Download St - Modesto Bee

St. Paul’s Church
I Kings 21: 1 - 21a
June 13, 2010
Psalm 5: 1 - 8
Third Sunday in Pentecost
Galatians 2: 15 - 21
Pastor Jim Stickney
Luke 7: 36 - 8: 3
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
I’m a relative newcomer to Modesto, and I have not yet attended a classic
movie at the State Theatre. I’ve heard the Modesto Symphony, seen the
McHenry Museum, and even caught a ball game where I cheered for our
home team, the Modesto Nuts. Maybe when I finally make it to the State
Theatre, they’ll be showing the classic “Jezebel,” starring Bette Davis as a
formidable southern belle.
Jezebel, of course, is featured in our first reading. This embodiment of the
femme fatale who is the queen of the worst king of Israel, Ahab, is not quite
what I had in mind when I heard that the series of readings for Sunday
would be made much more inclusive. I had in mind many beautiful passages
of the figure of Sophia in the Old Testament, that feminine personification of
the Wisdom of God (which, in Greek, is Sophia), through which God was
pleased to create the world — that benign spirit who declares that her delight
is to dwell among human beings and enlighten them.
I suppose the reason we hear about Jezebel is that her devious ways serve as
a contrast to the woman who appears in our well-known Gospel reading
from Luke. This poor dejected tearful woman massaged Jesus’s feet with
ointment from a jar made of alabaster — a beautiful vessel for a precious
and fragrant salve. She’s moved to weeping, and she wipes the hot tears
away from Jesus’ feet with her hair. Talk about drama — I don’t think even
Bette Davis could perform so powerfully! This poor woman must have been
a source of both embarrassment and high drama for all.
Luke tells us that she was a sinner, and the Pharisee’s thoughts
reinforce that judgment. His name was Simon, and remember that he had
taken a risk to ask Jesus to dine with him. If Simon had wanted to play it
safe, why would he have asked Jesus to attend? This Pharisee is only
clueless as a kind of mirror image of Jesus’ official twelve disciples.
What is really worse: Simon Peter’s buffoonery, or Simon the
Pharisee’s stuffiness? In God’s sight, both people are good but limited
human beings stumbling their way toward that sublime and lofty realization
that St. Paul’s expresses in his letter:
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
So Jesus tells a story, about those two debtors, one of whom owed ten times
as much. And Simon allows himself to be corrected by this paradoxical
teacher Jesus. Jesus is not trying to reform the woman’s sin of passion — for
she is already repentant. Instead, Jesus is after a more subtle prize, the heart
of a man which has grown cold. Simon the Pharisee keeps the externals of
the law, but is at risk, just as we are, of spiritual torpor, or ennui, of
weariness in doing the right thing, day by day.
The Pharisee has achieved a high level of moral conduct, but this integration
is all at risk if the spirit of routine can shrivel up his heart to be joyless,
loveless, and hopeless. In this way, secret sins and infidelities prove to be
more dangerous than obvious sins. A person who gets drunk at a party and
can’t drive home has already been judged guilty by those who maintained
sobriety. But their spiritual pride, which is invisible, can eat away at their
souls even as they entertain their smug superiority.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
If we know anything about the life of St. Paul, we know that he was the
Pharisee’s Pharisee, blameless in his observance of the externals of
complying with the commandments. But through the revelation of the Spirit
of the living God, through Sophia, he came to see that there was very little
difference between the public and the private sinner. What matters is the
surrender of the illusion that our egos are in charge of spiritual growth, and
to be guided, moment by moment, by the grace of God shown in Christ
Jesus.
At the start of this sermon I mentioned the new, more inclusive lectionary
readings. It’s true I have some issues with Jezebel’s inclusion in these
expanded readings. But I would call your attention to the Scripture insert and
the three verses added to the Gospel of Luke. They are verses one through
three of chapter eight.
In these easily-overlooked verses we have a summary statement of Jesus’
ministry: especially, just who was involved and how they met their
expenses. Luke makes sure we understand that the twelve men who followed
Jesus
were pilgrims like he was, going from town and relying on
hospitality. And this band also included many women, and three of them are
mentioned here:
Mary from the town of Magdala, a woman named
Susanna, and Chuza’s wife: her husband was well-placed in the household
of Herod.
Why is this important? Well, not only did these women follow along with
Jesus and the twelve official disciples, but they also “provided for them
out of their resources.” In other words, they funded the ministry of Jesus and
the 12, these men who no longer worked as fishermen, carpenters, or tax
collectors.
Where would this band of wandering disciples be without these women
making sure that everyone had enough to eat, and the occasional new tunic
or sandals? I’m not trying to covertly preach a sermon here on financial
stewardship, but just trying to say that paying the expenses of the ministry is
nothing new. In fact, as we prepare to celebrate the one-year anniversary of
St. Paul’s return as an Episcopal church, I find this New Testament parallel
very reassuring.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.