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Today’s
gospel reminds one of the story of the cookie thief. A
woman at the airport waiting to catch her flight bought
herself a bag of cookies, settled in a chair in the
airport lounge and began to read her book. Suddenly she
noticed the man beside her helping himself with cookies
from the cookie bag between them. Not wanting to make a
scene, she read on, ate cookies, and watched the clock.
As the daring “cookie thief” kept on eating the cookies
she got more irritated and said to herself, “If I wasn’t
so nice, I’d blacken his eye!” With each cookie she
took, he took one too. When only one was left, she
wondered what he would do. Then with a smile on his face
and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke
it in half. He offered her half, and he ate the other.
She snatched it from him and thought, “Oh brother, this
guy has some nerve, and he’s also so rude, why, he
didn’t even show any gratitude!” She sighed with relief
when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings
and headed for the gate, refusing to look at the
ungrateful “thief.” She boarded the plane and sank in
her seat, then reached in her baggage to fetch her book,
and what she saw made her gasp with surprise. For there
in front of her eyes were her bag of cookies. Then it
dawned on her that the cookies they ate in the lounge
was the man’s and not hers, that the man was not a thief
but a friend who tried to share, that she was the rude
one, the ungrateful one, the thief.
The
cookie thief story reminds us, as we see in today’s
gospel, that it often happens that the one pointing the
accusing finger turns out to be the guilty one, that the
complainant sometimes turns out to be the offending
party. In the cookie story, the woman believed she was
such a wonderful person to put up with the rudeness and
ingratitude of the man sitting beside her. In the end
she discovered that she was the rude and ungrateful one
and the man was wonderfully friendly. In the gospel the
Pharisee thinks he is the righteous one who is worthy to
be in the company of Jesus and that the woman was the
sinful one unworthy to be seen with Jesus. In the end
Jesus showed each of them where they really belonged and
the woman was seen as the one who was righteous and more
deserving of the company of Jesus than the
self-righteous Pharisee.
Why do
things like this happen? Well, because it is easier to
hear the snoring of the other person than it is to hear
your own snoring. It is easy to notice the fault of
other people while being blind to our own faults. Great
men and women of God have been, all without exception,
people who are so aware of their own inadequacies that
they are hardly surprised at other people’s
shortcomings. People who delight in criticising others
thereby betray their lack of self-awareness. In the end
they discover that they themselves are indeed the cookie
thieves that they accused others to be.
But what
was the mistake of the Pharisee? If the woman was indeed
a prostitute where then did he err? After all what he
said about the woman was true, wasn’t it? Of course the
woman was a sinner. Jesus did not say that the woman was
not a sinner. Jesus only said that the man was a sinner
too, and in fact a worse sinner than the woman.
I
entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet,
but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them
with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I
came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not
anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet
with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which
were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great
love
(Luke 7:44-47).
The
problem of the Pharisee was his notion of sin and
holiness. For him the woman was an “occasion of sin” to
be avoided by godly people. Jesus corrects him: it is
not what you avoid that counts, it is what you do. The
Pharisee might indeed have avoided occasions of sin, but
he did nothing for Jesus in need. The woman, on the
other hand, attended to the practical needs of Jesus.
Jesus accepts the woman’s external show of love as a
clear manifestation of inner faith: “Your faith has
saved you; go in peace” (v.50). This practical
engagement is the crucial difference between her and the
Pharisee. How do we employ our faith in practical
service of the needy?
Today’s
gospel is good news indeed to all who have been
humiliated by the “good people” of this world,
humiliated in a supposed concern to maintain the
standard of holiness in the household of God. Jesus
assures them that they are indeed closer to the heart of
God than their accusers have made them to believe. And
to those who, like the Pharisee, feel that Jesus is
their exclusive birthright, the Good News for them today
is simple: Watch it, lest in the end you discover that
it is you who are the cookie thief after all. |
