Jesus always sees things as they really are; we don't. We generally see things as we are. We pick and choose the bits of reality we are going to allow to remain on our horizons, the rest we just discard, or ignore, or deny. And so we live our lives from day to day with a distorted and incomplete knowledge of ourselves, of others and, of God.

 A symptom of this blindness is the tendency to use labels. Labels then become for us a kind of simplified reality, Reality For Dummies: she's a prostitute, he's a prophet, I'm a Righteous Pharisee. This tendency takes a few facts and builds them into a worldview which simplifies life, but it cannot know the truth.

Today’s gospel reminds one of the story of the cookie thief. A woman at the airport waiting to catch her flight bought herself a bag of cookies, settled in a chair in the airport lounge and began to read her book. Suddenly she noticed the man beside her helping himself with cookies from the cookie bag between them. Not wanting to make a scene, she read on, ate cookies, and watched the clock. As the daring “cookie thief” kept on eating the cookies she got more irritated and said to herself, “If I wasn’t so nice, I’d blacken his eye!” With each cookie she took, he took one too. When only one was left, she wondered what he would do. Then with a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half. He offered her half, and he ate the other. She snatched it from him and thought, “Oh brother, this guy has some nerve, and he’s also so rude, why, he didn’t even show any gratitude!” She sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate, refusing to look at the ungrateful “thief.” She boarded the plane and sank in her seat, then reached in her baggage to fetch her book, and what she saw made her gasp with surprise. For there in front of her eyes was her bag of cookies. Then it dawned on her that the cookies she ate in the lounge was the man’s and not hers, that the man was not a thief but a friend who tried to share, that she was the rude one, the ungrateful one, the thief.

The cookie thief story reminds us, as we see in today’s gospel, that it often happens that the one pointing the accusing finger turns out to be the guilty one, that the complainant sometimes turns out to be the offending party. In the cookie story, the woman believed she was such a wonderful person to put up with the rudeness and ingratitude of the man sitting beside her. In the end she discovered that she was the rude and ungrateful one and the man was wonderfully friendly. In the gospel the Pharisee thinks he is the righteous one who is worthy to be in the company of Jesus and that the woman was the sinful one, unworthy to be seen with Jesus. In the end Jesus showed each of them where they really belonged and the woman was seen as the one who was righteous and more deserving of the company of Jesus than the self-righteous Pharisee.

Why do things like this happen? Well, because it is easier to hear the other person than it is to hear yourself snoring. It is easy to notice the fault of other people while being blind to our own faults. Great men and women of God have been, all without exception, people who are so aware of their own inadequacies that they are hardly surprised at other people’s shortcomings. People who delight in criticising others betray their lack of self-awareness. In the end they discover that they themselves are indeed the cookie thieves that they accuse others to be.

But what was the mistake of the Pharisee? If the woman was indeed a prostitute where then did he err? After all, what he said about the woman was true, wasn’t it? Of course the woman was a sinner. Jesus did not say that the woman was not a sinner. Jesus only said that the man was a sinner too, and in fact a worse sinner than the 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 (Luke 7:44-47).

The problem of the Pharisee was his notion of sin and holiness. For him the woman was an “occasion of sin” to be avoided by godly people. Jesus corrects him: it is not what you avoid that counts, it is what you do. The Pharisee might indeed have avoided occasions of sin, but he did nothing for Jesus in need. The woman, on the other hand, attended to the practical needs of Jesus. Jesus accepts the woman’s external show of love as a clear manifestation of inner faith: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (verse 50). This practical engagement is the crucial difference between her and the Pharisee. How do we employ our faith in practical service of the needy?

Today’s gospel is good news indeed to all who have been humiliated by the “good people” of this world, humiliated in a supposed concern to maintain the standard of holiness in the household of God. Jesus assures them that they are indeed closer to the heart of God than their accusers have made them to believe. And to those who, like the Pharisee, feel that Jesus is their exclusive birthright, the Good News for them today is simple: Watch it, lest in the end you discover that it is you who are the cookie thief after all.

It seems incredible to us that King David did not seem to realize he had done wrong in having Uriah sent to the front of a battle to get him killed so he could have his Uriah’s wife. We could say he had lost his senses. What brought him to his senses again? It was the prophet Nathan speaking the word of God to him. In the passage in 2 Sam before our first reading today God sent Nathan to David and Nathan used a very clever story to help bring David to his senses (2 Sam 12:1-7). Nathan told David there were two men in a town, one rich and the other poor. The poor man had one lamb but when a visitor came to the rich man he took the poor man’s lamb and made a meal of it. When King David heard this he became angry and said the rich man deserves to die and should restore the lamb to the poor man fourfold. Nathan responded, “You are the man.” Then David realized the wrong he had done to Uriah. It seems King David would not have realized he had seriously sinned unless God had pointed it out to him through the prophet Nathan.

