Every year when Fathers’ Day rolls around I think of my Dad. I suppose it’s the normal thing to do, but I lost my Dad 29 years ago, so I end up just remembering. I was blessed because my relationship with him was good. In fact I was rather angry with him for dying because we had just come to the point where fathers become friends. So, today cherish your Dad, if he’s around, and if not, remember him fondly. If your relationship with him isn’t so good, work on it a bit. Regardless, you won’t regret it.

My Dad was a storyteller. I’m not half as good at it as he was. Of course, I also can’t tell the kind of stories he did either – at least not from the pulpit! Dad was a child of the Depression; he had lost his father at a relatively young age, so his constant refrain was: “Waste not, want not.” As I grow older and, please God, wiser I see the point he was trying to make. It is exactly the explanation we find in The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, “If we don’t waste what we have, we’ll still have it in the future and will not lack (want) it.” It is good, common-sense, down-to-earth advice we should heed, but does it apply in every case? What about love and forgiveness? Does it apply to them? Love, forgive, waste not, want not – really?

The lessons today call us to look at love and forgiveness through the lens of justification. The passage we read today from Luke is part of a total picture that the author has been painting illustrating the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. Part of the linkage is references to people “justifying God.” Charles Talbert, a Luke scholar, says: “At first sight this use of the verb “to justify” seems strange but Jewish usage shows it is not. In the Psalms of Solomon dikaioun (to justify) does not refer to a human’s justification but rather refers to God. God’s people justify him; that is they vindicate the sentence, judgments, and name of God, accepting and acknowledging them to be righteous (2:16; 3:3; 4:9; 8:7; 27). The same usage is found in Ps. 51:4: “thou art justified and blameless in thy judgment” (cf. also 2 Esdr. 10:16; b Berakoth 19a). It is this same usage we encounter in Rom. 3:4 which cites Ps. 51:4, and in 1 Tim 3:16. Both Luke 7:29 and 7:35 (//Matt 11:19) use the verb dikaioun in this way. Here the verb “justified” should be paraphrased “demonstrated or acknowledged to be righteous” (G. Schrenk, TDNT, 2:213-15).” [Reading Luke, p. 84-5]

What is happening in these justifications is the acknowledgement of the divine authority in what John the Baptist and Jesus are saying and doing. They both came pointing out God’s judgment and righteousness, reminding people that they don’t measure up, but offering forgiveness if they repent, turn their lives around, and live as God would have them live. As Talbert says: “Since the will of God set forth in John’s ministry was summed up in his “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:3), for the evangelist to say the Pharisees rejected God’s purpose for them is to say they did not repent and did not receive God’s forgiveness. Since Jesus came to call sinners to repentance (5:32), to reject him was to miss the acceptance of God that Jesus’ presence mediated (5:17-26. 27-32). To justify God was to acknowledge the rightness of his call in John and Jesus and to repent and be forgiven: This the people and the tax collectors did; this the Pharisees and the lawyers did not.” [Reading Luke, p.85]

So what we hear/see this morning is the reality of acceptance and rejection being played out. Simon the Pharisee can’t quite accept that his self-righteousness isn’t enough for God and doesn’t accept the idea that God’s purpose for him is repentance and a life of self-giving love. Like so many, he doesn’t realize that it’s not about how we measure up to everyone else around us, but how our words and actions measure up against the righteousness of God. The woman who wanders in off the street – and this was not at all considered untoward in near-Eastern society at that time – has accepted what Jesus has been preaching. She has experienced deep forgiveness and reconciliation in discovering God’s purpose for her. So what we have here are a covert and an overt sinner. The former doesn’t repent, the latter has. As Martin Luther said, “it was a sin of the flesh [Jesus] forgave, a sin of the spirit he reproved.” [Quoted in Reading Luke, p. 85]

The parable Jesus tells is in response to Simon’s unasked question – is Jesus a prophet, even though he let this sinner touch him? The whole story is told to lead us to the punch line about loving much. Jesus shows him that his lackluster performance as a host is tied to his self-satisfaction and self-righteousness. The one Simon calls a “sinner” has acted in a far more generous and hospitable manner. She has shown Jesus the hospitality Simon should have shown, but didn’t because he was preoccupied. Jesus then publicly confirms the woman’s forgiveness and in the face of questions of authority tells her: “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” The woman’s response, her openness and acceptance justify God’s action and testify to God’s presence and power at work in and through Jesus.

