Three weeks ago today as I sat here having lunch with all of you, I received a phone call from the hospital to say my friend Darrel had just passed away. He had been diagnosed with leukemia only a week earlier and the news was a great shock to me and all who knew him.
The details of his death are not important but how he lived his life is. Darrel’s mother told me that he had been short of oxygen at the time of his birth and was what we call today developmentally slow. I’m sure life wasn’t easy for him. He grew up and attended school in the 1950’s and 1960’s a time when society was much less tolerant of people who are different than they are today. Darrel worked for the city and then cared for his mother until her death. He was totally devoted to her, even to the extent of having his meals with her when she finally had to stay at the Northern Lights Manor.
Yet despite what some might consider a handicap, Darrel gave his love and devotion to others . If you asked him for help, he treated it as a honour. When we attended St. Andrews Darrel did the vacuuming for me after I had my hip replacement and couldn’t carry the vacuum up and down stairs. When I was laid up it was Darrel who came over to take out my garbage and shovel snow. He drove me to church until I was able to drive myself again. I heard from others that he proudly told everyone “I helped Harry today,” as if it were an honour not a responsibility.
He was equally as devoted in his church life. When he joined the Baptist Church after the closure of St. Andrew’s he was one of two new male members of the congregation to agree to be baptize by immersion. He faithfully attended Bible Study on Monday nights and if you invited him out that night he’d say “Sorry I can’t go. I have Bible study tonight.” Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses received a warm welcome from Darrel and he’d spend a portion of Sunday afternoons discussing scriptures with them.
Darrel immediately came to mind when I read today’s gospel. In many ways he was like the woman who attended the dinner at Simon’s house. Darrel perhaps didn’t have the intellect of some or the financial means of others. But he gave all his love to God and to his fellow man living the true spirit of what Jesus has taught us.
If you were expecting the twists and turns of so many of our gospel stories, Luke does not disappoint. We aren’t told much about the woman other than she was a sinner. Lots of commentators go to great length trying to speculate on what her sins might be but it is not the main issue of the story. She is what you might call a party crasher. She came to the meal uninvited and probably to the great embarrassment of the host. However one needs to understand that in the Jewish culture of the time, coming uninvited was not the social faux pas it would be today. When news went out of a dinner party anyone who wanted to could go. Some I’m sure came out of curiosity when they heard Jesus was a dinner guest. But not this lady. As the gospel tells us she washed Jesus’s feet with her tears and then applied ointment she had bought. This ointment was not cheap and it would have been a considerable expense to her. You might be wondering how she could accomplish washing someone’s feet when they were eating. People did not sit as they do today but rather reclined on a bench and ate with their hands.
Simon, the host is taking all this in. The Pharisees were always trying to catch Jesus out and Simon thought he had his opportunity. After all Jesus must have known what kind of a woman she was. How could he allow a sinner to touch him if he truly was the rabbi he was supposed to be?
We are not told that Simon spoke his thoughts aloud but somehow Jesus seemed to sense rebuke. He asks Simon a question. If someone owed a person fifty denarii and another owed five hundred and neither one could pay and the debtor forgave both which of the two would be most grateful. “I suppose the one whom had the greater debt cancelled,” Simon answers. Here the story takes a very unexpected twist. It is no longer about the woman who had touched Jesus in a way that Simon and no doubt the other Pharisees deemed as inappropriate. It is about Simon and his failings as a host. When Jesus came he was offered no water for his feet, or the customary kiss when a guest comes in. To be fair these courtesies were not necessary in Jesus’ culture but a mark of good hospitality. Just like today if we invited a guest into our home we would introduce him or her to anyone who didn’t know the person and perhaps offer them something to drink.
But the comparison between Simon and the woman doesn’t end with this mild rebuke from Jesus. The woman, labelled as a sinner, probably an outcast and obviously not a wealthy woman offered everything she had. Simon, a doubtlessly well to do man much higher up the social ladder offered nothing but the bare minimum.
Those of you in my generation might remember the Television Series The Thornbirds which aired about thirty years ago. Meggie , the main female character, was something like the woman who was a sinner. She had lost much because her forbidden love with Father Ralph yielded a son who died in a drowning accident. She married Luke, a man who never loved her. Yet despite all she had lost, she never lost her capacity for love. Father Ralph on the other hand is a priest pledging his life to serve God and help his fellow man. Instead he is blinded by ambition and gives his love half heartedly to God and half heartedly to Meggie. He tells Meggie before his death that “you understood God’s purpose for us far more than I did.”
What about us? Where do we fit in? I think again of my friend Darrel. After he passed away his family told me there was no hot water in the house. The hot water tank was not working. I said to a mutual friend “I wished Darrel had said something. We could have got that fixed.” “Yes,” my friend said, “but it was so like Darrel never to complain.”
The woman at the banquet showed great faith in her actions. She certainly knew that she would be an unwelcome guest. But her faith in Jesus was enough to bring her to show an act of humility towards him. Notice that it is not her actions but her great faith that Jesus comments on when he says “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” She has been saved by God’s grace. Paul picks up on this same theme in our reading from Galatians this morning when he says we are justified by faith in Christ.
My friend Darrel did not have a lot to give in terms of education, intellect or finances. But he gave with a heart full of love and from an abiding faith in God.
Can we say the same? Do we give with a full heart to God? Or are we like Simon and Father Ralph in The Thorn Birds, giving half heartedly knowing we could offer more but having a litany of excuses as to why we cannot do so?
Helping a neighbour in need can be as simple as taking them on an errand or perhaps a cheery phone call to see that they are okay. I remember when my wife and I used to do visits at the Personal Care Home and the Manor we’d cut some pansies from our garden and wrap them in a wet paper towel. Gifts like these cost little but bring joy to another’s heart. Sometimes the best gift we can give is our time.
Darrel’s death has reminded me that giving wholly of yourself does not require spending elaborate sums of money. We need to be like the woman who washed His feet giving our entire love. For when we give it to Jesus we give it to others as well. AMEN
