Pentecost 4 C

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Psalm 32; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3

“Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2Samuel 12.7 NRSV)

This ‘Jerry Springer’-style reveal is from our first reading today.

…[Summary of 2 Sam drama]…

David himself says what he deserves for what he’s done. The ultimate punishment. I mean, he used his great power to take a less powerful man’s life, just so he could feel a little bit better about taking advantage of that man’s wife, Bathsheba. That’s despicable.

And yet God forgives him.

But: God’s forgiveness of David doesn’t make what he did ‘OK’:

David has to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life — and his family does, too. If you read through the rest of the story about that family, it’s as dramatic, violent, and vengeful as any soap opera. The pain and deceit seem to ripple down through the generations.

And David knows it. He even writes Psalm 51 as his confession (“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”)

But both before and after his treachery with Uriah and Bathsheba, all of David’s power can’t produce the right thing. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put things back together again. Even his bold leadership and incredible psalms and eventual keen awareness of what he did wrong can’t bring back Uriah.

That’s a lesson we start learning as toddlers and continue to have to learn our whole lives: just feeling really sorry doesn’t fix everything.

If you can’t win by winning, and you can’t win by losing, what’s the point of feeling guilty?

If your guilt doesn’t save you, what does?

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The Gospel lesson today is also a story about guilt and forgiveness.

…[Summary of Gospel story]…

Just like Nathan used a story to convict David of his sin, Jesus uses a story to tell Simon, the Pharisee, about the forgiveness of sin.

…[Story of the creditor & two debtors]…

And so interestingly, Jesus connects sins and forgiveness with love.

“Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” (Luke 7.47 NRSV)

You might not think that sin and forgiveness go together with love.

There are a lot of religious folks that like the idea of love, but want to stop talking about sin. And I totally get it. Sin sounds old-fashioned. It seems like dwelling on the negative aspects of our relationship with God instead of the positive. And certainly, when it comes to judging the sins of others, we should give up on the sin-finger-pointing. But when it comes to the reality of the brokenness of humanity, and the sin in our own lives, we need the perspective that comes with an honest appraisal of where we are. We need to confess our sins.

Because the funny thing is, if we try to ignore the conversation that comes along with sin, there’s a worse anxiety that creeps in instead. Whether we’re trying to justify ourselves by ignoring our deficiencies or by wallowing in them, we’re still trying to justify ourselves.

Without perspective, we start to imagine that we are in charge. That we are like God. We act like David and take from others what we want for ourselves. We act like Simon the Pharisee and judge others as below us in order to make ourselves feel better.

But our invitation — our freedom — is to be like the woman washing Jesus’ feet.

She wasn’t saved by her good works — she was called a sinner and didn’t dispute it. But neither was she saved by her guilt, or her bad works, or her contrition…Jesus said, she was saved by faith. She was saved because her mistakes turned her toward Jesus.

None of us will be saved by good works. If someone called me a sinner, I couldn’t dispute it, and neither could you.

But if we are honest about our sin — if we know how much we have been forgiven, then our faith will turn us toward the One who can save us. We will be drawn toward the One who forgives. We will love the one who loves us first. And in the freedom of our forgiveness, we are given the ability to love others — our fellow sinners.

Remember, this is about forgiveness not perfection. And here’s the irony of what it means to grow as a follower of Christ: the more we follow Christ, the longer we live, the more we need to be forgiven for! And the more we’re forgiven — the more room there is for love in our lives.

This is important! The invitation that each of us has, and that each of us can share with others around us is to grow as a follower of Christ. But not to grow more like a Pharisee that can look down on others, but to grow in our awareness of how much we need forgiveness, and the awareness of how much God forgives.

And then in the freedom of that forgiveness, to share love with others.