We too are no strangers to sin. Even the best of us are no strangers to sin; Prov 24:16 says a just man falls seven times a day and rises again. We do not want to sin but we do. If even the really good sin seven times a day as Prov says, why do some think they have no sin or at least are not aware of sinning? We can deaden our conscience to sin and sometimes it might take a jolt for us to realize that we are sinning. In a similar way sometimes it happens that someone with a serious alcohol problem will not go to AA or get himself/herself treated until something serious happens when they are forced to admit that they need to sort themselves out. In our first reading King David realized that he had done something serious and needed to sort himself out after Nathan spoke the word of God to him. What about us? Are we examining our conscience to see where we stand before God? Do we allow the word of God to penetrate us and show up the dark spots in our lives so that we can bring them to the Lord for his healing and forgiveness?

Sin always leaves bad effects, sin always destroys something good. King David had Uriah and his marriage destroyed. Not only does sin hurt other people but it always hurts God. So as we heard in our first reading King David said, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Because our sins hurt the Lord our sins also hurt us when we come to our senses like David because we know the Lord loves us so much. We know that it was because of our sins that Jesus suffered his passion and death. Sin always has bad effects and consequences. Restoration and healing is always needed after sin. There is always a price to be paid for sin and Jesus paid that price for us in his passion and death. Therefore when we sin it hurts us because we know that it is our sin that inflicted all the suffering on Jesus during his passion and death.

But the wonderful thing is that God is forgiving. We cannot even begin to imagine how ready God is to forgive us. We think in a human way and we find it hard to imagine God being so full of love and forgiveness. It has been said that God created us in his image and likeness (Gen 1:27) and ever since we are creating God in our image and likeness. But to try to make us understand how loving and forgiving God is Jesus spent much of his time ministering to sinners.

We heard in our Gospel the beautiful account of the woman who was a known public sinner meeting Jesus. It is one of the most tender and intimate moments in all the Gospels. She washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. In this beautiful intimate encounter Jesus is saying something to all of us; we are not to allow past sins to drag us down, the Lord wants to forgive us and release us and wants an intimate friendship with us. Recently when I was on retreat one of the preachers told us the story of the monkey and coconut. If you cut a coconut in half, take out its contents, put something hard into it and put it together again with a chain or something to keep it firmly together while leaving a hole in it big enough for monkey to put his hand in the monkey will not let go of what you put into it until he gets it out. It has to be something hard that you put into it, not something soft like a banana. Sometimes we can be like that monkey when we will not let go of our past or allow the Lord’s forgiveness and healing to renew and heal us. Again look at the beautiful intimate picture we see in our Gospel between Jesus and the woman who had been a known public sinner. Jesus wants an intimate friendship with all of us and is ready to forgive us, we are not to allow ourselves to be dragged down by the past. As we heard in our Gospel the one who is forgiven most loves Jesus most.

How wonderful it would be if we could truly understand how much the Lord loves us and wants to forgive us. If we could truly understand this we would have no fear in approaching the Lord asking for his mercy. Jesus suffered and died for you, he desires intimate friendship with each of us. Why keep Jesus distant? Draw close to Jesus and allow him to draw close to you. Live all of each day with Jesus. Our whole life is meant to be a close loving relationship with Jesus. If we have sinned in a serious way let us not drag ourselves down. Sin does have consequences but God can turn evil to good in his own mysterious way. In a mysterious way good came out of David’s sin. The son born of his adultery with Uriah’s wife died but the next son became King Solomon who is credited with being the wisest man in the Old Testament although unfortunately towards the end of his life he allowed his heart to be distracted from the Lord. In Rom 8:28 we read,

We are well aware that God works with those who love him, those who have been called in accordance with his purpose, and turns everything to their good.

Also in Rom 5:20 we read,

Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more.

So let us allow the Lord who is all merciful and loving to be more powerful than sin in our lives and turn everything to good. As Paul wrote to the Galatians in our second reading today,

insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me. (Gal 2:20)

We also heard Paul write earlier in that reading that a person is justified not by works of the Law but by faith in Jesus. This text was badly understood in past centuries. Paul does not say that we are saved by “faith alone”, nowhere do the Scriptures say we are saved by “faith alone.” (Jas 2:24 says we are not justified by faith alone.) Paul says that works of the Law do not save, faith does. What are those works of the Law that Paul is referring to? They are the prescriptions of Moses in the Old Testament, specifically the law about circumcision. Paul is saying that circumcision is not necessary for salvation but faith in Jesus. Naturally when we have faith in Jesus we will do Christian works of charity. Faith and Christian works are the two sides of the one coin and go together.

David sinned and was forgiven by God. The woman in our Gospel sinned and was forgiven by Jesus. Our sins caused Jesus to suffer and die but Jesus desires us to live in intimate friendship with him. Let us not be like a monkey with a hand in the coconut holding onto the past, let us allow the Lord to renew and heal us so that we may say like Paul in our second reading,

“I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)

By Rt. Rev. Bishop Kasomo Daniel. PhD.D.Sc.

The Bishop of the Society of St. Peter and Paul (SSPP).