ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

‘Hence she has great love’

Sermon preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis, Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford, Sunday 13 April (Mary of Egypt)

Mark 10: 32-34; Luke 7: 36-50

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This is the last Sunday before the beginning of Holy Week, before the beginning of the story of the Passion of Christ, and this Saturday, already, we shall be celebrating Christ’s raising of Lazarus. Of course, the Gospel passage from Mark which is read today fits very well into that position. That is, it contains the outright, open prediction by Christ that he will be taken by the authorities and killed.

What about, however, the fact that on this day we also celebrate the memory of Mary Egypt? For her we read the passage from Luke which you also heard – a passage which is commented upon extensively during Holy Week, in particular on Wednesday, the day in which, in the evening, we shall celebrate the sacrament of Anointing. This links, then, this story of Mary of Egypt and this particular passage from the Gospels with our own experience of Christ’s resurrection.

This story – the story of Simon the Pharisee – has always caused problems. Simon invites Jesus to eat with him – and you have to imagine them reclining around a table. A woman comes and stands behind Christ and begins to weep. She washes his feet with her tears, she wipes them with her hair and she anoints them with oil. Now Simon – and here we see the reason why he has invited Jesus to come to dine with him – Simon says to himself, if this man were really a prophet he would know very well what kind of woman this was, and he would tell her to go.

Now Christ must have noticed this on Simon’s face, and he says ‘I would like to tell you a story’ – and he tells the story of the two debtors. Each owed a particular creditor a sum of money – one five hundred pence, the other fifty pence – and the creditor forgives them both their debts. Christ asks, ‘Which then, of these two, would love him most?’ Simon replies, ‘I suppose the one to whom he forgave most.’  At this point Jesus compares this woman’s behaviour with that of Simon: he did not give him a kiss, he did not wash his feet, he did not anoint his head. In the Authorised Version Christ goes on to say, ‘Therefore I say to thee [Simon], her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.’

How are we to understand that English translation of the Greek text? The natural understanding would be that her sins are forgiven because of her love – and yet that interpretation does not fit with the story that Christ told. As a result, in the New Revised Standard Version that same verse is translated as: ‘Her sins which are many, have been forgiven. Hence she has great love.’ In other words she shows her love because she has been forgiven, and that, of course, fits perfectly with the story that Christ told.

Yet this still leaves us with a problem: when were her sins forgiven? Nothing is said about that in this story except at the very end – after she has demonstrated that she knows Christ’s forgiveness.
Now we might imagine that she knew the reputation of Jesus, that she came into the house knowing that if she approached him he would forgive her sins; and that perhaps he saw something on her face, and made some kind of sign that confirmed that this was so, and that as a result of that she wept: she wept out of thanksgiving. Yet this is very unlikely. It is unlikely because we know that she brought with her the alabaster box of ointment. And Christ himself tells Simon – ‘from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet’ – in other words she was expressing her love, as a result of her forgiveness, right from the start. From this I think we need to conclude that she has already been forgiven, and that she has been forgiven by Christ.

The problem again is that there is no reference to this in Luke. Many of you, however, will realise that in the Gospel of John there is a significant passage that is now regularly printed in brackets, indicating that in the opinion of the editors it is probably not part of the original text. This is the story of the woman taken in adultery. The footnote in the New Revised Standard Version says of this passage:

The most ancient authorities lack this passage – John 7:53- 8:11 – other authorities add the passage here, or they add it after John 7:36, or after John 21:25, or even after Luke 21:38, with variation of the text. Some of these ancient authorities mark the passage as doubtful.

In other words we have here a story which is floating in the manuscript tradition, and this of course reflects the complex process of the composition of the Gospels. There is no reason to believe, however, that it is not authentic. After all, John himself says, ‘If we were to write down everything that Christ did the world itself would not be able to hold the books that would be written’ (Jn 21:25). I would like to read this passage to you because it seems to me to fit so well into this whole sequence of stories.
Jesus has spent the night on the Mount of Olives,

And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, ‘Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?’ This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. ‘And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her,  ‘Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?’ She said, ‘No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.’ (Jn 8: 2-11).

Now it seems to me that this story needs to be brought into relationship with the story of what went on in the house of Simon the Pharisee.  The one explains the other. The one follows automatically on the other in its inner structure.

What is interesting today, however, is why Mary of Egypt is remembered at this point, and why the story of Simon the Pharisee is given such prominence in Holy Week. The connection seems to me to be this: as this woman taken in adultery had to repent in order to receive forgiveness and enter into the joy with tears, so Mary of Egypt has to go through a process of repentance before she can enter the church of the Anastasis – the church of the Resurrection – in Jerusalem, before she can enter into the joy of Christ’s resurrection. Until then, an invisible force holds her back. So we, too, are invited by these stories, and by the way they are presented now, to repent in the midst of the whole forward thrust of Lent, a forward thrust that leads through crucifixion to resurrection. So let us take these stories to heart – the story of the woman taken in adultery who went on, in this interpretation, to anoint Christ’s feet with her tears, and the story of Mary of Egypt who had to pass through repentance in order to enter into the resurrection.

Amen