Kids, I want to play a simple game with you. The game is “Simon Says.” Ready? Simon says, “Touch your nose.” Simon says, “Raise yours hands.” Simon says, “Wave your hands.” Clap your hands! Oops. Simon didn’t say to do that, did he? In this game you’re only supposed to do what Simon says. But have you ever wondered who this Simon is? I mean why isn’t the game called “Suzy Says,” or “Cedric Says”? Why do we have to do what Simon says? No one seems to know who this Simon is.
There is a real Simon that I want to tell you more about this morning. We met him in our Gospel lesson. This Simon was a Pharisee – a religious leader who thought that the way to heaven was by keeping God’s laws. Jesus disagreed with Simon. He said that salvation comes to us through faith in his works not our works. That leads me to this question. “Simon Says” or “Savior Says”: whose salvation “game” are you playing?
Salvation of course is no “game.” If you lose, you go to a place of unimaginable and unending pain – pain much worse than a throbbing toothache or a weeklong migraine. Such pain is found in hell. So it’s very important that you take today’s sermon text seriously because it teaches us how to come out a “winner” in the “game” of salvation.
Our text describes how Simon invited Jesus to his house for dinner. When Jesus arrived, however, it became clear that Simon didn’t think very highly of him. The normal courtesies - the greeting kiss and water to wash the feet - were not offered Jesus. Picture the father who refuses to shake the hand of his daughter’s boyfriend and fails to offer to take his coat when he comes over for dinner. So why did Simon invite Jesus if he didn’t like him? It seems that he wanted to observe Jesus more closely. Many were saying that Jesus was a great prophet, perhaps even the promised Messiah. But Simon dismissed those ideas when a woman with a sinful reputation (unnamed so we could insert our own name?) came up to where Jesus was reclining at the banquet table and began crying. She cried so much that her tears began to wet Jesus’ feet. She then let down her hair and wiped Jesus’ feet dry with it. Finally she kissed his feet and poured expensive perfume on them! As Simon watched he thought to himself (perhaps with a self-satisfied smirk): “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner” (Luke 7:39).
Of course Jesus was a prophet - more than that - he is the Son of God and knew what Simon was thinking. Jesus also knew all about the woman and her sins, whatever they were. The fact that Jesus didn’t recoil from this sinful woman (or from Simon) shows that his “rules” for the “game” of salvation were much different than Simon’s. Simon thought that the Messiah would only welcome those who had lived according to God’s commands, as Simon himself thought he had done. Jesus set Simon straight with the following parable. “Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both” (Luke 7:40-42).
Like the two men in the parable, the woman and Simon owed a debt incurred by their sin that neither could repay God. Simon may not have been guilty of the public sin that the woman had committed, but he could hardly say that he was without sin. He was at least guilty of the sin of looking down on others. How many times in a day aren’t we guilty of labeling people as Simon did? We see a man whose shirt is untucked, face unshaven and we think, “What a slob.” What we don’t know is that he was up all night with a sick a child.
But if the woman and Simon were guilty of sin, why was Jesus, the sinless Son of God, hanging out with them? Because he was on a rescue mission. Jesus once said of himself: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). Just as a lifeguard doesn’t simply bark swimming stroke instructions to the kid who is drowning (what good would that do?) but dives in after him, so Jesus dove into humanity to wrap his arms around us flailing sinners to bring us to heaven. How exactly does Jesus do this? Jesus announced to the woman washing his feet, “Your sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:48). What he literally said was, “Your sins stand dismissed.” Jesus used a perfect tense, which in Greek points to an action completed in the past but has ongoing benefits. In other words, before the woman had even showed up to anoint Jesus’ feet, her sins had been forgiven.
