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Larry R. Hayward
June 13, 2004
Eleventh Sunday In Ordinary Time

Why Isn't Her Sin Named?
Luke 7:36-8:3

The earliest chapters of Genesis were written, among other reasons, to explain the origins of deeply ingrained human phenomena. These chapters attempt to answer such questions as:

• Why are we naturally ashamed of our nakedness? [1]
  
  
• Why do we fear snakes? [2]
  
  
• Why are men and women attracted to one another yet in conflict with one another over differences in roles and personalities? [3]

As these opening chapters of the Bible march on, they address:

• Why is work so difficult and demanding? [4]
  
  
• Why is there so much pain in such a beautiful experience as childbirth? [5]
  
  
• Why were cities founded? [6]
  
  
• Why is there a division of labor between artists, manufacturers, and farmers? [7]
  
  
• Why does human race experience differences in language, religion, and national identity? [8]

Each of these questions is addressed — and an answer given — through the narratives, poetry, and theological reasoning found in Genesis 1-11.

I.

One part of these narratives reveals a tendency — found in scripture and history — for men to hold women responsible for failings at least half their own.

When God calls out to Adam: "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" Adam replies: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and I ate."[9] Adam performs a linguistic feat with his answer: In one sentence, he manages to blame at both his wife and his God for a choice he clearly made himself.

From this tendency of men to blame women, Hebrew society, ruled by men, developed, like many other cultures, elaborate laws and customs to keep women in less than equal circumstances.

• For example: If, following her wedding, a bride was found not to be a virgin, she was brought "to the entrance of her father's house" and "the men of the town" stoned her to death. [10]
  
  
• Likewise, religious law earmarked women for a devalued status by labeling two natural female processes — a flow of blood [11] and childbirth[12] — as rendering women ritually unclean for a certain period.

From the tendency of men to blame women grew a tendency on the part of men to try to control everything female, particularly matters involving sexuality and reproduction. This tendency of men to control and dominate women goes much further back in history and is much more widespread geographically than The Stepford Wives might lead us to believe!

II.

The history I have just shared with you is not particularly uplifting. It may not be what you came to church to hear today. But there is good news. The tendency of men to seek to dominate women changed — radically — in the life and teachings of Jesus.

• When Jesus began his ministry, even though he initially surrounded himself with twelve male disciples, [13] he provided numerous examples of affirming the role and value of women.
  
  
  • He stood up to a crowd of men about to stone a woman caught in adultery. [14]
    
    
  • He set aside law and custom and talked with a woman at a public well in the middle of the day. [15]
    
    
  • And while male disciples abandoned him the closer he came to the cross, women stood nearby, filled with courageous grief. [16]
    
    
  • In addition:
    
    
    • It was women who first went to the tomb and found it empty. [17]
      
      
    • It was women to whom the risen Christ first appeared. [18]
      
      
    • It was women who first proclaimed the central message of the Christian faith: "The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!" [19]

Thus, when people say — as they do — that the Bible suppresses women, they speak accurately. And when people say — as they do — the Bible places women in a higher and more vaulted position than many other cultures and religions and legal systems of its day, again they speak accurately. Both suppression of and respect for women are present in the Bible, but clearly the closer we get to the life of Christ, the movement is toward respect.

This movement from suppression toward respect is a major reason that we in the Presbyterian Church — as well as most other Protestant denominations — believe that "both men and women" are "called…by God's providence…to hold [church] offices"[20] and that we are being Biblical in this practice.

III.

This complex history of both suppression and respect for women serves as background to the story we just read.[21] Our story involves a woman, a male religious leader, and Jesus. Notice what happens at the outset of the passage:

A woman hears that Jesus has been invited to dinner at the home of a Pharisee — a male Jewish religious leader.

The woman secures an alabaster jar of ointment — both the jar and ointment being expensive — finds the Pharisee's home, enters while dinner is being served.

She looks around among the guests and spots Jesus reclining at his place at the table, just as everyone in that day reclined, rather than sat, at table.

She walks over to where Jesus is, stands at his feet.

She begins to weep.

She begins to bathe his feet, not with soap and water from a basin, but with her tears.

She dries his feet not with a towel but with her hair.

She continues kissing his feet.

And she then anoints his feet with expensive ointment from her alabaster jar.

