The Unwelcomed Guest and Woman Behaving Boldly.

(A sermon on Luke 7:36-83 by Jill Friebel on 17 June 2007)

I want you to take a deep breath or two, and just consciously relax your body.

I want you to feel what you are feeling right now. Happy, sad, bored, lonely, brittle, loved, generous, angry, protective, scared, fearful, self conscious, free and abandoned feeling connected with yourself and your body and others or feeling or distant from yourself and from others – a bit awkward. Because wherever you are at will make a difference right now to what you receive. If you are feeling fearful, you will pick up fear around you and find yourself reacting and responding to fear from fear. You will be little bit more critical and brittle and touchy and self possessed, just more protective generally. If your are feeling more comfortable with yourself, more fulfilled, feeling loved and generous of heart you feel yourself opening up, letting go of the need to be defensive. You become more vulnerable and able to give of yourself and go beyond yourself.

So give yourself a little shake, and relax and feel what you are really feeling right now. There is no right or wrong way to feel. There are no good or bad feelings. You have feelings that feel good or bad, but they are just feelings. They are a very important part of you to tell you something. But they are not you – they are something you have. You are much more than your feelings.

And I invite you to try and move from your left-brain into your right-brain for a while. That will be easier for some of us than others. Some live more happily in their right brain – the more creative, imaginative more feminine side and probably drive others nuts at times who don’t. Others feel much safer in the left side, the more dominant, logical, rational masculine side. It is very useful and necessary but not always connected to one’s body. We need both, we need to be able to move from one to the other and back again. We need to feel our sexuality, our masculinity and femininity it is an amazing wonderful mysterious gift. It is through our sexuality and our bodies that all relationships are experienced. And it is the door through to our deepest spiritual being and true self. People on spiritual journeys inevitably become more comfortable in their bodies and in their true humanity.

Now, we heard a story tonight loaded with feelings and sexuality and sensuality. The setting is in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. The social pecking order is clear, the class distinctions entrenched and everyone knows their place and accepts it – after all that is who they are. – Right?

Into the small town comes a stranger. He’s been wandering round the region just being himself drawing crowds and people from all the pecking orders just by the nature of who he is. There is something about this man that attracts and draws people. He has a presence about him that affects people in wildly different ways. Some are reaching out to touch him, pressing in close to him to feel him. Woman and men are leaving their homes and following him. They are in love with him. They feel like they are becoming real when they are near him. They are coming strangely alive for the first time. They are hugged and held by him and are beginning to hug and hold each, and noticing each other with new eyes and ears and hearts.

Others are threatened by his popularity and incensed by his lack of propriety. He disregards the social order and treads on peoples sensibilities. He enjoys life, eats and drinks with whoever offers him food and hospitality. He owns nothing and yet is not hungry. He has no dwelling yet is never left without somewhere to stay. His popularity is unnerving and disconcerting.

This evening he has been invited to Simon the Pharisee’s place for dinner. His house is typical for his position and wealth – large with an open courtyard where anyone can gather and watch both host and invited visitors lying around the table. It all makes for a more important spectacle. Into this Jesus the divine guest enters. He feels the coldness of his welcome, and becomes quickly aware that this dinner party is going to be hard work. This host couldn’t even bring himself touch or feel Jesus. Something prevents him from offering the most basic acceptable practices of eastern hospitality- a kiss and foot washing. I seriously doubt whether he made a conscious decision to withhold this hospitality, but hidden anxiety towards Jesus simply blocked him from being civil.

He comes across confident, self-assured, in control and proud of who he is and his stature in this little town. He is educated and he knows the religious law and he lives safely in his left-brain. He can enjoy discussing how many angels could fit on the head of pin and yet can walk past suffering and not really see it. He is disconnected from his body and only feels what his head tells him. He is shut down, distant and cold. I don’t want to judge this man too harshly. Who knows what caused him to shut down to himself and when it happened? But it did, because children and teenagers don’t shut down for no reason. For some reason he needs to hide behind his protective clothing of power and status. He feels safe and secure in his achievements and possessions. Which only goes to show how insecure he is on the inside. The more fear he has the taller he stands and the more rigid he becomes. He gets all his identity from doing the right thing and looking the part. But he doesn’t know who he really is.

Jesus was the antithesis of Simon. He oozes warmth and strength and presence and sexuality and love and it scares the hell out of Simon. So much so, that he just shrinks into his ego as Jesus walks into his courtyard.

