Forgiven, much?

 February 14 2021

Luke 7:36-50

         One of the things that Jennifer have in common is our love of reading. So, it just figures that if you have two people in a house that there is going to be a lot of books. On top of that we have also passed on this love of reading to our three children which means even more books. I say all this to help explain that when I tell you that we are redoing our library at home that this is a really big deal, like eight six foot high bookshelves full of books, big deal.We are sorting through all of them and moving them to the room down the hall which we feel will make a better place for an office and library. Now, not all of these books are Jennifer’s and my books; some of them belonged to our kids, Sarah and Matt who when they moved into their own home needed time to get settled in before tackling their share of the books.So, last Saturday they came over and had a big time looking through the books they had left behind trying to figure out which ones to take and which ones to get rid of. As we were going through all of these books, Sarah turned to me and held up a book and said, “Dad this is a book that you got for me.” First of all, it made me happy that she remembered and secondly it made me happy that the book had an influence on her. You see, the subject of the book was feminism. Now, it might surprise some people that a pastor would give encourage his daughters to be feminist but what I always tried to remind them is that the worlds first feminist was in fact Jesus. That might cause some people to be a little surprised but before Jesus women were treated rather poorly even among the people of Israel, God’s own people. It was Jesus though, how he lived and the lessons he taught who witnessed to the reality that he loved women just as equally as he did any man. This is what I want my two daughters to remember that as followers of Jesus they don’t have to believe that they are any less in the eyes of God.

         We see this attitude of Jesus in todays scripture where in Luke we are told a story about Jesus and a woman and how in a surprising twist it is this woman, who turns out to be the one who loves with the greater love not the Pharisee who believed that he was more righteous than anyone else. The story centers around a dinner party with Jesus the honored guest or so it seems.Simon, The Pharisee throwing the shindig, Simon, wasn’t holding the dinner to honor Jesus as much as he was wanted to invite Jesus over to figure out just what was his angle. Just who did this Jesus think that he was? Didn’t Jesus know that righteousness looked like the life that he, Simon was living? And why did so many people believe that this Jesus was some sort of a prophet? Had they never read the prophets for if they had certainly they would have figured out that this Jesus was no prophet. All these thoughts were swirling through the mind of Simon as he sent out word to Jesus that he should stop over some night for some food and conversation.

         This story then is a good one for us, followers of Jesus who are in this season of Epiphany, a season when we are trying much like Simon, to figure out once again just who Jesus is. Sometimes it seems that we have known Jesus for so long that nothing about him surprises us but I believe that Jesus should be one who is endlessly surprising us and if not surprising us at least challenging us. Last week we heard the core of Jesus’ teaching, that to be truly free means that we must live responsibly, that we must respond in love no matter who it is, a friend or an enemy who stands in need of the love we are able to give. How can this teaching of Jesus not surprise us and challenge us every time we hear it? It is easy to overthink what Jesus teaches us to the point where we might just want to avoid people rather than be faced with the possibility that the next person we meet demands that we extend extravagant love to them as God has first done so to us. Yet this is of course not what Jesus expects and we must remember that if Jesus sets the standard then he also will be the one who will empower us to achieve that standard. This is the tie in with today’s scripture story for what should have caught our ear upon reading it was that Jesus said that the woman in our story had loved much. This is exactly the standard Jesus expects of us, the way of true freedom. This is why we should lean in and listen close to what Jesus has to teach us today.

