Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s readings are filled with emotional appeal. First let us talk about David. He was only the second king of Israel and at God’s command was handpicked by the prophet Nathan. He was the youngest of seven brothers and had the least of chances to rule Israel. But because he was so specially chosen, God had very high expectations of him. God expected him to reverse the evil rule of Saul, to keep the Covenant that God made with Moses and the Israelites, and to be a man of personal holiness and integrity.
But David failed on the personal integrity and holiness front. David lusted after the wife of one of his most trusted and loyal soldiers when we was away at battle, conceived a child with Bathsheba, to cover his misdeeds arranged for Uriah to be killed in the line of battle, and then went on the live a normal life. At his lack of the realization of his evil deed, God sent Nathan the prophet to convict him of this unthinkable wrong. I want us to hear God’s pain as he speaks to David through Nathan. It is as if all the hopes that God had placed on David were dashed; as if love was betrayed. God says:
“I anointed you king of Israel.
I rescued you from the hand of Saul.
I gave you your lord’s house and your lord’s wives for your own.
I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.
And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more.”
Why have you spurned the LORD and done evil in his sight? (2Sam 12:7b-9a)
In the gospel reading, there is a different dynamic and emotional appeal at work. An already sinful woman came to Jesus with an alabaster flask and all her sins. She has nothing to lose. Everybody treated her like scum anyway. Her gestures say it all – she bathed Jesus’ feet with perfume and her tears, she wiped his feet with her hair, kissed his feet and anointed them oil. Here is the bottom line. Jesus says about her, “Her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love.” (Lk 7:47).
So, here is my reflection. On the one hand, God expected David to live an upright, honest, faithful and holy life because of God’s love for him and because of David’s love for God. On the other hand, Christ forgave a very sinful woman because of God’s love for the sinner and because of the woman’s love for him. Sin is sin because of love and sin is forgiven because of same love.
Let me offer three practical implications:
a) Evil affects our vision. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is fresh is all our minds. Do you remember how angry the entire nation became with Tony Hayward when he said, “I want to have my life back?” Why did people get mad with him? Was it right for him to want his life back? Sure it was right! Should he have said what he said when the families of the eleven dead workers were still grieving? Should he have said that when the livelihood of millions of people, the beautiful ocean and beaches, the lives of billion of creatures were being destroyed? No wonder, people were upset! Hayward lost sight of the big picture. This is precisely what happened to David. He lost sight of why God had chosen him in the first place. Just for a little, he got lost in the moment. The short term benefit of sin seemed more important than that big picture, the larger vision, the total perspective that God had for him and the nation.
Today, however, we are not here to point fingers. God has a big picture image for us as well. Paul says in today’s second reading, “Yet I live, no longer I but Christ lives in me… (Gal 2:19). This is called discipleship. God calls us to discipleship – radical discipleship; to think like Jesus, talk like Jesus and act like Jesus! Whether we let our addictions control us, or we cross uncrossable boundaries in relationships, or we allow unresolved relationships to ruin our peace, or we keep collecting things at the expense of saving a life from starvation, or we put profit before people, or we fail to give the worship and honor due to God, we act against God’s vision.
b) Power of sin and the power of love. Both evil and love are powerful forces. Most of us underestimate the power of evil. One small white lie, one hateful word, one extra drink, one drag off a joint, one little resentment is all it takes to begin a chain reaction of tumble down the alleyway of evil. David’s sin began with a peek at a bathing woman. Look where that one small inappropriate act finally led him! Not that we can be angelic all the time. But must be aware of the power and potential of evil and stay close to the power of God’s unfathomable love for us. Love is the antidote to evil. It is love that brought the sinful woman back to God and it is love that let Christ offer this woman salvation; it is love that saw Christ on the cross and it is love that sends us redeemed from under the cross. Let allow ourselves to be consumed by the love of God.
c) David spurned the Lord. I began the homily today saying there is tremendous emotional appeal in today’s readings. I meant by this that both sin and reconciliation are very personal things – in other words, it involves persons. David may have coveted a woman and got her husband killed but, it is God who he spurned and rejected in the process. No matter what our sins are, in the final analysis, it is God we end up spurning. Similarly, he woman in the gospel may have committed many sins but reconciliation meant loving her God without limits. She threw her life at the feet of an all loving God. I hope that love will keep us away from evil and if we even falter may we always remember that the love of God waits for us.
As we come to celebrate this Eucharist, let us celebrate it with love. Let us come like the woman who brought herself just as she was. Here is a God who heals us because of love and trusts us even more in love. Let our communion bring us into communion with our God, Amen.
Fr. Satish Joseph