Saved by faith
Commentary
Object:
Our readings this week draw us into the tricky territory of works righteousness and the eternal temptation we humans seem to face in making the freely given love of God something we must earn. God’s law is given to help us live our lives well with one another; God’s love has already saved us no matter how much we may fail in our attempts to earn God’s grace.
1 Kings 21:1-10 (11-14) 15-21a
Jezebel was a princess, daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and her marriage to Ahab, king of Israel, was likely intended to be an astute political alliance. From the perspective of the writers of the books of Kings, however, it was a religious disaster, for Jezebel brought her homeland’s worship of Baal into Israel, and her husband King Ahab joined her in it. The prophet Elijah appeared during Ahab and Jezebel’s reign to challenge this apostasy. In the lectionary, we are in the midst of several weeks of reading about the life-and-death confrontations that arose between Elijah and Ahab and Jezebel.
Today’s story is one skirmish in the extended conflict between Elijah and the king and queen, though it is less about religious difference and more about the abuses of royal power. The plot is reminiscent of the story of David and Bathsheba: the king desires something he sees close to the palace (here, a vineyard), and unable to get it by lawful means, he resorts to trickery and ultimately the death of an honest, Godly man so that he can claim what he desires. The king’s treachery is then condemned by a divinely inspired prophet. In verses 21:27-29 of 1 Kings (not read today) Ahab repents of his sin, as David did, and as in the Davidic story, this repentance results in the withholding of divine punishment from the king while moving it to the next generation. The encounter between David and Nathan the prophet over the death of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah appears in the Track 2 reading for this Sunday.
The writer of 1 Kings claims: “Ahab, son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all [kings] who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel is the source of much of that evil. Jezebel was a strong woman, accustomed to wielding royal power, and she brought the expectations of her own culture into Israel. The Harper Collins Study Bible notes of 1 Kings 21:1-16, “Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, monarchs had, or sought to have, absolute control over their subjects. As this story illustrates, however, such control was never an ideal in Israel, where the king was never above the law and was always subject to divine judgment” (p. 515). When Naboth, following Israelite law not to surrender ancestral lands, refused Ahab’s request, Jezebel showed considerable understanding of the Israelite law by arranging for charges to be brought against Naboth that would result in his death. In all likelihood, a subject who had refused her father the king’s request would have been punished severely, so while Jezebel’s actions remain egregious, they are within reason in light of her royal upbringing in Sidon.
Galatians 2:15-21
Our six-week series of readings from Galatians that extends from Proper 4 through Proper 9 is the only time this letter appears in the three-year lectionary cycle apart from Galatians 4:4-7, which is appointed for Christmas 1 in cycle B and the Feast of the Holy Name. It was written to address what was then an urgent question: Do we have to become Jews to follow Jesus? This question has long since been answered with a resounding “no” by most Christians and it may feel strange to modern hearers, but this is what some missionaries were preaching to the early church in Galatia: Gentile men were to be circumcised, and Jewish festivals and dietary laws observed. Paul wrote to rebut these claims, arguing that salvation is found not through the law, but through Christ. The era of winning God’s favor by following the law has ended; Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection have already ensured our salvation, and it is sinful to believe or act otherwise. While most modern Christians no longer debate the specific issues that prompted this letter, Galatians invites us to examine the expectations and rules we now have for religious practice and behavior. Consciously or not, do we place our faith in being good people and behaving well, or do we place our faith in the mercy and love of God we have received through Jesus Christ? What messages about rules and faith did we internalize growing up? What do we believe now? What do we deeply wish to believe? It is worth noting a peculiarity of the English translation in verses 16 and 20 of today’s reading. The terms “faith in Christ” that appears twice in verse 16 and “faith in the Son of God” in that appears verse 20 in the NRSV may also be translated “faith of Christ” and “faith of the Son of God.” For those who struggle with faith and consider it a requirement of salvation that they are unable to meet (thereby treating it like law, rather than grace), it may be liberating to hear that we are saved by the faith of Jesus -- the faith that led him through his death into resurrected life. Having faith in Jesus does not become a new law for Christians; rather, we are saved by Jesus’ faith. Our task is simply to accept this salvation that has already been accomplished, and then to live our days with glad and grateful hearts.
Luke 7:36--8:3
All four gospels tell the story of a woman anointing Jesus during a dinner at someone’s house, but Luke’s version is distinct in several ways. In the other three gospels the anointing happens much later in the story, as Jesus dines in Bethany just days before his arrest and crucifixion. In Matthew and Mark he is at the home of Simon the leper, and an unnamed woman anoints his head. In John he is also in Bethany, but at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, whom he has recently raised from the dead. Here, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet. In all three of these Bethany stories, Jesus praises the woman who anoints him for preparing him for his burial, despite protests from the disciples about wasted money that could have been given to the poor.