After the hor-deuves Jesus reclines on a couch facing Simon and the table and an unnamed woman appears behind him at his feet sobbing uncontrollably. Simon recognizes her instantly, she is well known and quite possibly attractive and voluptuous and goodness knows how well Simon or some of his Pharisee colleagues know her. Her warm tears so abundant are wet enough to wash the dust from Jesus’ feet. And then she uses her hair to wipe them clean. Oh, how sensuous is that? How calming and pleasing that must have been for Jesus especially in the presence of Simon the prick . And then the most seductive and aromatic fragrance fills the air. Oh you know what happens to your body when you smell something truly sensuous and beautiful along with a relaxing foot massage. You want to move into it, and all of you relaxes and you feel the softness of your body opening up and becoming aroused with affection and love. There is a bond forming between the woman and Jesus, it is deeply connected and sexual and sensual. It couldn’t have been any other way they are both human! This is love being expressed between a man and woman, or a woman and woman, or a man and man and I am not talking about sexual intimacy here, which is different again. This is love pure and abandoned, public and engaging and fully Trinitarian. Two hearts merging and looks that penetrate deep into the other. One knows the other cares, one knows the other loves, one knows the other forgives, one knows the other is whole. Neither care about who might be watching, for what is happening is the greatest gift of life given to a human soul. It is wholesome, healing, releasing, and ecstatic reality in its deepest and purest form and what all our souls long for. Something makes us fear and withdraw from entering into such loving abandoned expressions of love. It is our hurts, fears, disappointments and insecurities that cause us to withdraw from each other and block us from expressing our deepest and truest humanity in such loving relationships. In fact if you can’t love or be loved by another human being like this, you will have trouble engaging with the Christ who comes to us like this in the Spirit.

“Jesus the divine visitor to the world comes as a guest to Simon’s house, but he receives little or no hospitality from the one who as host ought to have provided it. A person publicly known as a sinner – one, therefore, on the margins – is drawn to the occasion. Though certainly not welcomed by the Pharisee, she has sensed – correctly, as it turns out – that a wider, deeper welcome (“acceptance”) awaits her. Boldly, boldly SHE breaks through the barrier of hostility to herself and her kind. SHE, not the Pharisee, gives hospitality to Jesus. In return, she receives from him a new outflow of the “hospitality of God” as, publicly and authoritatively, he declares her forgiven and at home in the community. Well may ‘those at table with him” ask: “Who does he think he is forgiving sins?” Their fellow guest is the “Visitor from high”” one who personally embodies and communicates the sensual and sexual love and forgiveness of the Divine Lover, Spirit and Creator of all that is and who gave us our bodies in which to dwell and feel and love and be loved. (emphasis mine)

As I read and reread this story I was sort amused that when Jesus tells Simon the parable he immediately assumes that it was this sinner, this unnamed woman who owed the greatest debt and therefore showed the most gratitude. That is also the way that I too have always read it. But on Friday I saw it differently. Jesus never confirmed or denied it either way. But from where I stand now, and it is different to where I stood last week and last year I now view it that in fact Simon really owed the greatest debt and gratitude. He was the privileged and stronger of the two and had been given much more. He had power and status and used it for his own importance. She did not become a prostitute out of choice or longing or planning. She was thrust into it because of the likes of Simons who couldn’t see past their own noses or their sexual lusts and desires for power and prestige. He was too weak and impotent to use his God given masculinity and femininity to protect the poor, to defend the abused and to give hospitality to the weak. And when the Divine Guest arrived at his house he never even recognized who he was and couldn’t welcome or touch him. What a tragedy. How much more did he owe the Divine Spirit and Lover than this woman who lived on the edges and was considered a non-person. She never even had a chance from the beginning – until she met Jesus.

When I hold my little baby grand-daughter Gretel, I feel immense love and I feel immensely loved. I tell her as she smiles at me that she is so beautiful I could eat her. She is my littlest guest of many that I love. When I come to the feast of the Eucharist I feel overwhelmed by love from the host who invites me. And as I take and eat of the very presence of the Divine Host Jesus He comes to me so mysteriously in bread and wine and I feel whole and loved and free. I offer him the hospitality of my heart, knowing I need forgiveness, I wash his feet with my tears of regret and grief and I am drawn into an acceptance I simply cannot describe. All I can say is that every time I am changed a little bit more and that I cannot survive with out this bread and wine. My deepest desire is to be the fragrance that fills the air with sensuality and love. We are all welcome to the feast, come let us be changed together, let us love and be loved deeply as humans for WE ARE THE VIBRANT LOVING SEXUAL SENSUAL FLESH AND BLOOD BODY OF CHRIST.