The below sermon was offered at Christ Lutheran Church in Fredericksburg on February 23, 2025. It proved a difficult sermon for me to preach on several levels, but it was received extraordinarily well by people I know as left, right, and in between. I don’t post all my sermons, but based on that response and the many people that I have already spoken with because of my sermon at our two services, I suspect it might resonate with many others as well. So, here I post. I hope it somehow blesses you. If you prefer to listen to the sermon, a recording of our worship service follows the below text.
The woman that we meet today in Luke’s account proves a bit of a mystery, and everything about this meeting seems a bit unorthodox for that day. Here, we have an unescorted, unnamed woman of low rank and reputation barging into a high-ranking citizen’s home, a rabbi’s home, to approach a great religious teacher, Jesus. Then, she unceremoniously baths his feet in perfumed oils and her tears…drying them with her hair…kissing the feet that Peter would later say he was unfit to wash. How dare she presume such a scandalous interaction?
Well, she does so because she is thankful beyond words. Jesus commends her and identifies her actions as a sign of her gratitude for being forgiven of many sins…many sins…potentially very grave and serious sins…yet sins which are never explicitly named in Luke…any more than the woman herself.[i]
As I have shared before, when I was a teen and young adult, I often felt unlovable and unworthy. I imagined my sins were too great even for the power of the cross. So, as I came back into the Church, finally trusting in the forgiveness of all my sins, it proved easy for me to imagine myself in the place of that woman. Thinking of it, I can still experience a joy that can bring me to tears at times.
This realization of forgiveness changed the direction of my life, but I had much still to learn. You see, I could still play the part of the Pharisee. Sure, I finally trusted Jesus’ promises, and it had changed my life in remarkable ways…ways that others even began to notice. Yet, notwithstanding Paul’s encouragement to forgive one another, as God in Christ forgave us (Ephesians 4:32), it proved terribly hard to put forgiveness into practice.
I had been through a lot of traumatic experiences in my family of origin. I have experienced much trauma later through my police service. Such wounds of the world can last. The sin and unfairness we face can warp the way we look at ourselves and others. Despite my best intentions, I could judge people harshly. I could objectify them. I still could return hatred for the hate that I encountered on patrol, because I was prone to only see the sin and not the struggling, wounded person underneath…a person who through grace could be forgiven by Jesus too.
This past week on social media, I expressed to a friend that I was really concerned with the immediate cessation of all aid overseas. I suggested that perhaps some people who urgently needed help might suffer and die. A person unknown to me chimed in, “I chalk that up to [stuff] happens.” (Now, he used a different word than stuff, but we are in church.) Stuff happens? Well, my first response was, yes, stuff does happen to the just and the unjust alike just as Jesus taught (Matthew 5:45). That’s partly why God calls us to care for one another, because stuff happens.
I came across others who called government workers vermin and parasites. And yet although some government workers might fail in their duties, I look around here in this sanctuary, seeing current and past government workers that I know well, and I see people who are nothing of the kind. They are people who work hard and honorably. I don’t see vermin… I don’t see parasites, no matter any failings that might have…No matter any failings, I see Children of God, imperfect but loved siblings in Christ whom I must love…who I do love.
Then, I encountered others who thought anyone who supported the President at any level must be white trash and racist, ignorant or cruel…perhaps even a Nazi. And yet I see people here that I know have voted for president Trump…who are supportive of some of his policies…and I know them differently. They are nothing of the kind. These people are prone to generosity and love, who just want what they think is best for their country, and so they voted that way. No matter any failings, I see Children of God, imperfect but loved siblings in Christ whom I must love…who I do love.
You know…y’all are messed up! …We are all messed up in our own way. And yet I love you…and I hope that comes across…I love you. And I hope you can love the mess that is me. For, we are only human even at our best. We fail often. We can be selfish or shortsighted, and we always need one another’s love and forgiveness. We can also just be plain and blindly wrong at times.