For us to really understand this we have to talk about the “s word” – sin. I would agree with the spiritual writer David Stendl-Rast that the word “sin” no longer communicates a serious negative condition with disastrous consequences. This was brought home to me earlier this week while I was in Boston attending a meeting of the Congregational Library Board of Directors. I was walking across Boston Common when I was first approached by a gentleman in full clerical suit passing out literature – it had to do with sin, from a Roman Catholic perspective, a conservative splinter group to be accurate who still hold to the notion that if you’re not in their group you’re in sin. As I continued on my way I saw a tent. A big sign proclaimed: “Old Fashioned Revival!” – only in Boston, only in America would you have such a wondrous juxtaposition. Inside the tent a fellow in a dark suit and tie was preaching, though ranting would be a better description. “Sin” was about every fifth word that came out of his mouth, shortly followed by “you’re going to go to hell!” And it was incredible how he could stretch “sin” and “hell” out for far more syllables than they really have! Among the sins he catalogued was “drinking Budweiser beer” – which those of us from Milwaukee would certainly agree is a sin – but then he added any and all alcohol (he wasn’t content to be brand specific). Drinking, smoking, dancing, he said, is all sins and if you do these “you’re going to go to hell!” This is why “sin” no longer communicates. The church, or at least parts of it, has trivialized the concept.

Sin is what alienates us from God and from other people. Again, I heartily agree with David Stendl-Rast, “Alienation is our contemporary word that makes sense to us today. . . .We all know what that is. We know what it feels like; being cut off from everything, from ourselves from anything that has meaning, from all others . . . from ultimate reality, from God.” [Quoted in John Shea The Relentless Widow, p. 163]. John Shea points out that “Other thinkers like the word “separateness.” It carries the connotations of being cut off, isolated, radically alone. Dorothy Soelle liked the image of freezing: “[Sin] . . . is the Ice Age – this slow advance of cold, a freezing process which we experience and try to forget . . . [it is] the absence of warmth, love, caring, trust . . . [it is] the destruction of our capacity for relatedness. . . . [It] means being separated from the ground of life, having a disturbed relationship to ourselves, our neighbor, the creation and the human family.” Each word – alienation, separateness, freezing – expresses with its own nuances what Augustine said about sin. A person in sin was “incurvatus a se” (bent over on top of himself or herself).” [Shea, p. 163]

Simon the Pharisee was in that state – turned in on himself. Paul was, too, until his life was opened up. His words to the Galatians are powerful: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul is talking about a relationship where alienation, self-focus and self-centeredness have been swept away and a new, open way of living has been made possible.
God wastes not, but there are times when God is wasteful in the right way. God looks on us and sees our faults, our failures, our lack of righteousness, our inability to simply measure-up to be the kind of beings He created us to be and looks right past it. God looks not on our faults and failures, but on our potential to be what we’re called to be – made in his image and likeness, God’s children, loving, caring and living as God intended for us to live. Both the woman in Luke and Paul demonstrate this. All of us are “forgiven much,” if we open ourselves to accept what God so willingly offers. As we have been forgiven much, now we are called upon to love much. The Good News in these lessons is reconciliation – between God and humanity, between one another – is real and present. The first part we can understand, but the second is often harder. However, to love much is to begin to be wasteful in the right way, loving and caring in the same manner God has. This isn’t about our righteousness, but God’s, and it’s even more about God’s generosity. We can’t do this by ourselves, but with the Lord’s grace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can and together – as the Lord’s body, the church – we must.

Alienation is all around us – you don’t have to look far in the media or in your own experience to know that’s the truth. On the world stage we see it in the Middle East – where the Palestinians and Iraqis have each turned on their co-religionists and fellow citizens over ideologies. We see it close to home on our streets and sometimes even in our schools, our work, and our homes. We experience it everywhere and what this alienation is is a being turned in on self, being self-centered and self-focused, lacking a concern for others and for the common good. So I challenge you to waste not the grace of God by being wasteful today – spread love today in your words and actions, to those close to you and to the stranger you encounter. In the days and weeks ahead get out of yourself and into others through service, whether through the work of our church or some other opportunity for service. Build up the community, build up the church, build up your family by your actions and your attitudes – then you will know waste not, want not, for you will never lack a sense of the presence of God. You will know, truly, really, that you are loved and cared for – and you are. Waste in this way and you’ll want not – really.