Minister 's Letter - November 2008
Dear Friends,
Loss, separation, letting go, giving away: these are themes that run through the biblical story. According to the Genesis accounts, when God created the world, the first thing that happened was that there was separation - of light from darkness, of waters from waters, of water from land. Life is born from separation. And this principle which operated in God's actions was immediately played out in human actions: later in the creation stories we hear, "for this reason a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh."
When God began to call a people, his first call to Abram was to leave his father's country and house. And the incarnation could not have happened without loss and leaving. Paul, writing to the Philippians, says of the self-emptying of Christ, "though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born inhuman form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." Christ's self-giving led to crucifixion, the ultimate loss since a crucified person literally has no control over their movements or their future. And this pattern of loss was there when Jesus said to his disciples, "If I do not go away, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you." And, in the reading from Galatians, Paul, amazingly, speaks of our being crucified with Christ. This self-giving with no strings attached is not only God's way but now, because we are in Christ, our way.
So I've found myself pondering this recurring principle of loss as a window on the gospel story. We have an encounter between Jesus, guest at a Pharisee's house, and a woman. People could come into a house where there was a dinner party and stand around the edges of the room to watch the proceedings. Guests would lie on their sides with their heads towards the table and their feet pointing out. Where the woman went too far was that she approached Jesus, bathed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. Then she continued to kiss his feet and anoint them with the ointment. No respectable woman let her hair be seen in public, and anointing was normally of the head, the feet were only anointed at death, but she went on anointing his feet and covering them with kisses. It was, no doubt, a total conversation-stopper. But Jesus accepted this without comment until he saw that his host was discomforted by this turn of events. Then he addressed not the woman, as we might have expected, but his host and pointed out that the breach of etiquette lay not with the woman's actions but with his host who had not observed the very basic courtesy of providing a servant to wash his guest's feet.
Luke's picture is of a woman whose extreme need drives her to offer Jesus her most treasured possession, a jar of ointment that represented her future financial security. If I give someone a gift it cannot have strings attached, otherwise it is not so much a gift as a transaction. I cannot tell you what to do with what I give you. When we give something away there is loss, otherwise we have not really given.
We live and worship in a context at which the offering of all that we have is at the heart of things. And in that sense, the woman who poured out her ointment and the remaining shreds of her reputation out of love for Jesus is our example. "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." We are not our own anymore, we are given to God.
In Christ,
Christopher White
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