Yet as tribal, sinful humans, we can be awful to one another…truly, abysmally awful. We can close off our hearts…And those we should love, we push away…We judge…We coldly condemn…We see evil, but we fail to see evil at work within our own hearts. And those who hate us, we might tend to hate all the more. This might surprise many in the world, but we can actually say we think someone or something is wrong without hating or objectifying. In fact, the Bible says for us to defeat evil with good (Romans 12:21), not with name calling or insulting memes.
Not doing good with our words and actions can have unintended, deadly consequences. For with such sin, as Luther teaches, we can become murderers killing peace, relationships, and in some cases, killing the spirit of others. This sin is like a disease that can spread from person to person. Perhaps this is partly why an eleven-year-old girl died by suicide in Texas after being taunted over her immigration status by other children. We can become murderers, Luther argues, through the simmering anger, hatred, and contempt hidden in our hearts, and others like our children might just pick up on that and go further than we ever intended.
So, Luther states passionately in his Large Catechism, that “Thou shall not murder” goes way beyond actually stabbing someone. “God wishes,” he writes, “to remove the root and source by which the heart is embittered against our neighbor…[urging us] to commit to [God] the wrong which we suffer. Thus, we shall [put up with] our enemies to rage and be angry, doing what they can, and we learn to calm our [own] wrath, and to have a patient, gentle heart, especially toward those who give us cause to be angry, that is, our enemies.”
Thus, this week, I thought of my own hard and terrible lesson about this sin that works within me. As a police officer in the 1980s and 1990s, I told you before that my heart had grown hard. I was on bicycle patrol one night with my partner and close friend, Willie, when a burglary of an athletic store occurred. The thieves had gone through the roof, stole a lot, and they had successfully gotten away. Hours later in the early morning…hours before any commuters had awoken…Willie and I saw a young male walking with an athletic bag. His clothes were covered in black pitch and tar, and the bag was stuffed to the brim with items. In the context of the recent theft, this seemed like reasonable suspicion for a stop.
Yet soon after we began to speak to him, the suspect got nervous and began to fight us with all his might. He was big. He was strong…very strong…and it took all we had to try to contain and restrain him. And during the fight, the suspect reached for my weapon and tried to wrench my weapon multiple times out of its holster violently. I was fighting with all my might to keep control of it. It came to my mind that if I lost this fight I might die. (I can remember this moment so unbelievably clearly.)
He broke away almost as quickly as he had begun to attack us, and a pursuit by foot and bicycle began. We had already called a Signal 13 which in Alexandra meant an officer was in dire trouble, and units were screaming their way toward us from all over the city. As we sought to cut off and corner the man, Willie and I were separated during the chase, and in the midst of the pursuit my radio went dead just as a large bang could be heard echoing through the darkness. (I remember that clearly too.) A friend told me later that with no one able to reach me, he feared that I had been shot and killed.
So, it was chaos. There was adrenaline pumping, and there was fear. And there was righteous anger, too. After all, he was a thief. He had fought the police. He had even fought for my gun likely to use it against us. This man was caught hiding in a dumpster. (That was the loud bang that people heard.) Yet to arrest him, a police K9 had to be deployed. And as the man fought more and more, the dog bit him more and more…He was damaged pretty badly…until he submitted.
So when I came up to the group, there he was, my enemy, on the pavement in cuffs, profusely bleeding and waiting for an ambulance. He was in pain…that’s for sure…but what I remember very clearly was looking at his eyes and seeing a lot of anger and hatred. (A look that I will not forget…a lot of hatred.) And as I surveyed him in all his suffering, I thought in the depths of my heart, “Good. I am glad he is hurt. He deserves to suffer. He deserves to die. He is trash.” I am ashamed to say it. It is ugly, but it is true. I would have been happy in that time of my anger if he had died.
