• I Kings 21: 1-10, (11-14)

King Ahab wanted the vineyard of his next door neighbor, Naboth.  He offered to exchange that piece of property for another or pay its fair price.  Naboth rejected the King’s offer for a specific reason: “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”  The King was furious and sulked.  The Queen, Jezebel, taunted him: “Do you not govern Israel?”  She presented a scheme to have “two scoundrels” falsely charge Naboth of blasphemy against “God and the King.”  Her plan worked and Naboth was stoned to death.  The King immediately seized Naboth’s property.  “Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah….”  The Lord instructed Elijah to go directly to King Ahab and deliver the Lord’s gruesome judgment on Ahab:  “in the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth dogs will lick up your blood.”  In the confrontation between King and prophet, Elijah delivered a blistering indictment: “Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you….”

• Psalm 5: 1-8

The psalmist initiates a prayer to the Lord expressing confidence that “You are not a god who desires wickedness,” because You are a god who despises connivers, liars and violence– any person “of blood.”  The psalmist is privileged to enter the Lord’s house only because of the Lord’s kindness.

OR 

• II Samuel 11: 26- 12: 10, 13-15

Having abused his power as King and manipulated Uriah into a fatally dangerous position in battle, King David now takes the dead man’s widow as his wife.  The Lord sends a prophet, Nathan, who tells the King a story about an abusive bully.  David declares the man in the story to be a brute who deserves to die.  Nathan says, “You are that man!”  Nathan then reviews all that “the Lord, the God of Israel” had done for and through David and then says, “Now therefore the sword of the Lord shall never depart from your house.”  David confesses and the prophet pronounces the Lord’s absolution.  But there will be a price.  “The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill.”

• Psalm 32

The psalmist describes the stark contrast between her life before and after confession to the Lord.

• Galatians 2: 15-21

Paul’s’ letter to the churches in Galatia describes the total difference in his life before his discovering that “through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.”

• Luke 7: 36-8:3

Luke takes the accusation which arises throughout the gospels that Jesus befriended sinners and constructs an unforgettable story-within-a-story, which includes one of the most enduring sayings in all the gospels.  Jesus accepts an invitation to dinner in the home of a Pharisee.  “And a woman in the city, who was a sinner” tracks down Jesus on this occasion.  With a jar of ointment, she stands behind Jesus at his feet, weeping so profusely that she bathes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair.  She kisses the feet of Jesus and anoints them with the ointment.   The Pharisee is repulsed by this emotional display by someone so unfit and says that if Jesus were a true prophet he would have known what sort of woman was touching him so unashamedly and in public.  Jesus then tells a story about two people in debt; one owes a huge debt the other much less.  When the one to whom both people were indebted forgave both their debts, which do you think would be more grateful, Jesus asks?  “I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.”  You are right, Jesus tells the Pharisee.  He then contrasts the effusive behavior of the sinner with the perfunctory hospitality of his host, and says, “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown greater love.”  And then Jesus adds one of the most unforgettable sayings in all the gospels: “But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  As Luke’s narrative continues, those who are still preoccupied with religious prerequisites miss the entire point of the story Jesus has told and his words to the woman and they ask indignantly, “who is this that even forgives sins?”  Jesus sends the woman on her way with assurances: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”  Then Jesus departs and continues his journey through the countryside, “proclaiming and bringing good news of the Kingdom of God.”  “The twelve” travel with him “as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities…”  And for the first time in Luke’s narrative, Mary Magdalene is introduced along with several other women by name as well as “many others, who provide for them out of their resources.”

Religions share many common, conventional concerns, especially about who is and who is not worthy or acceptable.  But biblical narratives record an experience of God that always supersedes the norm.  The God of the biblical texts is a passionate, indiscriminate lover with an obsession for forgiveness and justice.

King Ahab’s total disregard for the dignity of his neighbor invokes the anger of the Lord who, through the Lord’s prophet, Elijah, confronts the King with the Lord’s judgment.    In the appointed psalm in response to this story, the God of Israel is known as One who despises connivers, liars and those who overpower others.  In the second optional story from the Hebrew scriptures, even the Lord’s favored, King David, gets his just rewards for causing another man’s death so that David could take his widow, although not the full justice David deserved.  And in the appointed psalm, the relief that comes only after full confession is expressed.  In Luke’s marvelous story, Jesus puts God’s love on full display.  Although those invested heavily in conventional religious expectations are shocked at what he says and does, Jesus not only accepts the overtures of a woman known locally as a “sinner,” he tells a story with a punch line that rebukes his pious host: “The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  Jesus then invites that woman into the closest circle of his followers.  The two stories from the Hebrew scriptures depict honestly humankind’s conniving, self-centeredness; Luke’s story illustrates the true nature of God’s love.

Near the beginning of Jean-Luc Marion’s meticulous, surgeon-like attempt to separate biblical revelation from any form of human conceptualizing, in God Without Being, he describes the God of biblical texts this way:

“…God is not because he (sic) does not have to be, but loves, then, by definition, no condition can continue to restrict his (sic) initiative, amplitude, and ecstasy.  Love loves without condition, simply because it loves; he thus loves without limit or restriction.” (p.47)  Marion continues to explicate the experience of God’s love in contrast to any and all conceptualizing about it:  “…as opposed to the concept that, by that very definition of apprehension, gathers it, comprehends, and because of this, almost inevitably comes to completion in an idol, love (even and especially if it ends up causing thought, giving rise– by its excess– to thought) does not pretend to comprehend, since it does not mean to take; it postulates its own giving, giving where the giver strictly coincides with the gift, without any restriction, reservation, or mastery.  Thus love gives itself only in abandoning itself, cease transgressing the limits of its own gift…” (p.48)  Near the end of his study, Marion reaches another defining conclusion when he quotes Pascal:  “Everything that does not lead to charity is figurative.  The sole object of Scripture is charity.  Everything that does not lead to this sole good is figurative.”  (p.178)

The capacity of the God of the biblical texts to upend human expectations never ceases.  But it is not shock for the sake of being shocking; it is the inexorable result of love “ceaselessly transgressing the limits of its own gift….”  In these same texts, God’s love is always paired with a passion for justice, and God’s revulsion at humankind’s conniving and exploitation of the vulnerable.

With which person in Luke’s story would we want to spend more time in our lives– the circumspect host who believes he comprehends God and has pretty much figured out what God really wants or the notorious sinner who recognized in Jesus God’s always surprising love and whose gratitude made her loving?  (We know the one Jesus choose!) 

“The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”