“(Jesus) said to Simon ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not annoy my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom Little is forgiven, loves Little.’ Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’”
– Luke 7.44-48
The story of Holy Week and the story of the passion is a story where everyone – or virtually everyone – who is close to Jesus moves away from Jesus, slips away from Jesus, abandons Jesus.
The crowds who shout Hosanna on Palm Sunday scream crucify a few days later.
The disciples, increasingly perplexed by Jesus’ actions, overturning the tables in the temple, washing their feet; but also by his inaction, not demonstrating his power in the ways they wanted and then ending up silent before his accusers - like a lamb to the slaughter, they slink away as well.
Only Mary, his mother, St John the beloved disciple, and a few other women - perhaps this woman from today's gospel who had been forgiven much and loved much in return - kept vigil at the cross. Everyone else who followed him has either turned from him or suddenly remembered an important prior engagement.
Peter, utters, unwittingly, some of the truest words he ever spoke. He says he doesn't know Jesus.
Judas betrays him with a kiss.
They let him down. They flee. They hide. They deny. They betray. They are not able to do what love requires.
But the un-named woman in today’s gospel story does. How? Why? What is the relationship between her being forgiven and her being able to love so much?
And how is it that those who followed Jesus most closely have not been able to grasp this?
And what does it say to those of us who, in Gerard Manley Hopkins' agonising words has have spent our lives upon his cause? “Why must disappointment all I endeavour end?”
And why was it that the one who washed the feet of his friends is vilified for receiving the same gift from the woman the proud and the religious thought he should avoid?
Why was it that her kisses, and her tears were such a violation?
Jesus says, it is because she has been forgiven, and therefore knows the power and liberation of forgiveness and therefore loves in return. Which is why in the Lord’s Prayer the only petition that carries a condition is that we, receiving forgiveness, must forgive others too.
But those who witness this astonishing and wonderfully shameless act of love given to the one whose life and dying and being raised to life is the very source of forgiveness, harden their hearts against Jesus, rather than examine their own sinfulness, and say to each other, ‘Who is this who forgives sins?’
But this is the heart and the meaning of the faith we share and the faith we proclaim.
We, the ministers of the gospel, are in Paul’s words, and because we have been reconciled to God through Christ, given a ‘ministry of reconciliation.’ (2 Corinthians 5.18) We are called to declare the forgiveness of sins. But today I must remind myself, and each of you, that if we are to do this with the same beautiful, undefended and shameless love that we see in the forgiven sinner of this story, then we must ask the Lord to soften, perhaps even to break our hearts; to make us penitent; to bring us to that place where we say with the thief in the last chance saloon of life, dying alongside Jesus; ‘Remember me in that kingdom of yours.’ (See Luke 23.42)
The Ordinal says that, ‘Formed by the Word, (priests) are called to bring their hearers to repentance and to declare in Christ’s name the absolution and forgiveness of sins.’
We cannot do this with integrity – and more importantly, we cannot do this with abundant love – unless we are penitent too.
The Church of England that we love and serve has been through - and still goes through - challenging and difficult times. We have been humbled by our failures and mistakes. We are learning to be penitent. Let us also learn how to love abundantly. Let us be undefended in our penitence and in our love.
The Ordinal goes on to say that with all God’s people - that is bishops, priests, deacons, lay ministers of various kinds and the whole people of God - we are called ‘to tell the story of God's love,’ baptising ‘new disciples in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit and to walk with them in the way of Christ.’
In our Diocese of York, we are called to live Christ’s story. All of us. That story is the story of sins forgiven. It is the meaning and the beauty of the cross. The story of him who ‘loves us and frees us from our sins by his blood.’ (Revelation 1.5b)
It is only when we know and receive the power of this story in our own lives that we are able to share that story and live it joyfully.
My dear sisters and brothers, fellow bishops, priests, deacons and lay ministers, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the service you give to the gospel in the parishes, communities, chaplaincies and schools where you serve. In a world of terrible confusion, violence and sorrow, where truth has become relative and partial, where wars are started with scant regard for international law, and with no clear objectives, and where, as ever, the innocent suffer, we are called to bear witness to Christ. May you be strengthened and upheld in this ministry and may you know God's love for you.
Let us earnestly pray for each other and for the outpouring of the Spirit, that we may be faithful in this ministry in a world which is in danger of drifting ever further from the truth of Christ.
The woman in today's gospel, carrying all her sin and shame and knowing that she had got life wrong in so many ways, is able to greet Jesus in the way that those who thought they had got life right could not. Let's try to make sure we are on her side, knowing how much we need God.
Paradoxically, let us give thanks to God that sometimes we get things wrong, that sometimes we fall, because it is in acknowledging this that we will learn the most important spiritual lessons of all - that old, old lesson of that old, old story - that we are always sinners in need of God's grace, and that without God we are nothing. I think that I first heard Rowan Williams say this, the only interesting thing about the Church is God. The only good news of the Christian faith is Jesus. This is what we are called to receive and share. The only reputation that we really need to care about is that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, look and sound like Jesus, weeping for our mistakes, and longing to serve him.
But since we cannot, like the woman in today's story, bathe his feet with our tears or anoint him with oil, then we need to do this - we need to look for him in others, and especially the poor, the vulnerable, the lonely, the afflicted, those who have been abused and excluded, let us serve Jesus in them and that's why we reaffirm our ordination promises today and that's why we bless these oils.
They are for baptism, as new followers of Jesus repent of their sins and receive his grace.
They are for healing, in a world which is out of sync.
They are for celebration, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
He is the anointed one. And he loves us very much. He has called us to his service. He anoints us with his grace.
That should really be the end of the sermon. But lately - and as close colleagues know from the number of emails I send them which contain the most horrendous typos - you see recently I have taken to writing most emails and indeed nearly all sermons and at least one book by dictating them on my iPhone. However, when I read the texts through, there are usually mistakes. Some are unintentionally illuminating.
So this sermon ended with the words, ‘he anoints us with his grace.’ But when I read it back, it said, ‘he annoys us with his grace.’ This caused me to think.
The proud and the religious were annoyed by the grace of God and the love of a woman whom Jesus should have known to avoid.
And his grace annoys us still, it pricks the bubble of our pomposity, it stops us believing too much in our publicity, it reminds us who we are and how much we need God.
‘Keep your servant also from presumptuous sins,’ says the Psalmist (Psalm 19.12), which may well mean those sins of pride and omission which because of our own ‘puffedupness’ we do not realise are sins at all and we become too ready as we are to scoff at those whose unabashed displays of love leave us embarrassed.
Dear sisters and brothers, fellow ministers of the gospel in this great Diocese of York, let us be annoyed and anointed by the grace of God, then we can be his servants in the world. Amen.
