Sermon 18th January 2015

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, continues our study of the Gospel of Luke. The reading is from Luke 7: 36-50

In the house of Simon the Pharisee

“You gave me no oil for my head, but she has put perfume on my feet.  That is why I tell you, Simon that her sins, many as they are, are forgiven:  for she has shown me so much love.  But the man who has little to be forgiven has only a little love to give.” vv. 46/7 (JB Phillips trans.)

1.         We have got a lot to cover this morning and not much time so I want to start at least by taking things at a fair lick. 

First, our text this morning is a painting by Moretto da Brescia. (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Moretto_da_Brescia_-_Supper_in_the_House_of_Simon_Pharisee_-_WGA16229.jpg ).   I learn from Wikipedia that the painting hangs in the Church of Santa Maris in Calchera, a town just north of the motorway from Milan to Venice.  It was painted between 1550 and 1554 by Il Moretto who by then was about my age.  He was to die in 1554.  It is said that he was a pious man who fasted before undertaking a religious painting. The painting is entitled “Supper in the House of Simon the Pharisee”.  I will describe the painting a little later but pass around a couple of copies now for those who can an want to look at it

Second, the catch-up:  we and the children are looking at the same passages from Luke’s gospel:  so they like us have had the chance to consider the curious paradox that Jesus consistently presents – the contradiction that marks him out as the one who at the same time both attracts and repels.  So we saw him taking up the scriptures and reading a manifesto of revolutionary theology from Isaiah to his home crowd who were simultaneously bowled-over in wonder and scandalised by horror;  and last week he attracted a crowd with his teaching, so many they filled the house, so the crippled man had to be smuggled through the roof;  and the midst of this rapturous acclamation he shocks by assuring the man of forgiveness.  Attraction and repulsion:  the power to shock, but to do so effectively.

2.         Third, I want to mention a couple of things that we won’t be looking at in any detail.  You see we could look at how this passage, as a culmination of the events set in this chapter represents Jesus working out that commitment to revolution –  bringing healing to the sick, sharing compassion with the desperate widow and now telling good news to this prostitute in Simon’s house.  We might note the report back to John the Baptist on the progress of implementation.  We could explore the “revolutionary view”. But we are not going to do that.  But don’t forget it is in the background.

            Or we could look at this story of the forgiveness of the prostitute in the context both of that compassion to the widow who faced economic ruin and, the start of the following chapter, the naming of the women on whom Jesus has come to rely.  We could look at how, in an obsessively male culture, Jesus did more than he had to do to identify with women, to underline equality.  We could explore the “feminist view”.  But we are not going to do that.  But don’t forget it is in the background.

3.         Back to our text:  Il Moretto’s painting.  They say various things happen as you get older:  the classic example is that policemen get younger.  What I have noticed is that, while others around (including those of you who I have known for several decades) accrue wisdom, like rings on a tree, all I accrue is an increasing awareness of how little I know and how much there is to know.  How many times have I witnessed explanations of Einstein’s theory “E=mc²”?  Do I have any idea what it is about?  None.  Worse asked to repeat it I am likely to say it as “E= MC Hammer”;  and worse still, I don’t even know who MC Hammer is!

