Luke 7:36-50
A. INTRODUCTION
We all make mistakes and we’ve, probably, all done thing of which we are not proud. But is there anything that you’ve done that you can’t forgive yourself for doing? Or is there anything someone else has hurt you so badly that you can’t forgive them either?
The issue of forgiveness—both forgiving ourselves and forgiving others—is not always an easy issue to resolve. And, yet, if we don’t forgive, where does that leave us? What kind of life can we lead if we let past mistakes constantly hang over us? What kind of life can we lead if we are constantly living with feelings of resentment—or even hatred—to someone else because of something they have done to us?
And that is why I’d like to take you on a journey, in this story from Luke. Because the issue of forgiveness (and un-forgiveness) is very much wrapped up in the story that we’ve just read.
B. FORGIVENESS
1. The Woman Who Couldn’t Forgive Herself (37-38)
And the very first person we need to look at, is an unnamed woman who just couldn’t forgive herself.
Now, as we’re told, this was a woman who had lived a sinful life—which is a short-hand way of saying that she was a prostitute. However, she knew that she was sinful, and everyone else knew that she was sinful too. But, having obviously heard much about Jesus, and having heard that he had been invited to a meal at the house of a local Pharisee, she obviously thought that, at last, there was an opportunity for dealing with the past, to get her life in order, and an opportunity to get right with God too.
So, what she did was that she gate crashed the meal in Simon the Pharisee’s house—a place where she would not have been very welcome.
Now not being a resident of the house, she tried as best she could to give Jesus a traditional Jewish greeting, fitting for any welcome traveller. But she had not been there when Jesus arrived to welcome him with a kiss. In addition, being an intruder, she was not in a position to wash Jesus’s feet either. However, she had come prepared, by bringing a bottle of perfume to anoint Jesus (no doubt bought with her immoral earnings).
Unfortunately, she was in such a state—grief at her own predicament and, no doubt, in awe at being in the presence of Jesus—that the situation got the better of her.
So, rather than stand at Jesus’s head, and anoint his head in the usual manner, she stood at his feet as he reclined on a divan and broke out weeping.
And with her tears falling and wetting Jesus’s feet—in her anxiety to make up for this mishap—she forgot all social proprieties. She let down her hair, wiped Jesus’s feet dry, and then kissed his feet.
Then, still unable to gather herself together and anoint Jesus’s head as was the custom, she stayed riveted to the spot and anointed Jesus’s feet instead.
The woman was a sinner. She knew it and everyone in the town knew it. But she was stuck. She just couldn’t forgive herself, and she probably wasn’t sure that God could forgive her either. She just couldn’t let go of the past. And that lack of forgiveness had eaten away at her, until that one desperate day, when Jesus came, and she decided she had nothing to lose but to go and see him. But even then, her distress was so deep she couldn’t even get that simple greeting of a traveller right. Her emotions, and her lack of forgiveness had got the better of her.
2. The Pharisee Who Couldn’t Forgive Her Either (36, 39)
Now. of course, whilst all this was going on, the second person that we need to consider looked on—not only in amazement but in contempt. Because it wasn’t just the woman who couldn’t forgive herself, but Simon the Pharisee, couldn’t forgive her either.
Now it was not unheard of for a sinner to be inside a Pharisees home. But it was certainly a rare occurrence. And it only usually happened if the person was uninvited. And as far as Simon was concerned the woman was not only an uninvited guest, but was an unwelcome guest as well. But then Simon’s attitude simply reflected the kind of person that he had become over the years. Simon, the Pharisee, had become uncaring, and unforgiving.
In his unwillingness to forgive the woman (and others like her), he had lost something of himself by taking such a stand. And this is reflected in the fact that having invited Jesus into his home, he had forgotten all the accepted courtesies and pleasantries.
Indeed, when Jesus arrived, he hadn’t kissed him on his arrival in his home, he hadn’t provided any water for him to wash his feet, and he certainly hadn’t even used cheaper olive oil to anoint the head of his invited guest.
Now, of course, it wasn’t compulsory to do those things. But with a person of the stature of Jesus—particularly of the stature Simon believed him to be—those things would have been the acceptable behaviour for any truly caring host. However, in his hardened attitude towards others, Simon had lost something of himself and had become a much lesser person himself because of it.
And that is further reflected in the fact that when the woman washed Jesus’s feet with her tears; when she wiped Jesus’s feet dry with her hair; when she kissed Jesus’s feet; and when she poured expensive perfume on Jesus’s feet, Simon’s reaction wasn’t ‘I should have done something like that.’ Rather his reaction was one of disgust.
His disgust was for the woman he refused to forgive. And as a consequence, his disgust now extended to Jesus, who had quite happily accepted the attentions of the woman. After all, Simon concluded, Jesus, obviously didn’t know who she was or what she had done. And so, in his mind, Jesus couldn’t be the prophet that he had thought that he was at all.
