In another example of “Lectio Divina is better in a group”….Luke 7: 36-50.
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Andrei Rublev,” which is about the infamous icon painter whose story is told by showing the context of his life more than his face, the climax of the story is a kind of anointing with tears similar to the one performed by the “sinful woman” in Luke 7. Both are stunning and fill us with awestruck wonder for similar reasons. The boy is forced into the position of trying to craft a giant bell that he doesn’t fully know how to complete. Further, his very life is on the line. Failure means death.
For many years leading up to the boy’s gut wrenching success, Andrei Rublev himself has remained committed to his vow of silence taken after being overcome by grief, guilt, and shame when he murders a murderous criminal out of compassion for the souls of a ransacked village. This climactic moment when Rublev’s face is shown for the occasion of the boy’s tears is the same moment that Rublev finally, after so many years, breaks his silence. Compassion turned out to be both the beginning and end of his not being worthy of having a voice of his own in the world. Something new is created in this moment, and it’s not a bell. The real heartbeat of the universe is unveiled in this moment when the grief of an unbearable burden is released in a fit of tears and shared with an embrace of compassion.
I think something similar happens in Luke 7 in what the “sinful woman” does. But, before showing the woman’s face, let me tell the story by setting the context.
Simon
Presumably, no one else, besides Jesus, knew what Simon was thinking when “he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.'” We realize that Jesus actually answered Simon’s accusation when Jesus facilitates Simon’s saying that the debtor who owed two years worth of salary will love the forgiving moneylender more than the debtor who owed two months of salary. Jesus silences Simon’s silent indignance by allowing Simon to address his own doubt out loud for everyone in the room to hear. It is brought out from the dark and into the open.
In letting Simon answer for his own private, silent voice, Jesus took on the silence that he could have imposed upon Simon. Instead, Jesus gave Simon a voice and listened. The very king of the universe both took on Simon’s silence and accepted his own. Neither was fitting for the kind of King Simon expected or for which he hoped.
Jesus could have addressed the private thoughts of anyone in the room, but he addressed Simon’s. Simon was chosen. Simon was called out. His being called out wasn’t his being shamed, however. This wasn’t a public beating with words. Presumably, no one else knew what Simon was thinking. Or, perhaps everyone was thinking the same thing. But, either way, Jesus’ gentleness towards Simon in his reply – at the exact moment when he caught Simon completely off guard and therefore vulnerable – was like an act of creation. In saying Simon’s name, it was like he was giving it to him again for the first time.
It was like Simon had his name “called out” from the light of another world. A world that runs on compassion rather than condemnation. Jesus, then, doesn’t answer Simon’s doubt of Jesus with indignance or condemnation of his own. Jesus doesn’t even just ignore Simon. I would be tempted to do any of those. Instead, Jesus does the opposite of what I would want to do. He has a kind of insider, personal, intimate encounter with Simon. Jesus gently addressed Simon’s indignance towards Jesus and condemnation of the woman.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” – 1 Corinthians 13:12. Through the course of the story, Simon is left to wonder at Jesus’ answer and his very ability to do so in the first place. By the end of the story, because of Jesus openness to Simon, he is left open to choosing allegiances.
Order
No one closed their doors in a village like the one where this dinner was being held. Anyone could meander in and listen to the important spiritual and political conversation going on between rabbi and religious authority. One gets the impression, however, that the “sinful woman” didn’t exactly feel welcome in the house by the host. I suspect she was expected to remain on the margins of the room, on the fringes, and to listen quietly, if she must be there at all. Make herself unseen and unheard. A nobody, like an insignificant child. Present but not.
As a group, however, we imagined and realized something about what the woman did. In order for her to “wet his feet with her tears and [wipe] them with the hair of her head,” it would have taken a while. Further, that would have been a lot of tears! She would have been like a blubbering idiot, with snot everywhere and everything! Who could even carry on a conversation in the room with that going on? She completely disrupted the important conversation between famous dignitaries when her snot, tears, and snorts!
Even worse, the licentiousness by which she was known was now on display for all to see as the center of what was happening in the room! She would have had to let her hair down. A husband didn’t even see a betrothed one’s hair down until their marriage was consummated. And, here was this “sinful woman” “letting her hair down” for Jesus! She wasn’t betrothed to him, either.
Unseen and unheard, present but not, a nobody she was not. This had to be somewhere between uncomfortable and enraging. Considering that her blubbering was over the feet of Jesus, all those discomforted or angry Hebrews, Simon and his private voice included, were probably fully expecting Jesus to silence the woman and make her leave. She had completely disrupted the proper order of things. In the uncomfortable or even apparently sinful tenderness of the very personal and intimate encounter between Jesus and the woman, it became exceedingly clear that, much like what these Jews saw the Romans become very well practiced at accomplishing, order needed to be restored.
