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June 16, 2013Does God love me? Does God really take an interest in my individual life? How could He care for me—after all I am a sinner—I have not lived a very Christ-like life? I think it would be safe to assume that most of us have wondered about these questions at some time in our faith journey. We would also be safe in assuming that there are many people in the world who wouldn’t deny God’s existence but find it hard to believe that God can have any personal interest in the likes of them, particularly if over the years they know they’ve drifted from away from God or even denied Him from time-to-time, and above all if they know that they have not lived as they should have lived—perhaps simply being indifferent when it comes to a brother or sister in need. This week-end’s Gospel should give us great confidence in God’s love for us and it does so not just with words but with a concrete example.
In today’s Gospel Simon has welcomed Jesus into his home for dinner. He has done so in a “coldly correct” way, offering a welcome in a stingy manner. While they are at table for dinner, something powerful happens in contrast to Simon’s reluctant welcome. In through the door comes a woman with a negative reputation in the community. She is a woman of ill-repute. Think of what all the men who are gathered at the table are thinking of her. Yet she enters the room and walks toward Jesus, in her hands she is carrying some very expensive and fragrant oil with which she wishes to anoint Jesus’ feet.
The woman approaches Jesus and kneels at His feet and begins to weep—so much so that her tears flow over His feet. She lets down her hair—“something that a woman of good reputation would never do in society”—and dries His feet with her hair, anointing His feet with the ointment. This is an act of extreme generosity—in contrast to the stingy welcome of Simon. But Simon and his fellow dinner companions react differently. Simon cries out, “This Jesus is supposed to be some kind of prophet, isn’t he? Doesn’t he know what kind of woman she is?” Scripture scholars tell us that indeed Jesus knew who and what she was—again, scripture scholars tell us that “It’s you (Simon) who do not know who she is—you say she is a sinner, a good-time girl, a little nobody, flaunting herself in public. But Jesus sees her as much more: a sinner, of course but as a forgiven sinner and beyond that as a potential saint; she matters to him.” She has received forgiveness so much so that she now returns that forgiveness in generous love.
The Gospel today shows us something more than just Jesus’—and thus God’s—readiness to forgive. We see in this Gospel God’s interest in us personally—and not just of the rich and powerful like King David in the first reading, but in the lowly and the powerless—like the woman in the gospel —and like us. We also see in this Gospel that God is so alive to us—and not just to our weaknesses and failures—but even more so to our goodness. This goodness is there—it needs to be unleashed and brought out by the community of believers, in which we are all called to share our gifts and talents, especially the more “insignificant seeming ones”…our talents are gifted to us by God and are shown to us as how to their usage by the life of Christ. This interest, this love that God has for each of us—you and me—is unconditional, it is the love that C.S. Lewis calls agape—and it is a love that will transform us into the potential He has created in each and every person. Will we accept His Love and will we allow it to transform us?
There are many folks—and many times—when we might feel as though God is far from us and has lost interest in us and our needs—but at those times and for those people it would be a good time for to reflect on today’s Gospel and the whole of the Good News of Jesus Christ. In doing so we will come to recognize that we are far too dear to God for that loss to occur. He does not lose interest in us…it is us who loses interest in Him.
