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The
Advantage of Sinning
June
17, 2007
Luke
7:36-8:3
Fr.
George Smiga
Is
there an advantage to sinning? I know this is a scandalous
question, but it is the issue that Jesus discusses in today's
gospel. Therefore, since it is a scandalous question, let's
clarify a few things at once. We all know that we are called
to avoid sin because sin is an offense against God and against
our neighbor. To follow Christ, we are not called to sin but
to holiness. This is something obvious and something all of
us understand. Yet it would be important to keep these truths
in mind as we look at today's gospel, because in the gospel
Jesus takes our notions of sin and twists them into a creative
new insight—an insight which is for our benefit.
What
happens in the gospel? Jesus is eating in a friend's house,
in the house of Simon the Pharisee. A woman who is a notorious
sinner comes and begins to minister to him. In his mind Simon
questions why Jesus is allowing this woman to touch him. So
Jesus tells the parable. A man had two debtors. One owed him
ten times more than the other, and yet he forgave them both.
“Which one”, Jesus says, “will love him more?” And Simon rightly
responds: “The one who is forgiven more.”
What
Jesus does in this parable is reveal to us a truth about God
and about our sinfulness. When we sin, that sin can lead to
repentance. If we ask God for forgiveness, God will never
refuse us. If we accept God's forgiveness, it will increase
our appreciation and our love for God. If that is true, then
the one who sins more and is forgiven more, will have a greater
appreciation and love of God. So Jesus, in a clever way, presents
an advantage to sinning. If sin can lead to repentance and
to forgiveness and if forgiveness leads to love, then the
one who sins more, will love more. Now, this parable is certainly
not asking us to sin, but it is telling us that no one understands
the love of God more deeply than the sinner who is forgiven.
And no one can grasp the depth of God's love more than the
sinner who has sinned greatly.
Why
would Jesus bring this truth to our attention? He wants us
to live differently. He wants us to live with more caution
and more hope. If what Jesus says about sin and love is true,
we should be cautious about judging others, about judging
their sinfulness. We might correctly say that this or that
person is selfish, unjust, and violent. All those things could
be true, but sin need not be the end of the story. It is possible
that sin could lead to repentance and God's forgiveness. Such
forgiveness could then lead to a deeper love of God. Forgiven
adulterers, slanderers, thieves, and bigots know God's love
better than anyone else. They might have a deeper relationship
to God than we do. We should be cautious about judging them.
We
should also be hopeful. We should be hopeful when we sin.
Not that we should encourage sin, but sin, if it leads to
forgiveness, can actually increase our love of God. In this
sense, even our mistakes can lead us forward. When we recognize
and repent from the way we have mistreated others, from the
way we have judged others rashly, from the words that we have
said that we cannot take back, from the poor decisions which
we have made and cannot erase, we need not despair. When we
repent of our sins, we can have hope, because God will forgive
us and our love for God can grow.
So
today, Jesus asks us to be cautious about judging others and
to be hopeful when we are ourselves sin. Sinfulness need not
be the end of the story. God in God's gracious forgiveness,
can turn our sinfulness into love. And since that is true,
as scandalous as it is: The one who sins little, will love
little. But the one who sins greatly will love more.
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