Luke 7:36-50
Pride and Promiscuity
The sermon title for today’s story is in honor of my wife, who first introduced me to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” a classic tale of two strong-willed and misunderstood personalities coming together in romantic love.
But today’s Bible story is a different kind of love story. Instead of “Pride and Prejudice,” we have “Pride and Promiscuity,” named after its two main characters apart from Jesus. One is the prideful Simon the Pharisee, a community leader full of self-inflated importance and probably seeking to trap Jesus. The other is an unnamed woman who has come out of a life of sin, probably sexual sin; thus, the name “pride and promiscuity.”
The setting is a dinner at Simon’s house. It was not uncommon back then for town people to gather at important social events to watch the rich and famous. It would be like our star search today, where you might try to spot an actor in an LA restaurant. Here people came to check out Jesus. What is not so common is that a woman of poor reputation would dare to come out in public, particularly at the home of a Pharisee hosting a popular rabbi. She had a brazenness to her, or more likely a desperation.
Her activities lean toward desperation. She was desperate for God’s love and forgiveness. She wept at Jesus’ feet; she wiped his feet with her hair, then kissed his feet and poured perfume on them. All of these actions suggest a person full of shame and remorse and desperately seeking forgiveness from a holy God.
Meanwhile, the prideful one is put off. Simon thinks, “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.” Simon mistakenly believes that if an unclean person touches you, then you are unclean. If that were true, what chance would Jesus have, coming to live among the spiritually unclean human race? The truth is, the only one clean is Jesus. Simon needed the Lord just as much as the person with a promiscuous past. We are all sinners. In fact, sometimes we are just like Simon. We look down our noses at people who don’t have their act together like us. We forget that we are in just as much need of God’s love and forgiveness.
Jesus proved he is a prophet by reading Simon’s mind. Jesus picked up on Simon’s haughty spirit and told him a story, a story about debt forgiveness. A denarius is about one day’s wages. So one guy owes 50 days of wages, and the other guy owes 500, about a year and a half worth of work! Jesus’ question was simple: When the lender decides to forgive both loans, which man is going to be the most grateful? Which will “love him more?” Simon answered, “I guess the one with the bigger debt canceled.” It’s as if he still couldn’t admit to his own need for forgiveness. Jesus affirmed his answer nonetheless.
Then Jesus slammed him. I love how Jesus turned toward the woman (verse 44) as he pointed out Simon’s pride. The story is for her, too. Jesus showed three areas where Simon had ignored his guest while the woman had bent over backward to serve him: water for Jesus’ feet, a Middle Eastern kiss of welcome, and oil for Jesus’ head. All three would have been ceremonially saying, “Welcome!” and would have been practical as well. The water would help cleanse his sandaled feet after walking on dirt roads all day. The oil would cool him down and honor him as a great prophet. Yet, Simon did none of these. It seems he despised Jesus practically as much as he did the woman!
The woman, on the other hand, washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and her hair. She kissed his feet, a sign of great love for her new Lord, and she anointed his feet with perfume. Maybe that was a way of saying, “I don’t need this anymore to entice men, so I give it to my Lord.” We don’t know for sure, but it’s likely she had met Jesus recently and found the hope of a changed life. Now she is sorrowful for the past but abundantly hopeful for forgiveness and a new life.
The key line is verse 47: “I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—therefore she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” This woman wanted forgiveness with all of her heart, and so she got it. In verse 48, Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven,” which gets the crowd murmuring, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Who indeed? And in verse 50 he adds, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Her faith in the one who could save her allowed Jesus to bring about her salvation. Our job is to believe; God’s job is to save.
On the other hand, the prideful Pharisee thought he already had everything he needed, so he received nothing else. His sins were not forgiven because he did not have faith that they could be or even should be. He didn’t need God. He had himself, after all.
Have you ever met anyone who is their own god? It’s pretty sad. Someone once said, “Pride is the only disease that makes everyone sick but the one who has it.” Prideful people are so full of themselves that they are inflated like a balloon. The Bible calls it being “puffed up.”
Whenever I start to get puffed up, God sends along a little pin to poke my balloon and let out all the hot air. In fact, that happened just a couple of weeks ago. I brought home a draft program for a ceremony where I am receiving a national award from the VA. I wanted to impress my father-in-law, to get some attention. Well, he looked at it and didn’t say much at all. My balloon was burst. Later, I told my wife how I realized that I had had a prideful moment, and God used my father-in-law’s seeming indifference to burst my balloon and convict me of my need for the approval of others. My wife said, “If you wanted attention, you should have showed it to my mom. She would have gushed over it!” But that’s not the point. God convicted me of my pride, so I didn’t need gushing. I needed God!
In “Mere Christianity,” CS Lewis writes, “A proud person is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” Our pride blocks our view of God. Simon the Pharisee had God in his dining room, and he missed it! As a result, he left unchanged. The Savior only saved one person that night, and it wasn’t him.
Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” God let me fall a little before I saw my prideful attitude. An old story illustrates how far we can fall. There were two ducks and a frog who lived together in a farm pond. They were great friends and really enjoyed their home, that is until the hot summer sun began to dry up their pond. They realized they would have to move. Well, that was easy for the ducks who could fly, but not so easy for the frog. So what they decided was to put a stick in the bill of each duck, and the frog would hang onto the stick with his mouth as they flew to another pond. The plan worked well, so well, in fact, that as they were flying over a field, a farmer looked up and said, “Well, isn’t that clever! I wonder who thought of it?” The frog cried out, “I diddddddd!”
Pride leads to a fall. And the biggest fall of all is the fall to hell. Think about it: you have to lose your pride to become a Christian, a follower of Jesus. To borrow from the first three steps of AA, you must admit you are powerless, that only a power greater than yourself can restore you, and you must turn your will and your life over to God as you understand him. Sounds to me like the woman in today’s story, and anyone who becomes a believer in Christ.
The story of Simon and the woman points us to the difference between a works theology and a grace theology, between every other world religion and Christianity. Pretty much all religions point to “works,” some activity you must do to gain God’s favor. Buddhists must pursue enlightenment. Muslims must die in a Holy War or with a life of greater than 50% good. Jews must obey the Torah. All of these religions require you to do something to gain God’s acceptance. Simon the Pharisee figured he was keeping the law to the utmost; thus, he was approved by God, unlike this rabbi who didn’t even know a sinner when he saw one.
Yet Christianity says bluntly, “There is nothing you can do. On your own, you are beyond hope. You need a Savior.” One sin commits you to hell, and we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. The woman in today’s story got that. She knew she was condemned to hell. Yet, she met someone who pointed her to God’s love and forgiveness, to a relationship with the one true God, made possible by a Savior, a perfect sacrifice. And in accepting Jesus as her Savior, she began a new life, finding all her sins forgiven.
You can have a works theology or a grace theology. Most of the world believes in works, “that if I’m good enough, God will let me into heaven.” But the problem is, none of us are good enough. I point you to grace. One person turned the word “grace” into an acronym: “God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” We can have the richness of a life with God forever as we trust in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray:
God, you know our pride. You know how it sneaks up on us and takes over before we even know it. Please help us notice when your Holy Spirit points it out this week, and help us to know how desperate we really are for a Savior, for someone who will accept us as we are, and then help us to change from the inside out. For that person here who has not yet come to you with their life, please help them give up their pride now and recognize you as their only hope. Help all of us to yield to you and your Spirit at work within us, in the name of Christ Jesus, our Savior, we pray, amen.