Wait a minute? Didn’t Jesus say that the reason the woman had been forgiven was because she loved him? Jesus’ exact words were this: “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much” (Luke 7:47a). If you’re cruising along the highway and see a mass of charcoal-colored smoke on the horizon, you might ask your companions, “What’s burning?” Why would you deduce that something is on fire even though you don’t see flames? Because where there is smoke, there is fire. Just as smoke is evidence that there is a fire, and not the cause of a fire, so the woman’s love for Jesus was the evidence that she believed she was forgiven, not the cause of forgiveness. To put it another way, her love for Jesus was not the price of forgiveness it was the proof of forgiveness. Think again of the parable. What had the debtors done to have their debts cancelled? Absolutely nothing. It was because their debts were forgiven that they would show thanks to their creditor. Likewise forgiveness of sins comes first then good works. Jesus hammers home this truth when he said to the woman: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50b). It was faith, not works that saved the woman.
But what exactly is faith? It’s trust. The woman and Simon were like passengers on a sinking ship. The woman trusted that wearing the life vest of Jesus would keep her from drowning while Simon didn’t think he needed that kind of help. After all, he had filled his pockets with gold coins! If you’ve ever had to swim a lap or two with all your clothes on for lifeguard training, you know what’s going to happen to Simon when he hits the open water: he’ll slip under and never resurface – not if he refuses to let go of his precious coins. And so it will be with those who continue to hang on to, that is, who trust in their goodness to get them into heaven. Their deeds, tainted with sin as they are, will drag them down to hell instead.
Today’s lesson reminds me of Jesus’ description of Judgment Day. On that day Jesus said he will point to the visible works of believers. “When I was hungry you fed me. When I was naked you clothed me” (Matthew 25:31 ff.). Like the woman’s anointing of Jesus’ feet, these visible works are not the cause of salvation; they are only the proof of invisible faith. On the other hand the unbelievers will claim to have done the same things for Jesus and will wonder why they’re not getting into heaven. Doesn’t Simon’s experience give you the answer? You don’t have to be an outright enemy of Jesus to reject him. In fact you may think of him as a prophet, call him “Teacher,” even invite him in to your home as Simon did, but if you don’t put your faith in Jesus as the only one who can, who has saved you from your sins, you are lost and Jesus will say to you on the Last Day, “Away from me, you evildoer. I never knew you.” “Simon Says” or “Savior Says”: whose salvation game are you playing?
May I sound a warning to you life-long Lutherans? I’d expect you to be playing “Savior Says” for we continually stress here how it is Jesus and not our good works that save. I wonder though if we haven’t come to think of good works as “extra credit”? The fact is good works are necessary for salvation (James 2:26). No, they are not the juice that lights up faith - Jesus’ love does that. Good works are the beams of light that emanate from faith, and look at how brightly a genuine faith shines. The woman in Simon’s house used her hair, her crown and glory, in deepest humiliation and devotion. So too our highest and best belong in the dust at Jesus’ feet. Faith, for example, gives the best in the way of our income to the Lord, not what it is left over at the end of the month. Faith treats others as Jesus treats us. If the woman had run into Simon the next day, would she have whispered to her friends, “There’s that self-righteous punk who thought I was nothing but trash”? How could she say a thing like that when Jesus had freely forgiven her? How can we forgiven sinners do anything less than forgive even when we are judged or criticized unfairly?
Something else from this text that struck me about good works is that they don’t always make “business” sense. I mean wasn’t it a waste for the woman to anoint Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume when the moment he hit the dusty roads again the perfume would be ruined? Jesus didn’t think so. Before we got rid of the old church sidewalk last summer I wondered, “What’s the point if we’re going to be tearing it up in a year or two for our new building?” The point is that when a project is done out of love for the Lord it is pleasing to him – even if the benefits aren’t obvious to us. Indeed one could argue that the “best” good works are those that don’t benefit us – like picking up trash in someone else’s neighborhood. Why would you do a thing like that? Because Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom of love – the love of the Savior and of the saved for sinners around them. We won’t show this kind of love, however, at least not without sinful pride, if we’re playing “Simon Says.”
So whose salvation game are you playing? Simon’s or the Savior’s? Don’t follow Simon’s lead. You haven’t been as good as God wants you to be. You haven’t been perfect and therefore you owe a debt that you can’t repay. But it’s a debt that Jesus covered at the cross. Believe it! Believe it and go in peace eager to let your hair down in service to others…for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