            Art is one thing I know very little about.  However, it is an area in which I feel comfortable with my ignorance because I have decided that I know what I like.  I don’t mind whizzing through a gallery casting no more than a glance at its contents, but I am very happy if one work causes me to stop short and tarry awhile, drinking in its meaning to me.  I would stop at Il Moretto’s painting today – stop even if it were in a room filled with the many other paintings of this scene.  Why?  Well let me describe it briefly:  the painting is about 6x4ft and is painted as if in a window with a round top, its curves echoed in the dim outline of the darkened arches of the building in which they sit.  There are 5 figures; 2 servants, one a boy walking behind the main actors:  we see that the man servant carries a bowl of pears blushed pink;  the boy’s red shirt calls our attention almost to the centre of the picture and we follow his eyes as he looks over his shoulder, his own attention rapt by the figure of Jesus.  Two other figures sit at a table –the end we see covered in a cream cloth;  with pewter plates with remains of fish-heads and bread.  Behind the table is the smaller man, in a dark overgarment and a cream head dress, its cloth being brought around under his chin, below a full, if grizzled and greying beard.  He, and it must be Simon, is silent looking forward into the face of the central figure who is Jesus.  Jesus wears a light almost brown-red gown with a black throw over his left shoulder and perhaps a napkin cloth (on which we can clearly see the blue hemming stitches) on his lap. He is sitting slightly to the left of centre with his shoulders turned toward Simon, his head turned towards him and his hands held out at his waist level (echoing a cross?), his left hand resting with open palm on the table near to Simon and his right being straight ahead of him, its fingers dropping down as if to indicate the final figure at his feet.  Jesus is not speaking either.  Perhaps he has just said:  I tell you, Simon that her sins, many as they are, are forgiven:  for she has shown me so much love.  He is silent, Simon is silent: they look into each other’s faces. 

            The final figure is the prostitute.  She alone is dressed in clothes that look more 16^th Italian than Judean - a full sleeved, pleated pale green dress with a covering over her legs ad a shawl.  She is on her knees at the bottom right and her body stretches across the bottom and down to the floor where she rest on her elbow with her right hand holding her long – almost pre-Raphaelite – hair close to her face and close to Jesus leg and her other hand touches Jesus bare foot.  We see the perfume bottle near her. 

We see her face in profile.  And her face is why I have stopped here.  None of the other paintings – even another by Il Moretto of the same scene – shows a face filled with such emotion.  She is serious;  tears are not evident but her pallour suggest they might have been.  Does she hear, has she heard, the conversation about her?  I don’t think so.  Does she understand what Jesus is saying to Simon:  that God’s forgiveness is equally available to everyone – to the prostitute, the Pharisee the tax-collector, the drunkard, the glutton, the outsider?  I don’t think so:  in the painting her face is wrapped up in her own experience of Jesus and her response.

4.         We have spent a long time on our text and it is time to move on but before we do may I suggest three thoughts we might take with us.  I want to start with the prostitute and not Simon because it is her to whom we are drawn in the painting.

·       The tears are important.  Not least they are a difference between this account and the stories told by Matthew and Mark which occur in the lead-up to the Passion.  Surprisingly to me, commentators take different views why she cries.  Some say they are tears of joy – having realised her forgiveness.  I don’t see this:  nor I think did Il Moretto.  I see them as tears shed at a crisis and at its resolution.  It is very difficult to face the truth about ourselves.  It can be distressing.  Which is why we can put it off, we can deny the necessity (“after all I am not a prostitute am I?”  Hello, Simon the Pharisee!), we fear the results (how would it change me?).  The attraction of Jesus is that he – and we as his church – offer the opportunity to be truthful to ourselves:  but it may not easy.  And it will happen again.

·     The confirmation of forgiveness is not the end of the story.  Jesus does not (as he does to another woman in similar circumstances) say “sin no more” as they part, but built into that final “Go in peace” is something more than a simple farewell.  Certainly it a prayer for peace but a prayer too that she be part of the peacemaking.  The forgiveness and the peacemaking are inseparable – as inseparable as the forgiveness and the tears.  The tears are the natural emotion:  the working at peace is the natural outworking, the natural reaction.  To others who observe us, it is evidence of the love we know.

·       And a final thought, concerning Simon.  A Pharisee, a judgmental character, a man fixed in his ways and his religion, the faith of his father.  And yet … open to inviting the new Teacher to supper and open to give a truthful answer to Jesus’ question.  For him too a time to be shaken from the comfort of his tradition?  A chance to challenge his narrow concept of God – to see him at work in everyone?

5.         The obvious question – of the four listeners in the painting who are you? 

·       The busy servant whose eyes are focused on the messy table

·       The innocent child hearing of the grace of God for the first time

·       Simon:  faithful but challenged to expand his faith

·       The woman facing the truth about herself and the love of God?

“Then he said to her, “your sins are forgiven  …  Go in peace”.