Luke’s Gospel today gives us a wonderful insight into who our God is.  When we enter into this Gospel we begin to catch a glimpse, through a glass darkly, as Paul says elsewhere, into the beautiful mystery of God.  A great theologian, Hans Kung, wrote a book entitled On Being a Christian published some years (1979) ago and although I have not read it for many years, a question he poses has always remained with me. 

Being a Christian means asking the question: who is this Jesus we call Christ? Is He who He says He is. The answer we give is very important because it will determine how we live our lives. This may seem like a rather obvious question but its importance came home to me in the baptismal preparation evening some time ago when a young woman—a godmother—confessed that she knew Jesus was the son of God but she didn’t realize that He is God.  Hans Kung says this: “Christian does not mean everything that is true, good, beautiful, human. Who could deny that truth, goodness, beauty and humanity exist also outside Christianity? But everything can be called Christian which in theory and practice has an explicit, positive reference to Jesus Christ.  A Christian is not just any human being with genuine conviction, sincere faith and good will.  No one can fail to see that genuine conviction, sincere faith and good will exist outside Christianity. But all those can be called Christians for whom in life and death Jesus Christ is ultimately decisive.” 

As we look around us today, we are swamped with daily news of corruption at many levels; we are appalled by decisions such as the ban on turbans for children playing soccer; we are depressed by the darkness descending on our society with the deposition of Bill C-41 legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide when only God is sovereign over our lives and deaths. This is the reality of our culture which we are asked to evangelize, to bring the good news of joy and fulfillment. We can only do this if we ourselves believe that the “life and death of Jesus Christ is ultimately decisive.” So again we ask the question, ‘who is this Jesus?’ Luke’s Gospel gives us some answers today. Let’s place ourselves at Simon’s table and learn. 

The cast of characters at the dinner party include Jesus, Simon the Pharisee, an unnamed woman identified as a sinner, and the other guests at Simon’s dinner. Simon is a Pharisee and therefore identified as someone who obeyed every tiny prescription of the law and felt righteous because of this.  St. Paul in our reading from Galatians states “a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” Simon, however, is one who feels justified by the law. Jesus does not hesitate to accept Simon’s invitation entering his house and reclining at table.  A woman described as a “woman in the city who was a sinner” courageously enters the room—courageously because she was an outcast and Simon was a man of standing in the city.  We are not told the nature of her sins but some commentators think she may have been a prostitute. She does something highly unusual. She begins to wash Jesus’ feet and anoint them with oil from “an alabaster jar of ointment”.  By using the word, ‘alabaster’, Luke is suggesting that this was an expensive perfumed ointment and her action is extravagant.  What was unusual was that this woman anointed Jesus’ feet when it would have been customary to anoint the head. We recall another scene in Bethany with another Simon, “Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon, a man who had suffered from a dreaded skin disease. While Jesus was eating, a woman came in with an alabaster jar full of a very expensive perfume…and poured the perfume on Jesus’ head.” This woman’s action of humiliating herself because of her remorse for her sins by entering Simon’s house and kneeling at Jesus’ feet scandalizes Simon and his guests. Simon mutters under his breath, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is a sinner.”  Jesus reveals that he is a prophet when he makes Simon aware that Jesus knew what he was thinking by telling the story of the two debtors.  Simon is caught out and forced to admit that the one forgiven the greater debt would love, more just as this woman. He turns to the woman and says, “Your sins are forgiven.” This scandalizes the gathered Pharisees even more because only God can forgive sins.  “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Who is this Jesus who equates himself with God, “Your sins are forgiven. ..Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Luke does not tell us how the woman responded to these comforting words of Jesus.  We can only imagine that she left filled with joy and peace, filled with the good news of God’s kingdom. In her faith she answers the question posed by the guests, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”, it is Jesus the son of God. Luke continues that after the encounter at Simon’s house, Jesus went about the countryside bringing “the good news of the kingdom of God.”  Who did you identify with in Luke’s account of the party at Simon’s? Simon? The woman? The other guests? The truth is that we are identified with each of the characters. The beauty of Jesus’ actions is that forgiveness is open to each one of us. We just have to humbly accept that Jesus through his life, death and resurrection has opened up the way to his Father’s kingdom for all.

When we read our second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in the light of this Gospel, we appreciate more deeply what Paul says.  The Pharisees—and Paul was once a zealous Pharisee—believed that they would be made righteous by obeying every article of the labyrinthine law which they helped develop. Ordinary folk—like our woman in the Gospel --could not hope to obey every article of the law—there were hundreds of them.  So Paul reminds the other disciples that “a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”  Through our baptism we become part of Christ.  “And 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 began this morning’s meditation on the Gospel with Hans Kung’s challenging question, ‘who is this Jesus”.  He is the one who does not condemn but invites us to join him.  He does not care that we are sinners as long as we accept his invitation. “Your sins are forgiven” Our challenge as Catholic Christians is to evangelize the culture we  live in. Having experienced God’s love for us through baptism, and nurtured by the Eucharist, we are to joyfully announce this good news to all whom we personally encounter.  In every situation of our daily lives, we can always ask ourselves, ‘how would Jesus have responded?

As one commentator says, “The question posed by the guests at Simon’s house, ‘who is this man who even forgives sins’ is “repeatedly asked of us throughout our lives when we: must make an important decision; face a challenge to our integrity and honesty; choose how we will use our resources; decide which people will be our friends; determine how we will spend our free time; if and where we will attend church; what stands we will take on a political decision, etc. In one way or another we will need to respond again to the questions, "Who is this man who even forgives sins?" "Who is this man about whom I hear all these reports?" Our daily choices and the manner we live reveal, better than any words, how we are answering those questions.”

I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for.

Hush, child. Hush, now, and I will tell it to you.

Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice: “Rags!” Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.

Ragman

by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

“Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!”

“Now, this is a wonder,” I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?

I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.

The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.

“Give me your rag,” he said so gently, “and I’ll give you another.”

He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.

Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then HE began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.

“This IS a wonder,” I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.

“Rags! Rags! New rags for old!”

In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.

Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.

“Give me your rag,” he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, “and I’ll give you mine.”

The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood – his own!

“Rags! Rags! I take old rags!” cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.

The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.

“Are you going to work?” he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head.

The Ragman pressed him: “Do you have a job?”

“Are you crazy?” sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket – flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.

“So,” said the Ragman. “Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.”

Such quiet authority in his voice!

The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman – and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.

“Go to work,” he said.

After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, and old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.

And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.

I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.

The little old Ragman – he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.

Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope – because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.

I did not know – how could I know? – that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night, too.

But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.

Light – pure, hard, demanding light – slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.

Well, then I lowered my head and trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: “Dress me.”

He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!