Clergy and Educators

ICJS Scripture Forum, 2005-2006
Session #7

Scripture Forum
Session #7
Chizuk Amuno Congregation
March 31, 2006

Texts:
     Genesis 18:1-33
     Luke 7:31-50

Introduction to the texts (Dr. Randi Rashkover):

• In choosing texts for previous Scripture Forum sessions I've been trying to be rather systematic. I've moved from liturgical practices to Temple economy to a narrative. When I thought about doing a Scripture Forum year devoted to ques-tions of economy, I definitely wanted to have
  one session where we focused our attention on hospitality as an economic category. The ques-tion of hospitality has dominated a lot of attention in theological circles in the past ten years. The person who has really raised this issue in the last ten years is Jacques Derrida. He offers a very challenging perspective in regard to hospitality, arguing that, on some level, hospitality is really a challenge to all economic systems. Definitionally speaking, hospitality breaks the bounds of econ-omies, and to the extent that it doesn't, it cannot be authentic hospitality. I do think that hospitality is a challenge to closed economic systems.
• In thinking of the texts that we've already studied, hospitality is a nice category for economic inquiry because it borders the domestic economy with the public economy. Hospitality is a border economic concept in which we can actually see the engage-ment between private economy and more public economy. I think it would be interesting to con-sider the connections between these two things because we may have standards about private economy that don't have legitimacy in the public economy. Just to point that out for a bit, a long time ago there was a New York Times, or perhaps a Washington Post reporter, a Jewish woman, whose father had been shot by a Palestinian near the Temple in Jerusalem. She became consumed by this event and began to write a story about it. She sought out the person who had shot her father, found him in jail, and did a long-standing interview with him and his family. She even en-tered his home, and she really tried to discern the private narrative of this person. The process didn't adjudicate her understanding of the political cir-cumstances, but there was an extent to which she became familiar with the private and domestic aspect of the man's situation. The question that whole series of interviews raised is, how do we adjudicate between the private and the public sphere? I think today's texts lend themselves to that question as well.
• The text we are going to look at first is Genesis 18, which comes from parshah Vayera. This is a very famous text. We're not just going to look at the episode of Abraham's hospitality toward the strangers. Instead, we're going to juxtapose that scene with the engagement with Sodom and Go-morrah. One of the questions we want to raise about hospitality in this text is: What are the relationships between the two economies -- the hospitality in the first scene and Abraham's engagement with God in the second scene? Genesis 18 stands in great comparison with Luke 7, where we see another example of domestic hospitality. The two texts together can help us address the question of hospitality, as well has
  the question raised several sessions ago, namely, do we find an eschatological economy? Do we find a hyperbolic economy; that is, is the hospitality beyond limits, or is it delimited? And if there is a hyperbolic understanding of economy or an es-chatological economy in the loop, do we also find that in the Genesis text?

The first text: Genesis 18:1-33 (NRSV translation)

The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, "My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest your-selves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on -- since you have come to your servant." So they said, "Do as you have said."

And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, "Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes." Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" And he said, "There, in the tent." Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due sea-son, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son." But Sarah denied, saying, "I did not laugh"; for she was afraid. He said, "Oh yes, you did laugh."

Then the men set out from there, and they looked toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice; so that the LORD may bring about for Abraham what he has prom-ised him." Then the LORD said, "How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know." So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the LORD.

Then Abraham came near and said, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" And the LORD said, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake." Abraham answered, "Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?" And he said, "I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there." Again he spoke to him, "Suppose forty are found there." He an-swered, "For the sake of forty I will not do it." Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there." He answered, "I will not do it, if I find thirty there." He said, "Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there." He answered, "For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it." Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there." He an-swered, "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it."

And the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

The discussion begins:

