Sermon 02.23.2025: The Greater Debt

In today's story, a woman washes Jesus' feet with her tears, drying them with her hair. It's an intimate scene. An emotional scene. A costly scene. And it makes the rest of the guests uncomfortable. 



We don't know her story, but we see her response to Jesus. How do we respond to grace, forgiveness, and second chances? Do we welcome second chances for others or just for ourselves?

Scripture

Luke 7:36-50

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.’ 



Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’ ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

Sermon

All four Gospels tell a version of this story. In the other gospels, it happens right before Jesus’ arrest, which leads to his trial and death. In those tellings, they see symbolism in her action, where she’s anointing his body while he’s still alive, giving him the love she has while he still lives, reminding us that soon they’ll be anointing his body after death. 

In Luke, it is placed right in the middle of his ministry and is not a foreshadowing of his death. It is about the woman, and about who Jesus is. We don’t know her name. But we’re told she’s a sinner. We don’t know what she’s done to have her labeled a sinner, either. 

To be called a sinner in scripture could happen for a number of reasons. If you didn’t keep the commandments and the laws of God, you’re a sinner. If you’re a Gentile, you’re a sinner. The Pharisees thought anyone who didn’t keep their particular traditions and ceremonies were sinners. 

Today, we would say that everyone sins, that we all miss the mark at some point and we all fall short. But that was not how the Pharisee would have understood sin. 

An important understanding from the Protestant Reformation is that we need God’s grace and mercy like we need air to breathe. None of us can follow every law, commandment, rule, or tradition perfectly and none of us can earn our way to God’s salvation. 

Salvation is God’s gift to us. And so we acknowledge our need for God, our inability to save ourselves. It’s one of the reasons we say a prayer of confession in worship each and every week. We acknowledge we have fallen short of our dreams and hopes for our good behavior and turn to God in gratitude. Confession and the forgiveness of sins is the moment in worship where we set down our judgment of our own lives, and our judgment of other people’s lives. 

The term Pharisee is often a bad word in our vocabularies, because of their opposition to Jesus in the gospels, but they weren’t bad guys. They were trying to faithfully follow all of the commandments and laws of the Mosaic tradition. They were a conservative religious movement, in the sense that they were resistant to change and to the influence of Greek and Roman cultures. 

Pharisees tried to remain set apart because they also believed that coming into physical contact with uncleanness would make you unclean too. To see Jesus being touched so closely by this woman with the great sins would have freaked them out because uncleanness was contagious. 

To be fair, I think it would freak me out too. I picked the art for the bulletin cover today because I wanted us to be sure to picture what it would be like for a person to wash another person’s feet with their tears, to kiss their feet, and to dry them with their hair. You cannot do it from a respectable distance. 

It is an up close and intimate act. Some of you may have had your feet washed at a Holy Week worship service, with bowls of water and towels. And that feels up-close and personal. But to have someone’s tears be the water that washes our feet, and their hair be the towel that dries them? No thank you. 

What the woman does with her alabaster jar of ointment, her tears, and her hair—she is coming as close to Jesus as possible. It is a public act of great vulnerability and intimacy. 

And messy, intimate, public vulnerability was not what the Pharisees were about. Public respectability. Public adherence to the rules. 

We can have compassion on the Pharisee, because we know that it would be exhausting to think you had to get everything right all the time, that your relationship to the God you love and worship was at risk, every single minute, from your mistakes. It is a paralyzing way to live. 

We’re told the Pharisee ‘said to himself’, not out loud. “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.” 

I say a lot of stuff to myself and not out loud. You’re welcome for that. Some things I say only to myself because I don’t want to say the wrong thing out loud. And, maybe like the Pharisee, I hope that if people don’t know what I’m thinking, then they won’t be able to judge me for getting it wrong. 

Maybe he says it to himself and not out loud because he does not want a dialogue with Jesus, maybe because he thinks he already has what he needs, in himself, to decide if Jesus is a prophet. He knows the law and the prophets. He follows the law and the prophets. This woman does not. She’s a sinner. Simon is not. Perhaps he thinks he can answer his own question with his own knowledge and his own opinions, so he says it to himself. It doesn’t even occur to him that he might be wrong. 

The woman and the Pharisee offer such a contrast to each other. He’s trying to do everything perfectly and correctly, having Jesus over for dinner. She’s doing everything with deep love and vulnerability, throwing her whole body into the act of caring for Jesus. 

And I recognize I’m much more like Simon than I am like the woman. 

Dang it. 

I want Jesus to know how much I love him, but can’t I do it by having him over for a dinner party and not by kissing his feet and weeping in public?? 

Jesus still hears what Simon doesn’t say out loud. Jesus addresses Simon’s unspoken objection directly. 

He tells a story about two people with debts. A day’s wages were about one denari. So one person owes two months’ paychecks, one person owes two years’ paychecks. Both debts are forgiven. 

Simon knows he’s in a trap even as Jesus asks him which of the former debtors will love the creditor more, but Simon also really wants to be correct and know the right answer. “I suppose the one who had the greater debt”. 

