Reconnected*

Life’s storms swirl around us. Last Sunday was peaceful and sunny and cool in Milwaukee—LGBT Pride was kissed by the sun and blessed by God. The week saw torrential rains more than once, and those caused lots of delayed travel, and that caused lots of gnashing of teeth. Drama. Life is full of drama even in the best of times.

Lots of drama this week in the scripture. In Luke 7:50 Jesus says to the woman (identified as “a woman in the city, who was a sinner”) who has been bathing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair: “50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Jesus uses words like these at the end of most of his healing events. It points out the action inherent in healing, which is to bring peace into a chaotic void. Like a metaphorical thunderstorm, the things in life that keep us back hound us with battering winds and driving rain and distract us with noise and lightening and frighten us with seemingly unrestrainable power—how ever will I survive this?—we ask ourselves in the midst of it. And then, when it has passed, there is peace, stillness, and in that stillness is the knowledge of the presence of God and the certainty that we are not just in the presence of God but that we are indeed together with God. Jesus’ words also literally point the hearer (in this case, the woman, the Pharisees, and us) in a new direction, in the “way” of peace. The phrase “go in peace” is an instruction, but also literal direction for new life. She is literally reconnected with God; now she is instructed to turn in the direction of connectedness.

Ah, then there’s that word: sin. We are first told that the woman is a sinner, and then we hear Jesus announce that her sins are forgiven. We have to remember always that sin is separateness from God. Jesus is not telling the woman that he has forgotten her past. He is announcing her present, togetherness with Him, in which there cannot be separateness from God because Jesus is God. The Pharisees in the story act surprised, in fact they are playing their part as bigots well! They continue to look down on the woman, and, indeed, on Jesus, not grasping that God is in their midst. And so that is the contrast. The woman is without sin because she is with Jesus. The Pharisees remain mired in sin because their bigotry prevents seeing that God is right there with them. The difference between sin and togetherness with God is ours to create, ours to perceive. Apart from God we find ourselves tossed and turned in the maelstroms of life and together with God we go in peace. The difference is ours because it is only we who can separate ourselves from God.

We separate ourselves from God whenever we seek to make ourselves Godlike by making our priorities most important. In the Old Testament lesson Ahab who has not just the presence of God but the favor of God to be a king to God’s people—Ahab falls into the vortex of selfishness and rearranges lives to suit his own will, actually taking the life of Naboth so that he, Ahab, can have Naboth’s fine vineyard. What is the sin here? The sin here is putting God aside with the action of playing God. We do the same whenever we seek advantage over another of God’s creatures.

In Galatians Paul writes that “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” He means that he has put aside his tendency to sin, to separateness, and is now at one with God because Christ, who is God, lives in him. He has been crucified with Christ because the action of dying to sin is wrenching. It might mean putting aside treasured desires, it might mean yielding pride and what used to be called vainglory in order to weather the storm and come back to center, to that place where your faith has saved you and you now can go in peace.

For GLBT people it sometimes seems like all of life is one long storm, one long and lonely maelstrom. The false prophets cause the whole world to swirl with our condemnation. But it is they who have no faith, who have separated themselves from God, and obviously, it is they who have no peace. If we stand firm in the knowledge of God’s love for us, and in the certainty of God’s love in creating us just as we are in order to love just as we do, the it is we whose faith saves us. It is we who are connected, and eternally reconnected as children of God.

Go in peace.

*Proper 6 (1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.