In the garden, the tree of life was in the center. In Exodus, the Tent of Meeting with God was originally in the center of the camp. Jesus did end up sending her away, but not on the terms they were expecting.
The Woman
I imagine that the woman’s alabaster jar of “ointment,” oil, or perfume (whatever it was) might as well have already been full of tears as she made her way through the village to Simon’s house. I have heard in the past that this kind of jar of “ointment” would have been worth about a year’s worth of labor. The well of tears Truth released was worth far more than that.
I imagine that this woman didn’t enjoy a life of sin, whether adultery or prostitution or what, from a high hill of victorious joy. I think her habitual sin was a silent bearing of hopelessness and dis-ease. That she had given up all hope and peace was probably why she was living as “a sinner” in the first place. She would have been socially shunned, looked down upon, and shamed for this. Quite publically. And, the village would have made no bones about it. In fact, Torah called for it. As far as she was concerned, her life had ended. Her life was her death. The hope of the village would have been her actual death, since she was it’s shame.
So, the village she walked through was the village of her shame, hopelessness, and even of her walking death. Until Jesus showed up on the scene.
One of the first questions that came to my mind as I engaged in the practice of Lectio Divina in this story was: Why did Jesus tell the woman to leave? After an encounter like that, why not stay? As discussed previously, though the door was wide open, she wasn’t exactly welcome in Simon’s house. The answer is because she didn’t come to see Simon. She came to see Jesus. In him, she was Truly seen for the first time. There wasn’t anything left for her there after that, then. After seeing what she came to see, it was fitting that she leave. So, what did she come to see?
That she arrived at the most important house in the village not only not to see the man of said house but when she was so unwelcome says quite a bit, I think. That she completely disrupted the established order of things that was so well carved into the thick book of her shame points to the same thing. The appearance of Jesus made this woman very bold.
“When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” – Colossians 3:4. Through the course of the story, the woman goes from shame to grace. By the end of the story, she is sent by Jesus as a witness to the victory of God.
Jesus
As a friend of mine has said, “Behold” is a kingdom term.” And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house..” This is utterly shocking. This is astonishing. The one who is supposed to be the anointing of the King of Israel is a figure like Samuel! A great prophet who lived his life dedicated to God shepherding Israel as their great leader is supposed to anoint. Not a “sinful woman” who might as well be dead.
In Jesus, however, she came alive. Where she had no hope, she saw hope in Jesus. Where she had no peace, Jesus became her peace. The village of her death and shame became, in the appearance of Jesus, the place of new hope, peace, conviction and boldness that she not only never considered but never saw as enough of a possibility to even begin to make a choice on one way or the other. When she saw Jesus, what had been buried came up out of the grave. Her walk through the village to Simon’s house, then, was her rising up from her grave.
This was only possible, because she agreed with who he was and claimed to be. She believed. The most influential man in the city of her death doubted, but her boundless darkness was burned away in the pathos of seeing the man who was her new life. That she cleaned his feet, in particular, meant that she saw herself as Jesus’ servant – the servant Simon had but never provided. Her tears mean she was greatly honored to fulfill the role.
Simon was called out and heard his name for the first time again. She, on the other hand, become known for the first time. “Then turning toward the woman he said…”
When she made herself the center of the room, she was supposed to be shunned, re-buried, forgotten. Her silent, tearful proclamation was out of order. She was supposed to disappear. Instead, “turning toward the woman he said…” Jesus gave her her humanity. Instead of re-establishing the proper order of things, Jesus subverts it. Turning towards the woman also meant turning away from Simon. “[T]urning toward the woman he said to Simon..” Where she could have become merely a political pawn in a competition for power between Jesus and the Pharisees, the politic of Jesus meant actually facing her, being present to her, and gifting her with her original dignity that had been long denied. This was a sign that the original order of creation was being restored.
In holding this “sinful woman” up as an example for Simon to follow, Simon becomes the disciple and the woman the Rabbi. In the woman’s becoming and then even being affirmed as the center of the room, Jesus becomes the host and Simon the guest (Of course, this implies that Christ’s reign is over the whole world, Rom. 4: 13). This woman is the reason Jesus becomes the host. And, as he was the reason she came, Jesus was why she became the teacher. Jesus doesn’t re-establish order but establishes a new one.
This new order is now one of radical acceptance and embrace as a sign of the character of God and nature of the kingdom. And, it is established through a longed-for encounter with Jesus. Once that encounter that we waited and came for (potentially without realizing we were waiting for it!) occurs and we are created again, once we become known by the Truth, then it becomes completely appropriate to say, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
Just as I didn’t realize I trusted in deceptive futility until the Spirit transported me to the light, just as the boy in the Andrei Rublev film didn’t realize how burdened he was until it was lifted in a moment of profound compassion, behold, the “sinful woman” had waited for something she thought was buried six feet under until the Son of Compassion appeared on the scene. Behold, (I) a sinner anointed him with (my) tears.
Knowing God 