Luke 7:36 - 50
John Newton’s hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ is
probably the best-known hymn in the English language; it is sung at funerals
and football games, and someone has suggested that the words of its first verse
are familiar to more people than the words of the national anthem! Newton saw
the hymn as his own story. He had spent the early years of his life as a sailor
and a slave trader. He had lived in complete disregard for God’s commandments,
not only abandoning his own faith but also trying to undermine the faith of
others. But gradually the Gospel message had broken into his life. A two-week long
storm at sea became the catalyst for the beginning of his conversion, and
eventually in his late thirties he became an Anglican minister and a preacher
of the very Gospel he had once tried to discredit. He felt a real affinity with
Saint Paul; he had been the chief of sinners, but God in his grace had forgiven
him and made him a preacher of the Gospel to others.
Newton’s early experience of the life of
sin, and his continuing awareness of God’s mercy toward him, gave him a tender
attitude toward the sins and failings of others. He often said that when you
know how much God has forgiven you, and continues to forgive you every day, you
can’t help having the same forgiving attitude toward the people around you. Our
Gospel reading today has this same emphasis.
One of the Pharisees, named Simon,
invited Jesus for a meal at his house. Dinner parties like this were very
public. What we know today as ‘private life’ did not exist in the time of
Jesus; doors were left open all the time during the day and people wandered in
and out at will. If the weather was warm the dinner may even have been held in
the courtyard of Simon’s house with the gates open to anyone who was curious.
The table would have been in a U-shape, with guests not seated on chairs or the
floor, but reclining on couches, leaning on their left elbows and using their
right hands to reach for food and eat. The couches would have been angled away
from the table so that the feet of the guests would be behind them.
There was a strict etiquette about such
meals. As each guest came in, the host would greet him with a kiss of peace. As
the feet of the guests would be dirty and tired from the dusty roads, the host
would ensure that water was provided and the servants would wash their feet.
Olive oil might also be given to anoint the heads of the guests. These were the
unwritten laws of hospitality; these were the ways the hosts would show respect
and honour for their guests. Luke does not let us in on the secret yet, but
later on in the story he will tell us that none of this had been done for
Jesus. His host, while inviting him to this meal, had also given him a public
snub by not honouring him as he would an ordinary guest.
The NRSV translates verse 37 ‘And a woman
in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the
Pharisee’s house…’ One commentator
thinks this should be translated as ‘a woman who was known in the city as a
sinner’. ‘Sinner’ here would have meant at least that she had lived a
promiscuous life, if not that she was actually a prostitute.
We can read between the lines that this
woman had already had an encounter with Jesus which had transformed her life.
How do we know this? Verses 40-47 explain that a person who has been forgiven a
huge number of sins will respond to this forgiveness with great love. Jesus
explains the woman’s acts of love by the fact that she has been – past tense – forgiven a great many sins. “Therefore, I
tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown
great love” (v.47). It seems reasonable to infer that Jesus has already met
this woman and has declared God’s forgiveness to her, perhaps even that very
day; she has come to Simon’s party to say thank you to Jesus for all he has
done for her.
The woman seems to have been temporarily
deflected from her original purpose; we read that she ‘brought an alabaster jar
of ointment’ (37) to anoint Jesus’ feet, but she does not immediately use it.
She stands behind Jesus - remember that he is reclining on a couch with his
feet extended away from the table. She is overcome with emotion and begins to
weep, bathing his feet with tears, wiping them with her hair and only then anointing
them with the ointment. In those days, this would have been scandalous
behaviour. Women in Israel at that time kept their hair covered and only let it
down in the presence of their husbands in their own bedrooms. To let down your
hair in public and use it to wipe the feet of a man you were not married to was
shocking; in the eyes of the people at the feast, this woman would have been
acting like a prostitute with one of her clients.
This is certainly the way Simon the
Pharisee interprets her actions. He even questions Jesus’ status as a prophet;
a true prophet would know what kind of person this woman was! The unspoken
inference is that if Jesus knew she was a prostitute he would not allow her to
touch him or even be near him. Evil was seen as highly contagious; the only way
for good and holy people to preserve themselves from evil was to avoid evil
people altogether. The woman had come into Simon’s house like a contagious
disease; it was Jesus’ duty as a prophet to rebuke her and send her away, and
he was not doing so.
Note that Simon did not voice this
opinion to Jesus; Luke tells us that 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”
(v.39). Prophets know things other people don’t know, and they use that
knowledge, in Simon’s view, to declare God’s judgement. However, Jesus is about
to demonstrate to Simon that he is indeed a prophet. Simon has not spoken out
loud, but Jesus knows what he is thinking! And he uses that knowledge to rebuke
Simon, not the woman, and to invite
him into a different way of seeing reality. Simon is wrong; Jesus does indeed
know what kind of woman this is – she’s made in the image of God, she’s a
forgiven sinner overcome with gratitude for the grace of God, and in her
gratitude she is expressing her love for Jesus as the one who has made it
possible for her to be forgiven.
So Jesus tells the little parable of the
two debtors; one owes the creditor five hundred denarii – that is, about
eighteen months’ wages for an ordinary labourer - the other fifty. Neither of
them can pay, so the creditor cancels the debts of both. Which one will love
the creditor more? Simon cannot avoid the conclusion: the one who was forgiven
the greater debt will feel the most love for the creditor.
