High noon.
A vulture flies by overhead calling out a harsh and throaty welcome.
The bad guy, his eyes squinting in the sunlight, walks out onto the land, the crunch of gravel under his feet. The land is his. He took it from someone who was in his way, a little person, who won’t be bothering anyone anymore.
He survey’s his conquest with grim satisfaction.
Suddenly he is not alone. The bad guy hears the scrape of footsteps approaching from behind. He spins around cursing the intrusion upon his land.
And there he stands– the good guy, his eyes piercing the darkness of his very soul.
A stand off, a show down.
Good verses evil.
And king Ahab says, “Have you found me O my enemy?”
Elijah the Tishbite, the prophet of God speaks in return, “I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you.”
And this is where Clint Eastwood, or Silvester Stallone, or Bruce Willis or the latest action hero or cowboy star finishes off the bad guy.
An old, old story.
The same ole story once again, except Ahab says that he is sorry and God forgives him and instead punishes his children.
The children of Ahab and Jezebel, imagine, talk about a dysfunctional family!
I doubt God had to do anything to bring ruin upon that family, they specialized in destructive behavior, they learned from experts, their own parents.
So the same ole story–it is really about sin.
How many times have we heard it?
He coveted what wasn’t his, the Vineyard of Naboth.
Ahab and Jezebel bore false witness against Naboth.
They used the Lord’s name in vain in accusing Naboth of cursing God.
They committed murder by using capital punishment to kill an innocent man.
And they stole Naboth’s Vineyard.
That is five of the ten commandments they broke.
The story of sin, is the same ole story over and over again, it is ultimately very repetitive, redundant, predictable and …boring.
Sin is boring. The same ole story, again and again and again.
Like King David, coveting Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite, committing adultery with her and arranging for Uriah’s death. David broke three of the big ten. Nathan the prophet of God called him to account. David repented, but his dysfunctional children brought ruin upon Israel, upon all that David achieved through his virtue and abuse.
Both Ahab and David kept falling back into their old ways, unable to escape from their own inclinations.
The same ole story again.
The story of Sin.
How do we escape from this same old plot line?
The same old reruns.
No matter how many times we change the channel, there is nothing else to watch.
If sin doesn’t kill us outright it will bore us to death, numbing us into a rut where nothing new is allowed to happen.
The Good News is that there is another story line.
Another life to live that is full of unexpected innovations and plot twists and creativity.
The Gospel does much more than steeling us away from the grasp of rerun prime time story lines. In the space that sin once filled something else is planted, profuse and absurd gratitude.
Simon the Pharisee asked Jesus over for dinner and treats him very poorly, rudely.
Being a poor host is not an obvious violation of the Ten Commandments, though it should be. I suppose withholding the hospitality due a guest is a kind of theft.
An old story.
Then something unexpected happens, the plot deviates from the script, who knows what is going to happen next?
The town prostitute invades the dinner party, not seeking business but rather lavishing affection upon Jesus.
So much for the dinner party!
She bathes his feet with her tears, she dries his feet with her hair, and then she anoints his feet with costly ointment.
Jesus tells her that her sins are forgiven, that her faith has saved her and to go in peace.
A life of forgiveness isn’t only a life freed from the hold of sin it is a life of extravagant gratitude and praise.
“Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”
Who knows what that woman would do next? She was now off the track, into uncharted territory, off the edge of the map, into the unknown land where forgiveness and love, and gratitude create and build lives of never before seen beauty and splendor.
Of coarse we all know what Simon the Pharisee would do next, he was following the same old script, unwilling to admit the need for forgiveness, a life with very little love, stuck in the rut of petty sins and resentments. A life with little love. A life bound to small slaveries, rather than small affections and intimacies.
I suppose most of us are more like Simon the Pharisee than Ahab or Jezebel or the prostitute. We are small time sinners. The advantage of big time sinners is that there is no real denying the mess up or the need to start over.
Most of us are small time sinners, who don’t feel too much need to give or receive forgiveness, not too much, we do pretty well most of the time. Which is really the most dangerous kind of Sin.
We imprison ourselves in lives of not much love, of not much gratitude, of not much praise or thanksgiving, a life of predictable resentments and restraints, without the lavish heart of knowing God. We don’t have tears to wash the feet of Jesus.
Sin is a sneaky thing, it can devour some of us in big lunging gulps, but most of the time it secretly nibbles at us until one day we are only ghosts of what we once were.
It is as the Poet Scott Cairns writes,
“the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so bad
as it is a waste of time.”
The same ole story.
But there is another story, that runs off the page who know where it goes next, a story of embarrassing and lavish thanks and praise, of costly and eager sharing, a life of not merely visiting the world doing the same old thing over and over, but a life that is truly free to love and forgive and be forgiven, building something beautiful and glorious.
Jesus comes to town with the good news of this new story.
Will we have him as our guest to hear this new way of being alive?
Will we welcome him great and desperate need?
Or condemn him with faint praise and polite thanks as we turn back to our favorite rerun.
A great love has arrived in the world that is for the world. Something that was lost is being restored. Something new is unfolding before our very eyes and it is crazy wild.