Brief synopsis of the readings: The relationship between King David and Nathan the prophet informs our first reading. Nathan scolds David because, after all God has given him, David sins gravely. Nathan tells him: “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, taken his wife for your own, and killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.” Chastened, David replies: “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan then tells David that God forgives him and will not take his life. Luke’s Gospel describes a scene where a Pharisee invites Jesus to a meal. Once taking his place, a woman (who had a bad name) entered. She brought an alabaster jar of ointment with which she anointed his feet. Weeping, she kissed his feet and dried her tears with her hair. The Pharisee, recognizing the woman, called out Jesus and proclaimed that if Jesus were truly a prophet he would know this woman’s reputation. Jesus then told a parable about a man who was owed debts by two people. One owed him 500 denari and the other owed him 50. When he forgave both debts, which debtor will love him more? Simon (Peter) suggested the one with the greater debt would love him more. Jesus agreed and told the woman her sins were forgiven and proof of this was shown in her desire to serve Jesus. This caused some consternation as some at the table asked: “Who is this man, that he even forgives sins?” Jesus concludes this reading by telling the woman that her faith has saved her.

Sometimes when I read the readings from the Catholic lectionary I have to scratch my head over how they chose which stories (and which versus) to tell. Our first reading from the Second Book of Samuel makes almost no sense without some context. It begins with the 7th verse of the 12th chapter but we need to read from the beginning of the 11th chapter to fully understand the depths of David’s sin.

Here David is the King of Israel. His reign over Israel is generally considered the apex, the high point, of Jewish history. Years ago I watched a movie about Jews in the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis in 1943: prisoners with smuggled guns fought back against their oppressors and one of them (knowing the uprising was ultimately doomed) proclaimed: “I feel the blood of King David in my veins!”

But David, along with all of us before and after, was a flawed character. This reading describes perhaps his lowest point. Israel was fighting against the Ammonites, and one of his soldiers was a man named Uriah. While Uriah was in battle, David saw Uriah’s wife Bathsheba and was attracted to her. David called for her and demanded intercourse with her.

Today if we are horrified by this demand that’s a good thing. We put great stock in the phrase “consentual sex” but frankly that’s a fairly modern term. Today we believe that either partner in an intimate relationship can decline intimacy and the other partner commits a crime by ignoring that refusal.

But that hasn’t been true for much our history. Thomas Jefferson, the third American President, had a long term relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemming. He kept it secret at the time because of criticism because it was an interracial relationship, but today we see it at forcible rape because a slave could not refuse her master. Sex is consensual only if both parties have the power to say no.

Bathsheba was in the same situation. King David did not need to ask for Bathsheba’s consent: as king his power over her was absolute. He didn’t need to ask her consent anymore than he needed to ask the consent of the knife he used to cut his food.

I know this shocks us today, and that’s a good thing, because our understanding of the relationship of the equality between men and women takes center stage in this reading.

You see, David found himself trapped by his own actions. His desire for a one night stand with Bathsheba resulted in her pregnancy. Even the mighty King David recognized that this sin would not play well with his people. Unfortunately he doubled down on his desperate situation. First he called her husband Uriah home in the hopes that he would have sex with her and everyone would assume this child would be seen as Uriah’s.

It didn’t work. Uriah, feeling guilty that he was called home from the front lines, slept outside his home and everyone knew that he did not sleep with Bathsheba. David grew more desperate: he recognized that the clock was ticking and abandoned the plan to claim that Uriah fathered the (soon to be born) child.

Instead he made a desperate and awful decision. He ordered that once back in battle, Uriah’s troops would pull back, expose Uriah to enemy fire and ensure his death. Alas, that plan worked.

Except that it didn’t. God saw what happened and took the side of the powerless. We call Nathan a prophet because he spoke for God, and Nathan was not diplomatic. His call to proclaim God’s truth was not supposed to be diplomatic. God recognized that David sinned both in his decision to impregnate Bathsheba and his decision to cause the death of Uriah to cover up his first sin.

Finally we find ourselves at the beginning of our first reading. Nathan confronted David in his sin, and to his credit, David admitted his guilt.

As Christians we often speak of God’s ability to forgive even our worst sin. It’s hard to imagine a sin greater than David’s. As a matter of fact, the United States Code of Military Conduct specifically prohibits any sexual conduct between members of the military and the spouses of other members.

And yet God forgives David. God’s forgiveness does not come without a price (and the child born of this affair died at seven days old). And while we rightly mourn for the child who died prematurely, we need to put him or her in God’s care and recognize that David is not evaluated only on his worst decision.

This message continues to the Gospel. We know nothing about the woman in this story except she was seen badly by those gathered. Perhaps her desire to find a husband called her to make bad decisions. Perhaps today we would see her as a victim of human trafficking. In any case her desperation called her to see Jesus as her best hope for a fulfilled life. There is much we don’t know.

What we do know is this: she knew that Jesus was dining with a Pharisee. And having little to lose she entered the Pharisee’s home without an invitation and approached Jesus.

And she was all in. She broke the rules and and once there she broke open a container of oil, rubbed it on Jesus’ feet, mixed with her tears. She then dried his feet with her hair.

And here we see the divergence: the Pharisee looked at the woman’s sins and Jesus looked at her love. He stated clearly that she could only have done this out of love. She wasn’t even looking for forgiveness.

But forgiven she was. And that commands the heart of these readings.

I’m hoping many of you remember this, but in late 1998 President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a legal but inappropriate relationship with an intern, Monica Lewinski. There was a great deal of conversation in this country about how we had “lost a sense of sin” and that anything was permissible. At the time I disagreed. I felt (and still feel) that we have never lost a sense of sin, but instead we have lost a sense of forgiveness of our sins. Caught in his indiscretion, he feared that the word “adulterer” and “sex maniac” would completely describe him, pushing out President, father, husband, and friend. Because he didn’t think there was a path back to wholeness he lied and hoped he would get away with it. But like David, he didn’t.

For if humility reminds us that we cannot be seen exclusively by our best moments, forgiveness demands that we not be judged by our worst moments. The ability, indeed the command, to forgive ourselves and others provides us with the only path to wholeness and true discipleship.

As with so many of Jesus’ encounters we are called not to see as the Pharisee saw but as Jesus saw. While the Pharisee looked back on the nameless woman’s life with an inventory of her sins, Jesus looked forward to her life of love.

As a postscript I hope she was able to forgive herself. Forgiving ourselves is often the hardest job we face.