• Remark: In the car coming here I was explaining the Genesis story to my daughter because I thought it was really amusing. Abraham is in front of his tent, and God comes along. Abraham sees these guys walking down the street, and he says, "God, could you just wait a second because there are these guys that are coming." He's asking God to wait a bit because his focus is on something else. I found that kind of funny.
• Reaction: That's interesting because I read that completely differently. I read "the Lord appeared" and the "three men" as the same thing. But I like your reading better.
• Remark: Years ago someone told me that the reason Abraham is sitting in the tent is that he's recovering from his circumcision that has just taken place.
• Response: Yes, that's what has just transpired [in chapter 17]. It's frequently noted that his actions are all the more significant because he's exhausted and weakened. It's important to understand that the covenant was forged immediately before this. The question arises here, to what extent is Abra-ham behaving covenantally? That he seems to put his desire to be hospitable to these three folks over and against his concern with God doesn't look so covenantal. Or one may say that the reading is quite covenantal, that in fact Abraham is acknowl-edging God precisely by anticipating welcoming the visitors.
• Question: Could chapter 18 have come before chapter 17? Would Abraham have made this gesture of hospitality? Would there have been
  a chapter 18 had there not been a 17?
• Reaction: Genesis 17 doesn't really give an ac-count of why it is that God chose Abraham. As I was looking at this, I kept thinking that it would be both odd and satisfying to the rabbis because, to a certain extent, all the justification happens after Abraham's election. We could argue that Abraham is precisely the sort of guy who would actually be worthy of being elected because he obviously be-haves in a very noble way. You don't need the rabbis to drum up stories about Abraham shatter-ing the idols in order to explain why it is that God chose Abraham. On the other hand, a question in this text is, is this evidence for Abraham's worth, or is this a test? Is it a test that he's being asked to choose between social responsibility and divine responsibility?
• Question: When you ask if chapter 18 could have come before 17, or whether there would have been a chapter 18 without chapter 17, do you mean all of chapter 18, or do you mean just the first fifteen verses? The reason I ask is because when God asks whether he should reveal to Ab-raham what He is about to do in Sodom, that question is based entirely on the covenant. And
  I guess the follow-up question is, do you only mean 17, or do you also mean Genesis 12 and
  15, because there is covenant in both of those chapters?
• Response/question: I think what I meant was whether or not this gesture of hospitality and making God wait would have been possible. Is it the covenant that makes him generous? Do we have any texts that demonstrate Abraham's generosity prior to chapter 17?
• Response: There's his rescue of Lot, but that's
  a family thing.
• Another response: He does give Lot the first choice.
• Reaction: Those actions are after the initial covenant. He does take Lot under his wing when his brother dies. [Scribal note: Abraham's father takes responsibility for Lot after the death of Lot's father. Then Lot goes with Abraham (Abram) right after God speaks to Abraham the first time.]
• Remark: Something else that I would factor in is that when Abraham goes to Sodom, Lot offers him hospitality. Lot is not doing that after having re-ceived a covenant; as I read it, Lot is doing that as a social act. So I puzzle over why we look at hospitality as an implication of the covenant.
• Response: Partly because there is something different in what Abraham does as opposed to what Lot does. Abraham doesn't know who these people are; they are strangers, and they are not related to him. So the question of hospitality is, in part, the question of inviting a stranger into your home and behaving with generosity toward some-one you don't know. Is this possible for Abraham only after the covenant because God has asked him to go to a place he does not know and be-come a stranger there. I think that's interesting
  to consider.
• Remark: I think there's another element that is important for this discussion. The Bible tells us
  the crimes for which Sodom and Gomorrah are
  to be punished. We see one crime in Genesis 19, and that crime is the exact opposite of hospital-ity. This is reminiscent of the end of the book of Judges, where a similar act leads to something that severs a tribe from the twelve tribes, something that is considered so great a crime,
  so great a sin, that the rest of the Israelites are willing to break off from this tribe (something they later regret doing). I think that adds more to our understanding of hospitality. This narrative begins with an invitation to guests, and one of the major parts in the story as the narrative continues has to do with outright rejection and hostility toward guests.



• Remark: The etiquette of hospitality here vis-à-vis Sarah really intrigues me. One of the visitors makes the outlandish assertion that Sarah is going to have a child, and it hits her funny bone be-cause it's so ludicrous. Then, when they ask her why she laughed, she doesn't challenge them with the physical impossibility of having a child; rather, she covers up. Is this part of the hospitality? You don't want to embarrass your guests, so you essentially indulge their nonsense.
• Reaction: Would it have even been her place as a woman to speak to them?
• Response: They spoke to her when she laughed.
• Remark: I wonder if Sarah's response could be considered the opposite of an act of hospitality
  in the sense that her body is not going to be hospitable to new life. If we look at what's going on in the text through the lens of hospitality and the borders of public and private, do we look at the question of the public and private nature of Sarah's body? Obviously, that's not a question from inside the text.
• Reaction: Say a little bit more about her act of being inhospitable. What is she inhospitable to? Is she inhospitable to the idea of having a child?
• Response: Well, I just thought of that. What's really going on in my head is the scene in Luke of the annunciation. In Luke the woman is open to the reception of new life as, in a sense, an act of hospitality. If you put the Lukan text next to the Genesis text, you get a great anti-Jewish reading of the Genesis text.
• Remark: I'm just astonished that Sarah made thirty-six pounds of flour into bread. She's probably exhausted more than anything else.
• Response: Maybe so. But if I read Genesis intertextually, that's the allusion: This is an annunciation scene.
• Reaction: But this is an annunciation to Abraham, while Sarah is not given an opportunity to offer any kind of hospitality except to work with the thirty-six things of flour. She's behind the door, and she laughs to herself. So is she being inhos-pitable, or is the text simply marginalizing her? She was right: Sarah didn't laugh. She didn't laugh out loud; she laughed inside herself.
• Reaction: She's inside the tent but she hears what's going on. And one of the things she hears is "Where is your wife Sarah?" She has not been introduced by name to the visitors. She's got to be thinking, "They know my name. Oh my goodness."
• Remark: And they know that she laughed even though she didn't laugh out loud. No wonder Sarah is scared.
• Objection: You're making the equation that the three people are the LORD. It says, "The LORD said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh?’" It does-n't say the three men said this to Abraham.
• Objection to the objection: The three men say, "Where is your wife Sarah?"
• Response: Right. They do know her name, but they never say, "Why did Sarah laugh?"
• Reaction: That leaves open the earlier reading about covering up, which might actually be the more midrashic approach. It's not that she laughs at them and is thereby inhospitable to them. Her laughter is a covering up. It's not what she says; it's what she doesn't say. In Abraham's order of priorities, the three men are first, then God, and finally Sarah. And these men come and say what
  is going to happen to Sarah's body. You could imagine that Sarah is annoyed. But she doesn't get angry, and she stays relatively quiet. Actually she is quite hospitable here. She prepares the meal, and that takes a lot of work.
• Remark: I think it's fascinating that Sarah's laughter is questioned. When Abraham fell on his face laughing (in chapter 17), no questions were asked.
• Question: Why are we saying that she laughed to herself?
• Response: Because the text does. It says she laughed "within herself."
• Remark: The LORD says to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh?" But then Sarah says, "I did not laugh." Either Abraham or somebody confronts Sarah, or Sarah can hear the LORD.
• Response: My Cecil B. DeMille's imagination is that there's just a tent flap, and Sarah is behind the flap. They can't see each other; they're veiled, if you will.
• Response: If you play with the idea that the LORD is not the three men, the LORD says to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh?" Then Sarah responds. So even if the LORD is talking to Abraham and she is on the other side of the flap, if she hears it, then she can hear the LORD.
• Question: Who is the "he" who says, "Oh, yes, you did laugh"?
• Response: Verse 13 says, "The LORD said to Ab-raham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, "Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?" Is any-thing too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’" That's an exchange between the LORD and Abraham. But Sarah denied saying, "I did not laugh."
• Remark: It's interesting how you're moving that interpretation because the dynamic of the text for me has always been playing around with liminality: The borders or the boundaries between the LORD and the strangers are all tangled up and you can't sort them out.
• Response: I was trying to separate them. Certainly it's a very traditional Christian interpretation to see these three guests as the LORD, and as a prefigurement of the Trinity.



