June 13, 2010 - Pentecost + 3

Jesus Sees More than a Label
Luke 7:36-8:3
Pentecost + 3, June 13, 2010

A few years back, I went out and bought a label-maker. I like it. It makes me feel organized. I've used it for my files & folders here in the office and at home, for binders with old class notes. I've used it a lot in the kitchen so I can remember what's in all of the different Tupperware containers of food – different kinds of rice or beans or flour. It's a great tool, because when you label things, you can tell at a glance what's inside. You know what to expect; you don't have to think too hard about what you'll find.

From the way Luke tells this story in the gospel, I get the idea that Simon the Pharisee would've liked my label-maker. Labels simplify things. They make it easy to separate things into different categories. When something has a label, you know where it belongs, what you are supposed to do with it, what it's good for. The only problem in this story is that Simon, like so many of us, attaches labels to people. Even Luke does it. When we first meet the woman in this story – all we know about her, before she even does a thing, is that she was a sinner. That's how Luke describes her: “a woman in the city, who was a sinner...”

Now we don't know why she was called a sinner. Luke doesn't tell us anything about the nature of her sins. In years past, there was a tendency to label the woman in this story a prostitute, but there's nothing in the story itself to back that up. In fact, it would seem that perhaps her sins were of the not-so-obvious kind – or else why would Simon think that Jesus needed to be a prophet in order to know what kind of a woman she was? All we know is that the people in town consider her a sinner – and whatever she did, that's all Simon can see as she kneels there at Jesus' feet, crying out her guilt and relief and amazement at being forgiven. Simon can't see past her past, past the label she's been given.

You know how it works – you get a bad reputation, and it's nearly impossible to live it down, no matter how much you change, no matter how hard you work to turn your life around. And it just doesn't seem to matter how much time has passed. I ran into someone I went to high school with last summer who was home for her 20th class reunion. I don't think she had ever been to a class reunion since graduation. But here she was – and let me tell you, I think it took all the courage she had to make herself go. Because in that last year of high school, she'd done some stuff, made some bad decisions, hurt some people. She kind of became this wild child, breaking the unwritten, unspoken rules of our little rural town about how good girls behave. And 20 years later, she was afraid that when she met her old classmates again for the 1st time in so long, that that's all they would see. That she wouldn't even be given a chance to tell them about how she had changed, how she had learned from her mistakes, how she had turned her life around. She was a different person now – but she was afraid she'd be labeled based on who she used to be – even though that's not who she was anymore.

And you know we've all done it – we've been on both sides of that equation. We've all labeled other people; we've all been labeled by somebody else. And so often those labels are based just on what we can see on the surface. We don't really see each other because we can't see past the label. Those labels that come out of my label-maker, they stay put pretty well, but give 'em a good pull & they come right off – but it doesn't work that way with the labels we put on each other. Because when it comes right down to it, labels are easy. To borrow a line from the movie, The Breakfast Club, we see each other how we want to see each other, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But if you've ever been labeled, you know how devastating it can be.

Thankfully, Luke reminds us that Jesus doesn't do that. For as much as I like my label-maker, I don't think Jesus would've been too impressed. Because no matter how many labels we have stuck on us, even if we're covered from head to toe – Jesus sees past the labels. He looks beyond them & sees the whole person. Even more than Simon does, Jesus sees this nameless woman, and he knows what she has done – far better than we ever could, far better than Simon, far better than anyone else in town. Jesus knows that she has been a sinner. But Jesus has forgiven her. By the way the story plays you, you get the impression that this isn't the 1st time Jesus & this woman have met. It looks like they've met somewhere outside the scope of what Luke wrote down – and that she has already been forgiven. And that forgiveness has changed everything for her. Whatever guilt she was carrying around, whatever shame was weighing her down, whatever it was she had done that left her feeling unforgivable, unacceptable, unlovable, all of that was washed away by the love of Jesus – and so she has come, uninvited, interrupting dinner, filled with a gratitude and love that overflow in her tears, that are poured out with the ointment. Jesus has pulled away that label “sinner” and replaced it with a permanent one that says “forgiven” - and because of that, she gets a chance to start over, to begin again.

That's what happens when we come face to face with Jesus. Because when Jesus looks at us, he sees it all. He knows all the labels others have put on us, the ones we've given to ourselves – whether they are accurate and deserved or not. As painful and scary as it may be to think of, Jesus knows everything about us, not just our outward actions, but our inner thoughts and attitudes and motivations. He knows all about those things we hope & pray that no one will ever see or figure out about who we are – just like he knew what Simon was thinking that day at dinner when the woman was washing his feet.

And he loves us anyway. He accepts us anyway. He forgives us – not based on anything we do, but because of who he is. And in that forgiveness is the hope of a new start. It's the call to begin again – to stop living into the labels that say we can never change, the ones that say we aren't worthy of being loved. In that moment of forgiveness, Jesus invites us to put all those old labels aside and instead claim the label he has given us in our baptism, that he reminds us of in this meal – Forgiven. Beloved. Child of God. Forever. May we, like the woman kneeling at his feet, be amazed and overcome with this gift of forgiveness and start living that forgiveness out, to become the people Jesus has called us to be.

Amen.