Big Love Christian Diner

delivered July 31, 2011

Luke 7:36-50; Deuteronomy 6:1-9

There is a big purple van parked in the former parsonage owned by Dan and Rachel Kusch. It is called the “Big Love Mexican Diner.” Just for fun I thought that for the morning I would rename this Baptist Meetinghouse “The Big Love Christian Diner.” I do this in honor of a woman who served up some big love at a dinner in the home of a Pharisee name Simon 2000 years ago. In our Gospel story an unnamed woman exhibits unrestrained extravagant love for Jesus Christ. This type of thing happened at least one other time and possibly two other times. There was something about Christ that elicited this type of uninhibited demonstration of devotion. John’s gospel tells a similar story which happened in the home of Lazarus; it tells us that it was Lazarus’ sister Mary who was the one who anointed Jesus. But that happened later, very near the end of his life, and it seems to be a different event. Matthew and Mark also have a story of a woman anointing Jesus, and it may be the same event, but it is not certain. Luke’s account is so much more complete than the others that I am going to focus exclusively on this one this morning.

The story compares and contrasts two characters who could not be more different. The woman is identified as “a woman in the city who was a sinner.” It doesn’t tell us what her sin was. People often jump to the conclusion that it was some type of sexual sin. This is assumed because the woman let down her hair and was touching Jesus. Women didn’t touch men who were not family members in that culture, and that is true in many cultures today, including observant Jews today. But I think these actions say more about this woman’s attitude toward Jesus than the type of sin she had committed. The fact that so many interpreters assume it was sexual sin probably says more about the interpreters than about her. We have to be careful not to read our cultural bias into scripture stories.

The other character in the story is a Pharisee named Simon. Pharisees are badly misunderstood today. They have become caricatures of religious intolerance and hypocrisy. Let me just give you a little perspective on them. The two main religious groups that we see in the Gospels are the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees were the conservatives. They were in charge of the temple and the priesthood. They were clergy, religious professionals who controlled the sacrifices and rituals. As conservatives they held only to the oldest portion of the Bible - the Torah, the first five books of our OT. In Jesus’ day they had strong ties to the ruling Herodians. Herod the Great built them a beautiful new temple, and they were grateful.

The Pharisees were a lay reform movement based in the synagogues, which were local congregations found in most towns. The scribes, who also appear in the scriptures, were part of this movement. Pharisees valued scripture above ritual. They were not conservatives or fundamentalists like they are so often pictured. They were actually moderates for their day. The Essenes, another group which do not appear in Scripture but were a part of the religious picture at the time, were much stricter than the Pharisess, and the Sadducees more conservative than the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a broader view of scripture, accepting not only the Torah (the Law) but also the Prophets. They held such new ideas (for that time) as the resurrection of the dead and life after death – something the conservative Sadducees did not accept. Jesus’ teaching had much more in common with the Pharisees than the Sadducees or Essenes. The Pharisees emphasized personal morality as very important to the spiritual life. They shared the Sadducees high regard for ritual purity, but ethics was their focus. That is the point that comes to the forefront in our story.

First let’s look at the woman; I call her the sinner who loved Christ deeply. One of the Pharisees, a man named Simon, asked Jesus to come and dine with him. And it says, “³⁷And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, ³⁸ and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.” This is all we know about the woman, but it is enough.

          She was a sinner. This is stated as a matter of fact. It doesn’t say that this was the opinion of Jesus or of the Pharisee. It simply calls her “a woman in the city who was a sinner.” The truth is that we are all the same in the eyes of God. According to Scripture we are all sinners, but that is not the point. The point is that this woman had a reputation. Every culture in every age has some sins that are looked down upon more than others. The type of sin is changes over time. Today there are certain sins that are considered by our society as particularly heinous.

The media hoopla over the recent murder trial of Casey Anthony is an example. For those of you who don’t know who she is, she is the Florida mother who was recently acquitted of murdering her two-year old daughter Caylee. I did not follow the trial, but it is hard to miss the media frenzy surrounding her acquittal. Apparently everybody thinks she did it – even the jurors - but the prosecution couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, so she walked. It is today’s O.J. Simpson trial, except the victim in this case is an innocent child. In our society, sin against children is the unforgivable sin. Child molesters are scorned even in prison. Even criminals have ethical standards and child molesters and abusers are at the bottom of the ladder. Regardless of what the woman’s crime would have been back in Jesus’ day, which earned her so much scorn in her community, today she would be Casey Anthony or some child molester.

          So when you hear this story this morning, picture this woman as Casey Anthony. That changes our attitude toward this woman, doesn’t it? Normally when we read this story we are sympathetic toward this woman. I am. I immediately sympathize with the woman, and I am already judging the hypocritical Pharisee in my heart. But if we look at that story this way we will entirely miss the point. And it will not have the effect on us that it is meant to have. To understand this story we must assume that this woman had done something that we would consider horribly wrong. Look at her from that perspective. And now finish the story.