• Remark: The clause "for she was afraid" -- that's sort of standard when you bump into the LORD, isn't it?
• Response: It isn't for Abraham.
• Remark: They've been hanging out for a while.
• Response: Yes, Abraham and God have been hanging out for a while. But it seems to me that you could argue that the LORD didn't just appear to Abraham. And, maybe on another occasion, I'd like to argue that the appearance of the LORD to Sarah is not derivative of the LORD's appearance to Abraham; although in this text, once could argue that it is. But the fact that she's afraid …
• Remark: It's interesting to compare Sarah and Abraham. Sarah encounters God and she is afraid. But in the very beginning of [Torah portion] Lech-lecha, Abraham encounters God and is not afraid. The question is, why is Abraham so receptive to God? Part of the argument is that God promises certain things to him, so Abraham has a lot of reasons to trust God. But here God is speaking
  and there are no promises. There is no potential comfort for Sarah. She gets no assurance that
  the stranger is one she can trust. All she gets is God appearing to back up or call into question her concern about these strangers, who have given her no reason whatsoever to trust them. Abraham has been promised some things, but Sarah is not the recipient of the promises.
• Remark: Plus the fact that Abraham just uprooted her without any consultation. She's a pretty angry woman.



• Question: Does it scandalize the sages that the visitors are given cheeseburgers [milk and meat]?
• Response: They address it.
• Question: How do they address it?
• Remark: I always though that the sages retro-jected Abraham as observing the halakhah.
• Response: According to the sages, Abraham didn't eat, he just appeared to eat. And the angels didn't eat either because angels don't eat. So they just appeared to be eating. That's one midrash.
• Remark: This is the first interaction between Sarah and God, and perhaps the only one. And it's just this: "You did." "Did not." "Did too." It's a very funny interaction.
• Remark: In this context of hospitality where Abra-ham's being so nice to everybody else, there is domestic strife. It's like when the neighbors knock on the door and you're in the middle of a family fight. The neighbors come in, and everything is sweetness and light. It's a lot easier to deal with the three strangers than to deal with what's going on in the tent. If you want to take this from a feminist perspective, Sarah really is a very angry woman. All of the drama is about Abraham. These men come with a message about what's going on in Sarah's life, but then they leave and Abraham goes with them. The things that are happening in the tent are diminished in their significance. What is the price of hospitality in terms of your home base?
• Question: But isn't this Abraham's MO?
• Question: What do you mean?
• Response: When you get to chapter 22, …
• Interjection: He's an angry man.
• Reaction: He's an angry man. He's a sexist, patriarchal, angry man, and it was ever thus.
• Response: But look at v. 19. Abraham is actual-
  ly applauded for being the guy who keeps the household intact. You're saying that it's his MO
  to focus less on the household and to be a part
  of a bigger mission. But in v. 19 it explains why it is that God is going to consult him with respect to Sodom and Gomorrah. It says: "For I have loved him because he commands his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD doing charity and justice" [not the NRSV translation]. One of the reasons Abraham has been given this MO is because he's inculcated his household into these two virtues of charity
  and justice.
• Objection: But it's not mutually exclusive that he could do that and still not tell Sarah what's going on.
• Another objection: I read v. 19 as saying that God has chosen Abraham in order for him to do these things, not because he does them. That's the way the English sounds to me. It's future-oriented.