         As we previously have said, the story begins with Simon the Pharisee who is trying to figure out just who Jesus is so he invites Jesus over to dinner. Now when we talk of having someone over for dinner what we imagine this being is a group of people sitting on chairs around a table upon which that main course is situated in the middle of the table to be passed around until all are served. But in the days of Jesus when they ate they would sit on pillows or couches situated around a low table. Jesus and the others at the table would have been reclining on these pillows or couches with their heads toward the serving area. Their feet would extend out towards the wall of the room. We have to understand this so when we read that a woman of the city crashed the party and began to wash the feet of Jesus we don’t somehow think that she is crawling under the table. That would just be weird but of course what she did do was plenty weird enough. We are told that this woman when she heard that Jesus was invited to eat at the house of Simon she decided to go and meet Jesus there to demonstrate her love for him. Now, we have to understand the risk this woman was taking just considering this act. I mean, the Pharisees were some of the meanest and cruelest people to those they labeled as “sinners”. Yet, in spite of knowing this this woman entered the house of Simon, a flask of perfume in hand, moving slowly against the wall until she came to the feet of Jesus. Overwhelmed with emotion when at long last being able to be in the presence of Jesus she began to weep uncontrollably, the tears flooding down her cheeks. She knelt down, her face just inches from the feet of Jesus which were caked with the dirt and dust Jesus had walked in all day. As her tears fell upon the feet of Jesus she watched as they began to run down his feet carrying the dirt away.  Having no towel with which to dry away the tears that had fallen upon the feet of Jesus she did the unthinkable, she unbound her hair and used her long tresses to wipe away the tears she had shed upon the feet of this one she had loved so much. Then she lowered her head even further and with trembling lips softly kissed the feet of Jesus. She broke the seal on the alabaster flask of of sweet smelling ointment and poured the contents out upon the feet of Jesus, anointing them in an act of extravagant love, the heady fragrance filling the air of the dining room of Simon’s house.

         Now, this act of extravagant love was one of those moments that most likely lasted only a very short while yet to those in that room watching such an unbelievable act so outside of the social norms of the day, it most likely seemed to last far too long. There was most likely much nervous whispering and fidgeting going on as this woman intruded into their rigid and uptight gathering. So it seems fitting that Simon, the good little Pharisee would speak for the rest of everyone else when he exclaimed, “If this man were a prophet he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” We have to remember that as the honored guest of Simon, Jesus would have been sitting at Simons right hand at the head of the table. Apparently Simon didn’t even care that what he had said might be offensive to the person who is sitting right beside him. Simon just knows that good prophets don’t touch bad girls. You can tell from what Simon has said that his world is a world categorized into neat little classifications; there is a certain sort of woman, and  there are prophets and there are pretenders. There are sinners and then there are good people who are just like Simon.

         Now Jesus had every right to be offended at Simon’s questioning of his character, his insinuating that Jesus was nothing at all like a prophet yet Jesus did not take the bait. Instead Jesus very politely asked Simon if he could tell a story to which Simon said of course, go ahead tell me a story. The story Jesus told was about a man who loaned out money to desperate people perhaps like a banker but probably more like a loan shark. This guy had two people he had loaned out money to, one he loaned out fifty bucks and another he loaned out five hundred bucks. Now, both of these people he had loaned money to ran into some trouble and found that they we not going to be able to pay back the money that had been lent to them. Now the money lender had some options. He could have them thrown into debtors prison where they would stay until family members or friends could scrounge up enough money to pay off the debt or he could do the unthinkable and simply write off the loan. This last option is what this banker did for both of the people that he had loaned his money to. Now at this point in the story, Jesus turns to Simon and asks him a question: Simon which of these two people would love the banker more, the one who had been forgiven fifty bucks or the one who had been forgiven five hundred bucks? Simon is like, “Well, duh, the one who had been forgiven the five hundred bucks Jesus, that’s the one who would have been the most grateful to the baker for forgiving his loan.” To this Jesus replied to Simon, “You have judged rightly.” Now, at this point Simon has no idea that Jesus the honored guest is about to bring shame upon him and his arrogant attitude.  Jesus turns to the woman. Jesus looks at this one that everyone else is trying very hard to ignore but to Jesus she is the one upon whom everyone’s focus should be. Jesus asks the rest of those in the room, “Do you see this woman?” No longer would he allow her to be invisible to those who had judged her unworthy of being in their presence. Jesus wants them to see her, to see what she has done at great cost to her. “Do you see”, asks Jesus, “Do you see how she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. Do you see Simon that she has done what you should have done but failed to do.” Again Jesus asked,  “Do you see her? She has not ceased to kiss my feet but you Simon have not shown be the most basic hospitality of a kiss when I arrived.” And yet once again Jesus asked them, “Do you see her? She has anointed my feet  with ointment but you Simon have not given me the customary anointing when I entered your house.” After these searing questions Jesus comes to the “therefore”, the conclusion that has to be understood from these actions of this woman they assumed to be not worthy of being in their presence. What they should have been able to figure out is that this woman’s sins that were many have been forgiven. How did Jesus come to that conclusion? Jesus said that it was obvious that has been forgiven much because she has loved much. Just like the person who owed five hundred dollars who when he finds that he is unable to pay off his loan discovers that his banker  is willing to wipe out his loan responds with great gratitude so too this woman who had many sins also responds with overwhelming love towards Jesus. Now, this idea also goes the other way as well. The one who is forgiven little, loves little.

