The good news is... great love for God and neighbor

This week, I read the story of a woman named Sara Cook. 

Over three years, eight back surgeries, and more than two dozen hospital visits, Sarah, only 43-years-old, was buried in medical debt. 

Before the injury, she had worked as a nurse. She had struggled to keep working, but then the injury developed an infection, and things got worse from there. The infection triggered unpredictable seizures and so she was now permanently disabled. She couldn't drive or walk without a cane. She had to leave her apartment when she couldn’t pay rent and had been relying on friends who let her stay with them for free.

When Sarah wasn’t sitting in a doctor’s office or fighting the government for disability benefits, she tried to repay her hosts for taking her in by folding their laundry and taking care of their dogs. But she felt indebted to them and constantly worried that her doctors would stop treating her because she owed them too much money.

Then a letter arrived from the organization “Undue Medical Debt.” 

Sarah assumed it was a scam when she read, “We are pleased to inform you that you no longer owe the balance on the debt referenced above…This is a no-strings-attached gift.”

She couldn’t believe it. She had never asked for help with her bills. Who would do this? 

Undue Medical Debt does not accept requests for debt relief. Instead, the group buys up medical debt from collection agencies and hospitals for pennies on the dollar, identifying accounts that belong to cash-strapped patients across the country, then surprises patients by absolving their debts. 

That summer, the nonprofit partnered with a church to raise $15,000, which was then used to purchase $1.8 million in unpaid bills for people in the area where Sarah lived. 

The $5,000 gift forgave only a small fraction of the roughly $750,000 that Sarah owes.

It’s one of the problems that research has identified with this method of debt forgiveness—help often comes too late for patients to make a significant change in their financial situation. 

But to Sarah, knowing that strangers came together to help her was a gift of pure grace. The experience reinforced her belief that God would provide for her. 

Thankfully, Sarah’s story has a happy ending. Her application for disability benefits was finally approved. She was able to move into a condo with her aunt and regain some stability. 

Forgiveness is powerful. Whether it’s for debt we couldn’t have avoided, or for mistakes we could have. 

In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus tells us a parable about two people whose debts are forgiven. 

One owed 50 denarii and one owed 500 denarii. 

When neither could pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. 

After telling this story, Jesus asks his host, Simon, “Now which of them will love him more?”  

Simon and Jesus agree that it would be the one who owned more, for he had 10 times the amount forgiven.  However, I do wonder if the person who couldn’t scrap together a measly 50 denarii might have been more relieved… 

Either way, it seems like Jesus point is not actually about the debt, but about what forgiveness does in the lives of the debtors. What love and dignity do for those who have been maligned by the judgments of others. 

It was the judgements of others that prompted Jesus to tell this story. Simon’s self-righteous judgment of the woman with the alabaster jar. 

“LL Cool J,” by Nicolette Faison (Inspired by Luke 7:36-50). 

To empathize with Simon for one minute here, I don’t like the idea of making my party crashed. Here he is hosting Jesus of Nazareth, a man he calls Teacher, and in walks an uninvited guest.

A woman he knows from the neighborhood, a woman he finds unsavory. A sinner, unworthy of touching the feet of his teacher, his guest, his friend, Jesus.  And now she is making a scene, weeping, getting her smelly perfume all over the place. She’s kissing his feet. And washing them with her hair?!?!

It's misogynistic for sure, but we can also see how this scene might make each of us a little (or a lot) uncomfortable to witness.

This scene is dramatic… it’s intimate… its vulnerable. We might ask, who is this woman? What has caused her to engage in this extravagant, public act of devotion, among people who clearly do not think highly of her? 

Here, let’s get clear about what we know—and what we don’t.

Simon calls this anonymous woman “a sinner.” That is all we are told. Over time, Christian tradition identified her as Mary Magdalene and labeled her a prostitute. I noticed in this week’s devotional entry, the commentator, a well-respected scholar, made this very same, old assumption. 

But Luke tells us neither of those details. 

Mary Magdalene does appear in the opening verses of Luke 8, which likely contributed to this confusion, yet she does not appear in this story. But it’s not her that Luke describes here. And Luke never explains what Simon means by “sinner.”

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that a similar scene appears in all four Gospels, each with different details. We do not know whether they describe separate events or different memories of one moment. 

Either way, it matters that we read this story on its own terms—its own holy possibilities—and pay attention to what the Gospel writer chooses to emphasize.

What Jesus emphasizes here is not how sinful the two debtors were, but how deeply they experienced grace—how fully they received forgiveness, how profoundly they were changed by love.

Simon, an earnest religious man, has invited Jesus to his home. In their culture, it was customary for a host to greet a guest with an act of hospitality, water to wash sandaled feet, soiled by dusty roadways, oil for the head, a kiss of welcome.

