Anglican Diocese of Perth

Northern Region

Bishop Farran's Sermons 2004

A sermon preached by Bishop Brian Farran at S. Cecilia's Quinns-Mindarie Second Sunday after Pentecost 2004
(Luke 7:36 - 8:3)

Love as the outcome of forgiveness

This is an incident in the ministry of Jesus that pulls everyone up short. Certainly, reflection on this incident, the conversation and the conclusion ought to affect how we approach that crucial petition in the Lord's Prayer "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us" That has always seemed to me to be on our part a dangerous petition to pray, for it assumes that we are good at forgiving. Yet my listening ear of about thirty-five years of ordained ministry tells me that forgiveness is not well practised, even by Christians.

My caution is that we all should approach this passage of Luke's gospel with sensitivity, awareness and a readiness to be plunged into unbelievable divine generosity that literally takes our breath away! Of course, with the divine generosity there are reversals of expectations. Here again, the insider becomes the outsider and the outsider becomes the insider.

Such reversals of status are typical of the inversions of Jesus' ministry where the last become the first, and the least become the greatest. Of course, the reversals create a set of unexpected outsiders - those who had assumed privilege or position or the correct interpretation and who found that they were inverted and subverted by the teaching and practice of Jesus.

This means that insiders such as ourselves are in continuous need of staying and living close to the text lest we behave as if we were here by right and not by sheer grace. Living under grace is to recognize everything as an undeserved gift. Yet such recognition chaffs at our desire to be in control, to have status, and to assume that we are right. Sometimes being in worship is similar to that chorus from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado where everyone sings that he is right and she is right and everyone is as right can be!

Although the dinner setting is Middle Eastern with the door of the house open so that the public can attend the conversation although not the dinner itself, and with the guests reclining in festive setting with their elbows towards the table and their feet away from the table, the mannerisms of Simon the host might be familiar to us. Simon is courteous but not effusive. Simon does the minimum of greeting. Simon's is a practised reserve that indicates to Jesus that he is welcome but with limits.

I suspect we have all been guests at dinner parties where there has been some detachment on the part of the host. Perhaps the hosts are repaying a previous dinner at our home, or they are wary of us, or they are too conscious of their social position. Whatever, we can pick up those vibrations and realize that the atmosphere is a little strained.

Given the conditions under which the dinner party is hosted, it is not surprising that non-guests are present. The woman's presence does not bother Simon. It is the woman's intimate behaviour that sets Simon off. There are cultural taboos operating here.

In Middle Eastern culture a woman would not let her hair down in public. That was a sight that was only for her husband. Therefore, a woman who appeared in public with her hair down was signalling that she was sexually available.

By the way, this is the reason in 1 Corinthians that Saint Paul talks about hair styles and women covering their heads. The way a woman wore her hair gave sexual signals. Saint Paul makes the obvious point that in worship it would be a total distraction if the male members of the congregation were attempting to read off the sexual signals from the female members. One wonders how Paul might write today if he undertook a shopping expedition at Just Jeans!


Let me read you the climax of the interaction. This is from the New English Bible which most scholars recognize as the best translation of the text. "And so, I tell you, her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven; where little has been forgiven, little love is shown."

Why is the woman known to be forgiven? The answer is that her display of affection is evidence of it.

Luke in his accounts of needy people meeting with Jesus often relates the responses they made to Jesus. Some made ethical responses, such as Zachaeus, who gave half of his goods to the poor and fourfold to anyone whom he had defrauded. At other times the responses are directly to God in worship or praise.

Here the response is lavish affection shown to Jesus. Luke's expository point is that significant contact with Jesus either in healing or forgiveness leads to significant outcomes in behaviour that express generosity of spirit either in ethical behaviour or in worship.

This is the point at which each of us needs to undertake some introspection about our experience and practice of forgiveness.

Let me introduce such an important undertaking with words of caution from a great spiritual writer of the last century, an English Methodist, J. Neville Ward. In a meditation on Forgiving Neville Ward wrote,
"Theoretically the Church is the forgiven and forgiving community; and Christians should be good at forgiving, thinking so much about it as they do. However, that is the kind of theory that does not easily transplant from the pages of library books to the pains of beating hearts. Some people are in fact good at forgiving, whether committed to it like Christians or not. Buoyant and extroverted temperaments seem to find it easier than reflective and withdrawn types who often cannot stop their memories fingering old wounds."

We should begin our introspection under the light of Luke's story with a recognition that as we start we are accumulated pieces of past limited forgivenesses. I suspect that we are not totally pristine in our forgiveness; that there are bits and pieces of hurts that we have held onto, and these at times pop up into our consciousness, distorting our happiness. We puzzle as to how it is that we are now thinking of that incident of so long ago. It simply indicates lack of resolution of the incident on our part.

What is it like to be forgiven?

It is here that I have to become autobiographical - there seems no other way of speaking of forgiveness. I am reflecting upon those moments when I have inflicted pain upon someone I really love. So I am not thinking of trivial incidents, but those moments when you feel suspended by what has been said or what has happened. To be forgiven for something that has cost the other dearly is to be met with sheer generosity and grace.

I have found that immediately when I have been forgiven there is a lightness of being. It is as if I have been transported to another place where the sheer weight of the issue is released, where reciprocity is now again possible, where the love of the forgiver is palpable.


Such forgiveness has enabled me to understand the resilience of love, that love even though wounded and mystified can continue undiminished. Then I have been filled with a sense of wonder, of being known yet still loved, valued, and trusted. This experience is an anticipation of finally being fully known by God. Although there is cost in forgiveness to both parties, the cost is not a scar but a scaffold for better, stronger relationship.

That seems to me to be the sheer wonder of being forgiven by another, and conveys some of the intensity of sensing one is forgiven by God.

And then there is that stage of moving on (as Americans put it). That too seems congruent with the ministry of Jesus where there was often physical movement (the newly forgiven followed Jesus in the way), or they were given a new task (like Peter), or they moved towards others (in changed behaviour).

In another gospel in another parable Jesus tells of the only alternative to forgiveness - violence. That parable is the story of the hugely indebted servant who is thrown into prison until he repays his debt of Allan Bond proportions. Of course within that time's prison system, repayment was impossible as the prisoner earned nothing. The debtor languished in prison with his family for life.

The blunt point of Jesus story was: either forgiveness or violence.

These are still our alternatives. Either forgiveness or violence. Forgiveness is the way that the chain of violence and retaliation are broken, and the sin of the world lessened.

Putting this in conjunction with Luke's dinner party report - who is the violent one? And who is the one who knows forgiveness?

Let me end by referring again to the writing of J. Neville Ward. This piece sets out our continuing work in forgiveness. He writes,

"The prayer of forgiveness is a way of seeing that releases love. It is faith seeing those who have wronged us, and ourselves, within the great reconciliation of God's kingdom and trusting our belief that God is working to bring in that kingdom of truth and affection. To pray this in stillness and trust is to receive from God a further light, that our resentments and fears are to be transformed; that they are not essential to our humanity; we are not doomed forever to hurt and destroy one another. In such hope we might begin to question their claim to tyrannize over us and so find their hold on us loosen."

Luke's litmus test about forgiveness is whether we are generous in our loving.

"And so, I tell you, her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven; where little has been forgiven, little love is shown."