• A fast day that opens with a promise
• What manner of woman this is
• Dost thou see this woman
• The hands that warm first
• Love them freely, and go in peace

A fast day that opens with a promise

You would expect a fast day to begin with a demand. Today begins with God speaking first, and what God says is not a condition. I will heal their breaches, I will love them freely. The Latin is diligam eos spontanee: I will love them of my own accord, unprompted, because I want to.

Look at where the sentence sits. Israel has just been told to come back carrying nothing but words: no offering, no livestock, no proof of improvement, only a sentence of return.

Before those words reach the end of the verse, God has already answered them. Love them freely is not the reward for the return. It is what the return walks into.

The old purpose of these Ember days, as the Catholic Encyclopedia records it, was to thank God for the gifts of nature, to learn to use them in moderation, and to help the needy. Not one of those three is a fee. The Secret today calls our fasting a gift, and a gift is only a gift because no one is buying anything with it. No fast has ever purchased what God decided in Osee simply to give: I will love them freely.

So hear the whole chapter as a September chapter. Dew, lilies, olive branches, wheat, a vine, the wine of Libanus, and a fir tree that stays green when everything else turns. It is a harvest picture of people who have been let back in. To love them freely is how a God with nothing to gain from us talks about a people who had fallen down by their iniquity.

What manner of woman this is

Now go to the dinner. A Pharisee named Simon has invited Christ to eat. A woman of the city comes in, known to everyone there as a sinner, and without a word she kneels at his feet and weeps on them, and dries them with her hair, and kisses them, and pours out her ointment.

Simon says nothing aloud. Luke lets us hear what he says within himself: this man, if he were a prophet, would know surely who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him. That sentence is a whole theology in one breath, and it is a harmful one. It teaches that holiness means knowing exactly what kind of person is near you, and flinching.

Be precise about where the harm lies. It is not in her tears. It is in the idea that a holy man is proved by what he refuses to let touch him, and that the first question to ask of any woman in the room is what manner of woman she is. God in Osee asked no such question before promising to love them freely.

Trans women have been handed that question at more doors than anyone could count. At the communion rail, at the washroom, at the sign-up table for the choir, at the exchange of the peace when a hand is offered and not taken. What manner of woman is this. Someone is always sure they know, and sure that knowing settles whether she may come near. The Lesson says I will love them freely; the door says, first tell us what you are.

We named trans people on Monday, where the question was a short fixed list of verses produced at them as though the file were closed. Today’s claim is a different one. It is not about which texts are quoted at them. It is about whether they are allowed to touch the Lord at all, and whether the welcome depends on passing an inspection first.

And it differs from yesterday, too. Yesterday asked who the rescue party goes out looking for. Today the woman has already come in on her own, uninvited, and the question is whether the man at the head of the table will let her stay. The God of Osee asks for no credentials before he says I will love them freely.

Let no one mishear this. Being trans is not the sin in this story. Luke never tells us what her sins were, and this ministry will not supply them. The parallel is with Simon’s inspection, not with her past. To love them freely means there is no inspection at the door.

Dost thou see this woman

Here is the part that should undo anyone who has ever been sorted. Christ does not answer Simon’s question. He is asked, in effect, what manner of woman is this, and he never says. He turns around, so that his back is to his host and his face is to her, and asks Simon something else: Dost thou see this woman?

Then he tells her story back, out loud, in front of everyone who had already decided what she was. She washed my feet with tears. She wiped them with her hair. She has not stopped kissing them since she came in. She anointed them.

He lists what she did. He does not list what she is. That is how he chose to love them freely: out loud, by what she did.

Think about what it is to have someone do that for you in public. To be spoken of by name and deed, in the room where you were being discussed as a category. Many people in this congregation know exactly what that sentence would cost to hear, because we have waited a very long time to hear it. Being described by your deeds, in the hearing of the people who sorted you, is what it sounds like when God decides to love them freely.

And then the ending. Thy sins are forgiven thee. The guests start murmuring again, now about him. He does not stop to argue with them. He speaks one more time, to her alone.

That is what it looks like when God does what Osee said God would do. I will heal their breaches. I will love them freely. The promise in the Lesson becomes a man at a dinner table who lets the wrong person touch him and calls it love.

The hands that warm first

There is a story sometimes told of a woman who has used a wheelchair since her twenties and who, for years now, has needed help to wash. More hands than she can remember have handled her body. Most of them were quick and competent and a little impatient, the way people are with a task.

One aide on the night rota is different. Before she touches her, she runs her own hands under the hot tap for twenty seconds, every single time, so they will not be cold. She says her name before she begins. She asks before she lifts an arm. She has never once said anything about how much work this is.

The woman in the chair will tell you she could pick out that aide in the dark by the temperature of her hands. She cannot remember most of the others at all. She remembers the twenty seconds. They tell her something no chart ever says: that her body is not a problem being managed, but a person being honoured. Twenty seconds under a tap is not grand theology, but it is what it looks like to love them freely.

That is the woman at Christ’s feet, turned around. Someone kneels at a body others have decided is improper, and gives it water and ointment and time, and does not hurry. There is no rescue in the story and no cure. None is expected. There is only care that asks first, and warms its hands.

Disabled people know what it is to be handled without being seen. We know that the difference between the two is often twenty seconds long. And we know that when someone takes those twenty seconds, it feels like being let back into the human race. Twenty seconds is how an aide, a friend or a whole congregation learns to love them freely.

Love them freely, and go in peace

So here is what this community, led by trans people and disabled people, takes from Ember Friday. We are the ones who were inspected at the door. Therefore at our door there is no inspection. God says I will love them freely, and we are not going to charge admission to something God gives away.

If you are trans and you have spent years at the edge of a room waiting for someone to settle what manner of woman or man or person you are, hear the Gospel’s order of events.

She came in. She drew near. She touched him. Only then did anyone speak, and the one who spoke took her side. That is the order in which God chooses to love them freely.

If you are disabled and your body has been talked about over your head in every waiting room you have ever sat in, hear Christ’s question addressed to everyone else in the room. Dost thou see this person? Not the chair, not the chart, not the diagnosis. This person. To love them freely begins there.

And hear the last line, because it is the one meant to be carried out of the house. Thy faith hath made thee safe, go in peace. Our Sunday a month ago heard its near twin said to a leper who came back to give thanks. Both times the healing is credited to the one who came near.

A word about limits, because this matters. None of this means you must go back into rooms that hurt you to prove your faith. The woman came in once, and she was sent out in peace.

Peace is permitted. Rest is permitted. You are not required to earn anything from a God who has already said I will love them freely.

If the theology is not yours, the argument stands without it. Some people in your life were checked at the door, and you may have been one of the checkers.

Warm your hands first. Ask before you touch. Name what someone did rather than what you think they are. That is how anyone learns to love them freely.

↑ The order resumes below.