Daily Reflection Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week  in Ordinary Time

Do you remember the old financial services advertising adage “When EF Hutton speaks, people listen.” ?

When a story of an encounter with Jesus appears in all four Gospels, we are wise to listen up. The beautiful and poignant witness of the woman who anoints Jesus is one of these quadruple appearances, each with variation worthy of our study and prayer. Matthew, Mark, and John share the most common elements, with the disciples complaining about the extravagant waste and Jesus defending the woman’s actions (Mary in the Gospel of John – unnamed in the other two), seeing them as preparation for his own burial. But the story perhaps most tenderly remembered, a story brimming with themes of mercy and forgiveness, is Luke’s telling of the ‘woman of the city,’ a woman who bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair.

Our woman here has no name but ‘sinner.’ Shrouded in public  shame, breaker of the moral code, her backstory unknown to us, we have no idea what has shifted in her life so that she sees in Jesus her beautifully unfolding future, the answer to her deepest longings.  But it is a vision worthy of  the extravagant outpouring of her love and gratitude. Love has propelled her to break barriers, to risk further ridicule from the self-righteous, respectable crowd. Pedigree and buttoned-up social standing are marginalized here. Passion in the form of warm tears, humble gratitude in the form of kissing his feet, perfume wafting to anoint both Jesus and the woman in immeasurable expressions of love – this is the ennobling hospitality that Simon the Pharisee in his pinched vision, his intent to trap Jesus, could never imagine.  Great love and great forgiveness in a delicious swirl.

This is a story of gifts offered -- courage, perfume, anointing, tears, forgiveness, yes.  But is a story, too, of the openness to receiving the gift of unconditional love and self-emptying generosity from another.  The woman's gift -- one of an expression of radical hospitality of her own, throwing off cultural norms, giving fully of herself in the moment -- is accepted by Jesus without reservation nor protest. Perhaps Jesus longed for the warmth and comfort of another's touch. Perhaps the cool ointment felt like a baptism of sorts. Perhaps, just once, it felt good to receive the loving service offered from another.  This is a surprising portrait of Jesus, one that we sometimes have trouble duplicating in our own lives.

The refrain from the hymn The Servant Song captures this dynamic so well:

"Will you let me be your servant,

  Let me be as Christ to you?

  Pray that I may have the grace

  To let you be my servant, too."

The final verses of our passage from Luke today link directly to the opening of Chapter 8. In a way, it seems that the loving act done by this woman has given Jesus a new vision and vitality as he goes on his way “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.” Luke also lists those who are with Jesus, including the names of several women.

We might ask, would our names be included? What stops us from demonstrating with wild abandon our love for Jesus?  What hinders us from being more open with our love? -- or receiving with a reckless abandonment the gift of salvation and wholeness?