Instead, this scene is full of ironic reversals. Simon, the man who has invited Jesus to this gathering, neglects these signs of hospitality.  

Instead, the uninvited woman becomes the host. She shows the welcome Simon withheld.

And not only does she show Jesus hospitality, but she’s a little extra about it. 

Perhaps this scene made the rest of the group uneasy, to see this women just be so extra. And then to witness Jesus graciously accept this attention, her touch. Perhaps Simone felt the hot rush of shame for neglecting his own duties as host.  

But instead of owning up to his own mistakes or easing the tension, Simon rebukes Jesus for allowing this woman to touch him. He doesn’t even deign to speak to this woman directly. To him, she is too lowly to even acknowledge. 

The parable Jesus tells about debt, is his response to Simon’s judgment. It’s his refusal to join in. 

Simon wants Jesus to dismiss her. To label her unclean. To condemn not just her sin, but to condemn her “a sinner.” 

The very thing Simon expects Jesus to do is the very thing Jesus refuses to do.

Instead of cooperating, Jesus confounds. The good news is surprising… and it is great love… fierce love… love that sometimes doesn’t make sense… for god and for neighbor. 

Love like the woman with the alabaster jar shows to Jesus. 

Love like Jesus shows this woman. 

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his followers that to welcome him into their lives is to welcome those the self-righteous have rejected. Those who the comfortable have avoided. Those who the privileged have overlook. 

The hungry. The immigrant. The homeless. 

Those in debt. The sick. The people who don’t speak English.

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, a Rohingya refugee from Malaysia who died in Buffalo this past week.

Last week in Buffalo, NY, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee named Nurul Amin Shah Alam was detained by Border Patrol. After realizing they could not deport him, the federal agents dropped off Nurul—who was nearly blind, unable to speak English, and walked with a cane—at a closed donut shop late at night. Temperatures were near freezing. His family was not notified where he had been released.

On his feet were thin orange booties issued by the county holding center, rather than proper shoes suitable for winter weather.

Five days later, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, was found dead, 5 miles from his home. 

There are a lot of unanswered questions in this case. Officials debate who, if anyone, is responsible, but wherever blame lies exactly, whether with the individual officers or DHS policy, these event simply points to the larger picture of our cruel and inhuman treatment of immigrants in this country—a cruelty which has been around for far longer than the current administration—but has been exacerbated by their policy of mass deportation.  

The cruel irony is that Nurul Amin Shah Alam fled genocide in his home country and came to this country in search of safety and opportunity, only to die in the United States for being a refugee. 

This past week, as I read the words from Matthew 25, all I could see was the sweet face of Nurul Amin Shah Alam. 

To his disciples, Jesus says, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ 

What this country is doing to immigrants and refugees—especially those with brown skin and unfamiliar accents—we are doing to Jesus Christ himself. He, too, had brown skin. He, too, spoke with an accent. He, too, did not speak a word of English.

I tell Nurul’s story not so that we might feel self-righteous; Thank goodness I would never do that; thank goodness that sort of thing doesn't happen here; thank goodness I didn’t vote for this. 

I tell Nurul’s story as a reminder for us to examine our own hearts, lest we become like Simon—certain of our righteousness and dismissive of the person standing right in front of us.

Who among us has not sustained a conversation with someone who speaks little English? Who among us has walked by a person we judge to be homeless, without checking to see if they are okay? Who among us has not silently prayer thank God I wasn’t there when the latest tragedy hits the news cycle, Thank god I don’t have any part in this. 

Jesus’ good news is that we are not called to look for blame, to condemn, to judge, but instead we are called to love. To affirm the dignity of others. To care for the brokenhearted and sick. To release the prisoner. To forgive debts. To welcome the stranger.  

What would it look like to love our neighbors like Nurul Amin Shah Alam, as extravagantly as the women with the ointment loved Jesus? For immigrants and refugees to receive this abundant welcome at our borders?  

When Jesus calls us to love God and love our neighbor, he is not asking for polite sentiment. He is inviting us into a fierce, joyful way of living that restores dignity and sets people free. 

With the love that erased a stranger’s debt. 

With the love that knelt at Jesus’ feet without shame. 

With the love that refused to join in condemnation. 

With the love that sees Christ in the immigrant, the sick, the burdened, the overlooked. 

Friends, we don’t need the answers to receive this good news. We don't need to do this perfectly. In fact, we will not do it perfectly. We will miss things. We will need forgiveness for ourselves. But the same grace that met Sara, the same mercy that lifted the woman with the alabaster jar, is at work in us. And wherever that love takes root—in a home, in a church, at a border, in a hospital room—hope comes alive. 

That is our calling. 

That is our joy. 

That is the good news.

Sermon preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on 3.1.26.