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Which Will Love Him Most?
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis March 19, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill I John 4:7-12 Luke 7:36-50
The work of Estonian composer Arvo Part, whose setting of this story from Luke’s seventh will soon fill the sanctuary, “is wordless,” writes one critic, “wordless in the sense that the words in the music are presented in a way that do not demand to be heard.” Therefore as Part as our exegete this morning, we would do well, before we address the question Jesus addressed to Simon long ago, to do business with the prior question hidden in these verses and inherent in Part’s music. To wit: How do we hear God’s address? How do we hear the word of God through words printed on a page or proclaimed from a pulpit and soon to be sung by the choir? This story at the end of Luke’s seventh chapter, preceded as it is by the question of who Jesus is and followed by a summons to decision, this story, says Eduard Schweizer, “deals with what it means to hear the word of God.” There is a sense in which Simon appears to have taken the first step toward hearing God’s word: he has invited Jesus into his home and set a place for him at the table. You could say at least that to hear the word of God means to take God’s word on, to do business with the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. Yet from the outset there appears to be something not quite honest about this encounter, something not right between the guest and the host. Any ancient Middle Eastern listener would have noticed immediately that though Simon had invited Jesus to eat with him, Simon had failed to create the space, the hospitable place, in which true human communication may happen. On one hand, Simon may have had in mind the prospect of an interesting evening, a night filled with lively conversation if all are on their best behavior, a table full of rabbis sparing over the meaning of the law, parting ways here and there concerning the teaching of the prophets, ending the evening in a posture of cordiality, albeit strained. On the other hand [a hand played out at dinners when slowly it becomes apparent the main course is intended to be, in Martin Marty’s words, fricasseed preacher], on that hand there comes to mind, between the lines of Luke’s story, the game of “get the guest” from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Perhaps, as would be the case later in Luke’s gospel with other Pharisees, Simon had readied himself for the evening by rehearsing a few lines sure to entrap Jesus in his misinterpretation of a text or embarrass Jesus with his misunderstanding of the law. In either event communicare, which is to say in Latin “receptive fellowship,” the human meeting wherein you give yourself to the other and the other gives himself or herself to you, in Luther’s words, does not seem likely to happen around the dinner table in Simon’s house. Such human meeting takes a bit of doing, Luther wrote, requires, in fact, a redemptive ingredient. And though the One who had been sent to redeem the whole world had also just walked through Simon’s door, something more than a polite invitation or an interesting conversation was necessary on Simon’s part if Simon were to hear the word God intended to speak to him. Enter the woman…from the city…a sinner…uninvited by Simon but summoned for reasons we will never know, for reasons she herself may not have known, into Jesus’ presence. Class, cleanliness, gender, respectability: all other considerations were trumped by the action this woman’s longing for God’s nearness…and the daring this woman’s desire for God’s word… provoked. Luke tells us that she did not just happen in off the street begging for a crumb from Simon’s table. Rather, she had heard that Jesus would be dining at the Pharisee’s house, a house where she surely knew herself not to be welcome as a woman…from the city…a sinner; she hears on the street that Jesus has come near to the place where she dwells—to the city and the dark night and the human condition--so she is determined to place herself in the way of his grace. In all receptivity, she readies herself for the prospect of a meeting. Filling an alabaster jar with oil, we sense she must be fearless. It is a simple but significant gesture of hospitality; it is a gutsy and daring wager on the power of God’s saving grace. Though more significant than anything she does…in fact hidden in the person that she is…is a hint as to what it means to hear God’s word: in a word, it means we come to the One who has come to us just as we are, in all our vulnerability and need, in all our longing and ancient loneliness. Therefore she arrives begging no one’s pardon, pardon having already been made flesh in him whose feet she now wets with her tears and dries with her hair. Wordlessly she communicates…communicare…gives herself, her sinful self, her tearful, her broken self, to him. Then as though he already were the bread broken and the cup poured out at this table, wordlessly he yields himself, gives himself to her ministrations as “Christ is declared and given to all believers,” says Paul Lehmann, “just as they are, with all that they are: works, sufferings, services, graces, possessions! Nothing is left out.” At the heart of the meeting and so the meaning of our hearing the word of God is vulnerability: God’s vulnerability to us in Christ and our vulnerability to the God in whose light we are exposed and by whose love we are forgiven. Vulnerable, of course, is the last thing we want to be these days; but because Luke is writing that we might come to know what it means to hear the word of God, he (frankly) means to embarrass us: the touching, the tenderness, the sensuality. When, Luke means to ask, are we more vulnerable, more easily hurt, more deeply loved than in the presence of the One who knows us just as we are, nothing left out? This is what it means to hear the word of God, God’s word of grace and forgiveness. Simon, of course, hears nothing. Silently he surveys the scene as one who is unmoved, invulnerable, disgusted. Seldom does scripture tell us the secret intentions of its characters, so when Luke moves to let us in on Simon’s motives, we lean in. Clearly Simon had invited Jesus over to find him out; therefore after this encounter, as far as Simon was concerned, the evening had come to an end. Quite enough had been revealed. This was no prophet, touched as he was in every way by a sinner; rather he was nothing more than an unholy man, an unclean fraud. The evening, I say again, would seem to have come to the end except for the parabolic turn the gospel always takes just when we think we have heard enough. “Simon,” Jesus says and so speaks the first audible word in the story, “I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” Simon replies and by now we cannot help but hear the irony, the self-assured arrogance of one who believes himself to be unassailably superior, “Speak.” “A certain creditor had two debtors,” Jesus begins and in the end, Simon knows he has been had. Which of them, asks Jesus, will love him most? I suppose, says Simon, the one for whom he canceled the greater debt. We suppose the same, though there is, I think, one last parabolic twist to this story which our hearts may never understand until we taste of death and see Christ face to face. No doubt Luke identifies the woman in the city as a sinner, and Jesus acknowledges her sins which were many to Simon. But I have always thought the one who lived in greater sin was Simon. Sin being the distance we keep from the living God while we have our being, surely it was Simon who stood at the greater reserve and so also stood in need of the greater forgiveness. Likely some of us here today stand with him, before the word of God made flesh we cannot hear as a word to us, before God’s word that does not demand we hear but rather, simply, hospitably, eternally invites us in. The word, I repeat, does not demand to be heard, and this text, set by Arvo Part, also makes no demands; rather these pure notes create the space, the hospitable space, in which communicare, human receptivity to God’s address, can happen. I swear it is so that music exposes, unleashes the vulnerability we do everything in our powers to hide. “It is a matter of pure faith,” says Part’s biographer. “The summons of the Russian bells calling people to worship is not an insistent one. Like the bells resounding throughout Part’s music, they beckon people to listen, but only if they wish to. It is up to the listeners to discover what lies behind the sound.” Which debtor will love him most? Listen for the word of God! |