Beyond just showing up, one of the basic requirements of learning the game of golf is the willingness to humiliate yourself.  If you can’t take the embarrassment that goes with learning you’ll never make it with golf.  When Harold Cowell was first teaching me one day we were standing near the tee gazing out toward the hole that looked 5,000 yards away.  Between the little flag and us was what looked like the Grand Canyon.  I asked Harold, “What club should I use?”  He looked at me and kindly said, “It doesn’t matter.”  He turned out to be a prophet.  It didn’t matter.  But, what I didn’t understand that day is that it really didn’t matter.  Though I never have heard the story about how he drew the short straw and ended up with the assignment of teaching the preacher how to play, Harold wasn’t golfing with me because I was already good at it.  He was teaching me because he was willing to befriend a humiliated beginner. 

This woman Jesus befriended “had lived a sinful life.”  She looked more out of place in a Pharisee’s home than I do on a golf course.  What our English version of the scriptures is trying to say all too graciously and the Pharisee was all too willing to point out was that she sold sex for a living.  How the Pharisee knew that about her is interesting in itself.  There are those who sin and then there are those who always know too much about the sin of others to have been standing at a morally comfortable distance.  This woman’s reputation preceded her.  When she touched Jesus it rankled the religious pro in the room.  To him, the man of God’s place was with those who’d already proven good at godliness.  If Jesus were who he claimed to be he wouldn’t let her touch him.

Luke’s way of describing this woman even sounds somewhat condescending.  He describes her as living a sinful life as though she was the only one in town doing so.  But, we know what he means.  Her sin was worse than the sins of those who only practiced socially acceptable moral indiscretions.  And, while those change from generation to generation, the scriptures warn of a fixed standard. “There are six things which the Lord hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:  Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers (Proverbs 6:16, NASV).”  The problem with most of those sins is their social acceptability.  Everyone gossips.  It’s a sort of social sport.  That makes it O.K., right?  Being entertained by others who sell their bodies for sex makes for box office hits.  But, sell your body for sex and you’ll be at the top of the hit list of those in the religious moral majority despite their practice of other socially acceptable indiscretions.  That’s what Luke meant.  Her sin was worse than others as men judge sin.  That’s what bothered the Pharisee, too.

We’re hard on the Pharisees for being so judgmentally hard on others.  But, let’s put things twenty centuries old in current event perspective.  If you want emotional contact with why this Pharisee despised this first century woman of the streets, think about how you felt when you saw the pictures of Barbie Atkinson.  She’s that despicable character who locked her little girl in the closet for four months and that after no one knows what kind of abuse for her eight short years.  Those treating Lauren said that, when she was rescued, she thought she was two years old and didn’t know what the sun was.  What went on in that excuse for a home most of us would probably just as soon never know.  It’s bothersome enough, isn’t it, that it all happened so close. 

And, every time it does we wonder how.  It’s partly unimaginable.  But in a county where the annual turnover rate of Child Protective Services workers is 43 percent, in part because the average CPS caseworker makes $7,000 per year less than our already underpaid school teachers and works on twenty-five cases at a time, how can we be totally surprised?  What ought to frighten us as much as Lauren’s story are the stories we don’t know yet.  Lauren’s mother had six children in nine years by no telling how many fathers.  She kind of made her living that way.  Sleeping around.  Having babies.  Lauren just got run over by a life totally out of control.  If you want to know how the Pharisee felt about the prostitute washing Jesus’ feet just remember how you felt when you saw Barbie’s picture.  Then, you may also be able to understand why Jesus kept getting himself in trouble.  He hung out with people like that. 

He was even accused of being some kind of party animal.  But, Jesus knew that the only way he’d lose his way would be if he let what others thought about him dictate it.  Especially those who believed their own compromised morality to be a good compass by which others should set the course of their lives.  The religious crowd, those who paint their world in colors moralistically black and white using very broad brushes, can be impossibly difficult to please.  Jesus liked to work the morally wrong side of the street.  And, it frustrated him that the very same people who thought John the Baptist was demon possessed because of his religious strictness didn’t find him acceptable for loosening up a bit.  “‘The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”’”

That “friend” of sinners part really gives us trouble, doesn’t it?  The Pharisee wanted Jesus to do the right thing, prove his moral indignation and refuse the gift and touch of a whore.  Jesus wanted to do the loving thing whether others believed it to be right or not.  He knew this woman had more than enough lovers but that the one thing she needed most was a friend.  Jesus was, is, a friend of sinners.  Which is very good news for Barbie.  Barbie needs jail time among other things.  But, can you imagine anyone in this world who needs a friend right now more than Barbie?  Jesus is her friend.  That may be hard to believe.  But, if Jesus can’t be her friend then he can’t be ours either.  Jesus doesn’t befriend people on the basis of their goodness, only their humiliating need.  And, one difference between Barbie and us is that at least we now know what she kept hidden in her closet.  If Jesus can be Barbie’s friend then he can be mine and he can be yours.  That’s good news for Barbie and us.  Jesus is a friend of sinners. 

