I’m giving a dinner party this weekend. I’m looking for some good conversationalists, so you’re all invited!

I’ve asked the most fascinating person – you may have heard of him: his name is Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, the carpenter, and Mary. He’s been hanging around here in Santa Ana. Kinda strange looking, really – it’s easy to mistake him for one of the homeless…

This Jesus is really smart! He does some healings now and again – but it’s what he says that fascinates me! He’s quite provocative and interesting to talk to – has kind of a different "take" on things, and he doesn’t hesitate to give his opinion…

I’ve got all kinds of questions I’d like to ask him, and I imagine between us all we should generate some good discussion!

Consider:

Who exactly is my neighbor – and, while we’re on the subject, can we explore the implications of loving our enemies? Do you really mean our enemies?

What must one do to inherit eternal life?

How can anyone be born after having grown old?

Isn’t it totally irresponsible not to worry about our lives, what we will eat, or about our bodies, what we will wear? Why shouldn’t we save for our future, storing our grain in silos and putting our money in the bank? Who wants to be a burden to their children or wind up on welfare?!

How do we interpret the present time?

What’s with this "cross" business? Gaining life by losing it? Why glamorize suffering? Surely there’s another way to have a relationship with God than by depriving ourselves… Can’t we just join a church?

Can’t you feel the potential for conversation, lively discussion? What a great evening! I can hardly wait to sit back and listen to Jesus expostulate, to be a part of the repartee…

We know about Simon’s dinner party, of course.

Most of us can probably identify with his anticipation of an evening of good food and scintillating conversation.

Instead, we have a party-crasher!

The gathering of people-like-us takes a sudden and unexpected turn: like Simon, we watch in horror as an intruder – a woman! – a sinful woman! – knocks our conversational train off its rails, and the evening degenerates from mind to heart to – body!

We’ve suddenly become voyeurs to an unanticipated intimacy, and it makes us uncomfortable. It’s not quite the evening we had planned!

The Gospel lesson this morning almost feels like a New Testament Song of Solomon:

Your love is better than wine,

Your anointing oils are fragrant,

Your name is perfume poured out;

Therefore the maidens love you. (1:2)

My beloved is mine and I am his. (2:16)

How much better is your love than wine,

And the fragrance of your oils than any spice! (4:10)

Most of us know God loves us, and we assent to that love of God with our minds, but in our culture – unlike that of some of the medieval women mystics – it’s a love denuded of passion.

It’s an idea, a "head thing" – perhaps even a theological construct, something we’ve learned…

It’s probably easier to think about, to know – up here – than to feel – in here.

Yes, we say we love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind – but what’s behind those words? Do any of us experience that loving with heart and soul and mind as that very real – but unidentified woman in today’s Gospel lesson?

We can look with wonder at her bold ministrations – that uninvited guest who knew that with Jesus there are no uninvited guests – and label it many things: impulsive, improper, brave, crazy…

But we cannot fail to recognize that she loves Jesus.

Here is a woman who knows that she is a sinner – but her knowledge that Jesus loves her in spite of that has elicited from her a response that is not only loving, but daring!

Her need to express her love has propelled her into a world – a household, a situation – in which she risks censure, ridicule!

She changes the whole tenor of the dinner party!

It is no longer the gamesmanship – fun though that might be! – of debate and discussion about one theological principle or another, chasing ideas and going on intellectual flights of fancy! Things aren’t going quite as we had expected – but then, with Jesus things rarely do!

The party has gone from talking about to an experience of.

It is no longer about what we THINK.

It is about engaging in relationship, about feeling the love of Jesus, the love of the incarnate God, here among us!

It is about who we become when we allow love to transform us, when we allow love to enter in and heal us.

As with this woman – and with Simon, if he were able to hear – Jesus encourages us to bring those broken parts of ourselves to him so that he might cancel our debt.

He will love us as we are!

He will love us as we are!

No wonder his love calls us into love!

Of course, we must be willing to receive his love in all its fullness – to allow it to enter into even our most hidden spaces, and make us whole.

If we filter his love, holding back parts of ourselves as unworthy, unlovable, putting conditions on what he gives unconditionally, we cannot know the immensity of the love which accepts and forgives!

The woman’s outpouring of love for Jesus was a response to her experience of his love for her, reaching into the depths of her being, accepting her, forgiving her, restoring her to wholeness.

"The one to whom little is forgiven loves little," Jesus tells us.

The one to whom much is forgiven loves much.

This woman-of-the-city today reminds us that our relationship with Jesus is more than a theological construct, or learned responses to the questions in our catechism.

It’s not about "being saved" or an insurance policy against death.

It’s not about a set of rules to follow, or principles to live by.

It’s not moral teaching.

It’s about love.

It’s about the kind of transformation that occurs when we are loved into loving, and the people we become when we in turn love, even as we are loved.

It’s about feeling that love burn so brightly within that we can’t not express it.

As I read and re-read this lesson over the past couple of weeks, the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnet kept playing through my mind:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old grief's, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

She’s writing to the man who will become her husband, of course, but she could as easily be giving voice to the woman’s loving ministrations to Jesus at Simon’s dinner – or to her, or your, or my, relationship with God.

Imagine, for a moment, God looking at you with the eyes of a beloved: "You," his eyes say, "you, whom I love…"

Feel that love of God enter you, burn within you.

Allow yourself to respond to that love with your whole being, giving yourself, heart, soul, mind, and body, to God, wholly, fully, loving God in return.

Return the gaze of God, your beloved.

For just as God has called us into being, God has called us into loving.

Oh, God – how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways…

Enough to risk the censure of the others at the dinner party.

Enough to risk the embarrassment of expressing my love for you.

Enough to trust to go where you lead me…

Enough that I will never be the same again…

Amen.