He Who Is Forgiven Much Loves Much

by Fr. Scott Homer
In the Name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

We are going to be talking about love this morning. We are going to talk about love because Jesus talks about love in our Gospel reading. And he is talking about love in an unusual way. His meaning is not all that transparent but his point is essential if we hope to live out our lives in love, peace, and joy. Jesus says is that the extent to which someone knows love and demonstrates love is in direct proportion to the amount of forgiveness they receive. Great forgiveness received, great love expressed. Little forgiveness received, little love expressed. Now this presents us with an interesting problem. Does Jesus mean for us to believe that if we have not received forgiveness we are incapable of loving? Some of us don’t really believe we have done much requiring forgiveness. We believe we are living virtuous lives for the most part. Is Jesus saying that we are not going to be loving people because we have not been screwing up all our lives? Do we have to go out and sin so that we can receive forgiveness? Well, the answer to these questions is no, you don’t have to go out and sin but yes, to the extent that we have not been forgiven we are incapable of loving. And yes, those of us who believe that we have lived largely virtuous lives and have done little to warrant forgiveness really are incapable of love. You see, the problem is that love does not spring out of virtuous acts. Love springs out of a relationship—a relationship with the Source of Love and that relationship is first and foremost a relationship established in forgiveness. Our God, the one and only true God, is first and foremost the God of love, the God of compassion and mercy, and we simply cannot be in his presence without experiencing forgiveness. In his presence we know acceptance, and peace and joy but all of that is born out of our forgiveness in his presence. In fact, true forgiveness can be found nowhere else—only in our Lord’s presence.
When we read these Bible stories about Jesus we have got to keep something in mind. Jesus is God in human flesh. If we forget this the stories will not make sense. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus makes this point himself in John chapter 14, verse 9. The disciple Philip has asked Jesus to show him God the Father. And Jesus responds by asking Philip, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father?' And this is not the only evidence. Do you recall the way St John starts his Gospel account about Jesus? In John 1.14 he writes, “And the Word became flesh [that is, Jesus of Nazareth], and dwelt among us, and we saw [Christ’s] glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. And St. Paul is of the same opinioon. He also repeatedly asserts that Jesus is God in the flesh. Most notably in two places in the letter to the Colossians he writes in 1.5, “[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God” and again in 2.9 he writes, “…in [Jesus Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” So, when we see Jesus operating in the world we see God operating in the world. We see how God acts, what God values, the ways that God handles situations, God’s priorities and God’s values demonstrated in concrete form. And when we read the stories about Jesus we are being shown God working in our world--not somebody who demonstrates godly characteristics, not somebody who channels godlike sayings, not a particularly godly man—but God in all his glory working in the world.
Jesus is God in the flesh—We have to begin here because we can’t grasp what is happening in our Gospel reading this morning any other way. When we read this story we have got to understand that God has gone to eat dinner at this Pharisee’s house. God is seated at the dinner table. It is God’s feet that are being washed with the woman’s tears. And it is God who is being judged and accused by the Pharisee. When we look at the behavior of the Pharisee and the woman we are looking at two unique responses to God’s presence in their life. And there are a couple of very important differences in their response to God’s presence.

The Pharisee doubts that God has drawn near. He can not or will not see God’s presence in Jesus but the sinful woman worships Jesus, devotes herself to caring for him. She goes so far as to anoint him—and hyes, there are kingly implications in that. The Pharisee dishonors God because he confuses forgiveness for uncleanness and accuses God of being a fraud. The sinful woman honors God with her whole being.

But here is the most important thing: The Pharisee does not recognize his need for forgiveness. He is, in his own mind, a righteous man. In his mind he has done little or nothing wrong and he senses no need for God’s mercy but the sinful woman recognizes her sinfulness and she is dependent on God’s mercy.

As a consequence of forgiveness the woman’s response to Jesus is loving. She abandons herself to serve him, to bless him and to honor him. The Pharisee’s response to Jesus is to defend his self-righteous superiority by leveling an accusation against God and God’s mercy.

Jesus wants all the Pharisees of the world to know that love is intimately linked to forgiveness. No human being will ever be truly loving as long as they are convinced that they are above needing and receiving forgiveness. It is only in God’s forgiveness that you are empowered to love. The problem is confusion about the nature of righteousness. Where does righteousness come from? Does one become righteous by keeping oneself unstained by the world? Or is righteousness a gift which is bestowed upon a person by God? Are we righteousness under assault or is righteousness like a cloak that has been placed upon us?

We can live as though righteousness is our starting point and that living the righteous life before God is the process of keeping ourselves unstained by the world. In this approach, that is the preferred route for Obsessive compulsive personalities, a person is righteous to the extent that they are able to avoid coming into contact with any and all filthiness, through a doggedly determined attempt to maintain our purity against a dirty world, by tiptoeing through a sin-filled minefield scrupulously avoiding anything that looks like a mistake. But God forbid you should ever happen to brush up against some filth unawares, or that you should experience a momentary lapse and think an impure thought or engage in an unholy act. And many have failed because they stumbled on a landmine and all their attempts at being righteous were dashed in a moment. And what about all those invisible perils? This approach leads to a miserably unhappy life.

Or we can live as penitent sinners. We can acknowledge that brokenness, neediness and filthiness is the given. That is our starting point and living the righteous life is the process of accepting God’s forgiveness and serving him and others to the best of our ability. In this scenario the goal is not to maintain a false sense of righteousness. It is to abandon ourselves to God’s grace and mercy, trusting that when our soul is a forgiven soul it is a loving soul and that a forgiven-loving soul is much less likely to succomb to the temptation of sin. If we are stained by the world, it is, after all, the way of the world but we know that if we confess our sin and repent and return the Lord, that he will once again forgive us and we will once again know the joy of being a forgiven creature. We will once again know His immense strength of love supporting us. This is the preferred method-according to Jesus.

Love—it is the center of the gospel message. When Jesus is asked to summarize the Law, that is, when he is asked to reveal the most important code of conduct—the code of conduct that people must observe if they hope to be found righteous in God’s sight, Jesus says, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Why this extraordinary emphasis on love? We find the anwer in St. John’s first Epistle. St John writes, “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love…God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus says that the woman who is washing his feet, and kissing his feet, and anointing his head with oil is loving much. She is completely invested in making Jesus comfortable, in welcoming him, in honoring him and she seems unconcerned about how she might appear to the people looking on. But her expression of love is born out of Jesus’ forgiveness. Love is the human response to God’s graceful and compassionate forgiveness. Let’s stop acting as if we need to have it all together. Lets accept the facts, surrender ourselves to God's forgiveness and grace. Let's begin to live out the love that God is showering upon us. Amen.