Most of the time, if you invite someone over, it’s because you want to cultivate the relationship.  The Pharisees were clearly a mixed group and not all of the same mind about Jesus.  They acknowledged that he did not keep the Law, not the way the Pharisees did, but that was true of most Jews.  The Pharisees were always a minority.  I’m sure there were those Pharisees who were adamant that Jesus offered nothing and was nothing, that he ought to be avoided, shunned at all times.  There were others, though, who wanted to hear more, wanted to know more.  By all reports, Jesus was doing things that were tremendous, miraculous.  People can get excited, carried away, can start embellishing.  Jesus was also saying something that resonated.  Some among the Pharisees heard, it, felt it, too.  This didn’t make them disciples, but it did intrigue them.  They wanted to hear more, maybe even wanted to understand.

Perhaps this Pharisee wanted a conversation with Jesus, or a debate.  Maybe he just wanted to watch and wait and listen, reserving judgment or gathering evidence.  Maybe he had a sense that, with Jesus around, something was sure to happen.  Jesus kind of makes things happen, beloved.  When Jesus is present, you can be sure that something is going to happen, and it’s going to be good—not simple, not easy, but always, always good.

They’re at the table.  We sit at the table.  In the ancient world, furniture being expensive and living space being used for several purposes, it was more practical to sit on the floor or to stretch out on your side, on a mat, perhaps a cushion, feet away from the table.  It’s a low table.  The group is in close, like our own tables at meal time.  There is bread, olive oil, maybe fruit, perhaps some cheese, almonds or maybe even walnuts, wine.  Word is going to spread fast that Jesus is there.  People are going to hear and gather around the door and windows.  It’s not a private matter.

“A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume” (7:37).  We’ve heard something like this before.  John tells us about Mary the sister of Lazarus, but this isn’t Mary, and Jesus doesn’t speak of the woman as preparing him beforehand for his burial.  The Pharisees weren’t the only ones who understood that someone special was there.  We’re told this woman “lived a sinful life”—I’ll leave you to figure out the code, there.  Did she have no alternative?  No other way to stay alive?  Was it forced upon her?  Sisters, you say I would nev-er; she did too, at first.  Well, Scripture does not give us her backstory; that is not the essential thing.  We all have one.  The point is what is happening now.  She lived a sinful life.  What’s that?  A life without reference to God, a life lived in a way that God could not approve.  We’ve got to think carefully and clearly, here.

The woman came to the Pharisee’s house.  Unlike the others, she didn’t just stand outside the door or the window, gawking curiously.  She went into the house of the man who lived to keep the Law.  She brought her sinful impurity, her uncleanness, in with her, and all the Pharisees there understood that.  Can you see them sort of drawing back, drawing away, as she entered?  Filth.  But she wasn’t there for them.  I wonder if one or two at the table knew more about her than they cared to have others know.  She was there for Jesus.  She came for Jesus.  What had she heard?  What did she know or hope?  People said Jesus did miracles.  She was not blind.  She was not deaf.  She was not lame.  She was not dead.  And she knew there was that in her that was blind, was deaf, was crippled, was dead.  She felt that death in her, daily.  It’s not a happy feeling, is it?

She heard that Jesus healed.  I have to believe she also heard that Jesus forgave.  I don’t think she had encountered much forgiveness in that place.  Condemnation, yes.  Revulsion, yes.  They would never let her escape what she had done, even when she wanted to.  And there were times, maybe even long seasons, when she didn’t, told herself she didn’t care, that it didn’t matter anymore.

The Pharisees, along with everyone else, were astounded and perplexed about the miracles of healing.  What offended them was the forgiving, forgiving the sins of others.  It wasn’t like saying “I forgive you” when someone has hurt you or told you a lie or stolen something from you.  It wasn’t a personal offence.  It was sin, the problem of the brokenness between us and God, the broken mess we are and make, the trail of broken mess we leave in our wake in this life.  The Law was there to keep God’s people on the good path, and even God’s people went stumbling off into the brambles and swamps.  The Pharisees were committed to going the good way.  For them, that meant doing the Law with meticulous care, no matter the cost.  That is an admirable goal, and it is also impossible.  So what many Pharisees ended up doing was to make quite a public display of their ceremonial, their ritual-keeping holiness.  Their hearts they could not change, but they could put on a show of doing things differently, speaking a certain way.  The Pharisees knew everyone else was a hopeless sinner, but they were committed not to be so.  And if sin came along, well, only God could forgive that; they would not.