• Question: Looking now at Sodom and Gomorrah,
  is there hospitality in the negotiation? In the last session we looked at the negotiations with the Hittites and asked about the standards for mak-
  ing contractual relationships with non-Jews. It's interesting to me to read Sodom and Gomorrah through the lens of the hospitality toward the three strangers. Is Abraham repeating the kind
  of behavior he exercised by welcoming three strangers into his home in the negotiations with God over Sodom and Gomorrah? Or is he striking
  a different kind of moral posture here?
• Response: Abraham wasn't really the host is Sodom.
• Question: What is he giving up?
• Response: I don't know. What is the import of
  the question?
• Response: In the encounter with the three men, Abraham extends his worldly goods, if nothing else, even though it makes him vulnerable. Is he risking his relationship with God by pressing God about Sodom and Gomorrah? What is his vulnerability in this negotiation?
• Response: The vulnerability is asking God to exhibit mercy and not just justice. There is a possibility of reading this as hospitable because Abraham has a real concern for strangers, for people who are not the same as he is. Even though the numbers may not support it, he's asking God to show mercy to a whole group on the grounds of the righteousness of a few. He's welcoming the stranger in terms of his concern for them. That's how I see this as an act of hospitality.
• Remark: I would say that this can happen because of the covenant. Abraham understands that he and God are in this together, so he extends himself and makes this plea.
• Reaction: So it's a use of power, in a way.
• Response: It's an empowerment. In a sense, God empowers Abraham to do this because God has chosen Abraham.
• Remark: But it's a plea on behalf of strangers, in particular, strangers who have been unjust, by and large. That's quite welcoming, quite hospi-table, to welcome into your standards of mercy those people who are other and who are morally questionable.
• Objection: But it's not mercy that Abraham raises. He raises justice. And he goes out on a limb when he first speaks to God. He says, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" He ques-tions God's sense of righteousness. As the negotiation goes on, Abraham realizes what he
  is doing because his tone changes completely by the end, where he says, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak."
• Remark: But it seems to me that there's a possibility that hospitality is not a function of compassion; it's a function of justice. Providing hospitality to the strangers without knowing anything about their moral character Abraham sees as an act of justice. Therefore, in a curious way, he is challenging God to act in the same manner in which he himself has just acted.
• Question: Another question that I have to ask is how this relates to the Akedah. I'm baffled that Abraham would stand up for complete strangers and yet be willing to offer up his own son, no questions asked. Maybe this does go along with your reading of hospitality.
• Reaction: This goes back again to the tension between Abraham and his so-called mission, and the price of that mission for his family. Does his family have to pay the price of Abraham's being charged with this historical narrative significance? That's an interesting question.
• Remark: Even within the family, Abraham is sad-dened by the LORD's decision to go along with Sarah's request to banish Hagar and Ishmael. But we don't find anything at all about Abraham's reaction to being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. All we learn is that he does it. It's very puzzling, bothersome.



• Remark: I'm intrigued by the question, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" I would like Abraham to say, "You're going to seep anybody away? What kind of God are you? Just because they're wicked, you're going to sweep them away?" Maybe because he's a baby in the covenant and is just learning, he's got a narrow notion of justice and who the LORD should have mercy on. Maybe when he grows up, he'll ask the question, "What do you mean, you're going to sweep people away because they did something wrong?" I'm deeply troubled about this. And a little angry. It's the notion that nobody ever asks why bad things happen to bad people. We all assume that if you're bad, bad things should happen to you.
• Remark: Look at the juxtaposition of verses 19 and 20. There is some kind of boundary drawn there. God talks about why He has chosen Abraham, and then all of a sudden in the next verse, God is talk-ing about Sodom and Gomorrah. That's a big turn in the narrative that is trying to create a bound-ary, and Abraham decides to jump over the boundary.
• Remark: If we go back to v. 17, it's not only Ab-raham who is a baby at this covenant; so is the LORD. God has to decide whether to say anything to Abraham and how much negotiating to do with Abraham before he goes ahead with the destruc-tion of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• Remark: Whether it's fifty or five or whatever number Abraham wants to come up with, it's something of an academic exercise because
  God knows that He is going to find total de-pravity.
• Remark: One of the questions that is raised in this text is whether the covenant at this juncture is an exercise of learning for both parties. But is that betrayed by the fact that, in terms of the overall narrative, what God was expecting to happen happened anyway? Does that kind of dismiss the fact that they're learning from each other how to proceed? Is God just making a showing that He's learning how to proceed through Abraham? Or is He really making a move? Does Abraham really mediate the position, and does God really change His mind because of what Abraham says? Does God learn what counts as justice and charity through Abraham?

The second text: Luke 7:31-50 (NRSV trans.)

[Jesus said] "To what then will I compare the people of this gener-ation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,

     ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
     we wailed, and you did not weep.’

For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘lLook, a glutton and a drunk-ard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children."

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him -- that she is a sinner." Jesus spoke up and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Teacher," he replied, "Speak." "A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt." And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly." Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little." Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

The discussion continues:

