Great Love

Every once in a while I abandon my usual reading of non-fiction and pick up a novel. R, who is used to seeing me wading through medieval monastic texts, invariably says, “You’re reading fiction?” I’ve learned not to be offended at her reaction, because she’s had to suffer through my self-important pronouncements that there are too many good works of antiquity for me to waste my time reading modern novels. To make matters worse, I sometimes pick up a book she is still reading, and we have to compete for its pages.

This time, however, I have followed my mother’s lead and turned to Agatha Christie. I’ve read two of her murder mysteries in the last few days, and will probably read a couple more before I reluctantly come to the conclusion that dwelling on the evil side of human nature is probably not the best spiritual discipline. And Christie, like A. Conan Doyle, presents me with British class distinctions and bigotries that I’d rather not remember. Even aspiring actresses have a maid, and the butler, of course, is always a suspect.

The U.S. certainly does not have the same class distinctions. We like to think of ourselves as an egalitarian society. Yet that is simply not true. All it takes for me to realize that is to sit in my office each day and watch students arrive for the G.E.D. class down the hall. Unlike our son, who had the support and resources to put him in the position where he is, these children of God never finished high school. They are still struggling in their twenties and thirties and beyond. Without education and probably without stable families behind them, they are in a very different socioeconomic class from most of those who come to this building for church each Sunday.

I’d like to think that if a G.E.D. student did show up on a Sunday, we’d be more welcoming than the Pharisee was to the “sinner woman” who just wandered right into his dinner party and poured out her tears on Jesus’ feet. It’s pretty clear that even if the Pharisee was holding his nose, Jesus knew she was a child of God. Interestingly, when Jesus dresses down the Pharisee for his hard-heartedness, he doesn’t completely turn him aside. The man may not be forgiven much, compared to the woman, but he is still forgiven. And one gets the distinct impression that if he would stop judging other people, he might be forgiven more.

That’s really the trick, isn’t it? It’s a habit to judge others, to consider if someone is really good enough to be associated with. Jesus just blasts through all that. True, such behavior eventually got him killed. Yet it also showed us how we are to be – more grateful that we are forgiven than concerned with what someone else has done. Maybe that’s why the lure of Agatha Christie’s novels, as well-written as they are, will eventually peter out. They aren’t about grace; they’re about judgment. And I, for one, need all the grace I can get.


3 Pentecost: 1 Kings 21:1-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3.