Jesus was saying the good way meant something else.  The good way wasn’t really about following rules, not that rules are bad or have no place.  We all know rules, but what rules the heart?  The good way was about a relationship, a loving relationship.  The good way wasn’t about loving a law but loving God.  The Pharisees didn’t see any difference, as Jesus pointed out many times.

The woman living in sin came when she heard Jesus was there.  She came into the place where she knew already she was least welcome.  That didn’t matter to her.  Jesus mattered to her, because she hoped Jesus might give her what she needed more than anything: restoration, restoration to a loving relationship.  You see, she had no such relationship.  Sin saw to that, her sin.  Sinful people talk a lot about love, but all it really amounts to is self-love, self-worship.  Jesus talks a lot about love, and it amounts to life.  This woman wants forgiveness, the forgiveness only God can give.  She wants another life, another chance.  She couldn’t make it happen.  She was stuck.  There had been no way until Jesus came along.  She couldn’t make another life for herself, a new life.  But God could do it, if He wanted to.  She believed in God, and she trembled, and she hoped, too.

Why the desire for a new life now?  Maybe it wasn’t so sudden.  Maybe that desire had been growing for a long time, a lifetime.  The tipping point, I think, had two parts: Jesus was here—that’s one; the other was the unshakeable, terrifying conviction that not to seize the opportunity would be to lose God: the life she had been living—the death she had been living, put more and more distance between her and God each week, each day.  We get stuck and then we feel stuck.

Here, now, as though by a hand drawing her, pushing her, a voice whispering, urging her on, she knew what to do about it.  What did she do?  “As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears” (7:38).  Weeping.  That’s the right way to come into the presence of Jesus, isn’t it?  Not from sorrow—though God knows there is sorrow enough—more than we know, if we would know it.  She isn’t weeping because she is sad but because she suddenly knows she is so close to home, and it’s been such a long journey.  She isn’t coming home proud but broken.  We want to take life as one triumph after another.  Too often, though, it can get to feeling like one beating after another.  A cynic might well say this woman was crying for show, to get sympathy—poor pitiful me.  I don’t think that’s why.  Can you imagine what it took for her to cross that threshold into that house, where she was least welcome, where every eye, except for that of Jesus, was turned upon her in revulsion and rage?  Maybe she had a speech worked out in advance, had planned out just what she would do, maintain a little pride, some dignity—well, all that fell to pieces the moment she stepped through the door, her eyes only upon Jesus, so close now—she couldn’t let anything stop her now, get in her way—not even herself.  There she was, standing there behind him, her tears dropping onto the feet of Jesus.  She didn’t want to be like this, and she couldn’t help herself—do you understand?

“Then she wiped [his feet] with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them” (7:38).  Oh, I’m always done and undone right there.  I forgive you!  It’s going to be alright!  But it’s not my forgiveness she needs—is it?  Now, why her hair?  She had both an inner and an outer garment, presumably even a head covering of some kind.  She could have wiped her tears and the perfume with any of those.  Ladies, sisters, would you wipe anyone’s feet, especially any man’s feet, with your hair?  Maybe, maybe—if these were the feet of Jesus.

But she does more, doesn’t she?  She is also kissing his feet.  We use that phrase in a derogatory way—“Hey, do you have to kiss his feet?”  “Don’t be such a foot kisser”—total submission, groveling.  Have some pride!  That’s a part of Christian faith we’re not exactly keen on talking about: submission.  What’s the opposite?  Now, do you suppose Jesus just has the smoothest, softest feet, in that dry land of dust and pebbles and sandals?  A grown man, used to physical labor, who mostly walks everywhere all over the region?