• Remark: Part of the reason I chose this text is be-cause I just kept wondering what we're expecting of this poor Pharisee. He's in his house, he invites Jesus over, it's very nice, and then this woman shows up. What are the limits of hospitality? Does the Pharisee have to entertain somebody who comes by unexpectedly and then turns the tables on his whole event? How much of an intrusion by a stranger do we have to absorb in order to say that we're behaving hospitably?
• Remark: I find it interesting that she even gets into the house. How would she even dare to go
  in? There's some hospitality being shown to her already by being allowed entrance into this place.
• Remark: She has no business being there, and the Pharisee has no obligation to offer her hospitality. She is a woman who has invaded a male space in the house. The women do not eat with the men. This is very striking.
• Reaction: At a Lenten program on Wednesday night we were talking about the limits of hos-pitality and what happens when someone violates community norms. In particular, we were talking about the night somebody stumbled into some-thing we were doing outdoors, let loose a stream of profanity, and would not stop. I told him he would have to leave, and he said, "You're the pastor, and you're doing me like that?" He had come in and violated a norm that we had decided could not be violated. The woman in this text is violating community norms, but it seems to me that Jesus is saying that he is changing the norms.
• Remark: Not only does she go into the Pharisee's house while he's trying to be hospitable, but she also trumps his hospitality through her own. She becomes even more hospitable to Jesus. Is her exceeding his hospitality a violation of norms? This is very different from the man who came into the church function and started swearing, but we could say that it is equally invasive for her to do this.
• Response: I suppose it depends on the point of view of the perspective you take on the story. If you take the woman's perspective, perhaps in her mind the norms don't apply; and they don't apply for a number of reasons that we could perhaps discuss. But I'm interested in that angle because there's a similar thing going on in the language of the psalms of lament. As the language escalates
  in the cursing psalms, there is less and less of a concern that the psalmist might be offending the Holy One. I've tried to argue that the more des-perate a person is, the less he or she is concerned about boundaries and appropriateness. Desperate people don't sound nice.
• Reaction: The text completely bears that out because Jesus basically says that the one whose desperation for forgiveness is greater is the one who is going to love more. Her desperation to be forgiven explains her behavior. It's a justification for her behavior. The text repositions the proble-matic out of hospitality and into the question of the forgiveness of sin. That raises the question of what the Pharisee is being asked to welcome. Isn't he being asked to welcome a new standard of forgiveness?
• Question: What did she have to lose?
• Objection: I don't see her asking for forgiveness. She's not asking for anything.
• Response: No, but Jesus tells the parable of the creditor and the debtors …
• Response: That's Jesus, right? She's a sinner.
• Reaction: She may not be desperate in asking for forgiveness, but she's desperate because she's marginalized.
• Objection: But she's not really marginalized be-cause she's there. In the Gospels, someone who is really marginalized is always outside of town, along the road.
• Question: What about the woman with the hemorrhage?
• Response: She's also not marginalized because she's in the midst of the crowd, but she is un-derstood to be unclean. The issue that the Pharisee has with the woman is not that she is
  in the room, it's that she's touching Jesus while he's sitting at the table.
• Response: I think she is marginalized, but she makes herself not marginalized. She chooses to come into the house. The woman with the hemorrhage chooses to be in that crowd and to touch Jesus. I don't think you can say that just because they're there, they're not marginalized.
• Remark: The text says the woman learns where Jesus is. That is not insignificant. She's obviously after something. This story gets placed in the category of sin and forgiveness because of how Jesus responds to her, but I'm not completely convinced that that is the only dynamic out of which to read the text. Look at her behavior;
  what is she doing? She's anointing. In Mark's Gospel, interestingly enough, this story is in-
  serted just as the Passion begins. In Mark's story the woman anoints Jesus' head. This business of anointing has several meanings. It could be anointing as in a Davidic anointing of a king, or anointing as in preparing a body. By putting the story at the beginning of the Passion in Mark, you get even more of that kind of layered nuancing. Here she has learned that Jesus is eating in a Pharisee's house, and so she brings an alabaster jar of ointment. To begin with, any woman who has an alabaster jar of ointment has a lot of change. Alabaster is expensive; ointment is expensive. So whatever kind of sinner she is,
  she has money.
• Remark: She may have been well paid for her sins, and the Pharisee may have been the one paying her.
• Remark: There's another dimension I want to puz-zle over here. The Pharisee's does not react to the woman's coming in the house or to her performing the rituals of hospitality. He's only thinking about the fact that Jesus doesn't even know who she is. He's sidestepping his responsibilities as a host.
• Question: Why do you say he's not being a good host?
• Response: Because his reaction is not about the hospitable things he failed to do for Jesus -- the things that were left up to the woman. All he's thinking about is that Jesus doesn't know who
  the woman is, and if he did he wouldn't let her anywhere near him.
• Remark: I think that's significant in the way the hospitality is being shown. Why has the Pharisee invited Jesus for a meal? It's not to show him hospitality. This story falls in a section of the Gospel that questions who Jesus is. There are those who know, and those who don't know. This woman knows, and she shows him hospitality in the midst of the people who don't have any clue who he is.
• Remark: The dynamic is that nothing is going to keep her from getting to Jesus -- not Pharisees, not convention. And it doesn't say she's going to get to him because she's a sinner and she wants to be forgiven. It doesn't say that, and from her actions it's not clear that that's what's going on.
• Reaction: He does say, "Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven."
• Response: Well, yes, he's reading from the script. That's what he's supposed to be doing. The point is, it's not obviously a response to her. We don't know why she looks for him, but she's after him and she finds him in the house of a Pharisee. Maybe she's invited. Maybe she knows the Phar-isee. We don't know why she gets in there, but she gets in.
• Remark: She's the Pharisee's lover.
• Reaction: She's the Pharisee's lover, which is why she has so much money.
• Reaction: Yet the Pharisee doesn't think too much of her, from what he says to Jesus.
