Creekside Church Sermon of June 14, 1998 "Goodness Gracious and Gracious Goodness" Luke 7:36-8:3	Rev. David Bibbee
Send this sermon to a friend

William Sloan Coffin was the preaching minister at the Riverside Church in New York City. He is an eloquent preacher, as those who hear him at the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference in Orlando will discover. He is also fiercely opinionated and staunchly independent. His friends were deeply saddened when he went through a divorce. They were additionally distressed when he withdrew into himself and talked with no one about his painful ordeal. It was especially troublesome to his friend Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the well-known theologian and Jewish mystic. In his book, Once To Every Man, Coffin tells of their first meeting after the divorce as they walked down a New York City street:

Slipping his hand under my arm he began, "I understand, my friend, that you have been through much suffering." "That's right, Father Abraham. It's been agony. It still is." "You should have called me," he said. "You were in Los Angeles all summer." "You still could have called." "I didn't want to bother you. Besides, I don't like talking about such things over the phone." "That was a mistake. I could have helped you." Irked by Heschel's self-assurance, I stopped and faced him. "Alright, how could you have helped me?"

Heschel raised his shoulders with his hands palms up. "I would have told you about my father, the great Rabbi, blessed be his memory, who too was divorced. You see, you Christians are so vexed by your perfectionism. It is always your undoing." Coffin writes, "As he talked, I felt the tears starting down my cheeks. He was so right. It was nice that a Jew was reminding a Christian that his salvation lay not in being sinless, but in accepting forgiveness."

"Oh to grace, how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be..." We will sing this verse after the sermon. The unconquerable, inexhaustible grace of God forms the foundation of our faith and is the means of our forgiveness, and to it we are deeply indebted. The gracious goodness of God in Jesus is where it begins. Sinlessness is unattainable. Forgiveness isn't.

How many, "There are two kinds of people in the world" sayings have you heard? There are lifters and leaners, stepping stones and stumbling blocks, givers and takers. I will add another- there are people who live out of scarcity and those who live out of abundance. Some people live like there is not enough of anything. They go through life holding and hoarding. Others live as though there is always enough. For them there is plenty to go around. There's always an extra plate at the dinner table. There's enough patience, forgiveness, and love for everyone. They go through life with open hearts and hands.

Today's gospel is about these two orientations. Jesus is the embodiment of abundance. Abundant life, deep and wide love is what he came to give us. But let's look at our responses to it in our story.

Jesus was invited to a dinner party at the home of Simon the Pharisee. This is significant since Jesus, as you know, didn't get along well with the Pharisees. Simon was uneasy because while Jesus accepted the invitation, he knew Jesus had a reputation for causing disturbances at other occasions. We don't know how things were going during the meal, but later on in the story Jesus mentions courtesies which Simon omitted. The food was fine, but no one washed his feet when he entered the home, no one greeted him with a kiss or placed the customary drop of fragrance on the forehead which all honored guests received. It was more than just a little breach of manners. It was a sign of scarcity in Simon's house.

We don't get the complete picture of what is wrong until an unexpected guest shows up. To picture the setting, it was common practice when a distinguished guest was present, to open the doors to the neighbors and the public to hear what the guest had to say. A woman stood by the door, and she came and fell at Jesus feet. We don't know if they knew each other, but those in attendance knew her. She was a sinner. Luke doesn't say why. Maybe it was because of the things that make us all sinners. Perhaps she was a prostitute. What is obvious is that she is Simon's polar opposite.

Simon strove to be sinless. She was sinful. Simon spent all his time studying the scriptures. She didn't know the difference between the Torah and a tomato. What she did caused Simon in shock to mutter, "Goodness gracious!" She fell at Jesus feet, wept on them with her tears and wiped them with her hair and she kissed his feet. Can you imagine having the minister for Sunday dinner when a lady comes into your house off the street and starts kissing his feet? I was invited into a Greek Orthodox home for a meal and didn't know about their custom of kissing the priest's hand. I was surprised. I'm not sure how I would have responded if someone tried to kiss my feet. She didn't say a word. Jesus didn't say a word. He didn't attempt to stop her, and stingy Simon who invited Jesus into his home on the chance that maybe he was a prophet, said, "If this guy were a real prophet he would have known who is smooching his feet!" Prophets are supposed to condemn sin.

