May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, oh God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

     In one of his whimsical short poems, the mystical Sufi Hafiz writes,

         AThe subject tonight is love,
            and tomorrow night as well.
            As a matter of fact,
            I know of no better topic
            for us to discuss until we all die.@
 

The subject of today=s gospel is love as well.  Its central character, the unnamed woman who loves much, has always been one of the most compelling characters in scripture for me.  She=s a vivid icon, an invitation, a guide.  She is also, for many of us, confused by the other stories of a woman who anointed Jesus.  Indeed, this story in one form or another is told in all four gospels.  Everyone thinks they know all about this woman, but that knowledge is embroidered by the confusion of the stories and confusion in the tradition.

     So, I=d like to try to untangle that a little bit before we look more closely at what Luke actually says.  The other three gospels place the story of Jesus= anointing by a woman right before his Passion.  Mark and Matthew say that it happened right before Passover, also in the house of a man named Simon, but in this case, Simon the leper.  The woman anoints Jesus= head with costly perfume.  In her gesture, there=s the suggestion of someone anointing a king, anointing God=s Messiah.

     The male disciples who are present complain: AWhy wasn=t the money that was spent on this costly ointment given to the poor?@  Jesus tells them, AYou will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.  This woman has done a beautiful thing for me; she has done what she could, and she has anointed my body for burial.  Wherever good news is proclaimed in the whole world,@ he says, Awhat she has done will be told in memory of her.@

     In John, the woman has a name B she is Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, who Jesus has raised from the dead.  The anointing happens in their house where Jesus has been a frequent guest, and the house is filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  John tells us it is Judas who voices his objections about the money that has been spent, but again Jesus responds that his disciples will always have opportunities to care for the poor but they will not always have the chance to show their love and devotion to him.

     In all the versions, including Luke=s, this anointing happens in the middle of a meal.  The woman acts outrageously, extravagantly, and intimately.  The other disciples, who may very well all be men, disapprove.  There are different meanings and contexts assigned to the story, but it must have been a very powerful communal memory for the earliest Christians.

     As Luke tells the story, it happens in the midst of Jesus= ministry, when Jesus is a dinner guest at the house of Simon the Pharisee.  Into the middle of this pleasant gathering comes Aa woman of the city who was a sinner.@  She appears suddenly in the house and suddenly in the story.  We are not told her name, but we are told she was a sinner.  The tradition has often assumed that her sin was sexual, and that she was a prostitute, and the images of her with her wild disheveled hair and her bold and sensuous and intimate action often seem to commentators to confirm that hypothesis.  The commentators who talk about it seem as embarrassed as Simon the Pharisee by this woman=s presence and her action.

     She=s also been associated, in the tradition, with Mary Magdalene, but there=s really no justification for that in the text at all B although, the verses that follow this, which we will not read today, speak of Mary Magdalene along with two other women who followed and supported Jesus in his ministry.

     Actually, I came upon an article in my preparation of this sermon that focuses on hair in the Greco-Roman world.  It was fascinating.  It suggested that for a woman to unbind her hair was not necessarily a signal of loose living or of prostitution; it was a sign of mourning.  A woman who had let down her hair in this way was likely to be beside herself with grief, and indeed this woman stands at Jesus= feet (for in the tradition of that day, he would be reclining at the table on a kind of couch with his feet up)- she stands by his feet, weeping and weeping and weeping.  We can assume that she is weeping because she is a sinner.

     What is our experience of sin?  The word itself means, Ato miss the mark.@  More profoundly, sin has been described as disordered loving - the experience of spending oneself for that which cannot satisfy, or of being unable to love.  Sin is also heralded by an experience of shame in one=s secret self, or it is heralded by the deadness of alienation, by a sense of denial that cuts off our ability to feel anything, to feel connection, to feel alive.

     And what seems to be happening for this woman is that her grief is breaking through her sin.  She has what the old teachers called Athe gift of tears.@  Tears that cleanse, that open the heart, that pour out in grief for what she has done B perhaps for what has been done to her as well, what may have been done in her name- in the language of the confession that we use every Sunday.  Whatever it is, she is lamenting, she is weeping, she is grieving, she is mourning, she is beside herself, and she is bringing all of this to Jesus.

     But also as she weeps, she is praising, for that is actually the other situation in which women unbound their hair - when they were going into a ceremonial adoration of God.  Tears, in this case, are a sign of the free flow of grace in this woman=s life, of the forgiveness she has already experienced, of the joy of coming to Jesus.  So she pours herself out with the ointment; she abandons herself to love, and what she does there with Jesus= feet with her tears and her hair and the ointment is an act of worship, an act of gratitude- an act of supplication, and an act of trust, both at once, an act of body and of soul both at once, and act of giving and receiving, both at once.

