Thursday • 10/10/2024 •
Proper 22

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; Micah 3:1-8; Acts 24:1-23; Luke 7:36-50

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

Today’s readings show us striking alternatives. We can return God’s love with grateful love, with outright rejection, or with cold indifference.

Luke. The centerpiece of today’s readings—indeed a centerpiece of Luke’s gospel—is Luke’s account of a “sinful woman” anointing Jesus. The passage is proof positive that Jesus is indeed the “friend of … sinners” people have come to think he is (Luke 7:34). What constitutes her sinfulness is left to our imaginations. Tradition has associated her with Mary Magdalene, but that is only tradition. The woman is unnamed, and so is the nature of her sin. That makes it easier, I think, for each of us to put ourselves in her place—because that’s where each of us belongs.

Image: "Mary Anoints Jesus" by elizaraxi is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

What is of note is the courage of her very presence at this table of such very righteous people, the custom-defying physicality of her ministrations, and the utter lack of reserve in her display of emotion. Surely, she has not been invited to this party, but here she is: bathing Jesus’s feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, and anointing them with expensive oil. This is party-crashing at its very best!

Reading the heart of Simon his host as only the God-Man can (“the Pharisee … said to himself ‘If this man were a prophet…’”), Jesus rebukes him because Simon has failed to provide normal, minimal hospitality to his guest. Jesus then tells the parable of the two debtors whose relative loves match the relative weight of the debts forgiven them (Luke 7:41-43).

And, reading her heart as only the God-Man can, Jesus says of the uninvited woman, “Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:47 NRSV), or “Her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven” (REB).

Those who have been loved much, love much in return.

I pray that you and I never lose track of what it cost Love to gain our forgiveness, nor ever outlive our love for the Payer of the debt.

Micah. Luke’s account puts in relief the anger of Micah the prophet at the political and religious rulers who are supposed to “know justice,” but instead “hate the good and love the evil” — whose unjust practices amount to a metaphorical cannibalism: “who eat the flesh of my people, and flay the skin off them” (Micah 3:1-3). Love of self has displaced any possibility of welcoming God’s love. And so, consequences. Purported prophets only “lead my people astray” (3:5). Seers go blind (3:6). Diviners get “no answer from God” (3:7). There’s only one possible result: “Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house (i.e., the Temple) a wooded height” (3:12).

As the writer to the Hebrews will later put it: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). To rework it slightly: “It is a fearful thing to say ‘No!’ over and over again to a protective God’s overtures of love.”

In the Book of Acts, the Roman governor Felix shows himself to be too cool a customer to open himself to God’s loving approach. The Felix before whom Paul appears in this passage is a minor “somebody” in the Roman world. He is a freedman of Antonia, the Emperor Claudius’s mother. Felix’s brother, Pallas, is Claudius’s secretary of finance. The Roman historian Tacitus says Felix “occupied the office of a king while having the mind of a slave, saturated with cruelty and lust” (Histories 5.9). Years after his encounter with Paul, Felix will perish at Pompeii during the famous eruption of Vesuvius. What a story his conversion could have made. Today’s passage (and the first four verses of tomorrow’s reading) is the lone recorded account of Felix’s encounter with the grace of God. This would have been one big fat celebrity conversion. But it was not to be. All Felix can think about is how he might possibly extract a bribe (Acts 24:26) from this semi-famous Jewish personage who says he has brought “to my nation alms and offerings” (Acts 24:17).

Like Simon the Pharisee, Felix the governor nonchalantly dismisses God’s kiss of grace. May you and I not do so. Instead, may we return much love with much love.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+