• Remark: My point is, if you look at what she's do-ing, what Jesus does in response is an interesting thing going on. She doesn't say she's a wretched sinner. What does she do? She weeps, she washes his feet, she anoints his feet and kisses them. Jesus' response is, "Your …"
• Objection: His response to her doesn't come until v. 48.
• Response: Right. He says, "Your sins are forgiven."
• Remark: His response is in response to what the Pharisee was thinking. The Pharisee is thinking she's a sinner, so Jesus responds to the Pharisee
  -- not the woman -- and says, "Her sins are for-given."
• Response: Unlike the Pharisee's sins.
• Remark: The Pharisee has to get his thinking back in order. Then Jesus follows up by saying directly to her that her sins are forgiven. So it's not clear that he's saying she's forgiven in response to a request for forgiveness. It's in response to the Pharisee's judgment that she is a sinner.
• Question: So if you were doing a follow-up pas-toral visit to the Pharisee, and he says, "I was a little confused by all that stuff that happened. I frankly felt as though I couldn't really provide much hospitality because of the intrusion. Every-thing got interrupted and thrown out of kilter. This is not somebody I normally would have invited. At the end, I know I got whacked upside the head, but what exactly did I get wrong? Or how do I have to get my thinking straight?"
• Response: I would tell him that when someone shows up to offer a gesture of kindness, perhaps you might be open to her, rather than judging her. You decided she was a sinner
• Reaction: But I think that raises the question again about the limits of hospitality, or the price
  of hospitality, because in this case he's being asked to pay the price for her being hospitable
  to Jesus. She's not even nice to the Pharisee.
  She doesn't offer him anything.
• Remark: Let's give it the read that's been the subtext here. This woman is either the Pharisee's mistress or his prostitute. He's entertaining Jesus. He and the woman know each other, so she can get into the house. He sees her and thinks, "This will be interesting. Let's see if this guy is a proph-et. Let's see if he can pick up who this woman really is." He's not offended by her presence there; he doesn't say anything that shows that he's of-fended. The text says, "Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him -- that she is a sinner.’" He knows she's a sinner, because he's been a sinner with her. But he wants to see if Jesus knows who she is, so he's not offended by her presence. It's a little game, a nice little test to see if this guy is really as good as he claims to be.
• Reaction: The great thing that you're pointing out is that the Pharisee says this to himself, and then Jesus responds in the way the Pharisee thinks that he can't respond. It's not that Jesus knows she's a sinner; it's that Jesus knows what the Pharisee is thinking. Jesus responds to the Pharisee's internal conversation.
• Remark: I think your reading [above] makes per-fect sense in light of the passage just before about eating with sinners, and being a glutton
  and a drunkard. Then the Pharisee says, "Come
  on over. I'm not one of those people." This is a test. I think the Pharisee told the woman that Jesus was going to be there.
• Remark: It's also interesting that the Pharisee doesn't get any condemnation from Jesus. In fact, he applauds the Pharisee: "You have judged right-ly." You have understanding.
• Objection: Except Jesus does point out the lack of hospitality.
• Remark: There's a cultural element here that folds into everything that's just been going on. The Pharisee invited Jesus to have a meal with him. If you invited somebody to eat with you, especially if you were a Pharisee, you were telling that person that you considered him to be of the same "rank" as you were. The Pharisee is saying to Jesus, in effect, "You're as good as I am, and you can come in my house and have a meal." The Pharisee fails to do all of the things that comprise hospitality, sending Jesus the message, "I really don't think that you're as good as I am." His failure to be hospitable is a huge insult to Jesus. Then when the woman comes in and carries out the rituals
  of hospitality that the Pharisee failed to deliver, the insult is compounded.
  [Scribal note: In the honor-shame competition in Mediterranean culture, undermining a man's honor can be accomplished by gesture or action as well as word. The Pharisee has invited Jesus to a meal and (intentionally?) neglected his duties as host. That is a deliberate challenge that must be an-swered by Jesus. Permitting the woman's invasion of the male space and allowing her to carry out the rituals of hospitality simply ups the ante of the challenge. Jesus answers the challenge and turns it back on the Pharisee by discerning what the Pharisee is thinking, telling the parable, and for-giving the woman's sins. See additional discussion of the parable below.]
• Question: But is the Pharisee expected to do the kinds of things the woman does? Her behavior seems excessive to me.
• Response: The requirements of hospitality are to offer water to clean the feet from the dust of the road. The kiss of greeting is part of the ritual. The ointment is intended to mask body odor in the social situation. These actions are all part of the rituals of hospitality. The woman is more emotive about it than the Pharisee would have been, but at bottom what she is offering to Jesus are the very rituals that the Pharisee failed to perform,
  the rituals it was his duty as host to perform having invited Jesus for a meal.
• Objection: But in the middle of all this, there's this little story about a creditor who has two debtors. What's that doing in the middle of the story?
• Response: Illustrating the point.
• Objection continues: Illustrating the point. And what is the point? Everybody's a sinner. Some are bigger sinners than others, and when all the sins are cancelled, who's going to love more? I think this parable appears elsewhere in other Gospels, so it's one of those floating pieces that got stuck in here. This insertion is to make the point that everybody's a sinner, and the one who has more sins and is forgiven more is going to love more.
• Question: But what's your point? If you extract the parable, then what are you saying is the remainder? Are you saying that the parable changes the …?
• Response: Every other place that this narrative shows up, it doesn't have this parable inserted in it. I think the parable tells us that this is about sin and forgiveness. If you take the parable out, is there more ambiguity about what's going on in the text? Is there a different valence to the teaching?
• Objection: Except I see that the remainder of the text after the parable seems to reiterate the same point. I see the parable overlapping the structure that follows: Jesus seems to tell the Pharisee that both he and the woman are sinners, they have debts; but the woman's sins are forgiven. Hence she has shown greater love. Her debt was greater, hence she shows greater love. Do you understand what I'm saying? The parallel structure seems to be transposed on the narrative.
