What Is
Repentance?
I have on ongoing discussion with a colleague of mine regarding the balance between goodness and grace in the Christian faith. My colleague, who knows a bit about how I preach, questions whether or not I take this grace thing too far. He points out that Jesus spent an awful lot of his teaching time pointing to the merits of the Christian life: “Never do I find Jesus saying that striving for goodness was a mistake,” he says. “Are we not in danger,” he continues, “of saying to people that our deeds are unimportant since we can never save ourselves?”
He
cites as an illustration the story of “The King and I.” Near the end of the play, the king, a good
king who had worked hard to bring his country closer to a bright future, is
near death. With a sense of loss that
the king had not fulfilled his life’s work, a friend asks Anna, “Do you think
that he was as good a king as he could be?” Anna answers, “Perhaps no king has
been as good as he could have been. But
this one tried very hard. He tried very
hard, indeed.” My colleague concludes,
“I would be most satisfied if at my funeral it might be said, ‘He tried very
hard to be the best man that he could be.’”
Knowing my colleague quite well, I have no doubt that such will be said
at his funeral. But still, he is wrong.
He is so very wrong, indeed.
I
want to tell you a story that explains why my colleague and friend is so very
wrong about the Christian life. It is a
story you have heard before, but I am going to tell it to you in a new way this
morning, for I am going to include insights from the Rev. Dr. Ken Bailey who
will be our Theologian in Residence in October. Dr. Bailey is a New Testament scholar who spent much of his life
in the Middle East. So hear now the
familiar story of the Parable of the Two Debtors told through Middle Eastern
eyes; it is a story of grace: grace first, grace last, grace that leads to
goodness.
*****
The
story begins, as do many of the stories about Jesus, with a meal. At the meal
are Jesus, a sinful woman and Simon the Pharisee. Simon is no doubt a member of the habburim, which is a religious club of Torah scholars. The habburim
were the pious leaders and teachers of a community that would gather together
to talk about Jewish Law. To become a
part of the habburim was considered a
high honor, and one could only join if invited by two current members of the
club. Simon invites Jesus, and perhaps
a couple of his cronies, to dinner to hear what this young rabbi with the new,
radical teaching has to say.
When
Jesus arrives, a crowd is already gathered around the table and in the dining
room. In the Middle East, dinners
weren’t just for the selected few; very much like we discovered in Nicaragua,
the host family always cooks three times what can be eaten and whoever is there
gets fed. Now the honored guests will
recline around the table, while the uninvited observers mill around the outside
of the room, but plenty of folk are there to watch and listen in on the
evening’s events. What the crowd sees
when Jesus arrives, or more correctly doesn’t see, is absolutely shocking:
Jesus is not welcomed with honor!
In
the Middle East, hospitality is a matter of self-respect, family pride and
village honor. An honored guest such as
Jesus would have been expected to be welcomed with open arms. Upon arrival, he would have been greeted
with a kiss, his feet would have been washed, and he would have been offered
olive oil for his hands and head with which to freshen up. This is the least that one would expect in way of
greeting. But nothing happens. Jesus arrives and no welcome is
offered. It is as if a dinner guest you
or I had invited over to our home rang the door bell, and when we opened the
door we stared at them and said, “Oh…it’s you....” And then we turned a walked
away. Even if we kept the door open so
they could follow us inside, this would still be a great insult. So is the way Simon greets Jesus an insult. Notice how Jesus responds, though. Rather than rail against the insult and
storm off in a huff, Jesus simply takes his seat at the table. He absorbs the insult into his person in
much the same way that he absorbs our sin into his person on the cross.
The
woman, who Luke tells us is “a sinner,” is sitting along the wall when Simon disrespects
Jesus in this way. She is horrified. She cannot sit idly by and allow this
insult to self-respect, family pride and village honor to remain. She
acts.
What
she does is reverse the insult. She
wets Jesus’ feet with her tears, lets down her hair and anoints Jesus’ feet
with perfume. Now, if someone,
particularly a stranger, did this to you or me, we would be a little freaked
out, and we might think such a person is a bit weird. But in the Middle East, the woman’s behavior is absolutely scandalous. The rabbis tell a story of a mother who
raised seven boys all who became well respected as righteous men. When the rabbis asked the mother what she
had done to raise such righteous men, she responded, “Only my husband and these
rafters have seen the hair on my head.”
For a woman to let down her hair had all sorts of sexual overtones. Only prostitutes wore their hair down in
public. Indeed, the Greek word Luke
uses, which is translated “touch,” also has the connotation of “light
fire.” The woman is “touching” Jesus in
a way that would be considered an intimate and provocative.
Now
Simon is horrified. Here Simon has
invited this young teacher with the radical ideas into his home and a brothel is breaking out! In front of the entire village! Simon thinks to himself, “Jesus can’t be a prophet, for he would
know what kind of woman he’s allowing to fondle him” Now some folks think, “Ah, you see how Jesus could read Simon’s
mind. That shows Jesus is the Son of
God.” No. Imagine the scene in your mind’s eye. Jesus didn’t have to be the Son of God to figure out that Simon
was about to go ballistic with this whole situation. No, the important thing to notice is how Simon defines a prophet:
a prophet is one who knows right from wrong!
A prophet knows good from bad! A
prophet does not coddle sinners, and
this woman is a sinner!