Several years ago I was having lunch with a man who was a prominent business leader and very active in his church.  We were talking about his pastor who had been caught in adultery, lost his job and family and was, at the time, stubbornly defiant and unrepentant.  Though this church member was angry at his former pastor, he said that he was trying to stay in touch with him because, when it was all over some day, he figured he was going to need a friend more than anything.  He wanted to be there waiting for him when that day came and he got out of the prison to which he’d sentenced himself.  Do you have a friend like that?  Do you have someone who will be waiting for you, no matter what, when you finally get paroled from your self-incarceration?  How would it change your future outlook if you knew that Jesus were your friend because he befriends humiliated sinners?  That he isn’t your friend or mine because we’re good at being his.  He’s our friend simply because we have the only qualification we need, our humiliated and sinful need of his friendship.

Just to be sure I’ve covered the bases with those keeping their moral scorecards up to date, I didn’t say that our sinfulness was of no consequence to God or his son who died for them.  It is just that where sin matters with God, his grace matters more.  People who keep moral scorecards have a hard time with that.  People who know they are hopelessly behind stopped keeping score long ago and are clinging to grace as their only hope.  That’s what this woman had done.  Jesus said of this prostitute, “‘her many sins have been forgiven for she loved much.’”  He wasn’t forgiving her because she’d done something loving for him.  She was empowered to love for the first time in her life, because she’d been forgiven.  Judgment only categorizes and classifies people according to their sin.  Love empowers people to love in return and live beyond their sin. 

The truth is, we never know the whole story about anyone else’s life.  In a coffee house a young waitress asked me early one Father’s Day morning if I’d called my dad.  She looked as though life had been particularly difficult for her and had aged her quickly beyond her years.  My heart had gone out to her over time and we’d talked some.  I told her I had called my dad already that morning and then asked if she’d done the same.  Her facial expression changed to striking sadness and she said, “I haven’t seen my dad in years.”  Then, she poured my coffee and walked away.  We never know the whole story.  That is what’s so intriguing about the parable Jesus told about the two debtors.  The one forgiven the most loved the most.  Before we rush to judgment of those who behave in ways we find unacceptable or who are mean, spiteful and unloving we ought to temper our judgment by remembering that we don’t know how much they’ve never known love. 

How many closets are there in Barbie’s past?  It doesn’t excuse what she did but it might make at least some sense of her life now and how she could be so void of life that she could do something like that to her own daughter.  But, this woman who washed Jesus’ feet very likely was a prostitute because she’d been widowed.  First century women who were widowed were often reduced to selling sex for a living.  But, for the sake of discussion, let’s not give her the benefit of the doubt. 

Let’s say she liked it.  Let’s say she had kids at home from multiple fathers.  Kids she abandoned daily while working the streets.  They were hungry and had head lice because she didn’t take care of them.  And, one day, on the way to see a client, she heard this man Jesus preaching on the streets she worked.  It was like nothing she’d ever heard.  She heard him say something like he did when he responded on another occasion to some religious professionals who were incensed that he would “‘eat with tax collectors and sinners.’”  Jesus said, “‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  Go and learn what this means:  ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners (Matthew 9:12-13).’”  He said that God loved those who were hopelessly unlovable and anyone could be forgiven anything.  That you didn’t have to be good to get his love.  You already had it. 

In an instant, grace did its miraculous work and she trusted Jesus then and there for his forgiveness.  And, she just had to have some way of thanking him.  For the first time in her life she’d been empowered, not judged, and she wanted to love this man in a good way.  Taking the proceeds from her last trick, she bought perfume, went looking for Jesus and found him in a Pharisees house.

Now, she’s close enough to touch him.  She may have meant to offer a little word of gratitude.  But, when you’re close enough to Jesus to touch him, it can leave you speechless.  She’s close enough to see love’s twinkle in his eye.  To hear the soft voice of compassion.  And, she just loses it.  She had wrestled with the toughest of men but was now a whimpering child.  Her tears falling to Jesus’ feet turn the dust on them to little balls of mud.  She’d made a mess of things, yet again.  She’d come to give a gift and instead muddied Jesus’ feet with her tears.  Unprepared as an uninvited guest and not having the social standing to even so much as ask for a towel she kneels down.  Having nothing more, she opens the perfume and pours it on his feet to wash away the mess she’d made.  And, using the only thing she has, she gathers her long strands of hair and brushes away the mud just as Jesus’ grace had washed away the stain of all her sins.  And, Jesus tells her what she already knew but needed to hear anyway from the only friend she’d ever known, “‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’” 

Later that night, lying in bed, the perfume lingered in her hair as it fell across her face and she remembered where it had been.  For the first time in years, caring more about living than making one, more concerned about giving love than making it, she rolled over and slept alone, yet in the company of the best friend she’d ever had. 

How would you sleep tonight if you knew Jesus were your friend?  How would you live tomorrow?  Wouldn’t you like to know right now?