All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

This past Sunday night, several couples went to celebrate after our first Second Sunday service by eating at El Fenix. I’ve often thought we could start an extension of Cliff Temple at El Fenix. By the time Nancy and I get there most Sundays after morning worship, all the chairs are taken and you who eat there are sopping up the last of the enchilada chili with what’s left of the tortillas. What better place to celebrate last Sunday night than El Fenix?,

Caroline Leftwich, not quite yet four, graced me by asking if she could sit with “Pastor Glen.” Believe me, the pleasure was all mine. I never feel more like a pastor than when I hear someone like Caroline say the words, “Pastor Glen.” They are so innocent; they give so much more than they demand while still reminding me of something very sacred. I still don’t know what it was I did to earn that gift. Maybe that’s the nature of grace; it always surprises us with its inexplicable generosity. All is I know is that every time I hear Caroline say, “Pastor Glen,” it feels like a shot of vitamin B-12 energy straight into my veins.

When her plate came, Caroline asked me to cut her enchilada. By then, to be honest, I was ready for a break. We had played a non-stop game of “I spy,” and Caroline was beating me two to one. I took her fork and knife and cut her enchilada. Before she took one bite, she asked me to help her butter a corn tortilla. I picked up the same knife. When she saw the enchilada chili on her knife she stopped me. It obviously concerned her that the butter would be made impure with a dirty knife. She looked at her knife and said to me, “Lick it.” She would have let me, too. Instead, I took a clean knife and buttered her tortilla. Otherwise, Caroline would have let me lick her knife and then butter her tortilla. I don’t know anyone I trust that much! Do you?

It set me to wondering. How long will she remain so unstained by the fear of germs others might give her if she shares life too closely with them? Obviously, Greg and Julie and loving grandparents have taught her that the world is a safe place to run and play and even let others lick your knife. Will she always feel that way? When do we stop being innocent children who trust everyone and start being suspicious of the infections others bear that could harm us, even if they don’t and they can’t?

When do we start closing others out? Who tells us to do that? At what age do we begin to distinguish between ourselves and others, especially to the extent that we judge ourselves better than others or our sin germs less lethal than theirs? When do we do that and who told us to do so?

Whoever told us, Jesus would make us think again. This morning, as we did last week, we have two stories, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, that compliment each other beautifully to drive home Jesus’ point.

The Old Testament story is very familiar to all of us who know what it means to eat at El Fenix after Sunday morning church. David committed adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers and then had the man put on the front lines of battle to insure his death and thereby cover up his sin, he hoped. This angered God greatly. Perhaps knowing that David was too proud to take a direct challenge, God sent Nathan to him to confront him in a somewhat backdoor kind of way.

Nathan did so by telling David this story of terrible injustice. A rich man had a poor man’s only lamb sacrificed for dinner instead of using one of many of his own which he had in abundance. When David heard this, he was incensed and, as King, demanded the death sentence. Nathan then says to David, “Actually, you’re the one the story is about. You have been given all of this kingdom by God himself. You could have any woman you wanted but you took this poor soldier’s wife instead.”

Aside from all the other painful and powerful lessons this story teaches, this one is most clear. In his haste to judge someone else for their sin David was blind to his own. That is, by the way, one thing essential to being able to judge others. It is impossible to judge others, no matter what the sin, without being blind to all that God has given you, all that God has forgiven you; you can’t judge others for the infection their sin brings to this world without being blind to your own spiritual pathogens.

The New Testament story is also very similar. Jesus is having dinner in the house of a Pharisee when a woman, known to be a sinner, enters the house. We don’t know what her sin was, though it wouldn’t be hard to guess. Maybe she was an adulteress. Maybe she was a lesbian. We don’t know, but it wouldn’t be hard to guess. She had sinned. It had been public enough of a sin that it had become the mark by which everyone identified her, not her name or anything else.

We catch up with her standing behind Jesus, as though she didn’t think she deserved to make eye contact with him, anointing his feet with very expensive oil. She begins to weep so uncontrollably that there is enough water from her tears to bathe Jesus’ feet and dry them with her hair. This is one of the most intimate stories ever told in scripture, not to mention one of the most graphic portrayals of humility ever recorded.

Of course, the Pharisee was very offended by all of this. He challenged Jesus. Surely, if Jesus knew the sin germs this woman carried wherever she went, he wouldn’t let her touch him at all, much less bathe his feet with her sin-infected tears and filthy hair. This is also one of the few times recorded in scripture where we are given the name of a Pharisee. Jesus addresses Simon by name and then tells him a parable. A creditor had loaned two people money they could not afford to repay. One owed a rather small amount, the other owed more than he could never hope to repay in a lifetime. The creditor, for whatever reason, chooses to cancel the debt of both. Jesus then tosses the loaded question to Simon like a hot potato. “Which of the two is likely to be most grateful?” Simon says that the answer is self-evident, the one who was forgiven the most.

Jesus then drives home the whole point of both the parable Nathan told David and that he had just told Simon. The extent to which we are willing to forgive others is proof positive of how much we know we’ve been forgiven. Unwillingness to forgive others if proof of how little we have acknowledged the depth of our own sin and what it cost God to forgive us. To put it another way, our unwillingness to forgive others is not evidence of the gravity of another’s sin as much as it is evidence of the gravity of our ingratitude for God’s grace toward us. The scripture says that, “They will know we are Christians by our love” (Paraphrase, John 13:35). There is no greater mark of Christian love than the standard we use to mark out forgiveness toward others.