There is more to this little story than
meets the eye. Let me ask you this: do you think Simon sees himself as a debtor
to God? Probably not! In his view, the woman is a sinner; he is not. And even
if he is, he certainly does not see himself as someone who ‘cannot pay’; he
will work harder, make the right sacrifices and ritual actions, obey the laws,
and in time he will pay what he owes. Jesus is inviting Simon to see himself as
being on a level with this woman;
they are both sinners owing a debt to God, and neither of them can pay the
debt. Simon’s debt may be small and the woman’s may be great, but that doesn’t
change the fact that they are both bankrupt! As someone once said, if you line
up a bunch of swimmers on the coast of California and ask them to swim to Hawaii,
it won’t matter in the long run whether some of them are better swimmers than
the rest! Some may drown after a mile, some after thirty miles, but none of
them are going to reach Hawaii!
But how can this be? How can Simon be a
sinner? After all, he’s a Pharisee! He’s been circumcised, he’s kept the
Sabbath, he gives tithes of all he earns, he carefully observes the food laws
and keeps away from bad company! He is an upright man!
Yes, but remember that Jesus believes
that the heart of the law is the two great commandments: Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour as
yourself. And on that very day, in his own house, Simon has offended against
the second commandment. He has not loved his neighbour as himself, because he
has snubbed his guest by refusing to extend the traditional courtesies to him.
He did not give Jesus the kiss of peace when he came into the house – which is
as if Jesus had come into your home today, extended his hand in greeting to
you, and you had stubbornly kept your hand at your side. He had not provided
water for the foot washing or oil for the anointing of the guest. In this way
Simon has not loved his neighbour as he loved himself; he has not done to
others as he would have them do to him. So he too is a sinner, and he too
stands in need of God’s grace and forgiveness.
So do I. I may be a churchgoer; I may
have been faithful to my marriage partner, I may never have killed anyone or
stolen anything or cheated on my taxes and so on. But have I loved the Lord my
God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, with nothing held back? Have I
loved my neighbour as myself? Of course not, not perfectly. These commands are
the debt I owe to God. I have not kept them perfectly, nor can I. Therefore I
too am a sinner.
This is the first way in which Jesus’
story challenges Simon’s worldview; like the woman, he is a debtor who cannot
pay what he owes. Like her, he is entirely dependant on the mercy of the divine
creditor if he is ever going to receive eternal life. The second way the story
challenges his worldview is in his interpretation of the woman’s actions. No,
Simon, this is not a prostitute trying to allure Jesus into an inappropriate
sexual liaison. This is a woman in the grip of God’s grace. She had always
assumed that her sins disqualified her forever from the presence of God. But
the grace of God had invaded her life, bringing her the free forgiveness she
had never dared to hope for. Of course
she wasn’t in command of her rational faculties! She was overwhelmed with
gratitude to the God who had forgiven her and to the man who had spoken that
word of forgiveness! And of course
her actions were open to misinterpretation – just like the apostles on the Day
of Pentecost, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit and the bystanders
said, “These men are drunk!”
The story ends before Simon has a chance
to respond. We don’t know what he said or did. Jesus is challenging him: this
woman whom you dismiss as a sinner is in fact your sister in God. Like you, she
was made in the image of God. Like you, she had a debt of sin she could not
pay. God has forgiven her sins and accepted her. Will you also accept her, despite
her reputation? Luke has left the story incomplete to challenge you and me;
we’re invited to supply the ending in our own lives.
Let me close with these two final words
of application.
God knows everything about me. There are
embarrassing stories about my life which I have been brave enough to tell some
of you, but you can be absolutely sure that there are others I would never dare
tell you. If they were broadcast on a screen in front of you all, I would hang
my head in shame. We all have those stories. I know you have them, and you know
I have them. And God knows them all.
What is God’s response? He has come among
us in Jesus and given his life on the Cross for the forgiveness of those very
sins. This has nothing to do with how deserving we are; it’s an act of pure
unconditional love on his part. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you
more; there’s nothing you can do to make him love you less. He already loves
you more than you can ask or imagine, and nothing can change that.
Do you believe that? The woman in our
story believed it. Jesus said to her “Your
faith has saved you; go in peace”. He wants you to go in peace this morning
too. No matter what that sin is which is troubling you so much, he wants you to
bring it to him this morning, leave it at his cross, and dare to believe that
it is forgiven.
And having received this free
forgiveness, he wants you and I to look at each other with different eyes.
Simon looked at this woman and saw a despicable sinner; Jesus looked at her and
saw a woman made in God’s image, overwhelmed with gratitude for God’s grace.
What do you see as you look around the
church this morning? Christian congregations are like families, and like any
family we accumulate resentments. Furthermore, we express our love for God in
different ways, and some of those ways look a little strange to others in the
congregation! But Jesus is calling us to learn to see each other with his eyes.
C.S. Lewis reminds us in one of his books that, next to the sacrament we will
receive later this morning, the holiest thing we will look at this week is our
neighbour, and we should treat him or her accordingly.
You and I are debtors who couldn’t pay
our bills, and we have been freely forgiven. What should be our response?
Delirious joy first of all – who cares what other people think of us, we just
want to thank this Jesus who has brought such love into our lives! And then our
second response is to have a gentle attitude toward our fellow debtors who have
also been forgiven. That’s the challenge this story is giving us today. What
will be our response?