This woman went into this respectable religious leaders house uninvited. She had a flask of very expensive “fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping.” This incident would have gone on for several minutes, while all the dinner guests stared. She got down on her knees and “began to wash His feet with her tears.” She let down her hair to wipe his feet. In those days, a woman did not let down her hair except for her husband. Then she began kissing his feet and anointing them with the fragrant oil.  I am trying to imagine what a modern equivalent of her behavior would be today, but it is very difficult to do. Imagine what you would consider very inappropriate behavior at a dinner party you were hosting. Someone burst in uninvited into your home and did something very embarrassing to you and everyone present.  Imagine that and you begin to sense the emotional atmosphere in this house.

Yet what is Jesus’ reaction to her? She is described as a sinner, but he doesn’t see her that way or treat her that way. Neither does he see her behavior as inappropriate. He is not embarrassed by it at all. If I was having a dinner party and a woman came in and did this to me in front of a houseful of guests, I wouldn’t know what to think or feel. Jesus looks at this woman at his feet, and he thinks and feels clearly. He does not see a sinner; he sees a forgiven woman. He says so in verse 48 “Then He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Forgiveness in the Bible means having a completely clean slate before God. It does not mean overlooking a person’s sins. It means that the sins no longer exist. Completely gone. This is so amazing that it is beyond our human ability to comprehend, and that is why so many people do not understand forgiveness or salvation.

Furthermore he sees her as a woman of faith. He says so in verse 50 “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”  He says that she is saved by faith. One of the most scandalous aspects of the gospel is the fact that truly terrible criminals can be forgiven by God. People do not like the idea that a serial murderer who truly repents can receive the grace of God and eternal life. It offends our sense of justice and fairness. That is the scandal of the gospel. And this scandal is being proclaimed here. No wonder Simon and everyone else is offended, not only by this woman’s behavior, but by Jesus’s proclamation of forgiveness and salvation and faith and peace.

We do not like to admit it, we are much more like the Pharisee in the story than the woman. We have our ethical standards and our ideas about justice, and we judge by them. Every one of us does this. It doesn’t matter how open-minded and tolerant you consider yourself to be. It doesn’t matter if you are religious or nonreligious, conservative or liberal. There are some behaviors that we think are wrong, and some people whom we consider downright despicable. The point of this story is to confront our judging, and understand that no person is beyond the love of God and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

An interesting element of this story is that the transformation of this woman already happened before the story begins. This is not a conversion story. Whatever happened in this woman’s heart and soul happened before she ever entered that Pharisee’s house. She had already experienced the love of Christ in her life previously in some way. This was just her opportunity to express her thanks. We do not know how the transformation in her life came about. But we know that it was real by the way she acts toward Jesus.

That is the whole point of the parable that Jesus tells to Simon the Pharisee – which brings me to him. Simon sees the woman behaving in this inappropriate manner and he is upset. He is upset with her, and he is also upset with Jesus. Verse 39 says, “Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”  But his resentment toward Jesus really runs deeper than that. We know that because of how he treated Jesus before the woman even arrived. Jesus points this out to him later. Jesus says in verses 44f, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. ⁴⁵ You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil.”

Simon did not perform for Jesus the customary acts of hospitality that that any guest deserved. Maybe this was intentional or maybe it was unconscious. It doesn’t matter. In either case it reveals Simon’s heart. He has not experienced the love and forgiveness of Christ in his life, and therefore demonstrates no love or forgiveness toward the woman or Jesus. We reveal our true spiritual condition by how we treat people and how we treat Christ. You can be as theologically correct as the greatest theologian who ever lived and it doesn’t mean anything without love for God and love for others. I don’t care how spiritual you appear to be – how profound your insights – without love it mean nothing. I don’t care what titles are in front of your name or what letters are behind your name. I don’t care what positions you hold or have held at any company or academic institution or religious organization. All that matters is your love. If you have experienced the love of God you will show your love to God. That is what this woman was doing. She did not care how her actions looked to anyone. How many times has that been true of us? How embarrassed believers are these days to show their love for Christ. This woman in this story puts us to shame. She loved Christ with a big love - wholeheartedly, unreservedly, extravagantly and unselfconsciously.

This is a picture of big love and big forgiveness. This woman knew that whatever she had done in the past, which earned her the name “sinner,” was gone in the eyes of Jesus and God. Maybe she did some truly terrible thing; but whatever it was, it was serious. But she had experienced the forgiveness of God, and she understood that Jesus was the source of that forgiveness. I wish I knew this woman’s story. Somehow she knew that she had been forgiven by God through Jesus, and that experience of forgiveness swelled up in her soul into extravagant love. She couldn’t wait for the proper moment and the proper setting to express it. She couldn’t wait til Sunday morning worship. She heard that Jesus was going to be in this Pharisee’s home and so she grabbed the most costly thing in her house and poured it out as an offering at the feet of Jesus while crying tears of gratitude.

This is the gospel. This is true Christianity. This is what are lives look like that have been touched by the grace of God. If our lives do not resonate with this woman,  we have to wonder if we know the forgiveness of God like this woman did. That is why Jesus told the story about the two debtors. “⁴¹ “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?” ⁴³ Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.”…. ⁴⁷ Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”  How much have you been forgiven? How big is your love for Christ? This woman loved much for she had been forgiven much. “But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”