The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 16, 2013

Listen to this homily (.mp3 file)

      Can stories about sin and sinners be good news?  It might not seem so, but today’s readings suggest otherwise.

     First, there was King David’s story in the reading from the Second Book of Samuel. It’s briefly told with a lot left out.  All we got, really, was the face-off and the finish.  In the face-off, the prophet Nathan reminded David of all that God had done for him and then confronted him with his two sins of adultery and murder. You remember the story, I’m sure -- how David had fallen in love with Bathsheba, the wife of his trusted soldier, Uriah, and in order to get Uriah out of the way, David had him sent to the front lines where he was killed in battle.

     We didn’t get all of that in today’s reading but we got enough of it to be reminded of David’s great sins. Happily, however, the story didn’t end with David’s sins.  Nathan’s courageous confronting of the king worked: David acknowledged his sins and repented and the story ends with Nathan’s absolution: “The Lord has forgiven your sin. You shall not die.”  As so often in the scriptures, there was no minimizing of sin in the story, but God’s mercy turned out to be far greater than the sins. It always does. That’s the good news.

     There’s similar good news in the story of the sinful woman in Luke’s gospel. In this story, we are left to guess what the woman’s sin was. All we know for sure is that she was known around town as a sinner and that she dared to crash a party in the house of a leading Pharisee where Jesus was a dinner guest.

     Well, we do know a couple of other things.  We know that Jesus didn’t let the woman’s sinfulness bother him in the least, and we know that he quickly read the mind of Simon, his host, who was greatly bothered by it!

     It’s clear Jesus wasn’t bothered since he let the woman come right up to him while he was at table, allowed her to touch him, to lavish affection on him, as she bathed his feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with costly ointment. 

     But the story doesn’t end there.  There is the exchange between Jesus and Simon, his horrified host. Jesus uses a little parable to make his point. He tells Simon about a lender who forgives one person a very large debt and another a very small debt.  He asks Simon which of the two forgiven persons will love him more. Simon says he supposes it’s the person who had the larger debt forgiven.  And then Jesus drives home his point: “I tell you,” Jesus says, “ (this woman’s) many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love.”

     Make sense to you?  It probably does. But the whole point Jesus was making is lost in that translation. Many commentators insist that the little parable Jesus tells about the forgiving of the large and the small debts demands a different translation altogether -- not “her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love,” but “her many sins have been forgiven, and that is why she has shown great love.”

     It may sound like I’m splitting hairs here, and it may not be easy to get the point on just one hearing, so let me repeat. The first version was, “her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love.” The second is: “her many sins have been forgiven, and that is why she has shown great love.”

     In other words, Jesus wasn’t saying that the woman was forgiven because she loved a lot. That would make forgiveness something she could buy with her love.  But it’s not. Forgiveness is a gift. It can’t be bought. On the other hand, if Jesus was saying that the woman loves a lot because she was forgiven a lot, well, that makes all the sense in the world.  And it also makes sense of the parable about the large debt and the small debt.  The one forgiven the large debt loved more because he was forgiven more. It’s as simple as that.

     My apologies if this is beginning to feel more like a class than a homily, but the point is too important to pass over.  Forgiveness is a gift; not even love can buy it. And the more we are forgiven, the more reason we have to love.

     Shortly after he was elected, Pope Francis devoted his Sunday talk to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square to the subject of forgiveness. He told a story about the time a woman came up to him after Mass and asked him to hear her confession. She was an old woman so he figured she couldn’t have much to confess.  He asked her, “Why confession if you haven’t sinned?” And she said to him, “We have all sinned.”  Then he teased her a bit, “But what if the Lord will not forgive you?”  And she said to him, “The Lord forgives everyone. If the Lord didn’t forgive everyone, the world would not exist!”

     Pope Francis commented about what a good theologian the woman was and then concluded his little talk by reminding the people, “God never tires of forgiving us. Never! We are the ones who tire of asking forgiveness!”  It’s true, my friends. And something tells me that if the Pope were to comment on today’s gospel, he would add, ‘and the more we are forgiven, the more loving we are likely to be.’

     I return to where I started: stories about sin and sinners can be good news.  Really good news!  So good, in fact, that we can now approach the Eucharist with confidence, knowing that we are approaching the One who said, “her many sins have been forgiven; and that is why she has shown great love.” My friends, may the same be said of us!

     Father Michael G. Ryan