The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
February 25, 2007
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
This sermon was transcribed.
Scripture: Luke 7:37-48 (New International Version)
When a
woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at
the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood
behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed
them and poured perfume on them.
When
the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man
were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she
is—that she is a sinner.’
Jesus
answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two
men owed money to a certain money-lender.
One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him
back, so he cancelled the debts of both.
Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon
replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled.”
“You
have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Then he
turned towards the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet,
but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman,
from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.
You did
not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have
been forgiven–for she loved much. But he
who has been forgiven little loves little.”
Then
Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Sermon:
One of the most
provocative things about this story from the gospel is this: we had no idea what the woman had done
wrong. If you look at the passage, it
vaguely refers to her leading a sinful life.
We have no idea of the scale of what her sin was. Was it great?
Was it something minor? Was it a
series of small things? Who judged it
sinful? Clearly, she judged herself to
be a person who had to repent. In the
story, we catch her in the middle of this extravagant gesture in which she asks
for forgiveness.
There are many types
of apologies in life. As I researched
this topic, I’ve been reading books about apology, and there are wonderful
things being written. In terms of public
apology, many people are devoting their attention these days to the question,
“How do you keep peace in the world – and as part of keeping peace and avoiding
war, have good apologies take place?” We
have an apology of a government to a group of people, one country to another,
an individual to a group.
Most of us
experience apology on a more basic level – one person apologizing to
another – or, as is often the case, not apologizing. When someone doesn’t apologize to you, what
happens? I turned to a wonderful book
for some guidance, and really recommend it.
It’s called, “On Apology,” by Aaron Lazare. The author is a professor of psychiatry at the
He first talks about
the process that makes us long for an apology.
See if you recognize anything from your own experience in his
psychiatric description of how a grudge is born:
Immediately
following the offense, one often feels stunned or blind-sided for several
minutes. Then, thoughts about the event
start to multiply, intensify and persist for hours or even days, leaving the
individual annoyed and perplexed, asking “Why can’t I get this out of my
mind?” Sleep may be disturbed for several
days. One often experiences a sense of
powerlessness – the feeling that there is little or nothing one can do to
change the situation. The anger that
follows is little and humiliating.
Humiliating rage. It can be
intense and distressing. Behaviors
motivated by such rage, such as sending off a nasty e-mail, having an outburst
of anger, terminating a relationship, or threatening suit or physical harm,
seem rational or appropriate at the time.
As the days and weeks pass, and the inner distress calms down, their
irrationality and inappropriateness become evident to us. We realize that rage has impaired our earlier
judgment. Then grudges form.
Hopefully, we
reached this calmer stage before we hit “send” on the e-mail or lashed out
physically, but often we don’t. When we
do control our rage, when we’ve been offended in some way, what this
psychiatrist says is a grudge becomes a slow-burning anger that stays with
us. We manage to control that initial
impulse to lash out, but the smallest offense done by that same person sets off
a wave of anger in us that is grossly inappropriate to the act itself. That’s why we need apologies. The only way out of these grudges is for some
healing mechanism to take place. This
psychiatrist says that for an apology to have healing power, it needs to have
four components.
First, you have to
acknowledge your offense. You have to
acknowledge the thing you’ve done wrong, and both parties have to agree that was
the offense. Sometimes, we think we have
offended someone by doing one thing and after we have the dialog, we find out
that they’re angry about something entirely different. So, first we agree on the offense and the
offender names it.
Secondly, we explain
ourselves. There is some moment of
explanation between the two parties, where the person who has been offended
comes to understand somehow, why this action took place.
Next, there is
remorse, or some series of behaviors and attitudes that are evident to the
person that has been offended. Sorrow,
shame, guilt, remorse, regret – we look for these behaviors as part of the
apology, or it simply doesn’t “take.”
There is something in human nature that makes us need to see the other
person suffer just a little bit in that moment of apology.
The fourth component
is reparation. Something happens, some
action takes place. Usually a reparation
is not nearly sufficient to right the wrong that has been done. When you think of governments offering
reparations to wronged groups of people, it is a token. The reparation restores the dignity and
balance of the relationship.
In the case of the
holocaust, there was an interesting example in which Reva Sheffer, a
75-year-old holocaust survivor, was the first person to receive a payment –
only $400 – from the Swiss government as reparations for the Swiss complicity
in the Nazis during World War II. When
she received this relatively small payment, she commented, “The amount means
nothing to me. I care about the fact of
it. No matter what it finally took,
after all these decades, someone is saying ‘you suffered, and we know it.’
” That was an apology that worked. It had the four components.
One of the theories
is that when we need an apology in order for something to be healed, the
balance of power has been thrown off. The
image would be: You are in a
relationship with someone and you are close, then one person offends you or
hurts you in some way and the relationship is off balance. The person who offended you seems to be up
and you are down. What a sincere
apology is supposed to accomplish is to get you both back to the same level so
the relationship can be restored. For
example, when you go to a restaurant, and are mistreated by a waiter – the
waiter brings the wrong food, the dinner is late and it’s cold, and the group
doesn’t get to eat together. The waiter
apologizes profusely throughout the meal, but it is not until the end when the
waiter says, “Your desserts are on the house,” that the reparation happens and
the relationship is restored and can go forward.
One of the most
famous stories of apology comes from Abraham Lincoln. He is often noted for having given the
Gettysburgh Address, and that being his finest moment; but perhaps his second
greatest speech is his second inaugural address. It was a 703-word document in which he, as
the President, essentially apologized for both the war and slavery. Let me give you a quote from that
speech. “One-eighth of the whole
population, 250 years of unrequited toil, blood drawn with the lash, enabled
some to wring their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” Here, he labels the offense, and acknowledges
slavery. Speaking as a representative of
the entire nation, including himself, he went on to take responsibility for
slavery; suggesting that the offense was not just a violation of the social
contract, but was a wrong that the nation had done to itself. Later, he suggested, “God gives to both North
and South this terrible war as the woe due to those to whom the offense came.” It is believed that had he not given that
speech, and given that apology so beautifully, our country could never have
moved forward in any way from the rupture that it had gone through.
In the Bible story this morning, the woman has clearly done
something wrong. She is weeping and
bathing Jesus’ feet. In this case, the woman is giving an emotive,
dramatic apology. She is weeping over
Jesus’ feet. She is kissing his hair and
anointing him with oil. The male figure
in this story says, “Jesus, you should not be associating with this sinner,” in
a sense, calling the question and saying, “Her sin is so great, this apology
couldn’t possibly be sincere. Jesus
responds with this wonderful image, that there are two people who are both in
debt, but one has a much greater debt.
In The Lord’s Prayer, we often use the word “debt” for
“sin.” So, one person has a greater
sin. They both are forgiven of their
debt. So, who loves the forgiver more? –
the person who carried the bigger debt.
So whose apology is most gratefully received? – the one who has the
larger offense. And we’re left with no
idea as to what that offense was.
Over one hundred
years ago, there was a slave trader named John Newton. John Newton was an 11-year-old boy when he
went off with his father into that business.
Then, as a boy, he was captured himself as a slave. As he was able to work his way to his
freedom, instead of turning against slave-holding, he became a great
slave-holder himself. He made an
enormous amount of money. Then, in the
midst of his adult life he had a conversion experience. He went on to become a great contributor to
the abolitionist movement in
The scripture says,
“Two men owed money to a certain money lender.
One owed him 500, the other 50.
Neither had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now, which of them loved him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the
bigger debt canceled.” “You have judged
correctly,” Jesus said.
For that is amazing
grace.