Luke’s story is different. It takes place in an unnamed Galilean city before Jesus even begins teaching the disciples about his coming passion. His host, also named Simon, is a Pharisee, presumably someone interested in his teaching but also a potential opponent rather than an already devoted follower; Luke’s account comes in the midst of a series of conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees recounted in chapters 5 and 6. It is only in Luke that the woman is identified as a sinner, and it is only in Luke that the conversation at the table turns to a discussion of love and forgiveness. Luke’s account is also remarkable in the extravagant emotion displayed by the unknown woman. Some commentators speculate that she anointed Jesus’ feet, an unusual action -- in the ancient world heads were usually anointed, while feet were simply washed -- because she felt too unworthy to approach closer and anoint his head. Jesus would have been reclining at the dining table with his feet pointing away from the table, so she would not have had to come as close to anoint his feet. Under strict Levitical law (Leviticus 5:1-5), Jesus would have been made unclean by the sinful woman’s touch. A prophet would have known both the law and the woman’s sinfulness, hence Simon the Pharisee’s internal doubt of Jesus’ status in Luke 5:39. But as in previous encounters with the Pharisees over healing on the sabbath and plucking grain on the sabbath, Jesus claims a higher authority than the Mosaic Law. Here, the woman’s demonstrated love and contrition, not any ritual action, are what prompt Jesus to pronounce her forgiveness. And Jesus himself claims the divine ability to forgive sins -- a claim of scandalous magnitude amidst the assembled company.
Application
In every generation, we humans need to discover again that we are saved not by works but by faith. There are so many ways works righteousness can creep into the lives of the followers of Christ, turning our joyful response to God’s saving grace into duty and drudgery. It can be so hard to accept that we are already saved; so many of us want to do something to ensure our salvation. In the early church in Galatia, that something was following the Jewish law, repeating the Pharisees’ emphasis on right practice of the law that Jesus challenged in our reading from Luke’s gospel today. The sinful woman who brought her full heart and sorrow to Jesus challenges all of us to name our sins and bring them to God with our heartfelt contrition and devotion. Keeping up the act that all is well and that we have everything under control only works for so long; at some point, we all need to throw ourselves at the feet of a merciful God.
In recent months, I have confronted the reality of middle-aged spread and joined my first-ever weight loss group, run by a doctor and nutritionist at a local family practice. While I am new to the weight loss journey, some others in the group have struggled with severe weight issues for decades. The shame that some feel about their weight is heart-wrenching, and so often it becomes the greatest hindrance to developing more healthful lifestyles. Every slip from the healthy guidelines we are learning has the potential to become internalized as a moral failing, and the weight of self-judgment can make it nearly impossible to break free from self-defeating patterns. I am seeing week by week how the rules that are meant to help us live healthy lives can become burdens that ironically defeat the very health we seek.
So it is with God’s law. After the Exodus from Egypt, God gave the law as a gift to Moses and the people of Israel to help them form a new, just society as they grew from slavery into freedom. But time and again, the gift turned into a bludgeon -- fail to observe the law, and expect punishment. In the case of kings like Ahab that accountability was a gift for his subjects, but far more often it meant living in fear of transgressing God’s laws rather than living in the freedom God’s laws made possible. And so Christ came, in Paul’s and Luke’s telling, reminding us that the law is meant to be the servant of the holy and not its judge. The love of God is higher and greater than any statute, and if statutes get in the way of that love they no longer serve God or humanity. Laws are certainly useful, and at their very best they are divine gifts that help us order our common lives gracefully and gratefully. (How would our lives and this world be changed if we genuinely kept sabbath, for example?) But they exist to serve God’s mercy and justice, not to create fear and disdain for self or others. My daughter, no doubt, could give you a long list of rules I have for her that feel like burdens: wash your hands before meals; look both ways before crossing the street; brush your teeth thoroughly; eat your vegetables; say please and thank you. But any parent knows that such rules are part and parcel of how we love our children and seek to help them grow into loving, safe, and healthy adults. How much more is this true for God, whose love and mercy surpass our deepest understanding.
Alternate Application
Jezebel was not a harlot. Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. The mention of these two women and the preponderance of women who appear in today’s readings offer a rare opportunity to discuss the place of women in scripture and to correct common errors in thought that have developed over the centuries. Jezebel was a queen who, when it was clear her end was near, bedecked herself in royal attire and proudly took her place in public view as she awaited her death. Her sin was not harlotry but following the wrong God and being a powerful female leader who swayed others to her will. Mary Magdalene was cured of seven demons, but she is entirely distinct from the unnamed woman in Luke 7 who anointed Jesus’ feet, whose sins most likely were sexual. But in the case of the unnamed woman, it is worth reflecting that in Jesus’ day, as in our own, the vast majority of women who turn to prostitution have little or no other recourse and are more sinned against than sinning. It is clear in Luke’s story that Jesus does not flinch from the touch of this named sinner, and for her, the encounter provides a profound healing.
