This is the season to be getting invitations to high school reunions scheduled for the fall.  Actually, I am getting several.  I attended three high schools in four years.  For the first two years I was in the high school where I grew up, and it was good.  I had my own circle of friends from all the years of being together.  But then, our family moved, and I entered a new school as a junior.  The next year that school divided, and I went to the new high school . . . three high schools in four years.

The hardest part of being a new kid in school is deciding where you sit in the cafeteria at lunch time.  There were the football players at one table, but I did not go out for football my junior year, so that was out.  Over here was, who were they, the Math Club?  We did not have computer geeks back then because we did not have computers.  But we had geeks – slide rules attached to their belts, plastic pocket liners with four different colored pens inside.  In the back corner were the band and choir kids, acting goofy.  And the Spanish Club speaking Spanish, I was “out” there, too.

So, usually I sat down at a table by myself and then watched the line to see who might sit with me.  “Oh no, don’t come here!  Please, please look the other way.  Oh, here is someone who looks pretty cool.  Maybe he’ll be willing to be seen with the ‘new kid.’”

And do not think that such things end when you graduate from high school.  Here is Monday’s “Around Town” column of the sports section.  “Radio personality Eddie Volkman, actor Vince Vaughn, and Blackhawks Patrick Kane and Adam Burish seen at Mercadito . . . .Bears star Tommie Harris at Vibe to hear rapper and Chicago native, Common . . . Blackhawk Troy Brouwer getting ready for Game 5 chowing down Saturday evening at Joe’s Stone Crab.”  Everybody is a Blackhawks fan today.  You should have seen all the brand new red jerseys people wore to the parade on Friday; very few people have old jerseys.  Where you are and with whom you are is news if you are a respectable person.

 That is what Jesus was confronting in our gospel reading for today.  Jesus is invited by Simon, a Pharisee, to dinner at Simon’s house.  The Pharisees were good people; they were decent people; they were nice people.  They were the kind that you would read about in the Jerusalem Post or the Bethlehem Star.  So, Jesus, the new celebrity prophet on the scene, is invited into polite company for a meal.

Now, we need to know that while the guests were invited to sit at the table on the floor with their feet extended behind them, outsiders were allowed to stand around on the perimeter and overhear the conversation.  In fact, outsiders were encouraged to come because it increased the host’s stature in society.  “Look who I have eating with me!  Listen to how smart we are and how clever we are.”

Into this nice, proper scene intrudes a woman of the streets, a “sinner” Simon is quick to judge.  She pours out a jar of ointment on Jesus’ feet and starts to wipe it off with her long hair.  This is embarrassingly erotic to the nice host who commands Jesus to send her away.  “This man must not be much of a prophet,” Simon thinks, “that he cannot see what kind of woman this is.”  Certainly, one not welcome in such nice company.

But Jesus says, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”  These are not words one wants to hear from a prophet, and Jesus begins with a story.  A creditor has two debtors, one who owes him a lot, and another who owes him little.  He forgives them both.  Which of the two debtors is likely to be more thankful?”

“The one with the larger debt,” Simon answers. 

“Correct,” Jesus responds.  Then he turns to the not-so-nice woman and says, “Do you see her?  When I came into your house you gave me no water for my feet but she washed my feet with her tears.  You did not give me a kiss of welcome, but she has kissed my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil as a sign of greeting, but she has bathed my feet with oil.”

This has the sound of that devastating judgment scene at the end of Matthew’s gospel where Jesus the judge divides people into sheep and goats.  Remember that the sheep are the ones who, “when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me water, when I was a stranger you welcomed me.”  The goats?  “When I was hungry you gave me no food, when I was thirsty you gave me no water, when I was a stranger you did not welcome me.”

Jesus is portraying the woman as a sheep and Simon the Pharisee as a goat.  It is not enough to live a nice, decent, good life.  We must get involved with the realities of life that sometimes are not so nice.  Simon thinks that the woman is the problem for being not-too-nice, but it turns out that he is the problem for being too-nice.  He wants her banished from his company, but Jesus embraces her as an example of faithful living.

The church must not be too nice when it comes to those with whom we associate.  Last Tuesday I was hurrying out of the Temple through the Clark Street door to run an errand.  As I turned left on the sidewalk, James started walking with me stride for stride.  James is “fixture” here at the church who often is down on his luck, and just as often comes to us seeking financial help.  Right away he pleaded with me for money to pay for a prescription; he was waving a piece of paper in front of me.