But feet.  Ugh.  Does it have to be feet?  There at the cross, on the cross, beloved, it was only his feet that those at the foot of the cross could just reach, just touch.  Don’t you see Mary there?  The women?  Even John?

Those Pharisees are just goggle-eyed.  The fury got checked the moment she began wiping his feet, tears perfume and all, with her hair.  They’d never seen anything like it.  No, they never had.  Pity.  They didn’t understand, they couldn’t know, but mixed in with it all, through the Spirit in a way even the woman couldn’t fully understand, was that she was also blessing the way Jesus has come to us, and blessing the way he goes for us.  Let’s love the Jesus way like that.

The host, seeing all this, knows for sure now that Jesus couldn’t possibly be from God, because no holy man would ever allow himself to be touched by anything so stained as that lost, ruined woman (8:39).  And Jesus knows it.  “Simon, I have something to tell you” (7:40).  Now, a Hebrew audience would understand what doesn’t occur to us, which is that the name Simon—like Simon Peter’s—means listening, as in “speak Lord, Your servant is listening.”  Jesus then tells a familiar parable.  You know, if you owe something it’s because something has been given in the first place.  What has God given us, already?  What exactly do we owe?  From a legal point of view, also, damages are owed when something on loan has been misused, abused, broken.  What could that be, I wonder.

Well, the amounts may not mean much to us, although one is obviously larger than the other.  By some calculations, it would be as if one owed $1,400 and the other $14,000.  Which would you rather it be, in your case?  Which is it, really?

Remember that the average daily wage, in those times, was like around $28—if you had regular work.  Expenses had to come out of that, too.  Anyone living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, here, and now we’re to add even $1,400 in debt?  “Neither of them had the money to pay him back” if you can imagine that, “so he forgave the debts of both” (7:42).  Did what now?  Forgave.  Both.  If you have no means of repaying the debt, ever, at all, then does it matter so much whether it’s $1,400 or $14,000?  It might as well be $1 million.

“‘Now which of them will love him more?’  Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven’” (7:42-43).  If it was $1,400, well, yeah, that’s not a small amount, but, you know, with enough scrimping and working, maybe taking on extra work—if it was available—maybe it could be paid off.

So, it’s forgiven, and that’s great, but after all, I really could have done it myself.  But $14,000?  Most don’t just cough that up in a week, or a month or a year.  Maybe not even five years.  To have the debt forgiven?  Because the one to whom the debt is owed freely decides to forgive?  Just writes it off, washes it away?  Now, maybe you and I, we could love what he has done, and we’d be so grateful, but Jesus doesn’t mention that.  He asks about loving the one who forgives.  Not the deed but the one who does it.  Debt isn’t about a relationship so much as a business arrangement, a legal matter.  Love is of the essence of relationship.

To cancel such a debt is a loss for the lender—would any of us be so glad to kiss $14,000 goodbye forever?—but it’s an act of love for God.  God is always clearing the way for relationship—so why do we keep cluttering up the way?

Jesus tells the woman this: “Your sins are forgiven” (7:48).  Jesus is doing a bit more here than making it so, beautiful as that certainly is; he is also declaring what already is so.  Reread this passage later today, and see if it doesn’t seem to you as if the woman is not so much coming to Jesus to beg his forgiveness, as she is falling at his feet in broken gratitude and praise because, somehow even she can’t explain, she already knows that she has been forgiven, because she sought God, finally, faithfully, because God was always already ready to give it, and the proof of the truth of this is the presence of Jesus.

Jesus is the proof of the truth of God’s forgiveness, already here.  Beloved, the Sacrament before us this morning is a very special reminder for us that Jesus is indeed present, here, now, today, with us.  His presence is love, grace, forgiveness; his presence is courage, hope, and salvation.  He isn’t present as bread and juice.  He is present with us, through these signs and symbols, as we have faith, as we have the Spirit, and these gifts are also reminders of the power of the Spirit with us, among us, and through us. “Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace’” (7:50).  Receive in faith and know Christ’s salvation power in you.  Amen and amen.