Yet it was at that very moment, like a voice in my head, I heard the words, “How can you condemn him, after all that I have forgiven you? He could be with you in heaven someday.” Whether that voice was the Spirit of God, or my mind’s synapses had finally made a new but powerful connection between scripture and my life[ii]…I knew I was a murderer…a sinner…a person who must repent. And although I know that the use of force was necessary, and the arrest was ultimately for the community and even the man’s safety (stopping him from harming himself and others more), my heart immediately softened. I saw myself in him, and I began to have compassion for him…to love him…wanting him to have the love and forgiveness that I had myself received. Now, this did not mean that I regretted any consequences for him that he faced. (Consequences can be necessary or unavoidable.) Yet, I recognized that more was going on in that situation…something eternal.
Years later, I have no idea what became of this man, but I still pray for him when he comes to mind. And he often does whenever I struggle to forgive someone, or whenever I start to objectify someone, or whenever I call someone a jerk. I catch myself thinking of that moment and of him. This was a life-changing event for me. It is one still difficult to share, especially in the context of what happened in Virginia Beach this past week.[iii] But it is also difficult to share because I am ashamed of my sin. And yet at this time, where people are failing in love so often and to such a great extent, painting groups of people with a broad brushstrokes with little or no discernment of their unique differences or situations, I see so many strong parallels.
You likely have seen it or experienced it yourselves. We tend cut off from one another in judgement and hate…where an adult child might not wish to speak to a parent due to disagreements over hot button political issues of our day. And after arguments, longtime friendships have died. I thought it important to confess my sin once again…this time to you. To acknowledge that I struggle at times to resist becoming the Pharisee of this tale, the one saying, “Doesn’t Jesus know who these people are, these sinners?”
Why, yes…yes, he does. They are the people he has come to love and save. Jesus taught us in his Beatitudes, as children of the Kingdom of God, saved-sinners, that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, even our enemies. In fact, Jesus had just shared the Beatitudes in Luke’s account immediately before this dinner. As with the women in Luke, it might seem sometimes a mystery how others have found themselves struggling in sin or on another political side opposed to us. Yet the mystery of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection for our sake, for all of us, points us only toward love for those whom we might otherwise judge without mercy or objectify.
My brothers and sisters, we live in a time of trouble. There are wars and rumors of wars – but not just overseas. These wars are happening in our communities, congregations, and within our families. People are turning against the ones they should love, forgive, and be gentle toward, and in their hearts, they start to think of others as trash…disposable. Our hearts have divided allegiances between Jesus’ way and the world’s way.
Yet, we who have been forgiven so much need not give in to the malevolent spirit of these times. By God’s help, whatever others say or do, we can be moved by the Holy Spirit toward patience, compassion, and forgiveness for those who might not deserve it in the eyes of the world. We can seek to protect and speak up for those who are maligned, objectified, or threatened even when those people are wrong. For we have been forgiven all our sin, because of what Christ suffered on the cross and nothing else…proving that no one is trash to Jesus, including you or me. Amen.
[i] Jane Schaberg, “Luke,” The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsome and Sharon H. Ringe (SPCK, 1992), p. 285-286.
[ii] I know what I believe, that it was a theophany of sorts, but I will leave it up to you to decide for yourselves.
[iii] Two Virginia Beach Police officers died after being shot during a traffic stop the Friday night (February 21, 2025) before this sermon was delivered. The sermon was already written, but many police friends and I had been reflecting how such a loss impacted us. Losses from our own departments came back to haunt us. I lost four colleagues during my six years as an officer – two from being shot, one from suicide, and one from a unknown, preexisting heart condition after a foot pursuit. The death of any officer resonates through the police community plus their families in a way hard to describe. The grief sticks with us for the rest of our lives.
I am not sure of the original source of the above artwork. I found it at the Holy Smack blog. If you know the artist, please let me know. I’d like to give proper attribution.
If you would like to hear my sermon or watch our service, the video can be found below. The Gospel text and sermon begins at about the 17 minute mark.
© 2025 The Rev. Louis Florio. All content not held under another’s copyright may not be used without permission of the author.
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