Pharisees and Sinners, Each and All
Lk 7:36-50[1]
There are a lot of reasons why people practice their
religion. For some, it’s simply what
their family has always done, and so they do it too. For others, attending church or synagogue or
mosque is an integral part of their ethnic identity. Then there are those who have more
interesting motivations. Some practice
their religion as a way of “keeping up appearances.” For others, their religious accomplishments
are a source of personal pride, and they parade them every chance they
get. In recent times, especially in this
country, the Christian faith has become a sanctified means of wish fulfillment:
if you pray the right way or follow the right steps, all your dreams will come
true. You’ll have the marriage you’ve always
wanted, you’ll have perfect children, and you’ll never have to worry about your
finances. As I said, there are a lot of
reasons why people practice their religion.
I think our Gospel lesson for today provides us with a
study that contrasts two very different people and their very different reasons
for practicing their religion. Jesus
attends a dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. He must have been a person of some
prominence, because he’s one of the few Jewish leaders to be called by name in
the Gospels. Apparently, Simon had heard
about Jesus and he was curious to see for himself what this rabbi from Nazareth
was about. There’s no indication that
Simon had any genuine interest in becoming a disciple of Jesus. The fact that Jesus wasn’t the only guest
suggests Simon must have invited some of his friends to the dinner--presumably
other Jewish leaders. It’s hard to tell
what his motivation was on the surface of things. Was he simply curious? Did he want to question Jesus? Was he out to demonstrate that his piety was
superior to this carpenter from Galilee?
It’s hard to say.
The contrast in the story is with the woman who comes to
Jesus. Luke’s Gospel simply says that
she was a “sinner.” Although some
translations assume that she had lived an immoral life, we don’t really know
that.[2] Yes, Jesus said that her sins were many, but
that’s a statement that could apply to us all.
In Jesus’ day, people like Simon had all kinds of reasons for calling
someone a “sinner,” most of which had nothing to do with that person’s actual
character. But she knows that she’s a
sinner. And she knows something else as
well: her sins have been forgiven. It’s
hard to know what motivated her to break all social conventions and “crash”
this dinner with its VIP guests.
Apparently, she has had some kind of encounter with the love of God that
Jesus embodied and shared with those around him.[3] And so she comes, overwhelmed with gratitude
to the point that she begins to weep.
And her tears flow so hard that she’s able to wash Jesus’ feet with
them! As if that weren’t surprising
enough, she also dries them with her hair.
These were things that a woman simply didn’t do to a man who was not her
husband.[4]
Apparently, she had a “reputation” in Simon’s town. Simon recognized her and looked down on her
as a “sinner.” And because Jesus allowed
her to even touch him, he made an assumption--the rabbi from Nazareth must not
be all that he heard he was.[5] But Jesus responded to the situation by
offering Simon a riddle that is pretty obvious: if two people have their debts
cancelled, the one who owes the most is going to be the most grateful.[6] Turns out Jesus did know who it was he had
allowed to touch him--a person who has experienced the love of God as
unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, and who was deeply grateful for that.[7]
On the other hand, it would seem that Simon’s true
motivation for inviting Jesus to dinner was transparent enough. As Jesus pointed out, Simon denied Jesus all
the customary courtesies a host would extend to a guest. So it would seem that the dinner was an
elaborate scheme to demonstrate Simon’s superiority to Jesus, the friend of
sinners. I think this gives us a clue as
to why he practiced his religion--it was a way for him to feel superior over
those he considered beneath his level of piety.
He didn’t have any real interest in anything Jesus had to say or
anything he might do. Simon simply
wanted to humiliate this famous upstart, demonstrating who was really at the
top of the religious ladder.