1 Kings 21:1-10 (11-14) 15-21a
Jezebel was a princess, daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians, and her marriage to Ahab, king of Israel, was likely intended to be an astute political alliance. From the perspective of the writers of the books of Kings, however, it was a religious disaster, for Jezebel brought her homeland’s worship of Baal into Israel, and her husband King Ahab joined her in it. The prophet Elijah appeared during Ahab and Jezebel’s reign to challenge this apostasy. In the lectionary, we are in the midst of several weeks of reading about the life-and-death confrontations that arose between Elijah and Ahab and Jezebel.
Today’s story is one skirmish in the extended conflict between Elijah and the king and queen, though it is less about religious difference and more about the abuses of royal power. The plot is reminiscent of the story of David and Bathsheba: the king desires something he sees close to the palace (here, a vineyard), and unable to get it by lawful means, he resorts to trickery and ultimately the death of an honest, Godly man so that he can claim what he desires. The king’s treachery is then condemned by a divinely inspired prophet. In verses 21:27-29 of 1 Kings (not read today) Ahab repents of his sin, as David did, and as in the Davidic story, this repentance results in the withholding of divine punishment from the king while moving it to the next generation. The encounter between David and Nathan the prophet over the death of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah appears in the Track 2 reading for this Sunday.
The writer of 1 Kings claims: “Ahab, son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all [kings] who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel is the source of much of that evil. Jezebel was a strong woman, accustomed to wielding royal power, and she brought the expectations of her own culture into Israel. The Harper Collins Study Bible notes of 1 Kings 21:1-16, “Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, monarchs had, or sought to have, absolute control over their subjects. As this story illustrates, however, such control was never an ideal in Israel, where the king was never above the law and was always subject to divine judgment” (p. 515). When Naboth, following Israelite law not to surrender ancestral lands, refused Ahab’s request, Jezebel showed considerable understanding of the Israelite law by arranging for charges to be brought against Naboth that would result in his death. In all likelihood, a subject who had refused her father the king’s request would have been punished severely, so while Jezebel’s actions remain egregious, they are within reason in light of her royal upbringing in Sidon.
Galatians 2:15-21
Our six-week series of readings from Galatians that extends from Proper 4 through Proper 9 is the only time this letter appears in the three-year lectionary cycle apart from Galatians 4:4-7, which is appointed for Christmas 1 in cycle B and the Feast of the Holy Name. It was written to address what was then an urgent question: Do we have to become Jews to follow Jesus? This question has long since been answered with a resounding “no” by most Christians and it may feel strange to modern hearers, but this is what some missionaries were preaching to the early church in Galatia: Gentile men were to be circumcised, and Jewish festivals and dietary laws observed. Paul wrote to rebut these claims, arguing that salvation is found not through the law, but through Christ. The era of winning God’s favor by following the law has ended; Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection have already ensured our salvation, and it is sinful to believe or act otherwise. While most modern Christians no longer debate the specific issues that prompted this letter, Galatians invites us to examine the expectations and rules we now have for religious practice and behavior. Consciously or not, do we place our faith in being good people and behaving well, or do we place our faith in the mercy and love of God we have received through Jesus Christ? What messages about rules and faith did we internalize growing up? What do we believe now? What do we deeply wish to believe? It is worth noting a peculiarity of the English translation in verses 16 and 20 of today’s reading. The terms “faith in Christ” that appears twice in verse 16 and “faith in the Son of God” in that appears verse 20 in the NRSV may also be translated “faith of Christ” and “faith of the Son of God.” For those who struggle with faith and consider it a requirement of salvation that they are unable to meet (thereby treating it like law, rather than grace), it may be liberating to hear that we are saved by the faith of Jesus -- the faith that led him through his death into resurrected life. Having faith in Jesus does not become a new law for Christians; rather, we are saved by Jesus’ faith. Our task is simply to accept this salvation that has already been accomplished, and then to live our days with glad and grateful hearts.
Luke 7:36--8:3
All four gospels tell the story of a woman anointing Jesus during a dinner at someone’s house, but Luke’s version is distinct in several ways. In the other three gospels the anointing happens much later in the story, as Jesus dines in Bethany just days before his arrest and crucifixion. In Matthew and Mark he is at the home of Simon the leper, and an unnamed woman anoints his head. In John he is also in Bethany, but at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, whom he has recently raised from the dead. Here, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet. In all three of these Bethany stories, Jesus praises the woman who anoints him for preparing him for his burial, despite protests from the disciples about wasted money that could have been given to the poor.
