Let’s go back to the beginning.  Imagine that we’re gathered here on Christmas Eve for one of the services at 4:00, 8:00, or 11:00 p.m.  In each the story we hear is the same, though the language we use varies some with the age of the people who have gathered to worship.  At 11:00 p.m. the language is the most traditional.  One of our retiring elder readers comes forward and proclaims these words:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 

Good tidings of great joy!  That’s what we proclaim on Christmas Eve.  Good tidings – good news – of great joy.  The word tidings is now a bit archaic, but good news is simply a rendering of the word gospel.  The gospel good news is unabashedly simple:  a Savior has been born for us, and that Savior is Jesus Christ our Lord.  Good news of great joy!

Why good news?  Because we need someone to save us.  We cannot do that by ourselves.  We need someone to save us from the distance that grows between ourselves and God – a separation we call sin.  We need someone to save us from the sense of desperation when we feel that we are all alone.  We need someone to tell us – to show us – that God loves us and will not give up on us, no matter what.  No matter what we have done or not done.  Whatever circumstances of our life threaten to undo us.  In Jesus Christ we come to know the love of God that has come into the world for all people.  And that is the good news of great joy that the angels proclaim to the shepherds on the hillside on a starry Christmas Eve night.

And though the words of Christmas may sound just a bit strange to us on a Sunday morning in mid June, they ought not.  For they proclaim the promise that now we realize as we have moved away from the time of birth into the time of journey.  Our church gives our high school seniors a copy of Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies because we anticipate that our young people will be doing a lot of traveling, geographically as well as emotionally and spiritually.  And they will need to feel the mercy of God along the way.  They may not anticipate that need now, but most of us who have a few more years under our belts than they do, know that for sure.  Life tells us that all of us need the mercy of God along the way.

Well into Luke’s Gospel we have been hearing of other people who have needed and received the mercy of God.  Chapter seven begins with a story of Jesus healing the servant of a Roman centurion, a military commander of the enemy occupation forces.  Does God’s mercy extend even to our enemies?  Clearly, the answer is yes.  Next Jesus heals the dead son of a widow in the town of Nain.  We heard that story last week.  Moved with compassion for the grieving mother, Jesus touches the funeral bier, restores her son to life, and gives him back to his grateful mother.  And today we hear of the unnamed woman identified only by the fact that she is a known sinner in the city who comes to Jesus during a dinner party at a Pharisee’s home to confess her sin and to bathe his dusty feet with her tears of remorse and gratitude and to anoint them with expensive perfume.

What we’re talking about here is salvation.  Now I know that for many of us salvation can be a highly charged theological word, even one carrying troubling connotations.  So it’s good for people like us to be reminded that the Hebrew word for “salvation” literally means “to make sufficient.”  Salvation is the discovery that life without God is insufficient, and that God’s grace makes sense of life.  The sinning woman of the city appears to have heard Jesus’ message that God brings life to all people, even those branded doomed sinners by those who cannot fathom the breadth and depth of God’s saving grace.

We can think of salvation as the experience of losing ourselves in grace that’s bigger than we are, that makes us whole and well.  Think of loving someone deeply.  When you love someone deeply it’s as if you are losing yourself and yet finding that you are more fully yourself.  When you love someone fully it’s no longer you at the center of the universe, but the person you love.  And yet at the same time you are more fully you.  It doesn’t make sense in the ordinary ways of thinking.  Do the math: if you give yourself to someone else, there should be less of you.  And yet, in the mystery of love, giving yourself to someone else makes more of you, not less.  Jesus said that if we lose ourselves for the sake of God’s good news, then we have not lost our lives but found them.

I think that’s what has happened to the unnamed woman with the expensive perfume she wants to give away.  She has come to a moment of realizing that whatever sin has held her captive, God’s love is sufficient to release her from its bondage and to wrap her in the warm embrace of forgiving love.  Have you had such a moment in your life?  Even more than one?  

Such moments often do come upon us when we recognize and acknowledge our sin.  And not one of us is sinless.  It’s just that some of us are more open to knowing our sin and seeking restoration – like the sinning woman in the story – than others who are not – like the Pharisee in the story.  Some of us become aware that the gnawing emotional pain within is a symptom of a spiritual malaise, an unawareness of our need for God’s salvation. 

As painful as those moments of recognition of our sin can be, they are also the key to our survival.  About those moments, Frederick Buechner writes: “If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to business as usual, it may lose you the ball game.  If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul.”  It is good to hear stories about grace – such as the story we have this morning about the woman in need of healing – because no story about grace is far from our own.

The woman in the story is desperate to touch Jesus.  But if someone had asked her, “Why?” she might not have been able to explain it in the common words we use.  Some feelings are too deep for words.  What matters is that she gets to show Jesus how much she loves him.  Faith is built not on belief but on love.  Loving God is more foundational even than believing in God to experiencing grace. 

So the woman intrudes into a dinner party and throws herself at Jesus’ feet, weeping so profusely as to have tears enough to wash the dust off his feet before drying them with her hair and then anointing them with expensive perfume.  The whole spectacle leads Simon the Pharisee to say aloud to himself – just loud enough for everyone at the table to hear him – “If this man were a real prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is.” 

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?  Some people are too narrow in their conception of God’s ways to recognize the extravagance of God’s grace.  That’s the problem with the Pharisee.  God’s extravagant grace is just too much for him.  He hasn’t heard or doesn’t understand the good news of great joy that the angel proclaimed God was bringing to all people in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus is not only a real prophet of God, Jesus is God incarnate.  We can imagine that Simon the Pharisee will never know the forgiving love of God in Christ because he doesn’t have a clue that he needs it.  He may never know the joy of heaven for his insistence on the rigidity that locks him in hell.

A contemporary biblical scholar has observed, “The difference between those in heaven and those in hell is that the former [those in heaven] celebrate God’s forgetfulness of sin and the latter [those in hell] are like raccoons trying to pry off the lid of the can to fling about the sins of all those they think shouldn’t be in heaven.” 

Jesus turns to Simon and asks, “Do you see this woman?”  The answer is “No.”  There are two kinds of people to Simon – those who can make it on their own and invisible people who can’t.  Simon thinks he has made it on his own so he has a hard time hearing Jesus say that he comes for sinners poor and needy.

Paul Tillich, the great theologian of the last century who counted on the saving grace of God for his own salvation, once wrote: “Sometimes a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted.  You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you.  Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything.  Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’”

Even this morning the Christmas angel stands before us, an angel of the Lord, and the glory of God shines around us, and even in our fear the angel of God reassures us: “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” 

Amen.