Great Love, Great Joy!
Luke 7:36 - 8:3
June 13, 2010
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
Her name was Candace. I met her during my tenure as Student Associate Pastor. As part of my ministry mandate to "create something for the young adults in our congregation" I had started a Relational Bible Study Group. I think we started with two or three participants. Candace was a friend of one of them, who told her about the group and invited her to check it out. I remember how quiet and reserved she was the first night she came. But something in the group drew her back the next week and the next until she was a regular and full participant.
We began each session talking about the stresses and joys of our week and offering each other support and encouragement. We also talked a lot about how we related personally to whatever Biblical text we happened to be exploring. The group grew together in love, in their sense of God's presence in their lives and in the joy that seemed to flow from that awareness. All of us felt our lives being touched, transformed and empowered. But none more so than Candace; she was like a flower opening up, a rose starting to unfold, a light beginning to shine.
I'll never forget the night she asked if she could share a song. She said it was a song that captured her story and she wanted to share it with us.
(Song)You Gave Me Love
You gave me time when no one gave me time of day.
You looked deep inside while the rest of the world looked away.
You smiled at me when there were just frowns everywhere.
You gave me love when nobody gave me a prayer.
That's why I call you savior.
That's why I call you friend
You touched my heart; you touched my soul;
And helped me start all over again.
That's why I love you Jesus,
That's why I'll always care.
You gave me love when nobody gave me a prayer.
You gave me laughter after I cried all my tears.
You heard my dreams while the rest of the world closed its ears.
I looked in your eyes and I found the tenderness there.
You gave me love when nobody gave me a prayer.
That's why I call you savior.
That's why I call you friend
You touched my heart; you touched my soul;
And helped me start all over again.
That's why I love you Jesus,
That's why I'll always care.
You gave me love when nobody gave me a prayer.
Picture in your mind the woman who stood behind Jesus, weeping, bathing his feet with her tears; can you imagine her singing those words as she gently massaged his feet? Can you hear her whisper or shout "you gave me love when nobody gave me a prayer"? She was after all a woman on the outside of polite society, a nothing, a nobody. Worse than that, she was a sinner; one who had sold her body to keep her life; one who had done whatever she could do just to survive. Now here she was crashing the party of Simon, the Pharisee, touching the feet of this itinerant preacher, interrupting the meal and rendering Jesus and anyone who came near enough to touch him or her unclean. It was the law. Simon knew it and so did Jesus and so did this woman! Women -even good, upstanding, reputable women- were not to speak to or touch men in public. She knew it, but her love was so great and her joy so profound that she dared to risk further retribution to just to say "thank you."
Now we don't know for sure just how it was that she had come to experience the love Jesus came and comes to bring. Perhaps she had been in the crowd and heard him speak. Perhaps she had caught his eye and when he looked at her she felt the love of God he talked about touching her deep within. Perhaps it was a smile. Perhaps it was the stories she had heard of other sinners he had welcomed, other outcasts he had included. We don't know. All we know is that something profound had happened to her and in its happening the love that had been hidden for so long was released in joyful service.
That's what happens when we receive a gift beyond anything we could ever hope for or imagine, isn't it? Our hearts are filled with gratitude that simply must find some expression. And when that gift is love when we have been told we are unlovable; when it is acceptance when all we have known is rejection; when it is extravagant welcome when the doors of life have slammed shut in our faces then that gratitude releases the love and the joy that makes us whole. I have seen it time and time again as individuals discover the love of God lived out in the extravagant welcome of a community of faith. I have seen it as the hurts and wounds of a lifetime begin to heal through the gift of Divine grace. When we have been loved like that, the great love and great joy that we experience simply must be shared, offered, given.
Meanwhile Simon, watching the scene unfold, simply cannot believe that Jesus is just sitting there, doing nothing to stop this woman or condemn her and her lifestyle. So Jesus tells him that story about the two debtors and asks him which debtor would love the creditor more. Cautiously Simon answers, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." Whereupon Jesus points to the woman and, after enumerating the number of times Simon failed to show Jesus common courtesy and respect while this woman poured out abundant love, Jesus says, "Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love."
Unfortunately several of the English translations of this passage have it backwards. They imply that this woman was forgiven because of her love. Not so, says Jesus. As a matter of fact the belief that forgiveness, love and acceptance come as a result of something we say or do was part of Simon's problem. He thought that only good, upstanding, proper, law-abiding people -like himself- deserved God's love and grace. He believed that only those who could follow every iota of the law were acceptable. He believed that one had to earn one's way into God's favor. He believed that because he faithfully kept the commandments he was somehow superior to those who did not. What he didn't understand was that in judging others inferior and in believing that he was capable of earning his own way, Simon was just as separated, just as distant, just as alienated as the woman was. He believed he had earned everything he had and there was no loving gratitude in his heart, no joy in his service, no room at his table for those he identified as sinners.
So much of the time we seem get it turned around. We think that we must do something to make ourselves acceptable to God. Oh, we utter the phrases about salvation by faith, but we turn faith into a work. We must have faith, repent, confess our sins; then and only then will God love us, accept us and forgive us. "No! Not so," says Jesus!!! We have it backwards. God loves, forgives and accepts us - period - end of sentence. The question is will we accept God's acceptance of us and in that acceptance and love grow into all God dreams we might become?
How different our lives might be if we finally accepted that we are loved in spite of the number of times we have failed and will fail to live into the fullness of who we are created to become! How different our lives might be if we finally understood that we are -each and every one of us- people of infinite value, limitless dignity and immeasurable worth?
On the day of my ordination, several years after Candace first tentatively shared her song with us, she stood in the middle of the sanctuary and with great love in her heart and great joy radiating from her life reminded us all of God's incredible love as she sang her story, my story, our story:
You gave me laughter after I cried all my tears.
You heard my dreams while the rest of the world closed its ears.
I looked in your eyes and I found the tenderness there.
You gave me love when nobody gave me a prayer.
Amen.
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