         The question that the rest of the guests had after this teaching of Jesus was just who is this that forgives sins? This is a question that seems to be a failure to get the point Jesus is trying to make. All Jesus did was to affirm just what was obvious about this woman that through her actions it was obvious that her sins were forgiven. What the question of Simon and his guests revealed is that what concerned them was the scandal of God’s forgiveness. If it was true that this woman,  a woman of this sort  can be forgiven  just as Simon had been forgiven then what would happen to all these neat and tidy classifications that they held for the people in their society. If all are forgiven then what would happen to the pride they had in their righteousness, a righteousness that they believed put them on a higher plane than these so called sinners? This was their true concern with Jesus being one who could forgive sins, it was a concern that this reality that they had built was in danger of collapsing.

         Now, we must remember about this story is that it was meant for those of us who follow Jesus. This story is not just supposed to make us want to shake our heads at the way that Simon treated this woman who had been forgiven much but it is to make us examine ourselves and ask which one am I, one who is forgiven much or forgiven little? It is obvious from the story that whether one is forgiven a lot or a little is in all actuality how one perceives their own forgiveness of their sin. So in this story we have two distinct ways that people are affected by their sin. The first question then is just how do we define sin? Well, perhaps the best thumbnail sketch of what is meant by sin is given to us by Paul at the end of the fourteenth chapter of Romans where Paul simply states that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. I believe that what Paul is getting at is that when we do not have faithful confidence in God then we will find that we will be controlled by anxiety and worry; this is the real root of all sin. It is this underlying anxiety, this uncertainty of life that makes us search for who or what we can place our faith in, what it is that we can believe in to make our worry cease.For those like Simon they turn inward and place their faith in their own abilities and possibilities which results in life inwardly turned, a life filled with pride.  In cases such as Simon’s their concern is knowing just how much forgiveness is needed, how much love is expected to convince God to be on their side, to be the guarantee for them that their plans will succeed. So they are forgiven little and they love little because they are concerned with doing just what is the least they can do to move God to lend his power to their cause.

How different it is for those like this woman who crashed Simon’s party. For her and people like her, in their anxiety and worry, they look to ease their pain by placing their faith in other people. This of course will lead her and people like her to find themselves in relationships where they are used, abused and manipulated. So, for them when they hear of this news that there is a God and that he is willing to let go of the past in order to have a future with them and that this God only desires to have a relationship that sets people free, for them this is good news indeed. For this woman and those like her, God’s forgiveness brings hope into their hopeless situation and having been set free from this they quite naturally respond with gratitude and out of this gratitude comes a great love. For them it is not about having God on their side but it is rather to have been found on the side of God, this is what at long last sets them free from their worry and anxiety. 

The question then remains, just what will it take for Simon to discover that he too has been forgiven much so that he too might be set free to love much? The answer is that in his confrontation with Jesus he will discover the God he believes in, the God who can be manipulated to serve the prideful plans of those who want God to be on their side is in all actuality no God at all. Simon and those like him must acknowledge that this God that they believed in was in fact a false god, a god who did not exist and in their worshipping this god for them they in fact have committed a grave sin against the one true living God. And in that moment of realization of knowing that in worshipping a false god that they deserved death they will at long last realize also that there is God’s forgiveness, making a way for them to come to him and live. This is when they too will be found to be those who understand that they have been forgiven much and out of gratitude of the life they have been given they will love much as well. So, in this story of the woman who crashed Simon’s party, we find not only judgment against Simon and his prideful attitude but we also find in this woman’s behavior the hope of extravagant love that awaits all who experience the great forgiveness of God. To his glory! Amen