So what does Jesus do? What he usually does when on the spot. He tells a story. "Simon, two guys were in debt to a creditor. One owed a little. One owed a lot. Neither could pay off the debt, so the creditor forgave them both. Now which one would be most grateful?" "The one who was forgiven more, I suppose." Simon said. "You suppose? What do you mean, you suppose? Of course it was the one forgiven most!" Now see the contrast between scarcity and abundance. See the favorable person in an unfavorable light. Simon catalogued all her wrongs...she went to a public function without male accompaniment. She exposed her hair. She, a woman, touched Jesus, a man, and defiled him. But she did the very thing Simon should have done and didn't...no feet washing, no kiss, no oil. Simon was a tightwad.

His salvation rested in his attempts at sinlessness, his spiritual expertise, his keeping good company and avoiding excess. He felt little need of forgiveness and therefore had little to extend to others. But this woman who was forgiven much, gave much...her gratitude to Jesus was extravagant. The unfavorable one in the story is seen in a favorable light. While others were exclaiming, "Goodness gracious!", she was responding to Jesus' gracious goodness.

Simon did not know the message we are still trying to learn. Our salvation isn't in sinlessness, but in accepting forgiveness. Our lives are to be a response to Jesus' grace. I love the way Phillip Yancey puts it: "Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more...and grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less." The gospel of Jesus is a gospel of abundance. He wants us to convert us from hoarding our time, our forgiveness, our love and ourselves to one of extravagance and abundance where we never run out of what matters most.

The grace of Jesus is all about abundance. Jesus told about the prodigal son and his elder brother and how their father bestowed gracious goodness on them both and said, "All I have is yours." "How often do I forgive someone who wrongs me?" Peter asked. "Seven times?" "No, more than that. Try seventy times seven," Jesus said. These are threatening thoughts if your tendency is to hold on tight. Grace sounds good when it's got your name on it. It's troubling when some major league sinner receives it.

So let me ask you a question-who are you in this story? I'm too much like Simon...too tightfisted, too stingy with God's grace, too prone to think I'm doing the right things, too reluctant to feel good about some other sinner getting their share. What about you? Do you live like forgiveness is in scarce supply? The woman who sinned much was forgiven much and it showed in her lavish response to Jesus.

We don't know what became of her or Simon. We are left with Jesus and a choice. Give and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put in your lap," he said. In other words, there's more than enough of God's grace to go around. There's no need to wonder who is deserving or not. Like someone said, "You don't need to portion it out a little here, a little there, give to this one, withhold from that one." The choice is how we respond. A sure sign that you received God's grace and forgiveness is your willingness to give it.

Every Friday evening it happened. An old man walked from his home down to the pier with a bucket of shrimp. He walked to the end of the pier, reached into the bucket and began to feed the birds who always waited for him. Slowly and methodically he distributed the contents while the sun slipped under the horizon. It was his way of expressing thanks.

He was Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. In 1942, during WWII, his B17 became lost in the Pacific, ran out of fuel and went down. The crew of eight made it into lifeboats, and began their harrowing fight to survive the sun, sharks, waves, and most of all, hunger. Several days passed. They prayed till they felt there was no prayer left. It seemed as though the end had come. Rickenbacher was asleep with his cap over his eyes. Then he felt something. A seagull lit on his head. If he could catch it, they would live. He did. They ate it and used the entrails for bait and survived.

So, every Friday Eddie Rickenbacker, now old and hunched over took his bucket of shrimp to the birds as an ongoing discipline of telling God, "Thank you." He had been given much, and it was incumbent upon him to make a return.

So again let me ask you, "Who are you in this story?" Anyone Simon, living in scarcity, little to be forgiven of, disgruntled by the ease with which Jesus imparts gracious goodness upon those not deserving it? When sin abounds, grace abounds more. Sinners that we are who have been forgiven much, who have received the marvelous grace of our loving Lord, we can allow grace and goodness to flow from us. We can afford to be lavish. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.

[Thanks to Richard Groves whose sermon, "Abundance or Scarcity" (Pulpit Digest, May/Jun 1992, page 57), helped shape the structure of this sermon.]

All of the sermons that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996 are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.

Sermon Search:



Exact phrase    All words (AND)    Any word (OR)