Prophet, sinner, saint...

Gospel text for this week: Luke 7:36-8:3

She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.

I've been reading various responses and rough draft sermons on this lesson all week. People seem to have a very strong reaction to it, at least the women preachers whose blogs I read. It's the hair. That's what gets people. Some find it oddly disconcerting, some find it achingly intimate but no one I've read doesn't have a reaction to that hair.

My priest recommended I read Womanpriest the first time we met. My copy sits on the arm of the couch, within easy reach. A scrap of paper, grabbed absently, hangs out of it halfway through. Alla's words echo back to me when I read this scripture. She speaks of what women can bring to the priesthood. Not the traditional pat answer of "compassion, and gentleness" but something far more important:"... a genuine value for femaleness." Our church has been sorely lacking on this point, as has our world. But Christ was not. Over and over again Christ turned to women and met them as they were. He neither ignored nor belittled them. He did not demand they be subservient or passive. He acknowledged and taught them. He spoke to them in public. He touched them.

I have been thinking a great deal about priesthood. Alla reminds me that the calling of a priest is sacramental, she goes beyond sacramental ministry to say it is a sacramental way of living. I love that perspective. And as I read this afternoon the gospel lesson took on new shades.

In the old testament it is the prophets who anoint God's chosen. And here we are, in a time when women were chattel and a woman is anointing God's chosen. (The only anointing Jesus gets, ever, is from women.) She does it without fanfare, without claiming any special titles for herself. It is a humble and intimate act. I can see it as nothing but an act of pure love. Love, and gratitude so strong they could only be expressed through tears and kisses. No cloth would do to dry the feet of this Chosen. Only the hair of the prophet as she washed his feet and then anointed him.

The Christ does not pull away from such show of raw emotion. He does not flush with embarrassment. And he does not consider her, a woman, unworthy. He acknowledges what she has done, he blesses her. Whatever her sins might have been he wipes them away. And he accepts her, just as she is.

Oh, that we would be so brave. To cry out our love, to wipe away the dust and pain of the world with our own hair. To serve and anoint, without fear of unworthiness or thought of propriety, because our hearts drive us to it.

And that we would be Christ as well to another. Loving and accepting her just as God made her. Not pushing her away out of fear or shame; but accepting the service God has called her to perform, and rejoicing with her in it.

Now that was far different then what I thought I would write about. This was supposed to be about our Midwestern fear of touching, about human contact. I'm no longer surprised when things don't come out the way I planned, I'm enjoying it.