Fr Aidan's sermon 13-06-2004

The Gospel story in which St Luke has this incident is dear to Luke because it does what he so often emphasises in the Gospel it's a very wonderful placing of the good news the gospel before us. St Luke recounts how the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. That God comes to be a human being to become flesh and dwell among us and we can either accept that or we can turn our back and that's what our life is about. The followers of Christ having seen Christ, glimpsed the divine presence in him and follow him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Others having glimpsed, maybe not even glimpsed the goodness in him, turn away and just live their lives just completely irrelevant.

Simon, the Pharisee its interesting to imagine what's been happening beforehand no doubt the Pharisees have been talking about this strange prophet miracle worker to whom the crowds were flocking who was saying things that were quite amazing. He had a magnetic attraction but specially for the poor and for the marginalised in society the ones who were at the bottom of society. There must have been a time when they will have been talking about him and he must have said "I will invite him for a meal" and somebody will have said "Ah yes you are going to follow him too are you". "No no I'm going to invite him for a meal but not over the top not make a fuss of him and we'll see what he's like".

So Jesus is invited and probably knowing what is going to happen to him, Jesus with that wonderful openness and humility goes. Then this woman comes in. What had she been doing before hand? She was a prostitute. She was a woman very much on the margin and everyone knew what sort of woman she was. But had she seen Jesus, had he been the only man she had met for many a year who had looked at her with a genuine love? He said 'Mary' as he did at the resurrection, he called her by her name. Something had happened because she came and she was over the top in her expression of love. She wept and her tears washed his feet and she dried them with her hair and she anointed his feet with oil. The love and gratitude poured out of her.

She was the one who recognised the goodness of Jesus and Jesus challenges Simon. He says to him "two people are in debt one owed £2 and one owed £2000 who was loved the most" and Simon said "Well its obvious the one who has been forgiven more". In some ways Simon has fallen into the trap Our Lord set for him. And then Our Lord turns to the woman and says "Simon do you see this woman, what she has done" he said "you never offered even the ordinary courtesies of guests. You never let me wash my hands and feet before the meal. Anointing my head is a sign of joy and celebration. You see what this woman has done and therefore she is loved much because she has been forgiven much."

Its interesting how the opening to our Lord comes not from Simon, perhaps he had his friends round him and they were going to ask him how it had gone, this dinner. He didn't need Jesus but he was intrigued by this miracle worker; perhaps he would do a trick or two. In Simon you can see almost all our Western world.

One of the biggest difficulties in evangelisation, in other words in bringing people to see the wonder of God and the good news, is when we come against people who don't need him, who can manage life without him. It's almost that we need to be brought to our knees before we can recognise God.

The other great consolation - remember that lovely story of the man, the professor at university walking across the quadrangle. It's a nice morning and his friend saying "Hello how are you?" and he replies "seething with lust, consumed with greed, over run by pride - as usual" Laziness, sloth, pride, gluttony, anger, lust, the sins are all around us, within us and without us but it is a consolation to know that if we go through our sinfulness then we open ourselves to our Lord. That is the way if we think we are good and we don't need him then its pointless. A parish priest in Carnforth recently had a poster outside announcing the Masses, Holy Family Church of Sinners and constantly we are reminded in what we do here that we are here because we need our Lord; that's why we are here. We are not here because we are kindly giving praise to him and we are giving an hour of our time especially for God. Aren't we good? No, we are here because we are acknowledging that we need him and we need him desperately as much as that woman did.

Finally don't neglect that wonderful first story, it's a story of King David and he is someone to learn about and love. He is a magnificent person because we can see ourselves in him and its true. I know he had power but all of us have power in some way even if small, but the abuse of power. Remember his armies are fighting and he is the great warrior king, but for some reason or other he has decided not to go and fight, the weather is too hot and he goes out to the top of his house and he sees across to the next house. A beautiful woman stripping off and bathing and he sees and lusts after her and he sends someone to find out who she is. She is Bethsheba, the wife of Uriah and he is fighting in the army. He's not there so David takes the opportunity, he lies with her and then she comes and tells him she is pregnant. David says send for Uriah and Uriah comes back. Go home and have a rest David says to cover his guilt. David thought he had sorted out the problem, except in the morning who should he find fast asleep at the gate but Uriah and he wakes him up. Why didn't you go home? I couldn't go home with my men still fighting how could I go home to my wife?. So David gets him drunk and because Uriah still doesn't go home David sends him back to the front line with a message for his senior officer, and the message was "make sure in the next attack that Uriah is in the front line and he is killed." The news comes that Uriah has been killed and so he takes Bethsheba to himself for his wife and she bears him a son and Nathan comes. Nathan the prophet and he says just as Jesus did in the story, "I want to tell you a story, there was a wealthy man who had a visitor and he wanted to do him proud and so he was going to roast a whole sheep for him to entertain him. But he didn't take one of his own sheep but he went next door where there was a poor man who only had one sheep. The lamb had been a pet and they looked after him and cherished him it was all he had but the man took it, killed it and served it. David was angry "who on earth did this he deserves to die"…. Nathan said "you are that man" and David overcome with grief, aware of his sinfulness falls to his knees and begs for mercy from God. We need to learn about David because in him we see ourselves.

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