Here she comes. Everybody knows what kind of person SHE is.’ ‘Keep your distance. Everybody knows that he’s bad news.’ ‘Oh, you go to THAT church. Everybody knows what they’re like.

Everybody knows. That’s the world we live in. Your successes may be widely known(thanks to our hunger for/addictions to social media; your failures are almost certainly public.

This is not a new thing. Word of mouth was a pretty good purveyor of gossip ‘back in the day’…even back in Jesus’ day.

Word of Jesus’ exploits got around. People knew (or presumed they knew) what Jesus was all about. He gets dinner invitations – some of them legitimate, others meant to trap him into revealing his plans for rebellion – and those dinners turn in to teaching moments. So it goes in this morning’s gospel lesson.

The host Pharisee is a big-shot. An important personage. Maybe he is sympathetic to Jesus’ cause; perhaps he wants to be the one to bring an end to the Jesus project. Either way, he throws a dinner party.

Now ‘everybody knows’ what happens at these things. Hands are shaken – connections are made. There may have been a first century buzzword. We call it Networking. And among the guests are some who seem to be gate-crashing. This woman, for instance.

She has heard about the gathering, and come with a purpose. She knows about Jesus. And she has an entirely unselfish plan.

She cannot have expected to be forgiven. A woman – and worse, one identified as a sinner – has no hope of redemption except through her husband. Those are the rules.

And to be clear, we don’t know what her ‘sin’ might have been.

Turns out that’s not important AT ALL.

She follows Jesus into the house and gives him a priceless gift. She bathes his feet – with her tears. She anoints his feet with ointment – kissing them! She makes quite a spectacle of herself (and of Jesus) by an act so intimate that we have been convinced that her ‘sin’ must be sexual in nature.

Not so (and still not important AT ALL.)

Our host says (to himself) ‘hey – everybody knows about this woman. No self-respecting prophet/holy man would allow such behaviour.’ His opinion is expressed in the sideways glance – the raised eyebrow – everything but words

Jesus rightly interprets this internal monologue with a rebuke. ‘Simon, you didn’t offer me any of the usual hospitality, yet this woman has gone out of her way to show me the courtesy of cleaning and anointing my feet, as a good host should have done.’

She is showing gratitude because she has heard what Jesus is about – and she wants what Jesus is proclaiming to be true for her.

The ’KINGDOM’ that Jesus proclaims is a place where folk are forgiven and welcomed. The rules for forgiveness are simple. There are no complicated (expensive) rituals.

To be forgiven, one must admit wrong and be ready to accept grace. She follows Jesus into the house, and offers these remarkable acts of gratitude because she recognizes the difference between her reality and the kind of world that Jesus proposes. And Jesus turns her gratitude into a parable. The reality of her sin (and the recognition of God’s forgiveness) prompts an overwhelming expression of gratitude.

So what, you say. Ancient times – ancient solutions. We believe in character. We demand integrity. We want people to know what we believe in – what we stand for. Fair enough. But don’t we believe in God? Don’t we follow Jesus? Aren’t we supposed to be emulating the one who proclaimed a different kind of kingdom – who offered unbridled forgiveness – who welcomed sinners and healed the sick and touched the untouchable? How did the followers of Jesus of Nazareth become a church of rules and restrictive moral absolutes.

Yes, we strive for ‘better behaviour, but in the process, we have set the standard of behaviour so high that Jesus himself might not qualify for membership (or it seemed to the teenage me where church was concerned. Heavily weighted toward the ‘THOU SHALT NOT’ side of the commandment table)

Our suspicions make it difficult to see the best in people. We believe the stories that we hear – stories of failures and foibles. We see (and imagine) only the worst of those around us (bad news makes the best news, after all.) Faced with chaotic behaviour and a God who seems to want only our best, we rely on rules.

Rules are the best way for us to organize that chaos. Rules serve to remind us whom we should trust and who to blame; who to dismiss and whom we ought to condemn. Jesus knows those rules…and broke nearly all of them. HE is our example.

He broke societal rules – rules that everybody knows – in a very specific way. He assumed the best of people. He made room for doubt. He operated from a position of grace. He nurtured hidden potential with limitless love and grace. He was gentle with his criticism…unless he was criticizing those who created, invoked or defended the rules.

Jesus looked on the woman that ‘everybody knew’ was a sinner and saw her gratitude – so he offered her grace. The host pharisee saw only this woman’s ‘history.’ Jesus saw nothing but her potential.

Jesus went to great lengths to show us that the realm of the forgiven is preferable to the culture of assumption and suspicion. Jesus’ calls us to live with an open-minded generosity. To challenge the notions that everybody knows. To test ‘common knowledge.’  To learn to find the best – rather than the worst – in one another. To hold up those live-giving traits. To encourage and nurture potential and promise.

True, his behaviour won Jesus some powerful enemies, but the power of the rule-keepers could not extinguish the hope that Jesus’ offers. The promise of God’s kingdom is one of life, eternal and abundant. In spite of the stories that everybody knows, God offers a plot twist: Jesus sees only the best in us. And we are called to live into that promise – to see one another with Jesus’ eyes – to encourage potential and nurture the best in one another, in spite of what everybody knows.