Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

As I was reading through our Office Gospel for this morning, I was struck by this verse: Jesus says, in Luke 7:47, “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.” Jesus is speaking about the woman who, at a dinner, has crept in to anoint his feet and bathe them with her tears; and he’s speaking to the host of the dinner, who, in not providing certain marks of hospitality (foot-washing, anointing, a kiss of welcome) stands in contrast to the woman who has demonstrably (and not without scandal, given the social mores of the time) shown her love.

What struck me about this passage, what went through my head as I read it was this: But wait! It’s not like this woman is the only sinner in the room…it’s not like no one else is in need of forgiveness…it’s not like showing great love in response to great forgiveness is beyond anyone else; we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we’re all in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves; our indebtedness to God’s for God’s grace and forgiveness isn’t actually less for some and more for others, but complete and total for everyone!

And then I think Spirit did the work the Spirit longs to do when we read scripture…because my next thought was: Then why, Mark, do you not love like this? If you’re aware, truly aware, of the forgiveness God has given you by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, then what is stopping you from giving yourself more fully, more wildly, more scandalously, more freely to the love that gave your heart its beat, that bled for you on Calvary, that defeated death for you (your death!) and that lives so you could share God's own life of love?

To which I had no response but a chastened, “Good question.”

On further reflection, I think one of the things that often stops us from loving God and loving neighbor as fulsomely as we might or ought is the infrequency with which we desire to be fully conscious of our sinfulness. And conscious not in an abstract or academic way, but in a deeply personal and convicted way. We have a sense that such consciousness isn’t fun, and it’s not. But it’s also not an end in itself. As our Lord suggests in our reading today, a consciousness of who we really are not only as sinners generally, but as particular human beings who sin in real and particular ways, is an invitation to become aware of the mercies God desires us to receive from the infinite treasury of grace that is God’s own loving heart, and to able to receive the grace needed to amend our lives and live them henceforth in the direction of mercy. The end of this consciousness is actually joy! Is love! Is celebration! Is redemption, a new life, and a new creation! Is the Mystery of God’s own loving regard for us that cannot be undone by sin nor death, nor the world, the flesh, and the devil! If we can manage to be aware of our sin and to confess it, then we can receive the forgiveness that will confirm us in loving thankfulness that is borne of real self-knowledge and a true apprehension of the nature of God whose property is indeed always to have mercy. And this will quicken in us joy, and establish in us a peace beyond the world’s reckoning, and transform us into a people of love.

Beloved Friend! I pray that in knowing who we are as sinners, in knowing our need for forgiveness, we will also know the mercy of God, and know ourselves to be instruments of that mercy, dedicated agents and instances of the wildness of God’s love, vessels of a glory and a joy beyond our imagining!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+