I said, “James, give me a few minutes to run this errand.  I need to do it right now, and then I can talk with you.”

That did not seem to register with him, and he continued to hurry along with me, insisting that he just needed eight dollars to have enough for this medicine.  I walked into an office building just across the alley from the Temple, he followed me through the revolving door, and I told him, “Wait here, and I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes later I walked through the lobby to the door where I had asked James to wait, and he was gone.  I looked around for him, and then I came back to the church office.  A short while later James was at our window ringing the bell.  I came out and said, “James, I asked you to wait and promised I would be back.”  He said, “Security kicked me out.  I was just standing there doing nothing, but they didn’t want me in their building.”

It is a nice building, and we all can understand the desire for order and predictability. But it is a too-nice building, too nice for James, a pharisaical building.  We, the church, cannot afford to be that nice.  We have work to do that calls us to associate with all others and to engage them as human beings. 

So, one way to read this episode in the Bible is to place ourselves in Simon’s role and realize that living a nice, good, proper life is not enough, that living a self-constructed life in which we work hard and do all the right things falls short of God’s intent for us.  In our individualistic society we praise the self-made person.  We have this contradictory notion that a person can control one’s own destiny.  What a strange idea!  It is contradictory by definition.  What happens to Simon, who is guilty of the sin of pride, is that he remains aloof and thereby misses any real engagement with Jesus.

There is a second way to understand the episode, and that is to put ourselves in the place of the woman who knows that she is not perfect, not respectable, not nice . . . that no one is going to sit with her in the high school cafeteria.  And yet, knowing herself, having no illusions about herself, she discovers God’s forgiveness which gives her a second chance.  And that forgiveness prompts her to love without fear of how others will judge her.  What is the opposite of the self-constructed life of Simon?  The love-constructed life of the woman.

We almost always have a Prayer of Confession after the opening hymn of our worship service.  Actually, we have two.  The first one we all say together, and it is cast in the first person plural, “we,” and the congregation offers it on behalf of the church.  “We confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.  We have failed to be an obedient church.  We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy.  Forgive us, we pray.”  We cannot confess our sins any simpler than that.

Then, we have the second prayer of confession, the silent prayer during which each one of us is encouraged to continue the prayer in the first person singular.  “I confess . . . .”

What follows?  The Absolution.  “In the name of Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven.”  A clear declaration not about our own goodness but about God’s power made real through Jesus Christ.  When we earnestly repent of our sins, God forgives us.  I suspect that most of us do not believe that is true.  We still wallow in regret for what we have said and done, for what we have neglected to say and do.  But God forgives our sins so that we are set free to love others.  The woman does not care about the judgment of Simon and his too-nice friends; all she knows is that her love emboldens her to anoint Jesus with the oil of extravagant hospitality when Simon has offered none.

Jesus has made plain the moral of his story.  “The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  Simon does not see himself as a sinner.  He is a nice, good, decent person.  But he cannot love.  Our capacity to love others is determined by how much gratitude we experience in being forgiven. 

The power of forgiveness.  I was taught that three decades ago by a woman named Joye Newton.  I did not know her, but she was the sister of a member of a congregation I was serving as the pastor.  He asked me to visit her in the hospital because she was dying of cancer.  She was Roman Catholic, but she was estranged from the church.

I went to visit her, and she would not acknowledge that I was there.  She never rolled over to look at me.  I went again, and the same thing, not even a word.  The third time I went she looked at me and said that she knew her brother had sent me, but she did not want me there.  That was the unpromising beginning of our relationship.  We actually talked a bit, and I detected that maybe it would be okay for me to stop in again. 

I did, and that is when she asked, “Does God forgive my sins?”  I, in good Protestant fashion, offered her words of assurance.  Vaguely quoting scripture, I said, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

“No, don’t give me that.  Yes or no, does God forgive me?”

I said, “Joye, the Bible says that as far as the east is from the west God will remove our sins from us.”

“Stop it.  Does God forgive my sins here and now?  Yes or no?”  She had turned her hospital room into a confessional and ordained me her priest.  She went on to tell of her regrets in life, her doubts, her unresolved grudges, her disappointment in herself.  The way anyone of us could talk about ourselves. 

Finally, I found my priestly courage and said, “Joye, in the name of Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven.”  For the first time I saw her relax . . . and smile.

The power of forgiveness; it sets us free to love.  And if we are too nice to know that we desperately need it, then we miss out on life.