As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church
In the name of the Father and of the Sone and of the Holy Spirit.
Party crashers can be so annoying! They are unexpected. They stress out the host and guests alike. The mind goes wild. One wonders what are they going to do to upset well-laid plans? How can we get them out as quickly as possible? If they really disrupt things will we have to face the authorities? And the worries go on and on. And of course, they weren't invited for a reason, they are most like very unsavory characters!
To catastrophize is so easy to do. It is a thin line between strategize, that is preparing for future eventualities, and catastrophize, imagining the worst. However, for Simon the Pharisee, aka Simon the Leper, the host of the dinner party for Jesus, his failing was not to catastrophize but to criticize, not so much the behavior of the uninvited guest, but Jesus' response to her. For Simon, she was who she was and Jesus should have known better. "If he were really a prophet he would know what kind of a person she was."
We humans tend to put people in boxes and leave them there. Jesus, however, is always showing us another way. In today's gospel lesson, Mary is our party crasher. In so many of Jesus' encounters with people in need, he goes to them, or meets them in an apparent chance encounter, under a tree, by a pool, on the road, by a well, and then responds to their requests. But something different happens here. Mary goes to him. She intentionally seeks out Jesus, but asks for nothing. Instead, she pours out her heart to him, not in words but rather in gestures. She doesn't have to say anything. She weeps on his feet and then dries them with her hair. She kisses his feet, then pours expensive perfume on them.
Jesus is always reminding us, by word and deed, of the two greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbor. How we do this varies from person to person and from circumstance to circumstance. This dramatic story is designed to get our attention, to magnify the underlying message. But we can't love our neighbor if we only love the neighbor who behaves according to the rules or conventions that we prefer. There can be no litmus test for love. No qualifying formula.
And Jesus' response to this love shown him by Mary, is to assure her that her sins, those actions she now regrets and wants to leave behind, are forgiven. They are forgiven not only by his word but by her faith that drew her to him and led her to show her love for the one who can save her. And her sins may have been great in her mind and in the opinion of those who knew her, but they could not prevent her from receiving the forgiving love of God. Her demonstration of love toward Jesus in advance of hearing the word from Christ, was a sign of gratefulness to him for being received and not being rejected. The world may well reject her, as did Simon, but God is not like us and sees to the core of the person where the true self created by God is still available to be uncovered and released.
By contrast, the Pharisee, Simon the leper, had been cured of his disease by Jesus, and yet his attitude toward Jesus remained restrained and skeptical. He did not show even the simplest gestures of love on greeting Jesus. And he questions whether Jesus is really a prophet at all, much less the Son of God.
Jesus knows Simon's thoughts, but in his response, Jesus is not angling for praise and recognition, he doesn't need that. Rather, he is demonstrating to Simon, and to us, what God's love really looks like. It comes without precondition and it looks beyond our many failings. And when our hearts and minds finally absorb the enormity of that reality, love can burst forth from us just as it did from Mary Magdalene. And the more often that happens, the more widely the healing impact of God's love will spread throughout the world. And how glorious will be the praise we and all God's creation will sing in thanksgiving and adoration!
Glory be to Jesus Christ!
