Episode Transcript
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Abba, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Abba, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Luke 7:36–50 (NIV)
When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
CONSIDER THIS
This account of an anointing of Jesus by a woman is similar to those that are found in Matthew 26:6–13, Mark 14:3–9, and John 12:1–8. However, the differences between Luke’s story and the others are so significant in detail (Luke’s narrative is set in Galilee; the others in Bethany, for example) that it is safe to conclude Luke’s rendering is unique, a different story.
The invitation to dine at the home of Simon shows that not all Pharisees were opposed to Jesus. In fact, Luke recounts two other occasions when Jesus was welcomed into the homes of Pharisees (Luke 11:37 and 14:1). The acceptance of this invitation by Jesus demonstrates that he was quite willing to associate with Jewish religious leaders, that is, with those who were open to or were at least curious about his teaching. Though Simon did not even go so far as to acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, nevertheless, he did recognize Jesus as a teacher or rabbi.
This story, though brief, contains many of the elements for a formidable revelation of character for all involved. Such an unveiling begins to emerge once the woman entered the home of this Pharisee who could only view her as an intrusion and as spoiling this environment with her supposed impurity, given her past. In Simon’s world, one’s past is utterly determinative. No possibility exists for a change in status. In short, there is no exit; the gate has already been shut. Remarkably, in this setting, this woman who was so negatively judged by the Pharisee spoke not a word. In her deep humility, she was silent throughout. Instead, it was her actions with respect to Jesus that evoked such a strong response from Simon as well as an extended commentary by Jesus that he offered in the form of a parable.
With Jesus reclining at the table, with his feet directed away from the food, the woman, obviously emotionally distraught, shed tears upon his feet, wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and then poured perfume on them. That Jesus allowed all of this to happen to him, to be touched by such a woman, even to the point of kissing, was simply intolerable to Simon with his Pharisaical understanding of holiness and its strong demands for separation from those deemed both unworthy and unfit. The Pharisee then thought to himself that Jesus could not be a prophet because he didn’t know the kind of woman who was touching him. In Simon’s eyes, at least, this made Jesus ritually unclean as well. The contagion had been communicated through the touch of a woman. Whatever respect he had for Jesus was likely slipping away.
The woman, mysterious in some respects, is obviously a catalyst in this story, and her actions helped to set up two strong contrasts. The first one was between herself and Simon. Jesus recognized this contrast as well, but in a much different way than had the Pharisee. As a good teacher, Jesus helped Simon, on some level, to appreciate this difference by telling a parable whose major truth was that those who are forgiven more love more. That’s a difficult teaching for some people to accept even today, especially by those who mistakenly think that they have little need for forgiveness. The truth is that we are all in God’s debt, and that debt is undoubtedly broad and wide—once we begin to understand just who God is. To fail to realize this is also to fail to appreciate the awe-evoking glory of the Most High manifested in the radiant beauty of holiness.
Jesus was about to apply this parable to Simon and the woman, but just before he did this, he turned toward the woman and posed a telling question to Simon: “Do you see this woman?” The obvious answer was no, for he had not seen this woman at all; indeed, she was invisible to him. This Pharisee couldn’t recognize any person with whom contact would render him ritually impure. His mistaken understandings about holiness and righteousness, likely passed along to him under the banner of tradition, removed whole classes of people and their problems from his vision—anyone he and his companions deemed unworthy. The need to preserve his own purity, a strong motivation, was perverted into a stilted self-righteousness that failed to realize that God’s love could be embraced and enjoyed precisely by those folks he had excluded and reviled.
The second contrast the woman helped to bring about as a catalyst was between Simon and Jesus. On the one hand, the Pharisee stressed the moral and spiritual distance that he had perceived between the woman and himself, thereby ostracizing her in his own house. He played his part in creating an atmosphere of both alienation and separation. Simon failed to grasp the significance of the woman’s actions with respect to Jesus. He had no sense of what such actions were revealing about who the woman really was, on the one hand, and who Jesus was, on the other. All Simon could see were masks—ones very much of his own construction: one for the woman and one for Jesus. However, Jesus comprehended the meaning of the woman’s actions immediately. He, therefore, sought not to exclude this woman or to set her apart for public scorn. Instead, he welcomed her back into the community, with its tender graces of love and fellowship, by pronouncing that her sins have been forgiven as evidenced by her great love for Jesus himself. How could Simon have missed, great religious leader that he was, the demonstration of such a humble and beautiful love? The contrast between the ostracizing Pharisee and the welcoming Jesus could hardly be stronger.
One very puzzling aspect of this story, and Luke’s account does not help us very much here, is how did this woman know who Jesus was? Had she heard reports from the disciples of John the Baptist or perhaps even from the disciples of Jesus? Had she possibly heard Jesus preach? We simply don’t know. One thing the text does reveal, however, is that the woman had remarkable, actually stunning, insight into the identity of Jesus that had evidently escaped Simon. To such a woman whose faith led to the tangible actions of love, Jesus declared: “Your sins are forgiven.” In response to this pronouncement, the dinner guests of Simon, no doubt surprised, asked the question: “Who is this who even forgives sins?” What the woman had known all along was now being revealed to all.
THE PRAYER
Heavenly Father, continue to reveal the nature of your Son and the scope of his love to me. I offer my heart and life as one great act of love to you.