When the Pharisee witnesses this, he says (not to his guests but) to himself: "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him — that she is a sinner."[22]

Jesus reads the Pharisee's thoughts, rebukes them by means of a parable, then blesses the woman as an example of one who is faithful, forgiven, grateful and hospitable, all traits absent in the Pharisee. "Your faith has saved you," Jesus says to the woman. "Go in peace." [23]

IV.

This incident gives rise to several potential sermon topics:

• Love as gratitude
• Being forgiven as a prelude to showing forgiveness
• Degrees of sinfulness leading to degrees of forgiveness leading to degrees of gratitude
• Jesus as a human prophet versus Jesus as divine Son of God
• Repentance leading to forgiveness versus faith leading to forgiveness

Any of these topics would preach, but I want to focus on one central factor in the story today: the fact that the woman's sin is never named.

• Notice, first, the Pharisee assumes he knows her sin. He assumes she is a prostitute: "If this man were a prophet," he says to himself, "he would have known…what kind of woman this is." But nowhere does the text say that she is a prostitute. She is simply "a woman in the city who [is] a sinner."
  
  
• Second, whatever her sin is, only Jesus and the woman know. Luke the writer does not know. The Pharisee does not know, though he thinks he knows. And we the reader do not know, though we are often led through history and tradition to join the Pharisee in assuming she is a prostitute. [24]The only two people who know the precise nature of the woman's sin are herself and Jesus.
  
  
• Third, Jesus knows her sin because he is divine.
  
  
  • It is apparent that Jesus has never seen the woman before.
    
    
  • Yet Luke tells us he knows her "many sins."
    
    
  • In addition, Luke tells us Jesus knows that the woman is washing his feet out of loving gratitude.
    
    
  • And Jesus knows what the Pharisee is thinking even though the Pharisee does not give voice to his thoughts.

In his divine-human role, Jesus is all knowing, and this is one place in the text where his allknowingness come out.

V.

Now how does all this relate to us?

First, inasmuch as we are like the Pharisee:

It reminds us that we must always be wary about our temptation to think that we can identify someone else's sin. The fact is, only God has the power to identify fully, to know completely, to assess and understand a human act of sinfulness. We do not have that power or ability. Because of this limitation, we must guard against our inclination to "jump to conclusions" about someone else's life.

Second, inasmuch as we are like the woman:

This incident reminds us that most often, our sins are a matter to be first resolved in our relationship with God and God alone. Christ is clear that the woman sinned, but he does not share what her sin is with others; rather, it is only in the relationship between the woman and himself that her sin is resolved. Neither the religious institution — in the person of the Pharisee — nor us, the reader, have a right or need to know what her sin is. What is shared with us is the fact of her forgiveness and gratitude, not the details of her sin.

Third, inasmuch as this incident relates to our relationship with Christ:

This incident reminds us that Christ as all knowing:

He knows the Pharisee's thoughts.

He knows the number of the woman's sins.

He knows, without her telling him, that she is washing his feet as an act of faith and gratitude.

Furthermore, it is precisely the fact that Christ knows her sins that leads her to receive forgiveness and healing.

Christ's knowledge of her sins — and by implication his knowledge of our sins — is not something to be feared; rather, it is something to be welcomed and embraced as the starting point of forgiveness. In the sanctity of their relationship, Christ confronts her about her sin, forgives her in her sin, and leads her to gratitude. This confrontation, forgiveness and movement toward gratitude occur outside the gaze of the Pharisee or the reader.

The ancient image we have that God knows everything we think and do is not something we need fear. Rather, in God's knowledge of us, God works with us to overcome all that is evil and destructive about us.

V.

I leave you with this:

• Sin is real in our lives and in our world.
  
  
• God knows our sin.
  
  
• God confronts us in our sin.
  
  
• God forgives our sin.
  
  
• And God leads us from our sin to loving gratitude.

While often, people close to us are legitimate participants in our movement from sin to forgiveness, it is not necessarily the case that anyone be involved other than God, as Christ, working with us through the Holy Spirit.

There is an old spiritual whose words I have re-written to capture this personal and private movement from sin to forgiveness to praise — all within our relationship with Christ:

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows trouble I've seen
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
But Jesus.

Nobody knows the sins I've committed
Nobody knows the sins I've committed
Nobody knows the sins I've committed
But Jesus.

Nobody knows the forgiveness I've received
Nobody knows the forgiveness I've received
Nobody knows the forgiveness I've received
But Jesus.

Glory, hallelujah!
Glory, hallelujah!
Nobody knows
But Jesus.

First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org

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