“One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat.”
I like dinner. Truth be known, I like breakfast and lunch too. Food is good. I especially like dinner around a full table, with lots of conversation and laughter. Such occasions build understanding and mutual caring. Jesus liked that kind of dinner as well. Too bad his host had a different kind of dinner in mind.
Social graces in that culture, extended to a dinner guest, were very clear: Provide water to wash the dust from one’s feet, give a kiss of greeting, and anoint the guest’s head with olive oil. Jesus’ host did none of the three, a calculated insult. It appears that his host, a Pharisee, was more curious than anything else, with a bit of distaste for this itinerant healer and teacher.
Scripture calls her, “a certain immoral woman of that city.” Hearing that Jesus was in the Pharisee’s house, convinced that he was the very one he claimed to be, she brought an expensive jar filled with even more expensive perfume (doubtless used in her business), knelt before Jesus and began to cover his feet with a mixture of the perfume and her tears. She covered his feet with kisses, kept laying on the perfume, and wiped his feet with her hair.
The Pharisee was scandalized, not about the woman, but because Jesus allowed her touch, that of a sinner.
Jesus reminded the Pharisee of his failure as a host, of the attention of the woman, and of his take on her extravagant act. “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. Then Jesus said to the woman, ‘your sins are forgiven…Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’”
You think that story didn’t make its way through town? Especially through certain parts of the town’s populace?
Throughout my years of ministry I had conversations with people who had sinned greatly—or who imagined they had—and who said over and over that God could never forgive the greatness of their sin. For a while I sympathized with their bleak outlook. They sounded almost noble. Then I began to understand that their feeling that God could never forgive them had absolutely no scriptural foundation. Jesus ALWAYS forgave those who humbled themselves enough to ask…and even some who didn’t. I further began to see that such a claim is tremendously arrogant…to pretend that the power and the grace of God are insufficient and weaker than my sin? Get a grip! Usually those with such a claim were using it as an excuse to hold God at arm’s length.
The “immoral woman” offered no excuses. She did not want to hold Jesus at arm’s length. She knew her sin, she owned it, she sought his forgiveness, and she wept an expensive joy because he gave it so freely.
Many of us need to get over ourselves and come to Jesus without excuses. When we do so, we can, like the woman, go in peace.
Prayer: “Great lover of my soul, I wish so badly to come to you without fault or embarrassment, but I cannot. I am not clean, I am not faultless, and I am not without guilt. Without you I am lost in the consequences of so many bad acts and foolish decisions. I have become skilled at offering excuses. But to you I make no excuse, for there are none. I have sinned greatly. I cannot live this life you call me to except you forgive me and cleanse me. Wash me and I shall be clean. Cleanse me and I will be whole. Only you can see me as I really am and lift me clean into real life. I give myself into your care. Amen.”