Two people encounter Jesus, with two very different
motivations. The one comes to Jesus out
of profound gratitude for the gift of acceptance. And she is so grateful for God’s loving
acceptance and forgiveness that she cannot control her tears. It would seem clear that she’s practicing her
faith because her heart has been radically changed. The other brings Jesus into his home simply
to demonstrate his religious superiority to the man everyone is talking
about. It would seem that he practices
his faith simply to make himself look good in the eyes of his peers. He seems
stuck in the mindset that his “righteousness” means that he deserves God’s
favor. Unfortunately, we’ve read the
stories about Pharisees and sinners in the Gospels so long that we make another
assumption: the woman’s sins were forgiven, but the Pharisee’s were not. But that’s not what Jesus said. He said the one who was forgiven little loves
little. Despite all that Simon has done
to publicly humiliate Jesus, he offers forgiveness to him as well![8] Unfortunately, Simon will have to undergo a
change of heart before he can even be aware of his sins, and that they are indeed
great.[9]
I think this is important because we have to realize that
we all practice our faith from a variety of mixed motives. While we tend to identify with the “sinners”
in the Gospel stories, if we’re honest with ourselves we have to admit that we
all have some of the “Pharisee” in us as well.
We all have that part of us that practices our faith because it makes us
feel good about ourselves. We all have
that part of us that thinks we deserve a reward for doing the right thing. We all have that part that looks down on
certain people as “inferior.” And Jesus
offers us all forgiveness and acceptance--whether we’re more “sinners” or
“Pharisees.” The path to the kind of
heart-felt faith that the woman displayed by pushing past all the conventions
and taboos of her world to express her gratitude is through a radical change of
heart.[10] That kind of transformation, that kind of
experience of God’s unconditional love for us, can only come when we recognize
that we’re all both sinners and Pharisees.
[1]
© 2013 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/16/2013 at First Presbyterian Church of Dickinson, TX.
[2]
Cf. John J. Kilgallen, “Forgiveness of Sins (Luke 7:36-50),” Novum Testamentum 40 (April, 1998):106,
where he comments, “By positioning the phrase "in the city" as he
does, Luke means to say, not that the woman was a sinner, but that the woman
was considered by the city to be a sinner.”
Cf. also Michael Lindvall, “Scandalous Behavior,” The
Christian Century (June 1,2004):119.
[3] Cf.
Kilgallen, “Forgiveness of Sins,” 109-110.
[4]
Cf. Francis Taylor Gench, “Luke 7:36-50: Making the Familiar Seem Strange,” Interpretation 46 (July 1992):287: “Not
only are her actions out-of-the-ordinary, but they are also a violation of
norms of decorum. By removing her headdress and unbinding her hair in public,
she performs the ‘greatest disgrace for a woman’ (Jeremias).”
[5]
Cf. Gench, “Lk. 7:36-50,” 287: she says that Simon’s response is “formulaic and
logical according to his routine way of looking at things: An indecorous act
means a sinner and an inappropriate association with a sinner means no prophet.”
[6] Cf.
Kilgallen, “Forgiveness of Sins,” 107: Jesus’ parable “makes
clear the immensity of Simon's error: all has been forgiven, while he can only
think that nothing has been forgiven.”
[7] Cf.
F. Bovon, Luke 1: A commentary on the
Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50, 297 , where he observes that “the removal of destructive prejudices in society (the cliques that exist in all
classes, from drug addicts to bankers), and self-examination (where does my sin
lie?) in the individual occur not in
the legal investigation of inability and in the application of written rules,
but in an encounter” (emphasis
original). Cf. similarly, Gench, “Lk.
7:36-50,” 288-89.
[8]
Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus
Christ 114, where he says that Jesus’ offer of acceptance to “sinners and
tax collectors,” in effect “is breaking through the vicious circle of their
discrimination in the system of values set up by the righteous. In this way he
is also potentially rescuing ‘the righteous’ from the compulsion of
self-righteousness.”
[9] Cf.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:797,
where he says, “The question is left
open whether the Pharisee Simon, who has not shown Him this love, is forgiven
to this extent or can receive such absolution.”
[10] Cf.
Peter S. Hawkins, “Mousetraps,” The Christian
Century 118 (May 23, 2001):17, where he puts it this way: “Because the
Pharisee believes that he has very little to ask from Jesus, he has little to
give him in return: not a drop of water, a kiss or a drop of oil. The woman, on
the other hand, knows the enormity of the debt that has been canceled. As a
result, she crashes a party to make a fool of herself, skipping all appropriate
expressions of thanks and soaring straight into the stratosphere of the
outrageous. Forgiven much, she loves much more than good taste could ever allow.”
No comments:
Post a Comment