Text:: Luke 7:36-50
Sermon
In Old Testament law, you find commands that really talk about good manners. In Leviticus 19, it says: “You shall not curse a deaf person, nor shall you put an obstacle in front of a blind person, but you must fear your God. I am the Lord.” Later the same chapter commands: “You must rise in the presence of gray hair and show respect in the presence of an elder, so that you fear your God. I am the Lord.”
God wanted his people to show reverence for anyone with more life experience. It doesn’t mean you always have to do what older people say, but honoring them reflects your relationship with God.
Why did God forbid cursing a deaf person? If their family doesn’t hear it and they can’t either, what harm does it do? It relates to good manners. If you can’t treat people politely even when they’ll never know you did, it says something about your attitude toward God.
Jesus taught this at the house of Simon the Pharisee. It would go too far to say politeness is the main point in Luke 7. But Jesus focused on manners because they say a lot about what you believe. For instance, despite his nasty thoughts later, Simon the Pharisee did something polite. “A certain one of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him. Jesus entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.”
In Greco-Roman Israel, they didn’t sit on chairs for a meal like we do today. The table was typically quite close to the ground. Each guest would have a mat instead of a chair and they’d stretch out on it propping themselves up on an elbow with their heads toward the table and their feet away from it. (This is important so you can understand how the woman anointed Jesus during the dinner.) As you picture the scene with Jesus at Simon the Pharisee’s house, you have to admit that customs and politeness played a big role here.
Why did Simon invite Jesus at all? We could guess that Simon just cared about popular trends and, since Jesus was a popular teacher, Simon thought it advantageous to host a party with Jesus there. We might theorize Simon wanted to have Jesus over simply to trap him in his words or expose Jesus as a fraud. But with all this, don’t we really assume the worst of him? Most Pharisees hated Jesus, but not all.
The Holy Spirit gave Luke an insider report of Simon’s mind. In verse 39 as the woman anointed Jesus, Simon thought: “If this man were a prophet, he would realize who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, because she is a sinner.” We wouldn’t know Simon’s thoughts without God telling us, so read them carefully. Simon sounds like someone who invited Christ over because he thought there might be a chance Jesus was a true prophet. He misinterpreted the evidence at his table. He came to a tragically wrong conclusion. But that does not mean he had only bad motives for inviting Jesus to dinner.
If you think I’m being too easy on this Pharisee, notice Jesus was also gentle and polite with him. Jesus would often blow up at the religious leaders. But here, he does not say: “You hypocrite! Why are you trying to trap me?” Jesus showed good manners even as he called his host to repent. Jesus socialized with prostitutes and society’s lowlifes. Yet, he also mingled and dined with other kinds of sinners like Simon here.
Did you hear him call Simon a sinner? He didn’t do it directly. Wasn’t that nice of him? He didn’t dress Simon down in his own home. Jesus spoke suggestively and let everyone else piece together his puzzle.
“Simon, may I tell you something?” “Sure,” the Pharisee replied. “Two people owed loans to a banker. One owed a lot. The other owed a little. The banker forgave both debts. Which would be happier about that?” Simon answered: “The one who owed more.” “You assume correctly,” Jesus told him. Now read verses 44-46. Jesus discussed good manners. He basically said: “Look at all the polite things you could’ve done for me, Simon, but you didn’t. People can tell you have less sin to forgive because you appreciate God’s forgiveness so little.”
“On the other hand,” Jesus basically said, “People can tell this woman has a huge bill that God paid for her because she shows so much appreciation for me.” Obviously, Jesus was not saying Simon first did his bad job of showing hospitality and then God decided to do a bad job of forgiving him. And clearly Jesus did not mean the woman first lavished Jesus with appreciation and then God lavished forgiveness on her. No, the forgiveness of Christ for both came first. Their good deeds, whether a little or a lot, came in response to his saving work.
This may still leave you with some questions. For example, why does Jesus talk about persons with a lot of sin versus a little sin? Aren’t all sins the same to God? Isn’t this Pharisee just as bad as the prostitute?
Yes, let’s set that straight right now. Whenever this woman first had sex outside of marriage, her act there made her God’s enemy and a child of hell. Whenever Simon the Pharisee first had his feeling of superior holiness over a drunkard or a woke liberal, his judgmental mind earned for him an eternity of pain. When Jesus said a person sins a lot versus a little, he did not mean: a lot or a little in God’s sight.
For one thing, Christ wanted Simon to see: “You don’t quite appreciate the serious debt God paid for you. You think you’ve only had a little sin forgiven. So, you’re only showing a little thankfulness.”
But it’s also true: there are sins that do more damage and less damage here on earth. We pray: “Lead us not into temptation” because we want God to guard and keep us, so that the devil, the world and our flesh may not deceive us or lead us into…great and shameful sins. Great and shameful sins don’t make God more or less angry, but some do more harm to a wider group of victims. If you lust after a woman on the beach, that’s sin. If you start an affair with her, that’s worse. If you hate a supervisor at work, it’s equal to murder before God. If you actually do the killing, you hurt more people than the thought by itself.
The woman from Simon’s town realized this. She saw her sinful decisions tear people apart. If she had children of her own, she saw it in their lives. She had public obvious sins. Jesus described them as “many” or “much.” On God’s record book, she had the same amount as Simon. But her sins hurt a wider range of persons.
Based on that, she had a greater capacity to show Jesus her thankfulness. She shed real tears. She felt real guilt over real sinning. She saw how much she needed forgiveness.
This woman must have really known her Bible. She had to know passages about the Messiah well enough to fit them together and see that Jesus lined up with those predictions. She also knew Jesus came not just to heal sick people and feed the hungry. She had a clear understanding that above all else the Messiah came to forgive sin and she recognized Christ as that donor of her forgiveness.
Finally, don’t rush past Jesus repeating the word of forgiveness in verse 48. Certain Protestant or non-denominational Christians get offended when they hear Lutherans say: “I forgive your sins.” They ask: “How can your pastors say that? Only God can forgive sins.”
True, only God could’ve made the initial decision to forgive all people. But in John 20 and Matthew 18, Jesus gave the keys of forgiveness to all believers. Any of us can lock or unlock sins from a person. You get a hint of that in this reading. In verse 48, when Jesus told the woman: “Your sins have been forgiven,” he just reminded her of the same forgiveness he’d already announced in his parable for Simon the Pharisee. Forgiveness happened long ago when God decided to send a Savior. He released you from guilt and he keeps doling out that forgiveness through the voice of anyone who repeats these words of Jesus to you.