Whitegate, Trinity 3, Proper 6, 16/6/2013
If you thought that Jesus’ presence in Palestine caused an outbreak of peace and goodwill among the people, then I urge you to look at the gospels again. Today’s story is one of many which show that when Jesus was around, then everyday rituals were ruptured, and everyday taboos transformed, to often scandalous effect.
But first let us note that everything Jesus did, he did in the arena of everyday life. He didn’t conduct his ministry in the equivalent of great cathedrals and parliament buildings, not on the stage or screen of his day. The action through which the Son of God revealed himself took place in people’s homes, around their kitchen tables, in the street and the marketplace - in just the sort of places where most of us spend most of our time. If you agree that Jesus was a revolutionary then ponder this - that Jesus brought about a revolution in everyday life.
Everyday life, we might consider, consists of an endless series of rituals, little rituals repeated so often and so much taken for granted that we barely notice we’re performing them: brushing our teeth in the morning, putting the kettle on when we get home, rituals around queuing at the bus stop or the post office, around where and how we choose to eat. These rituals reinforce who we are - and so they differ from culture to culture. It’s only when you visit another family or another country and notice the things they do differently, that you ever reflect on the things you do yourself - and ask why.
Why, for instance, whenever the English feel awkward or uncomfortable in a social situation (that is, almost all of the time), [do] we make tea? Why that universal rule: when in doubt, put the kettle on?
Visitors arrive; we [feel awkward about greeting them, so] we say, ‘I’ll just put the kettle on’. There is one of those uneasy lulls in the conversation, there’s nothing more to say about the weather. We say, ‘Now, who’d like more tea? I’ll just go and put the kettle on.’ ... A bad accident – people are injured and in shock: tea is needed. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ World War Three breaks out – a nuclear attack is imminent. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ You get the idea. [1]
And linked to our ritual behavior are our taboos - those things which we cannot stomach, will not regard; those areas of our lives which we hide away, and hide from. Often around the areas of gender roles and sexuality; our physicality; often around our dirt boundaries - what we do with our waste - we all know there are things we do not touch for fear that our whole social world will implode if we do. The keeping of taboos ensures that things stay in place. Those who break taboos are usually those who suffer from them: consider the emergence in recent years of physically handicapped comedians making jokes based on their experiences as marginalised people: like 14-year old Jack Carroll who suffers from cerebral palsy. In one joke he made during last week’s final of Britain’s Got Talent, Jack suggested that racehorses who break a leg should not be shot, but join the paralympics. Jack - and the paralympians - have transformed taboos and opened up new worlds of imagination for themselves and the general public alike. [2]
So, back to first-century Palestine and the house of Simon the Pharisee, where the three main characters in Luke’s story combine to rupture everyday rituals, and where as a consequence taboos are transformed.
For reasons we do not know, Simon was the worst of hosts. Having asked Jesus to eat with him he failed to do three things which a host would normally do when a guest entered his house in that culture: he did not kiss Jesus in greeting, he did not have his feet washed, and he did not put olive oil on his hands. As you see in verse 36, he just brought Jesus in and sat him down - rupturing the usual mealtime ritual.
It [was] like us not speaking to our guest or taking his coat, [just sitting him] down to dinner still wearing it. [2]
I imagine that if that happened to you, you’d feel uncomfortable at best, insulted most probably; and that must be how Jesus felt at that moment. Add to this the knowledge that dinner parties were held in public at that time, that houses were open to view and people would be watching these events unfold from close quarters, and you begin to appreciate how Simon’s breaking of the rituals of hospitality would have humiliated Jesus.
Which adds even more power to the actions of the woman who then emerged onto the scene, a woman who performed a new ritual to fill the void which Simon had left.
Look again at who she was - verse 37 - ‘a sinner’. We don’t know what her sin was, but for her to come to the table of a respectable religious leader would have sent shock-waves through her audience that day; the very fact that she was a woman would be shocking enough, for women were invisible in that society. Her taboo-breaking ritual began there: and look again at what she did - verse 38. As Jesus reclined at the table she stood behind him at his feet, weeping, bathing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment she had brought.
This physical, sensual, act would be uncomfortable enough, shocking even, if it took place in oursupposedly sexually-liberated society; back then, we can only begin to imagine the effect of the ritual she performed. ‘She broke all the social codes of the time’:
It was taboo for a woman to touch a man in public, and her body language, standing over a reclining man, was scandalous. A respectable woman never uncovered her hair in public: it was considered sexually provocative; and, if she did, her husband, who first saw her hair on their wedding night, was expected to divorce her. [3]
And we can imagine that the emotion through which this woman acted also challenged the norms of reasonable behaviour there. Were her tears for herself, in penitence for the sin she had committed? Were they for Jesus who she had seen humiliated by Simon his host, tears of empathy for one excluded person from another? Jesus suggested - in verse 47 - that her tears were tears of love, in response to the forgiveness he had shown her. Through her tears a new ritual was born, a ritual of the heart, a ritual which went way beyond normal expected behaviour, and through which Jesus spoke words which transformed taboos to create a new world of understanding in that everyday situation.
‘Do you see this woman?’ said Jesus to Simon in verse 44. ‘I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.’
Now a criticism which is - sometimes justly - levelled at Christianity is that the religion has been used to prop up dead rituals in vain attempts to keep marginalised people in their place. This criticism has featured in debates throughout recent decades over the role of women in society and the church; it features now also in relation to discussions about sexuality and the nature of marriage.
When these criticisms seem justified Christians should treat them as invitations to return to the author and source of our faith, to stories of Jesus like this one, to re-learn that Jesus places himself in situations where the rituals of old have run their course, and opens up opportunities for people to create new ones, breaking taboos where they have to, all for the sake of liberating oppressed people from those things which harm them, all for the sake of bringing marginalised people into the centre of things, all for the sake of love.
Now you might feel such language is distant rather than immediate, that it refers to events which seldom occur in the everyday. But consider those times when you have felt yourself treated the way Jesus was - made to feel uncomfortable in someone else’s home, made to feel humiliated by someone else’s manipulation of a situation. This story refers directly to just such times.
And consider those situations where you have felt yourself marginalised like the woman in the story, written off by society, or written into a role which limited or exploited you. The story is about just such situations.
And the story encourages us that with faith in one who loves us, who longs to forgive us and liberate us from all that harms or limits us, we can turn those situations around. We can find the wit and the imagination to do something different, to make something new, to challenge prevailing norms and open up new arenas of experience for ourselves and others.
We live in a world where the rituals of old are fading and new demands are being made on how we humans co-exist. A fitting subject, I suggest, for Father’s Day, with the role of the male within the family unit having changed massively in our lifetimes, presenting families generally, and fathers in particular, with the challenging need to create new rituals to sustain new models of relationships.
But if you look closely you will find that Christianity, forged through everyday scenarios like the meal at Simon the Pharisee’s house, has all the resources to make a positive difference in this ever-changing world, through the relationships of love which Jesus inspires in those he forgives.
Notes
[1] Kate Fox, Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, p.312
[2] Unrealitytv, Blog posts about Jack Carroll.
[3] Rosalind Brown, Simon’s breach of etiquette, Sunday’s Readings, Church Times, 14/6/2013
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