Do you see the woman?

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD, and the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I amounted you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if it had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan said to David, “Now the LORD has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child that is born to you shall die.” Then Nathan went to his house. The LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill.

Psalm 32

Happy are those whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away! Happy are they to whom ehe LORD imputes no guilt, and in whose spirit there is no guilt! While I held my tongue, my bones withered away, because of my groaning all day long. For your hand was heavy upon me day and night; my moisture was dried up as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not conceal my guilt. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin. Therefore all the faithful will make their prayers to you in time of trouble; when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach them. You are my hiding place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go; I will guide you with my eye. Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding; who must be fitted with bit and bridle, or else they will not stay near you.” Great are the tribulations of the wicked; but mercy embraces those who trust in the LORD. Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the LORD; shout for joy, all who are true of heart.

Galatians 2:15-21

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified  not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves had been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. For through the law I have died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Luke 7:36-8:3

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him - that she is a sinner.” Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “speak.” “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he 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 anoint 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.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

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“Do you see the woman?”

It’s a very simple question that Jesus asks. There is a woman in the space where the men have gathered to talk about religion and philosophy, and she has made a public spectacle of herself by getting openly emotional, weeping at Jesus’ feet and anointing him with a perfume that would have made the house smell for days. The host of this particular party, a Pharisee named Simon, sneers in her direction, as well as sneering at Jesus for not living up to his reputation as a prophet. Holy men, after all, are supposed to keep only the ‘right’ kind of company, and sinful women are far from ‘right,’ right? Then again, we don’t know what was meant by calling her a sinner. Could be she fought against her abusive husband, or stood up for her child when he got bullied by the Romans, but in any case, she did not stay in her place, so she got her own reputation as a sinner.

So comes the question, do we see her? Simon thought he knew her, knew what kind of person she was, knew where she belonged and what she deserved, but this woman in the story doesn’t even have a name. How could she be known without knowing her name?

Stories do this thing sometimes, though, where they leave characters without stories so those types can be even more open for interpretation. The rich man who ignored Lazarus, for example, or the Beloved Disciple, unnamed so we could find ourselves in these situations and rewrite those stories. Much like Nathan gave David the chance to re-write his own story when he told him a tale of two shepherds, one rich and the other poor, to stir David’s heart of justice and give him another perspective on his own actions.

Because sometimes, as much as we have a hard time seeing beyond the labels and expectations on other people, sometimes we have an equally hard time looking at, and seeing, even ourselves. 

I woke up this morning to a post in the ELCA Facebook page about this early morning’s shooting at a gay bar in Orlando. At least 20 people killed and twice that many now in the hospital. And June is Pride month, where LGBTQ people across the country celebrate that we don’t have to hide who we are in order to be worth loving. But our denomination, and much of the wider church, has yet to claim that publicly, by our ‘bound conscience’ clause in the 2009 sexuality statement - we can’t decide if my sexuality and gender identity are inherently sinful. Just like we can’t decide if women really deserve equal pay or can be trusted to know what’s best for their own bodies. Just like we can’t decide as a denomination if we are being too political by saying that Black Lives Matter. Because we might offend someone, even though while we look away there are religiously-inspired hate crimes going on all around us, inspired by our Christianity, even though while we look away the sexual assault rates on college campuses remains far too high with far too little consequence for the assailants, even though black and brown bodies are being treated as threats to national security just for breathing out in the open.

What do we see when we look at this world, I wonder? When we look at the news and look at ourselves? When we look at a twelve year old kid playing cops and robbers, or a man wearing a feather boa, or a college student going to a party to meet friends? Do we ever see each other, or only types, only pieces in a game, only old stories playing themselves out again and again without any of our own control over their outcome?

Simon didn’t see the woman who came to Jesus with a heart overflowing with love. Simon saw a ‘sinner,’ and we have been perpetuating a story about her ever since that reeks of shame and guilt and sexual immorality as we choose to define it. David didn’t see Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, a woman with her own hopes and dreams, but a body that he had power over and wanted to own and use for his own pleasure. David was a rapist who got his own story and plenty of chances to redeem himself. The woman in Simon’s house is there to be known for her love but is instead remembered for a sin which isn’t even specified. History just keeps repeating itself, doesn’t it?

But it doesn’t have to. We still have power over our stories, about how we stand in relation to the world, about how we look at ourselves and the people around us. And we have that power because we have been forgiven. Now, a big part of that forgiveness is like the story Nathan told David, where we look at ourselves openly and honestly, like an addict admitting to having a problem in the first place. Knowing that we need help is the first, and in many ways the hardest, step. Admitting we can’t get it all right on our own, or that we don’t even want to try, can hurt very deeply. But we are only human, we can’t be expected to fulfill some ideal of perfection, especially as that ideal keeps changing.

This is what it means to be Lutheran, to look at the law and find we cannot fulfill all that it demands, to hope and dream for a life with God that is as God intended and know we cannot accomplish it by our own striving, to know that we will fail and fall and hurt one another and be hurt by each other. And yet, despite our best efforts, there is grace and forgiveness and hope and new life. Because even while we struggle to see ourselves and one another, Jesus sees us as naked as the day we were born, as completely ourselves as we were before we started to be afraid of being different. Jesus sees us and knows us, and weeps when we weep, and in forgiving us restores us and returns to us the work of repairing the world. Now, that doesn’t always mean putting things back to where they were before things got broken, because sometimes the healthiest and holiest act is to walk away and start over elsewhere. But it does mean that for all of the times when we are just finished with the whole mess, finished with each other, God isn’t finished with us. It does mean that for all the times when we would rather ignore or avoid all that needs healing, God still comes with the surgeon’s knife and the loving embrace and the promise of resurrection.

God sees us, God knows us, God calls us each and all by name. For some, that being seen and known is a comfort, for some it is a terror, but how do we then see the God who sees us? Look at the news, look at Jesus on the cross, look and decide for yourself how God walks among us today. Look for God and find Her behind all of those labels we paste onto each other, find Her under the gossip and stereotypes, find Her next to you on the bus, and in the line at the grocery store, and the next time you visit the hospital, and, yes, find Her even in those moments of discomfort when decisions have to be made and conflicts have to be engaged. Because God is so very present in all of our wrestling, so very present in all of our hurting, so very present when we live and when we die and when we live again. God sees us. God knows us. God loves us with a love we may spend a lifetime with yet never fully understand, fierce and passionate and pouring over us just like the love and tears of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet at Simon’s house. Because God has much love for us, loving us in all our fullness: male, female, black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, old, young, single, married, geek, nerd, jock, musician, democrat, republican, pro-life, pro-choice. God knows our stories and sees our wholeness. May we come to trust that love and find it all around us.