Proper 6 June 13, 2004.

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15

Psalm 32

Galatians 2:15-21

Luke 7:36-8:3

Here we are, beginning Pentecost, the liturgical season that focuses on who we are as the ekklesia of the Lord: the called-out people. These Pentecost season liturgies (the leiturgia or "public work" of the ekklesia) mean to form us into a eucharistic (i.e., thankful) people. And we begin this journey through stories of honesty and confession. The forgiveness we receive from our own confessions forms, reforms, and renews our self-knowledge and strength. As the people of God, we hear many stories in the coming weeks that show us the way to be the church.

In the first two sentences, the reading from 2 Samuel contains a world of corruption and hurt. "When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son" (vv. 26-27) Because we are privy to the fuller picture of this accomplished king, we know the truth of David's greed and abuse of power. The widow's grief carries the pain of all powerless people manipulated by the ones who have the means.

It is, however, immediately clear that the widow has a power on her side far greater than David's: YHWH is "displeased" with David. Nathan, the prophet, is sent to tell David a story. Oh, how easy it is for David to vent his wrath on a fictitious and unknown abuser! Oh, how easy it is for me, likewise, to lash out at distant persons--tyrannical heads of state, tycoons of all stripes, wielders of bulldozers and missiles--about whom Nathan also whispers in my ears. How easy it is to exhibit one's own righteousness, and how hard to see it for what it is!

With that realization--a confession and, in effect, a "death"--we are able to see ourselves, as well, in the story of Jesus confronting the pompous Pharisee. Like Nathan, Jesus teaches Simon a hard lesson by offering a story that allows the one needing correction to consider his behavior and attitude in the abstract. Simon is given--as was David--the opportunity to look at himself from a distance through the story Jesus tells about forgiving greater or lesser sins. This distance offers Simon room to gain adequate vision in order to judge the characters in Jesus' hypothetical scenario in such a way that the finger he points at them can at last be turned on himself.

It is important to note that the response of Simon to Jesus is initially doubt. Of Jesus, Simon thinks to himself, "If he were a prophet...." In contrast, the woman's response to Jesus is nothing but adoration. There are no ifs for her. Simon keeps a distance from Jesus; she does not.

In both the first reading and the gospel, we see that the need for self-examination is answered through stories that enable the ones in need of correction to step away from themselves for perspective. It would be a mistake, however, to reduce these lections to the need for objectivity on a problem before it can be solved. Distance, perspective, knowledge, and such are helpful, surely, but the real point is confession.

Preachers have prophetic responsibilities here, but only if we begin with Nathan's finger pointing at ourselves. Only when we've done our own pride-swallowing, recognized our complicity in others' pain, confessed, and repented can we speak to others about the faults they must also claim.

This is where the cross and the empty tomb were headed all along for us, for the woman with the alabaster jar, for Simon, and even for David in the sense that the pattern of his healing is the same as ours. David must come to see and to say what he has done--who he is, where his heart really finds its treasure--in order to be able to move again in the grace and mercy of YHWH. The death of David's child is emblematic of the fruits of destructive desires coming to nothing and of the need for a certain kind of self-dying in the act of confessing sin.

The epistle for this day constitutes a necessary brake on misunderstanding confession as a quid pro quo with God. Paul's letter to the Galatians in this section gets precisely at the question of what it is that makes confession even possible. The faith of Christ Jesus makes confession possible. Our salvation comes not through our abilities to confess our sin and realize a new being has come into existence, but "so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law" (v. 16).

There is a serious scholarly question here, however, that has a bearing on how we understand Christ's gift to us. Paul's language dia pisteos iesou christou (v. 16) may be translated "through faith in" or "through the faith of" Jesus Christ. Likewise, v. 20 might be translated either "I live by faith in the Son of God" (NRSV) or "I live by the faith of the Son of God." The issue hinges on a wealth of theological questions but especially on the ambiguity of the prepositions involved: whether the preposition is subjective genitive (in) or objective genitive (of). Living "by faith in" suggests that faith is a profession to be asserted, a willed thing. Living "by the faith of" suggests that Jesus' own faith undergirds the faith we hold, locating the ground of faith, and thus of salvation, within the person of Jesus Christ, in his death and resurrection. They may both be acceptably complex renderings of faithfulness, but each presents a different twist on the understanding of human will.

This controversy could certainly generate lively discussion at a pericope study group, because at base it is a chicken-and-egg question. Sometimes we talk about faith as if we have it because we have confessed our sin and thereby enabled God to grant us forgiveness. Certainly the stories of David and Nathan and Jesus and Simon sound as if the confession is wrung out of the sinners so that they can be forgiven. Yet the ability to confess comes as a gift from God, as does the capacity for self-examination, for critique, and for repentance.

Everything comes from God. All grace and mercy is from God. The woman with the ointment jar is the one who simply and eloquently expresses it as gratitude. She is the one who shows us what it is to be the church. What is Jesus Christ doing, might we imagine, by means of these texts in the midst of the gathered people? He is accepting the tears we shed on his feet and dry with our hair. He is holding us so that we can, in fact, both confess and rejoice.