Then Jesus uses the woman as an object lesson for Simon, which I confess I don’t love. He talks about her as if she isn’t there, but you know she hears him because she’s currently kissing his feet and drying them with her hair. 

“Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” 

Jesus will go on to talk to the woman directly, telling her that her sins are forgiven, and that she should be at peace. 

But it’s clear that she has shown great love to Jesus before he tells her that her sins are forgiven, and in what he says to Simon, we understand that she shows great love because she already knows she has been forgiven. We don’t show great love to earn forgiveness. We show great love because we have already received it. Her love to Jesus was also costly. That ointment she poured out on his feet would have cost over a year’s wages to purchase. She gave sacrificially to show her thanks and gratitude. 

For Simon the Pharisee, I want him to be able to set down that quest for perfection. He’s so close. He’s not a bad guy, but his insistence that he can do it all his own self is what is keeping him from getting close to Jesus. 

What I want for the woman is somehow more complicated. To start with, I want her to be called by her name. I don’t want her to be referred to as the sinful woman because none of us deserve to be labeled by only our mistakes instead of our belovedness. 

I want to believe that when she leaves this party, she won’t be an object of whispering gossip. “There’s the sinful woman who poured out and wasted all that expensive ointment and then cried at Jesus’ feet at Simon’s house last week. What a scene! Who does she think she is?” 

That is probably exactly what was said about her. As I mentioned earlier, a version of this story is in all four gospels. That suggests to us that stories about this scene were told so often that everyone knew of it happening, including all four gospel writers. 

I believe that hearing Jesus acknowledge her gift, and hearing Jesus tell her that her sins were forgiven, mattered more than what other people said about her. That doesn’t make it easy to be the subject of gossip, but if she walked into Simon’s house and everyone immediately thought, “Why is that sinful woman here?”, being the subject of gossip wasn’t a new experience for her. 

Being forgiven in public, being called to peace, having your gift of expensive ointment, and the gift of your tears, and the gift of the very hair on your head—having all of that received with gratitude by Jesus—that was the new experience for her. Can you imagine the relief she must have felt when Jesus acknowledged her gift and spoke those words of forgiveness? 

I want Jesus to turn the sin economy upside down with much more clarity. This whole thing feels too subtle. Jesus publicly rebukes Simon for his failures of hospitality, for all the ways Simon has not behaved like the woman. Simon hasn’t offered water for Jesus to wash his feet. He didn’t greet Jesus with a kiss. He didn’t offer an anointing or a blessing for Jesus’ head. Simon’s sins are many. 

Jesus says, “But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little”. 

It’s amazing to me that for 2,000 years, this story has been told as if this sinful woman sure was lucky that Jesus was nice and accepted her weird, wasteful gifts. Why hasn’t the church instead asked, “Was Simon okay after being publicly rebuked by Jesus for his failures of hospitality and Jesus’ pronouncement that since Simon loves so little that he can’t possibly know the liberating gift of forgiveness?” 

We buy into the trope that the woman was the one with 500 denarii of debt and Simon only had 50. But is that the case? 

Jesus tells Simon, ‘You have judged rightly’ about the debtors in the parable. But then Jesus goes on to add up more than 50 bucks of debt that Simon has. 

Maybe we need to recognize the only difference between Simon and the sinful woman is that only one of them recognizes they have a debt at all. 

Our society is quick to judge the sins and debts of other people. But that isn’t how faith works. Our sins aren’t to be compared to others. Judgment is not what God requires of us. 

Whether we speak our judgment out loud, or only in our hearts, Jesus hears what we’re saying and loves us enough to call us to attend to our own behavior and actions. 

Some of us were here Wednesday night to hear the brilliant Loretta Ross talk about her book Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel. 

I highly recommend the book. But one of the things that was clear in reading it is that it is easy to cancel someone, to call them out for their mistakes. What is harder is to call them in. To care enough about them that you give them a chance to work for redemption. 

It’s easy to want to cancel people. I’ve got a long list in my dark little heart that I’m only saying to myself and not out loud, but if you’ve been watching the news, you probably have a similar list. 

And it is easy for me to call them sinful people, especially when they are. There are a lot of harms being done in our country right now that are surely against what God is desiring for us and for the world. 

But what this story reminds me is that while we continue to work for the world we want to see, we can’t do it from a place of exclusion and distance. We can’t see people we disapprove of as being beyond the reach of God’s love and forgiveness. 

What we can do is be more like the woman, willing to spend her money to buy expensive perfume to pour on Jesus’ feet, willing to offer her tears, her hair, her very self to get close enough to Jesus to say thanks. 

I clearly don’t have a handle on how to do that. I’m clearly still wrestling with what this story says to us and our crazy, mixed-up world today. 

So maybe the first step is to notice what we’re saying in our own hearts. Does it match what we say out loud? Does it match our actions? 

As you read through Luke’s gospel this week, as you watch the news, as you live your life, think about Simon and the woman. Whichever of them you feel closer to, remember that Jesus loves them both. Jesus calls them both to know they are loved, they are forgiven, and they are free. May we know that for ourselves, for each other, and for the world around us too. 

Let us be known for loving with all we have, not for loving little.