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spent0404
Confrontation
Text:
Luke 7:36-50
Date: Pentecost 4
6/27/04 simens A-50 wap cms
Confrontation.
Some people live for it, others avoid it at all costs. Confrontation.
It is a necessary ingredient whether in the realm of politics or
preaching. In its more civil form it is even taught as a fine art
called debate. In its more rash form it is rejected as terrorism.
Today Nathan the prophet confronts David the murder and adulterer,
Paul the apostle confronts Cephas (or Peter) the hypocrite, and
Jesus the Lord confronts Simon the Pharisee. In all three cases
truth was at stake and it needed to be confronted. As far as we
know the score remains only two-for-three for truth. David repented
and was forgiven. Peter would have a conversion experience to bring
him over to Paul's side. Only Simon the Pharisee remains in question.
Confrontation.
The issue, when it comes to religion, is not about how to win friends
and influence people. Nor is it to learn only to be nice and neighborly.
Love has harder edges to it. The issue is always and all about sin
and grace, repentance and forgiveness, the death of unbelief and
the life of faith, and finally heaven or hell. If Christianity is
treated as Little League recreation then I suppose one will not
put up with much serious confrontation or conflict. But if Christianity
is the Big League struggle of nothing less than life and death,
Truth or the Lie, well, no wonder there are such things as martyrs,
confessors, reformers and, yes, even divisions; not only statements
of faith but also condemnations of unfaith. Man's word may be the
way of compromise. God's word is the way of confrontation: Law and
Gospel.
Confrontation.
Sometimes you need a wake-up call, to be hit between the eyes with
a two-by-four. It was by way of a story or parable that David was
led to speak his own condemnation with his own mouth. “You are the
man!” concludes and confirms the prophet's word. And it was by way
of a story or parable that Simon the Pharisee was led to speak the
truth even if he would not see it or accept it for himself. David
heard the law stripping him of any cover up, laying him low, condemning
him as a murderer and adulterer. The Pharisee agreed with the proposition
that the bigger the debt forgiven the greater the love ought to
be. But he couldn't see the parallel between this story and himself
and the sinful woman at Jesus' feet, because he couldn't see that
he had any great sin to be forgiven.
It's
possible that Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus to a Friday night
Sabbath meal after hearing him speak in the synagogue. It was the
proper and polite thing to do, after all, especially if he thought
Jesus might be more than a teacher, maybe a prophet! So there were
more family and friends there getting ready to recline at table.
But then this uninvited guest, and it didn't take long for Simon
to decide Jesus couldn't possibly be a prophet. “If this man were
a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is
who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” “A woman of the city,
who was a sinner…brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing
behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with
her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head and kissed his
feet and anointed them with the ointment.”
Look
at this scene frozen in still frame for a moment. On the one hand
a Pharisee, obviously perturbed by the interruption, and on the
other hand this woman groveling, obviously overwhelmed by emotion.
On the one hand maybe an over-reaction, on the other an under-reaction.
Jesus breaks the ice. “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And
with a story, a parable, the difference between Simon and the woman
becomes obvious. Or does it? “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which
are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven
little, loves little.”
We
don't know anything more about Simon. But we do know about this
woman. She had obviously heard, if not Jesus himself, then someone's
report to her about him—how he was a man of God who spoke of acceptance
and forgiveness from God no matter how outcast, how hopeless, how
deeply ravaged or enslaved by sin. And in the hearing this woman
believed—believed that Jesus was the bringer of release from bondage,
of forgiveness and new life and love: the love of God! She believed
that because of Jesus her sins, which were many, were forgiven,
and all because of him! How do I know that's what she believed?
Look at her! “Her tears indicate her repentance, and her acts of
love toward Jesus indicate that she welcomes him as a prophet from
God, who has come to forgive even the worst of sinners” [Art Just,
“Luke,” p. 327].
Jesus
says to her, “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you;
go in peace.” As her expressions of love were not the cause but
the evidence of her forgiveness, so also her faith. Faith is not
the cause of forgiveness, but the means of receiving it. For even
the faith is the gift and working of God in the heart of the sinner
who hears the Good News. Simon the Pharisee had no concept of “gift,”
but only of “works.”
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