble in line. Her public shaming would be instructive to others contemplating a life of sin and warn them away from staining the fabric of their country. "Make them pay" was their mantra. Yet, they couldn't afford the bill either...and all the money from the Temple biz still left them in arrears. Jesus says as much at the end of the story in Luke 7. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." The universal prayer for universal guilt (Passat Pharisees included). And, prayed then paid, by the One who had no debt.
And behold, a woman who was in the city, a sinner; and when she knew that he was sitting at meat in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster cruse of ointment, (ASV)
Sometimes it is good to leave familiar routines and try something new. Last Saturday, as a result of a garage ordering a wrong replacement part for Lina's Passat, her car was not able to be fixed and inspected. So, we went to pick up her car at the garage as she was to be out of town for 7 days. The Passat was supposed to drivable but it made more noise than a broken rickshaw...then all of the noises ceased. Lina was hoping that the car had fixed itself--like a lizard grows a new tail after a badger bites off the previous one. I am not very mechanical but I am pretty skeptical that mechanical objects have self-regenerative capacity.
On Sunday morn, she needed to fly out of Harrisburg International (International? That's a stretch...probably one flight to Canada a year like Geese) and she wanted to drive her Passat there. The idea of Lina driving ("Air Lina" I call her) up to Harrisburg International then the car mechanically imploding then exploding (O-Ring-like as the Space Shuttle Challenger) on 283 was not something I felt was worth taking a risk about.
I insisted that Lina not drive her car to Harrisburg International. Despite her mild protestations that her car was drivable (she didn't want me to have to change my plans), I prevailed. Well, for the sake of efficiency, I went to Hershey E-Free for Church rather than drive back to Lancaster. I needed to be back up at Hershey by noon anyway to attend a buddy's graduation ceremony from Penn State University's Med. School.
At E-Free, I heard a sermon on Luke 7:37. I really thought about the sermon as it reminded me again that pastors (like this one did) need to continuously reinforce to us of the grace and forgiveness extended through Christ--why preachers don't pound this home every Sunday and instead address interesting but hardly as crucial (the crux or cross) matters puzzles me. The Gospel never gets old.
In the context of the story, a sinful woman (her sin is thought to be sexual but the text does not prove this...instead one can surmise), Jesus, and a Pharisee, are the main actors. The Pharisee is indignant that forgiveness is extended to the woman by Jesus. The Pharisee sees himself as a guardian of public morality. But, like Lina's Passat, he may sound OK yet he is deeply flawed inside. He thinks he has fixed himself. Moreover, he also believes that he knows how to diagnose others....the ASE service technician of souls. Through his condemnation of her, he believes that others will drive right. But, being broken is the universal human condition and is the result of the Fall and crash in the Garden. He can no more fix himself than the Passat. He is woefully blind in terms of his own need, self-righteously diagnostic of her sin, and entirely blind of Jesus' deity and righteousness.
The Pharisees hated Jesus so comprehensively because He exposed their sin, forgave others' sins, and threw their whole moral universe upside down. These are pretty obvious derivatives from the text. Also, some Pharisees and other religious leaders, clearly were on the take, making money on the religious enterprise. Guilt was the consumer need and they had a monopoly on the remedy.
Yet, I think that the larger group of Pharisees actually had other motives besides only perpetuating such a self-serving monetary scheme and the like.
Their animus I believe, instead, arose from the fear that Jesus attitude towards sinners and His willingness to forgive the repentant in the present, actually made the reality of sin more likely among individual sinners, and the people on the whole, hence. It wasn't primarily about her past...it was about her and others' futures. The Pharisees wanted "sinners" to die in their sin...to have their past be a prison of no escape. I don't know where they drew the line on who was "a sinner" and who merely sinned and could be forgiven but they clearly saw themselves as the latter and the woman as the former.
This, they thought, would keep the other potential rabble in line. Her public shaming would be instructive to others contemplating a life of sin and warn them away from staining the fabric of their country. "Make them pay" was their mantra. Yet, they couldn't afford the bill either...and all the money from the Temple biz still left them in arrears. Jesus says as much at the end of the story in Luke 7. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." The universal prayer for universal guilt (Passat Pharisees included). And, prayed then paid, by the One who had no debt.
Comments
thanks, Eric.