3. Summary
So, as you can see, what we have here is not just a story about forgiveness (and lack of forgiveness), but it’s the story of the damage and destructiveness that lack of forgiveness brings. The woman couldn’t forgive herself and she probably thought that God couldn’t forgive her either. As a consequence, we have a story of a woman who is a quivering mess, botching up a simple greeting to a weary traveller. But we also have a story of Simon the Pharisee who couldn’t forgive either. And in Simon we see someone with a false sense of superiority that had no place in reality either.
Both the woman and Simon the Pharisees were living lives that had been seriously damaged because of their inability to forgive. And, as a consequence, Jesus was well suited to bring about the necessary changes in their lives.
4. The Messiah Who Could Forgive Her (40-48)
And what Jesus basically did was to illustrate the importance of forgiveness as an essential factor in the life of everyone. For Jesus, if someone wanted to be whole, forgiveness wasn’t an optional extra, but something that was to be part and parcel of every person’s makeup. And of course, God’s forgiveness was the most important kind of forgiveness of all.
And the stress Jesus placed on forgiveness was this: If God is willing to forgive us, then we need to be willing to forgive ourselves and others too, no matter what the magnitude of the thing that we or others might have done.
Now, the woman, was very strong on the fact that she’d done something beyond forgiveness. And it was something that she couldn’t forgive herself for, and wasn’t sure that God could forgive her either. And yet Jesus’s response was not only to give her God’s forgiveness, but his farewell greeting to ‘go in peace’ was significant too. Indeed, it was Jesus’s way of saying that it was OK for her to let go of the past, and to live with the slate wiped clean, no matter what it was that she done.
Simon, however, was probably oblivious to the fact that he had a problem. And so it was harder for him to realise the burden that his lack of forgiveness was having on his life. Nevertheless Jesus pointed out to him his need to forgive and his need for forgiveness. He wasn’t exempt from the need for forgiveness from God, but he needed to forgive others too.
C. IMPLICATIONS
This gospel story, then, is quite a lesson in forgiveness, particularly when we consider that we all make mistakes in life, and that we may all have done thing of which we may not be proud.
The question remains today, though, ‘Is there anything that we have done for which we cannot forgive ourselves? And is there anything that someone else has done that has hurt us so badly that we can’t forgive them either? If so, then we need to consider seriously this gospel story and the lesson of forgiveness.
1. What Forgiveness Brings
Because what forgiveness brings, what it has to offer is this: peace!
Firstly, peace with ourselves—the opportunity to put away the past; to get rid of all the hurts and failures—intended or not. And that release then enables us to get on with life, and the ability to enjoy a quality of life that would otherwise not be possible.
Secondly, it offers peace with others—the opportunity to end hostilities, with someone who has hurt us; with the chance to rebuild relationships and to stop constantly looking over our shoulders to see what will happen next.
(However, with this one, it does come with a warning. Because, as the saying goes: it takes two to tango. And if the other person refuses to reciprocate total peace may not be available). But even then, at least we can live with the fact that we have tried—that we’ve done our bit—and that will go some considerable way to easing the tension.
And, thirdly, it offers us peace with God—the very thing the Christian faith is all about. It gives us a restored relationship with God—the opportunity to face our maker with all the past behind us; and the ability to accept God’s salvation with all the eternal implications that entails.
And all of that is where the sinful woman is left at the end of the story. At peace with herself, at peace with the world, and at peace with God. And all those things are available to us too, if only we would take seriously the lesson of forgiveness.
2. What Failure to Forgive Does
But if we can’t forgive, that refusal will result in:
Firstly, lack of forgiveness of ourselves. We will become bitter and entangled in our own despair, constantly dragging up and living in the past, and not allowing ourselves to move on.
Secondly, it will result in lack of forgiveness of others, meaning that we will continue the downward spiral of lack of care and concern. We will become more hardened—and not just to the person with whom we were originally in dispute. We will look down our noses at others, and snobbery will become the rule.
And, thirdly regarding lack of forgiveness with God . . . Well, we will actually end up denying the faith; denying God’s salvation work; denying the forgiveness that God has to offer; and, as a consequence, we will end up denying our own opportunity for eternal life with God.
And that is where Simon the Pharisee is left in the story. A man, with his religious background, who should have known better. But who, even at the end of the story, didn’t show any indication of turning from his unforgiving ways. He still didn’t show any compassion for the sinful woman. Indeed, he had lost the concept of what it truly means to have a loving and forgiving God.
D. CONCLUSION
Now, we all make mistakes in life. We’ve all done thing which we would not like to repeat. But are there things that we can’t forgive ourselves for doing? And are their people that we just can’t forgive?
When we refuse to forgive either ourselves or others, bit by bit we destroy something of who we are. And that is not something that any of us should either want, or accept, no matter how we might feel.
Which is why forgiveness is one of the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Because without it, without God’s forgiveness, the Christian faith would not exist. But then we all need God’s forgiveness—and that is available to all of us no matter what we’ve done. But we also need to forgive ourselves, and we need to forgive others too.
The story of the sinful woman and Simon the Pharisee, is an object lesson in the need for forgiveness. And it is one we would pass over at our own peril.
Posted: 1st June 2024
© 2024, Brian A Curtis
www.brianacurtis.com.au