Several years ago, three young people from Rockwall were killed in a horrifying wreck. In less time than it will take me to finish this sentence, their pickup hydroplaned on a small patch of moisture and ran head-on into another truck on a rural road. Their three beautiful promising lives were just gone, forever, in an instant. I knew one of the families only at a distance. Cameron had played YMCA soccer with the younger brother of one of the boys who was killed. We had practiced in their backyard many evenings. When Chris was killed it hit me hard. For weeks, I couldn’t get the family off of my mind. I was all but obsessed. I even found myself crying at times, which was somewhat strange given how little I knew the family. Later, I was sharing my experience with a friend and mentor. I told him that none of it made sense to me, that I hurt this badly for someone I didn’t even know. I said to my friend, “I don’t know what it is about those people that made this death so hard.” Nathan-like, he graciously said to me, “That’s because it’s not about them, it’s about you.” The death of those three young people had called out in me some unacknowledged germ of fear about the vulnerability of my own sons. Without realizing it, I was pre-grieving the death of my own sons who were and still are quite safe.

My grief was not about them. It was about me. I’ve seen that principle apply itself over and over and over again, not just in moments when what happens to others calls out my own fear, but when the sin of others calls out my own judgment of them.

That’s all Nathan was telling David. That’s all Jesus was telling Simon. The judgment or the fear or the anger that others call out in us tells us far more about ourselves than it does about them. Catherine’s willingness to let me lick her fork said nothing whatsoever about the pathogens in my mouth; it spoke volumes about the purity of her innocence and the trust of her three and one-half-year-old soul.

Have you carved out a place in your life for someone to whom you are not willing to extend the same forgiveness God, in Christ, has extended to you? If so, please listen carefully. Whatever it is about them that makes you so angry and so bitter and so judgmental says volumes more about you than it does about them. Beware! That place in your soul to which you have refused to allow the blood of Jesus to flow through you to them will become gangrenous. It will die, and maybe you with it. David was generously forgiven by God for his sin yet paid a horrible price nonetheless for its human consequences.

Just as more soldiers died in the Civil War than from all the other wars America fought with all of its foreign enemies combined, it is also true that more of those deaths were caused by infection and disease than by bullets. So it is that when brothers hate brothers and sisters hate sisters, the infection and disease of hate does more to destroy those who carry the pathogens of hate than it ever does to destroy those they perceive to be their enemies.

We held Margaret Bassett Johnson’s memorial yesterday. She was, as you know, the daughter of Dr. Wallace Bassett, the pastor here from 1918 until 1966. Her oldest son eulogized her by telling one of many fascinating stories of her life, just four months shy of one-hundred years long. When she graduated from Baylor in 1928 and her father gave her a graduation gift. Her son could not remember the gift itself but he did remember his mother telling him what Dr. Bassett wrote in the card that accompanied the gift. Reminding her of Jesus’ own words, he had written to his daughter, “To whom much given, much will be expected.” If God’s grace not only forgives you but also expects you to extend to others that same forgiveness, is your life evidence that you have lived up to that expectation?

One of the most interesting dynamics of this morning’s gospel story is the fact that this woman, known to all as a sinner, did not utter one word. We don’t know what brought her tears. What encounter had she had with Jesus prior to this? We don’t know. What we do know is the pronouncement Jesus made to her. Speaking of her to Simon, Jesus said, “‘I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’” Then, turning to the woman, Jesus said, “‘Your sins are forgiven . . . your faith has saved you; go in peace.’” She didn’t say one word; her faith spoke volumes.

I’d like to stretch your faith for just a moment. We place a great deal of emphasis on what we call the “public profession of faith” at the end of our worship services. We have done it so much that, in the minds of many, we have equivocated one’s salvation with that one-moment-in-time public declaration. Often times, I was told, particularly by visiting evangelists at revival times, that if I could not recall the specific time I had accepted Jesus as my personal savior then, in all likelihood, I never had. In order to be certain of my salvation, I was encouraged to “walk the aisle,” yet again, to be certain I had a memory I could keep of what I had done to secure my salvation. I carried that load of guilt-fear for so long it all but destroyed my ability to believe at all!

Jesus never said such as that. He did say a great deal about denying ourselves, taking up the cross of forgiveness and following him, about extending to others the same forgiveness as God has extended to us. To him, the greatest public profession of faith anyone could make in Him as Lord was evidenced in how much they extended the love God had extended to them to others. What difference does it make if we can remember the specific moment we “accepted Jesus” but we have an even longer memory of the sins of others against us? If you cannot remember the specific moment you first believed in Jesus, stop worrying about it! The real question is, are you trusting him now and following him now as your Lord? Is your life now clear, living witness that you extend to others the same forgiveness the Lord of salvation that you claim to follow has extended to you? Have you followed Jesus in forgiving others as he has forgiven you and, if not, can you truly claim you are “saved”?

All those people who make you so angry and bitter, maybe some of them brothers and sisters in this very church or others from years long gone but not forgotten, your salvation, your peace, your hope, well, it’s not about them. It never has been. It’s not about them.