Well, Jesus has had enough of Simon and his attitude. Jesus says to Simon, “I have something to tell you.” This phrase is an Aramaic idiom, and it’s a pretty harsh rebuke. It’s as if we said to someone, “Hey, mister, you listen up and let me tell you what’s what!” And then Jesus tells the parable of the two debtors. Actually, this parable is the easiest thing in the whole story for us Westerners to understand: two debtors, two acts of mercy, two loves. The greater the debt forgiven, the greater the love. Pretty simple. Pretty straightforward, don’t you think?
I imagine Jesus’ next words to Simon to be spoken slowly and softly, into the heavy air and tense silence of the room, with the entire village waiting to hear what would come next. Jesus’ words were like cold steel, “I entered your house.” Jesus doesn’t even have to say it, not in Middle Eastern culture. Everyone there knew Simon’s neglect. Everyone there knew what Simon should have done but failed to do. Jesus cuts with the cold steel of his words, slicing Simon’s self-righteousness down to size: “You never gave me any water for my feet. Heck, I would have washed my own feet but you didn’t even give me any water. You didn’t even put any olive oil – plain ol’ olive oil that’s only pennies a pour – on my head, but this woman has poured out her perfume all over my feet. There is a sinner in this room, Simon, and I’m looking right at him.”
The final words Jesus speaks are the precise opposite of cold steel. (By the way, what is the opposite of cold steel? Warm fudge?!) In any case, Jesus’ words are spoken to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” We have here a “functional Christology,” which means that Jesus demonstrates that he is the Son of God by what he does. Only God is allowed to forgive sins. Only the Temple atonement forgives sins. What does Jesus mean by telling this woman her sins are forgiven? What Jesus means is this: “I, the Lord of Life, set you free. I am giving you a new life, a new beginning. Live accordingly.”
You see, Simon and Jesus had very different understandings of God’s will. Simon, as a Pharisee and member of the habburim, believed the traditional theology of the day: The world is divided into two kinds of people: law keepers and law breakers. Jesus also taught that the world was divided into two kinds of people. But Jesus’ division was different: law keeping sinners and law breaking sinners. Simon believed repentance must be earned, never given. One could not be said to repent until and unless every sin that one had ever committed had been atoned for according to God’s commands and statues. Such people as this woman, this sinful woman, with her lifestyle, she would never – could never – fully and completely repent of her sins. Jesus believed repentance was a gift of God’s grace. This woman was already forgiven, that was Jesus’ proclamation. This woman, having heard Jesus, understood for the first time in her adult life that repentance was possible. Possible because God already loved her. Possible because God already extended to her the invitation to know his mercy. Possible because this Jesus had come to her town to tell her new life was hers for the asking.
*****
Now we can see why my colleague and friend is so wrong. He is so very wrong, indeed, because the love of God claims us, and when we are claimed by the love of God we cannot help but be transformed. Did you notice what the woman poured out onto Jesus’ feet? Anyone? Correct, it was her perfume. Now, do you know the significance of the perfume? Why she would carry perfume with her? What it means that she emptied the bottle for Jesus? Anyone? Any guesses? Then let me explain.
The woman would have used the perfume as part of her…ah…“business transactions.” Once she realized that she was loved, once she realized that her life – her life – had been claimed by Almighty God, she no longer needed this tool of her trade. The meaning of the perfume is found in that it is the symbol that she has moved into the new life. Jesus said to Simon, “I tell you her many sins have been forgiven (past tense). Therefore, she loved much.” Therefore. In other words, because she was forgiven, because she understood her own belovedness, therefore she began to live and to love according to God’s will for her life.
You who are parents, do you love your children? Of course you do. Do you try to teach them good manners and good morals and hope they will become “good” people? Of course you do. But do you love them because they are good? Of course you do not.
Let’s look at it another way. Do your children try to be good so that you will love them? Of course not. Your children know that you love them, which is why, in their heart of hearts, (and even though your youth children may deny this rather fiercely), they want to please you. So it is with God’s grace.
I have nothing against goodness. I’m actually a fan of goodness. I promote it in my own children, wholeheartedly suggest it to you, and even practice it occasionally in my own life. However, this I know to be true: the way to goodness runs through grace. “We love,” says John, “because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Rather than The King and I as a metaphor for the Christian life, I would like to suggest to you Private Ryan. For those of you who don’t know the movie, it is a Tom Hanks World War II movie. Private Ryan’s three brothers all die during the Normandy invasion and General George Marshall orders a platoon to find Private Ryan, the fourth and now only son of his grieving mother. The problem is that Private Ryan was airborne infantry and no one is really sure where he and his parachute landed. So the platoon, eight men in all, march off to the French countryside seeking Private Ryan. One by one, they sacrifice their lives for this man they do not know. Finally, at the end of the movie, having fought a desperate battle against the Germans, Tom Hanks, with his dying breath, says to young Private Ryan, “Earn this…earn this.” The movie ends with Mr. Ryan, now a civilian with a wife, children and grandchildren, saluting the grave of the man who set the course of his life. And he asks his wife, “Have I been a good man? Tell me I’ve been a good man.”
Do you see the difference? The King’s life was a desperate attempt to be good and, therefore, beloved. Ryan’s life was lived in the knowledge that he was already beloved and, therefore, should be good. One life is lived in the hope that we might one day be worthy. The other life is lived with the assurance that we are already worthy. One life divides people into law keepers and law breakers, worthy and unworthy, saints and sinners. The other life unites us all as one: sinners! Just where we need to be to hear Jesus’ words of grace: “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.” And with the peace of God upon us, we do go. Pouring out our perfume. Beginning anew. Living into the goodness that can come only by God’s grace.