The Pharisee & the Sinful Woman — Luke 7:36-50

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Please read today's text here: Luke 7:36-50

The censoriousness of the crowd toward both John the Baptizer and Jesus, which Jesus condemned in the preceding episode of Luke, leads logically to Luke’s telling of this incident in the home of Simon the Pharisee.

There were hundreds of men named Simon in Jesus’ day. It was one of the most popular names among male Palestinian Jews. Simon is merely a spelling variant of Simeon, the name of one of Jacob’s twelve sons and the ancestor of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. In the century leading up to the birth of Jesus the name was honored by being borne by a High Priest who was one of the brothers of Judas Maccabeus, as well as by several other High Priests.

Given the description of this man’s behavior and attitudes, he was probably proud of his name, as he was proud of his status as an observant Pharisee. He probably invited Jesus to dinner in his home more for what this would do for his own reputation in the community than out of real love and regard for Jesus. People would say: "did you hear? Jesus the great healer and teacher has chosen to dine with Simon!" If his invitation to Jesus was to enhance himself and did not show any real love for Jesus, he was nevertheless careful not to let his coolness toward the Galilean healer and teacher show too clearly, lest it reflect badly upon himself as a “boorish” host. But we can be sure that he avoided any show of too much positive emotion.

An invitation to his home would probably be something you or I would love to have an excuse not to accept. Yet Jesus went, for he was—as he once put it to his fishermen disciples—"fishing" for men, and he wanted to save sinners who thought themselves to be "righteous" (read "respectable") as much as sinners who knew themselves to be sinners. He dined with both tax collectors and Pharisees. This probably irritated the tax collectors less than it did the Pharisees!

In order to impress his neighbors as well as his honored guest, Simon's meal was a lavish Roman-style banquet, but with kosher food. In banquets in Graeco-Roman Palestine the home-owners left the doors to the street open and did not have bouncers at the door to block access. If someone truly unruly came in, he or she could always be ejected later, in a way that would not reflect poorly upon the master of the house. And so it was that, as Jesus was reclining—in the Roman way—upon a dinner couch at table with Simon and his family and friends, a woman came in unobtrusively from the street. She was a woman known previously to have an unsavory reputation. Perhaps as a prostitute. But perhaps in some other way: as a thief or as someone possessed of demons. To Luke it is unimportant that we know the details of her reputation. He did not want to embarrass her, once his gospel was read in Galilee. In fact he suppresses her name to protect her. But he wants us to know that Simon saw her come in and was scandalized by her presence.

Crouching behind the recumbent Jesus, the woman took his feet in her hands to kiss them in an act of tender love and gratitude. Please make no mistake! This was not an obscene or even sexual action. It is likely that Jesus had already met the woman before and helped her to repent of her former life and find freedom from her vice, whatever it had been, through faith in him. Now she sought him out in order to show her deep gratitude for changing her life.

She brought a very expensive perfume to anoint his feet, a gift estimated at roughly the annual salary of a working class person. As she bowed to kiss his feet and prepared to anoint them with the perfume, her deep love and gratitude caused her to break into tears, and those tears fell on Jesus’ feet. Heedless of the embarrassment that any other woman might feel, she unbound her long hair and used it to dry Jesus’ feet.

Simon was utterly incensed! Not only was this a woman with a scandalous past—he may or may not have known of her recent change for the better—but she was touching the rabbi Jesus, and he was allowing it in public! This confirmed Simon’s secret misgivings about Jesus. No true prophet would allow this: he would know instinctively that she was a sinner!

But Jesus, as in the previous incident with the onlookers to his exchange of words with John’s disciples, knew Simon’s thoughts—as a true prophet would! And so he used the custom of learned rabbis to put a difficult question to his host. Imagine, if you will, that two men owed different amounts to a moneylender—one 50 dollars, and the other 500 dollars. If the lender wrote both debts off, which of the two debtors would be more grateful to him? Slam dunk! Simon couldn’t miss getting an “A” on this test. “Surely, the one who owed him the most”, he answered. “Right”, answered Jesus. “Now let’s think about what this woman has done to me and contrast it with what you did as my host. When I arrived, your welcome to me was cordial but cold: no kiss on the cheek. But she has been kissing my feet. Your slave punctiliously washed my feet at the door, for it was expected. But you yourself would never think of doing it yourself. Yet this woman bathed them with her tears and dried them with her hair! How do you account for the difference, Simon? Is it not as you yourself concluded about the debtors? You suppose that there is little if anything sinful in your life that needs my forgiveness; so your “love”—if I may call it such—is formal and cool. This woman knows her true state: she understands what sin is and how much it was a part of her life, and her gratitude to me for forgiving her knows no bounds.”

Turning to the woman, who may have been listening with embarrassment, Jesus said to her, “Go in peace, my daughter! Your faith in me has brought you God’s forgiveness.” With these words Jesus either brought Simon to a realization of just how much he had underestimated him—for only God can forgive sins, therefore Jesus is God—or brought him to the conclusion that Jesus was a lunatic or blasphemer, falsely claiming deity for himself. Luke draws the curtain at this point, so that we do not know which conclusion Simon reached. In a sense, Luke wants his readers to ask themselves what they think of Jesus after this story.

Well, what do you think? And how does this story make you feel your own attitudes need changing toward Jesus and/or towards people around you who need Jesus?