• Remark: When I read the parable, it suggests that before Jesus arrives at the house, before any of this happens, both the Pharisee and the woman have been forgiven. The love that is shown is the love for the forgiveness. The way I read the parable suggests that. If anything, that raises more questions for me. (Request: Say that last sentence again. The love that was shown what?) From my understanding of the parable, before Jesus even got to the house, the sins of both the Pharisee and this angry, sinning woman had been forgiven. And that's why the Pharisee shows little love -- showing it perhaps through the invitation and allowing Jesus to sit at the table. The woman shows greater love by lugging this gorgeous alabaster jar around and cleaning Jesus' feet.
• Reaction: That is what I would have thought originally.
• Objection: But if she's his mistress, is her sin greater than his? I think what you say is what
  the text says; but according to the subtext, is this another case of coming down harder on the woman than on the man?
• Response: Well, there's a lot of sarcasm in the story, too. Certainly when the Pharisee refers
  to Jesus as "teacher," he doesn't really mean "teacher."
• Question: What if the background of the story has everything to do with the fact that the Temple has been destroyed? There are two competing, or contrasting, ways of understanding and responding to sin and the resolution of sin. While the Pharisaic methods of repentance constitute one dynamic, this is a text that articulates Jesus as the new Temple; in some fundamental way Jesus is medi-ating the forgiveness once mediated by the Temple. The polemic is that the forgiveness of sins finds readier, easier, more immediate resolution through encounter with Jesus than it does through the Pharisaic method, which is not really all that well played out.
• Reaction: If you read it as a polemic in that vein, it's noteworthy that there's no learning curve here for the Pharisee. He can't receive this alternative model. This is not a text about his being hospitable at all. It's a text about the fact that he's not hos-pitable and that there's a new normative standard for hospitality, repentance, forgiveness, and so forth. He doesn't learn at the end, and that seems to amplify the polemic. The two systems [for the resolution of sin] are truly competing systems, in that the one system cannot absorb the other. It's an interesting possibility.
• Remark: I am reminded here about the discussion we had earlier concerning whether or not Abraham could be hospitable before the covenant. If mem-ory serves, alternative Greek manuscripts render a somewhat difference valence to the reading of v. 47. This translations says, "Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love." That is, "be-cause I have forgiven her sins, she has shown great love." But there is an alternative reading of this text that says, "Because she has shown great love, I have forgiven her sins." If you look at the way the narrative works, her gestures are ges-tures of love. That's an interesting play on what makes what possible in terms of acts of love and forgiveness of sin. I think that might be a minority reading.
• Reaction: To the extent that the Pharisee does-
  n't show great love, it suggests that the minority reading is the only possible reading. If the Pharisee is forgiven, then he ought to show great love. If you have to show love in order to be forgiven, which is what actually seems to be the case, …
• Reaction: Or you have to show great love to be able to perceive that you've been forgiven.
• Reaction: It seems backwards because she does-n't -- as we've been saying -- come seeking forgiveness. She comes seeking to adore Jesus
  by anointing him. This woman has an understand-ing of Jesus. His response to her is not "since you've done this, I will forgive all your sins." Clearly there is a magnitude of sins established: She has a greater magnitude of sin, and the Pharisee has a lesser magnitude of sin. The par-able and Jesus' comments at the end are about the one who's got the greater magnitude of sins forgiven: That one will adore him more than the one who has the lesser magnitude of sins forgiven. It's not a cause-and-effect thing.
• Remark: It seems to me that there's a performative impact that the Genesis text carries; namely, that the text underscores the importance of providing hospitality and the dynamics of justice that are connected with that. The text moves the readers, the community, in a performative direc-tion. The question I have is, does this text move in the direction of advancing christological claims about who Jesus is? Or does the text carry with it ethical and performative expectations of the read-ers in the community?
• Reaction: We may be at an impasse. But I would want to come down on the following: that you do acts of generosity, charity, and hospitality be-cause that's what you're supposed to do. And that's what the woman does. It isn't a matter of being rewarded because she has done something generous. It's not cause-effect. It's that what Jesus perceives is, even though she is a sinner, she has done what somebody else hasn't done.
• Response: She's a forgiven sinner. She comes to Jesus as a forgiven sinner. The read is, knowing that she is forgiven, she can now express joy and generosity and graciousness. You might say like-wise that, knowing that he is in covenant with God, Abraham can show the hospitality he shows. A forgiven sinner, knowing he or she is in rela-tionship with God -- though a sinner -- can show the same hospitality.
• Response: I agree with you, but she doesn't know that. (Response: You don't know …) No, no, no. She may well be a forgiven sinner before she does any of this, but the text doesn't indicate that she knows that. Whether Jesus knows it or not, whether the Father in heaven has already forgiven her, the fact is that she doesn't know it. And she doesn't know it until afterwards.
• Reaction: But suppose she's been out there listening to his teachings, and that's why she's seeking him out -- because she knows who he is from the teachings she's heard. Now she knows that she is a beloved child of God, forgiven of her sins; and now she believes that and comes to express her great joy.
• Response: But we don't know that. We don't have anything on the lines of Genesis 12-17 that we have with Abraham, where it's really explicit. What we know about this woman is comparable to what we know about Sarah -- far less than what we know about Abraham.
• Response: Jesus is clear at the very end, in v. 50. He doesn't say, "It's your act of generosity, your act of hospitality, that has saved you." It is her faith that has saved her.
• Remark: I don't agree with what was said earlier about a new paradigm of christology. This is not a new paradigm for hospitality. There's nothing new here; these are things that should have been done. There is no indication in the text that Jesus had unreasonable expectations about the hospital-ity he should have been accorded. People aren't rattled by the woman's hospitality or the Phari-see's lack of hospitality. They're rattled by how Jesus responds, what he teaches, and the power he has to forgive sins.
• Question: What about Jesus' hospitality to her? That's what breaks the norm, right?
• Request: Play that out.
• Response: You say there is no change in the norms for hospitality. I would say there is a change because of Jesus' hospitality to the woman, which is not normative.
• Question asked of the rabbis present: How does this story hit you?
