Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
We are very familiar with parables in our tradition. Jesus used the parable with great ingenuity, but he didn't invent it. It was a literary device that was very widely used in the Mediterranean world. It was used by teachers, politicians, orators, rabbis, the lot. Among the most famous people to use the parable were Socrates and Aristotle. In our own day, the Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello has shown us the real possibility of parables for preaching today. A lovely example of this is his "Satisfied Fisherman". It goes something like this:
The rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find the Southern fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
"Why aren't you out fishing?" said the industrialist.
"Because I have caught enough fish for the day," said the fisherman.
"Why don't you catch some more?"
"What would I do with it?"
"You could earn more money" was the reply. "With that you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets. These would bring you more fish and more money. Soon you would have enough money to own two boats... maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you would be a rich man like me."
"What would I do then?"
"Then you could really enjoy life."
"What do you think I am doing right now?"
Now, a parable is a story, but not every story is a parable. A parable is a particular kind of story. It has a number of distinctive characteristics. First of all, it is drawn from ordinary, everyday life. Secondly, it teaches a religious or moral lesson. Thirdly, it is intended to persuade the listener and move him or her to action.
There is a parable tucked away in today's Gospel that could easily escape our attention. It is key to an understanding of the passage as a whole. In what is known as the parable of the two debtors, the man who is owed the money, the creditor, cancels a sum of five hundred denarii for one debtor and a sum of only fifty for the other. Which of the two debtors, asks Jesus of Simon, would feel the greater gratitude? The one with the greater debt, Simon ventured cautiously. He had got it right, and apart from the invitation to Jesus to dine at his table, it was about the only thing he did get right on this particular occasion.
The two debtors in today's Gospel are the woman with the bad name and Simon the Pharisee. The major point in today's Gospel is that the woman with the 'bad name' was in the presence of a love that was larger than herself too. She was a woman of such ill-repute - probably a prostitute - that Simon the Pharisee expected Our Lord to realise that straightaway. If Christ couldn't see the prostitute in her, then Simon couldn't see the prophet in him. Now Simon himself couldn't have been such a bad man. The fact that he was a Pharisee and that he still invited Our Lord to his table indicated an openness and tolerance that was uncharacteristic of his kind. Despite that, the difference in attitude between himself and Our Lord couldn't have been greater. Where Simon saw only a reprobate, Jesus saw a sinner, and a repentant one at that. It was the repentance that mattered most of all to him, that and the love with which it was expressed and the faith that underlay it. David's repentance, in the first reading, met a similar response: 'The Lord, for his part, forgives your sin; you are not to die' Nathan assured David. The woman with the bad name wasn't going to die either, socially or spiritually. There is no end apparently to the forgiveness of God.
The gospels always link forgiveness and joy. (Good examples are: The Prodigal Son; the Lost Sheep; the lost Drachma) Here, in our story today, was a woman who probably found pleasure in life but very little happiness. As far as the Pharisees were concerned, she was an outcast. Among the women in the place, who found their marriages threatened, she was probably detested and feared. The men she'd have encountered or propositioned wouldn't have wanted her for her own sake but would have used her for their own satisfaction. There were few, if any, in that entire community who would have valued her for herself. This woman with a bad name, however, wanted better than a bad future The spiritual side of her nature hadn't been completely subjugated by the sensual. Deep in the recesses of her being, she must have longed for acceptance and forgiveness. She was to find her better future in the Lord.
The scene where she wept at the feet of Jesus and wiped the tears away with her hair is one of the most moving in all Scripture. Whether she was forgiven because she loved, or she loved because she was forgiven, is an argument for the scholars. What's clear from St Luke, is that this woman, who hitherto felt used and rejected, now felt accepted, loved and restored. The tears she shed couldn't have been tears of grief. They had to be tears of joy. The woman was down on her knees but her dignity was fully restored. Repentance is its own reward, and the outcome is restored dignity and great joy.