When I was a
teenager I remember hearing my dad say that he’d like to have a sign on the
door of his church that said ‘This Church is for Sinners Only’. I think some
people were shocked and surprised when they heard him say that; it sounds so
strange and counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? You tend to think of the church as a
place where we learn not to sin, not
as a place for sinners. But to Dad, these words were an important reminder of
the gospel of grace, which tells us that we all fall short of God’s will for us
– we’re all sinners, in other words, whether we should be or not – but that God
reaches out to us in love whatever we’ve done, and invites us to turn to him
and be forgiven.
This reminds me
of the famous words of John Newton’s well-known hymn:
‘Amazing grace
(how sweet the sound),
that saved a wretch like me!’
To John Newton,
this was 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 a Church of England minister and a
preacher of the very Gospel he had once tried to discredit. He felt that, like 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 never
forgot his early life of sin, and he never lost his sense of God’s continuing mercy
toward him, despite his many failings. This 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. We read that 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’ didn’t exist in those days; doors
were left open all the time during the day and people wandered in and out at
will. The dining 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 these formal 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. Simon had invited Jesus to this
meal, but had then 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. 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 knows ‘what kind of woman this is’. He knows that 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, 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 can’t 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 doesn’t see himself as
someone who ‘can’t pay’; he’ll work harder, make the right sacrifices and
ritual actions, obey the laws, and in time he’ll pay what he owes. Jesus is
inviting Simon to see himself as being on
a level with this woman; they’re 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’re 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 Jesus says
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; he’s snubbed his guest by refusing to extend the traditional
courtesies to him. He didn’t 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 hadn’t
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. 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; 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’s entirely dependent
on the mercy of God if he’s 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 barred her from coming into 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 leaves 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.
How does God
respond? He comes among us in Jesus as one of us; Jesus is the walking
embodiment of God’s love for all people. But what do we do with him? Through
our political and religious leaders, we reject him, scourge him, mock him and
kill him on a cross.
What comes next
in this story? If this church is not
for sinners only, surely the next act is an act of revenge and judgement. But
no: the Gospel tells us that God is a God who loves his enemies, and so Jesus’ response
is to pray for his murderers: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what
they are doing” (Luke 23:34). On the cross, he models the unconditional love of
God for all people. It’s nothing to do with how deserving we are. In fact, there’s
absolutely nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there’s nothing
you can do to make God love you less. God 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. We can do that this
morning as we receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion. The broken bread
speaks to us of Jesus’ body broken on the cross; the wine poured out speaks to
us of his blood shed for us. To come to the Lord’s Table is to come to the
cross; we come with faith, we hold out our hands, and we eat and drink the
forgiveness that God offers us.
And having received
this free forgiveness, he wants us 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. Also, 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 that, next to the sacrament we will receive in a few minutes, 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, of course! 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. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”.
How many times do we pray that prayer without thinking about it? Now’s the time
to think about what it means, and to ask God’s help so that we can live by it.