• Response: A point was made earlier in looking at the text in Genesis about hospitality not being about caring but about being connected to jus-tice. I think that is the direct link to the Lukan text. What do you want me to comment on?
• Response: I'm interested in hearing if this reso-nates as a totally alien text. Is there a challenge? Is there anything here that jumps out?
• Question: A challenge because of the Pharisee?
• Response: Frankly, I would think that the chal-lenge would have much more to do with the teachings around forgiveness.
• Reaction from another participant: That's not why I chose this text. I thought that the text was ask-ing us, on some level, if we expect the Pharisee to be hospitable to this new paradigm. I don't read this as a text not about the Pharisee's hospitality. In terms of Jewish-Christian issues, the question is, how hospitable does the Pharisee have to be
  to this performance in his house of an entirely different normative paradigm? Your question asks about the Jewish reading of this text, and that's one of the Jewish reactions. We're going to be predisposed to be more sympathetic to his char-acter. I don't immediately assume that he's not being hospitable. I assume that he is trying to be hospitable, and that he's being asked to entertain a whole different norm of hospitality. It's almost that he's being posed with a sacramental chal-lenge. In Augustinian terms, there's a kind of tole lege, tole lege ["take and read"] scene that's being performed in front of him where he's exposed to this new paradigm; yet he can't hear it. This really challenges the limits of his capacity to be hos-pitable. To what extent do Jews have to be hospitable to this kind of performance when it's
  so at odds with their own norms of domesticity and their own tradition's norms?
• Question: So the challenge you're seeing is her presence in the room and what she's doing to Jesus?
• Response: And the performance that happens with Jesus' reading of her challenge, because he reads her challenge in this new paradigm of forgiveness. And this is going on in the Pharisee's house.
• Reaction: That's a great question How hospitable does a Pharisee have to be to a norm that is not part of his self-understanding? That really refo-cuses the question about hospitality for me. So here's my expectation. My expectation is you don't have to accept the norm. Maybe you don't even have to have the norm be part of the behavior of your home. But I have certain expectations about your response to this new norm; and that is, al-though it is not yours, you are not to judge it as therefore being ridiculous because it doesn't fit
  the norm that is the standard of your community.
• Reaction: But why wouldn't it be reasonable for him to say, "Not in my house"?
• Response: It may be very reasonable. The ques-tion is part of the question of Jewish-Christian dialogue. It's not that I want Jews to become Christians. It's not that I want Jews to adopt these new norms. What I want from Jews is that they not disparage these new norms that happen to be the guide of my life.
• Reaction: But more than that is going on here. The Pharisee is being challenged to accept so much more than that. He's being challenged to accept an actual performance of a witness to the gospel. He's being asked to witness their witness of the Christian message in his own home. It's almost as if he is being asked to permit his house to become their liturgical space.
• Reaction: Right. Even in a sense a launching pad.
• Response: Yes, and that's huge. Does he have to do this? What are the expectations for that?
• Remark: Which leads you to conclude that Jesus is not a good guest.
• Response: That's what we're asking.
• Reaction: If you're going to place this text after the destruction of the Temple, then Pharisaism was basically a table fellowship. Then the ques-tion becomes, why or how could the Pharisee
  have invited Jesus in the first place to eat in his home unless Jesus was in a state of ritual purity
  to join in the meal? So if you assume it's post-70, then Jesus was in a state of ritual purity to be able to eat in the Pharisee's home. And you have the question, why? Is that possible?
• Question: Is what possible?
• Question: But why not?
• Response to the first question: That Jesus ob-served the rules of table fellowship so that he would not eat regular foods except in a state
  of purity.
• Question: So why would that not be possible?
• Response: It could be possible. That makes him a Pharisee. Otherwise he couldn't have been invited into the home.
• Question: Is he ritually pure once she touches him?
• Response: That's a very good question. By the way, in terms of your [earlier] read, if the Pharisee wanted to sleep with someone other than his wife, he probably would not have taken a mistress. He would have taken a concubine, which was a legal -- and, therefore, acceptable -- relationship.
• Remark from a Jewish participant: The way I read it at the end is that it's no longer the Pharisee's house. It starts out as the Pharisee's house, but the Pharisee is not carrying out his acts of hos-pitality. It's the sinner who does that. Then Jesus does it by offering forgiveness. At the very end, it is Jesus who sends her away with the standard "go in peace." The Pharisee doesn't even do that. I read this as a challenge to the whole Pharisaic establishment, the Temple, or … [The rest of this statement is drowned out by a general uproar.]
• Remark from a Jewish participant: I'm not sure, and I'd really have to look it up, to see whether you're taking the biblical notion of hospitality, which is from the Abraham story, and you're superimposing it on what would have been good hospitality in the rabbinic period for a Pharisee. And I'm not sure whether the anointing would have been good hospitality in terms of people who are eating food in a state of ritual purity, or whether some of these actions might jeopardize that state of ritual purity. I just don't know. I think you have to be able to read the story with the Pharisee having done the appropriate actions for hospital-ity. Jesus is changing the rules, but it's not that the Pharisee didn't do what was expected.
• Remark: Now mind you, if this text were in Matthew, this would make a lot more sense in terms of concerns about ritual purity. But Luke doesn't care about that.
• Objection: I'm not sure I really agree with you on that score because it seems to me that Luke's community consists of some followers of Jesus who really were concerned about ritual purity.
• Reaction: Luke?
• Response: Yes, absolutely.
• Reaction: But Luke's interest …
• Interjection: … is on behalf of the gentile followers of Jesus.
• Reaction: And that's the point of difference be-tween Matthew and Luke. So, in a sense, this is
  a foil because the issue is something greater. In Matthew this would not have been a foil of a story. Luke is not concerned to show that the followers of Jesus are fulfilling all the laws of Torah. Luke wants to make a case about for-giveness of sins and faith in Jesus, and this poor Pharisee in his house somehow gets pulled into
  the story.
• Remark: Homiletically, it's beautiful that it starts out being the Pharisee's house, and at the end
  it's transformed into Jesus' house.
• Parting remark: It's the old story: Be careful who you invite for dinner.

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