Luke’s story is different. It takes place in an unnamed Galilean city before Jesus even begins teaching the disciples about his coming passion. His host, also named Simon, is a Pharisee, presumably someone interested in his teaching but also a potential opponent rather than an already devoted follower; Luke’s account comes in the midst of a series of conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees recounted in chapters 5 and 6. It is only in Luke that the woman is identified as a sinner, and it is only in Luke that the conversation at the table turns to a discussion of love and forgiveness. Luke’s account is also remarkable in the extravagant emotion displayed by the unknown woman. Some commentators speculate that she anointed Jesus’ feet, an unusual action -- in the ancient world heads were usually anointed, while feet were simply washed -- because she felt too unworthy to approach closer and anoint his head. Jesus would have been reclining at the dining table with his feet pointing away from the table, so she would not have had to come as close to anoint his feet. Under strict Levitical law (Leviticus 5:1-5), Jesus would have been made unclean by the sinful woman’s touch. A prophet would have known both the law and the woman’s sinfulness, hence Simon the Pharisee’s internal doubt of Jesus’ status in Luke 5:39. But as in previous encounters with the Pharisees over healing on the sabbath and plucking grain on the sabbath, Jesus claims a higher authority than the Mosaic Law. Here, the woman’s demonstrated love and contrition, not any ritual action, are what prompt Jesus to pronounce her forgiveness. And Jesus himself claims the divine ability to forgive sins -- a claim of scandalous magnitude amidst the assembled company.
Application
In every generation, we humans need to discover again that we are saved not by works but by faith. There are so many ways works righteousness can creep into the lives of the followers of Christ, turning our joyful response to God’s saving grace into duty and drudgery. It can be so hard to accept that we are already saved; so many of us want to do something to ensure our salvation. In the early church in Galatia, that something was following the Jewish law, repeating the Pharisees’ emphasis on right practice of the law that Jesus challenged in our reading from Luke’s gospel today. The sinful woman who brought her full heart and sorrow to Jesus challenges all of us to name our sins and bring them to God with our heartfelt contrition and devotion. Keeping up the act that all is well and that we have everything under control only works for so long; at some point, we all need to throw ourselves at the feet of a merciful God.
In recent months, I have confronted the reality of middle-aged spread and joined my first-ever weight loss group, run by a doctor and nutritionist at a local family practice. While I am new to the weight loss journey, some others in the group have struggled with severe weight issues for decades. The shame that some feel about their weight is heart-wrenching, and so often it becomes the greatest hindrance to developing more healthful lifestyles. Every slip from the healthy guidelines we are learning has the potential to become internalized as a moral failing, and the weight of self-judgment can make it nearly impossible to break free from self-defeating patterns. I am seeing week by week how the rules that are meant to help us live healthy lives can become burdens that ironically defeat the very health we seek.
So it is with God’s law. After the Exodus from Egypt, God gave the law as a gift to Moses and the people of Israel to help them form a new, just society as they grew from slavery into freedom. But time and again, the gift turned into a bludgeon -- fail to observe the law, and expect punishment. In the case of kings like Ahab that accountability was a gift for his subjects, but far more often it meant living in fear of transgressing God’s laws rather than living in the freedom God’s laws made possible. And so Christ came, in Paul’s and Luke’s telling, reminding us that the law is meant to be the servant of the holy and not its judge. The love of God is higher and greater than any statute, and if statutes get in the way of that love they no longer serve God or humanity. Laws are certainly useful, and at their very best they are divine gifts that help us order our common lives gracefully and gratefully. (How would our lives and this world be changed if we genuinely kept sabbath, for example?) But they exist to serve God’s mercy and justice, not to create fear and disdain for self or others. My daughter, no doubt, could give you a long list of rules I have for her that feel like burdens: wash your hands before meals; look both ways before crossing the street; brush your teeth thoroughly; eat your vegetables; say please and thank you. But any parent knows that such rules are part and parcel of how we love our children and seek to help them grow into loving, safe, and healthy adults. How much more is this true for God, whose love and mercy surpass our deepest understanding.
Alternate Application
Jezebel was not a harlot. Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. The mention of these two women and the preponderance of women who appear in today’s readings offer a rare opportunity to discuss the place of women in scripture and to correct common errors in thought that have developed over the centuries. Jezebel was a queen who, when it was clear her end was near, bedecked herself in royal attire and proudly took her place in public view as she awaited her death. Her sin was not harlotry but following the wrong God and being a powerful female leader who swayed others to her will. Mary Magdalene was cured of seven demons, but she is entirely distinct from the unnamed woman in Luke 7 who anointed Jesus’ feet, whose sins most likely were sexual. But in the case of the unnamed woman, it is worth reflecting that in Jesus’ day, as in our own, the vast majority of women who turn to prostitution have little or no other recourse and are more sinned against than sinning. It is clear in Luke’s story that Jesus does not flinch from the touch of this named sinner, and for her, the encounter provides a profound healing.