     So this woman is a window into something extraordinary really B of the heart opening to welcome all.  She wholeheartedly welcomes Jesus.  She grieves and she praises and she is flooded with love, and she is passionately alive, where before sin had deadened her.

     She is an icon of a grace-filled way to live.

     Now, near her in the story, there is another character, Simon the Pharisee B a respectable and dedicated and religious man who has invited Jesus to dinner because he=s curious, I would imagine.  He seems to be cautious, but interested in what this Ahot@ teacher will say.  We learn that he judges: he judges Jesus and he judges the woman.  Seeing the interaction between them, he thinks, AIf this man were a prophet, he would surely know what kind of woman this is.  Surely he would know who is touching him, and he would know that he is being contaminated by her touch.@  Simon seems to be afraid of being, somehow, corrupted by the contagion of the woman=s impurity, her wildness, and her grief.

     He judges the woman: he knows what kind of woman she is.  He assumes that he knows what is in her heart.  He assumes that she is different from him.  Simon sees no need to weep.  He sees no need to change; he feels no need of God.  Jesus welcomes the woman with her wild display, and he also senses Simon=s thoughts.  Like Nathan in the story of David B that wonderful first lesson that we read today B he tells a parable that gets right under Simon=s defenses.  Speaking of forgiven debts,  he asks the question, AWho will love more?@  And Simon says, AWell I guess it=s the one who=s been forgiven more,@ but the implication, the question that is not asked is: AWho is it that loves less and why?@

     And then Jesus speaks directly to Simon: ADo you see this woman?@  Simon does see her, and then again he does not see her.  He sees a sinner, an Aother@, a woman who seems crazy and disheveled and wild.  He does not see this one who God loves; he does not see the forgiveness and the joy.  He does not see the miracle that is unfolding in his dining room.

     Then Jesus speaks to Simon about hospitality: AI entered your house, but you gave me no water for my feet.  Yet this woman has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.@  And then he says, ATherefore I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven.  Hence, she has shown great love.@

     Is love the cause or the result of the forgiveness?  Our theology is clear, of course, that grace is first B that it is given; it is unearned.  It is the bedrock by which we are supported, the means by which we come to life.  And yet, it seems in this story that grace is really experienced, revealed, because of the woman=s act of love.  Jesus says to her, AYour faith has saved you.@  And if we didn=t know anything else about faith, if we defined it on the basis of this story, I think the definition would be something like: AA trust that is enacted in lamenting and loving, in grief and praise, and in the wholehearted pouring out of oneself in adoration.@

     The woman=s pouring out mirrors Jesus= self-giving when he washes his disciples= feet, when he gives himself even unto death.

     The subject is love.  How then will we learn it?  Both the woman and Simon the Pharisee are part of us, I would say; at least they=re part of me.  This story calls us to awareness of our disordered loving, our secret shame, our deadness.  It speaks to us of our need for God and the lavish availability of grace.  And it invites us to reach out in grief, and praise, and love, for the love that is always there.

     The story speaks of hospitality, of Jesus receiving us in our sin, in our love B of us receiving Jesus in his myriad mysterious guises.  It calls us to the flow of giving and receiving and invites us to learn how to touch Christ=s body with tears and love and gratitude.

     I have a few images for that-  that learning, that touching, that loving.

     The first happens here on a weekly basis.  You could argue that the whole soup kitchen is a kind of a parable of love and grace and gratitude and touchingYbut on Thursdays we have a very specific parable that happens when we have a volunteer group called Chiropractors For Life, who set up over there in the chapel with their tables.  They provide chiropractic services to our soup kitchen guests.  It always seems amazing to me that people who live on the street and who are touched so very rarely have the opportunity in this space to receive that gift of caring touch.

     Surely, there is a blessing of giving and receiving, a hospitality where Christ=s body is present in that moment.

     Another image I have has to do with the children of our congregation running through the aisles B running to someone that they love, being picked up.  Who is giving and who is receiving, and where is the love and the gratitude most present in the whole event?

    Imagine also a gardener with her hand in the earth, bringing life, working with the life, giving and receiving with the soil.  Or the creation of art, where love and grief and joy are all present together.

     And so we finish with art- with poetry once again, another short poem of Hafiz.

     He says,