June 17, 2007

The Party Crasher

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 7: 36-50

It would be as useless to ask if the story about the woman in the city who was a sinner is the account of an actual event as it would be to ask if Jonah was really swallowed and regurgitated by a big fish. They are, each of them, highly imaginative narratives. Both surely had their origins in attempts to illustrate and thereby make individual points. The point Jonah’s story makes is that everyone has a chance at redemption, even the miserable sinners of Nineveh. What then is the point of the story about the strumpet who crashed the Pharisee’s dinner party only to have an emotional breakdown and shed tears all over Jesus’ feet?

As with the Jonah story, maybe that everybody – including the woman of the street, so to say – gets a second chance, a chance to change course in life and go on to better things. One is not condemned to live forever with the consequences of what one has or hasn’t done, providing one makes sincere amendment.

As with any such story, though, it pays to mark each carefully chosen detail, as well as to keep an eye on the plot. – The first thing to notice that Luke decided to depict a representative of Jesus’ severest critics inviting him to dinner. In the First Century Mediterranean world, as now, one usually does not invite one’s perceived enemies to break bread. What did Luke mean by creating such a scene?

Second, how would it have been possible for a prostitute to gain entry to a gentleman’s house and make her way directly to the dining room without being ousted? Luke nevertheless placed her there almost deus ex machina. Now mark the scene: Jesus, his host and other guests are arrayed in a circle around a lazy-susan kind of serving set up. In the Mediterranean custom of the time, they are lying on the floor propped up on an elbow, heads toward the serving bowls, feet at the outside of the circle.

In comes the woman of the city who was a sinner. She approaches Jesus. Luke wants us to think that she had come to say something to Jesus or ask something of him. But all she can do is cry. Why was she crying? Was it shame? Was it being overcome by being in such close proximity to the great one she believed would free her from her rotten life? Because she approached Jesus at the outside of the circle, her tears would necessarily have fallen on his feet. And what did she do but let her hair down and dry those feet with her own tresses. Talk about sensual.

In a normal situation, what would soon have occurred is that the butler or a bouncer would have thrown the woman back out into the streets whence she had come, and, after profound apologies by the host and, no doubt, harsh remonstrance of the household servants, the next course would be have been brought on.

But, no. The host, whose purpose in inviting Jesus was clearly insincere and calculating, decided to see what Jesus’ reaction would be. What was it? Luke never exactly says, but we can guess that Jesus took the woman’s overt and daring gesture as genuine, and that he took the snide smile of the Pharisee as an opportunity to teach him a lesson.

What was the lesson? It was that those who know they need and then accept the greater forgiveness are likely to love that much more – that is to say, are likely to understand the dynamics of forgiveness in a such way that those who believe they have little to confess might not. Is that the difference between Prodigal Son and his elder brother?

Who also comes to mind in this regard is St. Augustine whose published confessions reveal a life before his baptism (and even for a while after) of considerable dissipation. When he came to himself and accepted what he took to be divine forgiveness of his shady past, he was able to ascend the heights of moral and intellectual leadership, which few can scale. He was a great priest and even a greater bishop. He gave back to those of his time and place with the same immense generosity he believed he had received in his conversion – proving in yet another way that everyone has a second and even subsequent chances to make things right and may, thereby, be enabled to love more fully and without qualification.

Some say the dinner party episode is a story of faith. I say it is a story of courage as a severely disadvantaged woman reversed the imbalance of power and took charge of her own life by aggressively seeking the acceptance she believed she needed to go on. Luke wants us to believe that her strategy worked, against all odds. Thus: courage + forgiveness = love. That’s the Christian formula for abundant life.

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.