Luke 7: 36-50
At a major spot in St. Anselm's classic theological treatise Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man?), the teacher reminds the student, "You have not yet considered the seriousness of sin."
It is the seriousness of sin that lurks in the background of the story of the woman, Simon, and Jesus.
David Steindl-Rast thinks the word "sin" no longer communicates a serious negative condition with disastrous consequences.
He suggests the word "alienation." "Alienation is our contemporary word that makes sense to us today. . . . We all know what that is. We know what it feels like; being cut off from everything.
Other thinkers like the word "separateness."
It carries the connotations of being cut off, isolated, radically alone. Dorothy Soelle liked the image of freezing.
[Sin] . . . is the Ice Age—this slow advance of cold, a freezing process which we experience and try to forget . . . [it is] the absence of warmth, love, caring, trust . . . [it is] the destruction of our capacity for related¬ness. . . . [It] means being separated from the ground of life, having a disturbed relationship to ourselves, our neighbor, the creation and the human family. .
Each word—alienation, separateness, freezing—expresses with its own nuances what Augustine said about sin.
A person in sin was "incurvatus a se" (bent over on top of himself or herself).
Christian faith thinks this alienated condition is so pervasive that it is original.
Although it does not destroy the good creation, it is coextensive with it.
It afflicts everyone.
The fact that sin is pervasive is part of its camouflage.
It is taken as normal life, just the way things are.
Since it is present everywhere, it is difficult to focus on it.
As the saying goes, what is everywhere is nowhere.
This is why the Pharisees do not see their alienation, their separateness, their frozen life.
Although Simon is "bent over" in conversation with himself and the other Pharisees talk only among themselves, their relational poverty never dawns on them.
They have learned how to adapt to the small space that their mind has made into a barricaded home.
However, when a flowing, belonging person who is in communion with God and neighbor breaks into human life, sin's cover is blown.
In the free life of this one person the prisons of others are exposed. Theologically put, it is in the presence of grace that sin is clearly seen. In this sense, Jesus did not badger people to repent.
Repenting was simply what other people found themselves doing in order to participate in the flow of life he was offering.
It is also in this sense that Jesus held up the overflowing life of the woman as a mirror to Simon.
He wanted him to see himself as he was and himself as he could be. He wanted to lead him to decision's edge.
Jesus is not a sad or angry prophet.
He is an invitation to fullness.
The seriousness of sin is that it teaches us to believe a lie about our¬selves and to defend that lie against the revelation of truth.
It tells us we are isolated individuals with scarce resources and meager means who need to oppress others in order to live.
But when we turn from this lie, we find ourselves extravagant lovers of God and our neighbor.
People uncontrollably burst into glorifying God and the Samaritan leper praises God in a loud voice
The Good Samaritan finds himself extending unstinting care to the wounded man
Zachaeus finds himself giving half his goods to the poor and paying back anyone he has defrauded fourfold.
Since we have traded communion for separateness, belonging for alienation, and flow for frozen, we are living by a greater life, a life not our own.
The alabaster jar is broken and the perfume pouring out.
It is even possible if we take a piece of bread and break it we can become food for others.
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