Sometimes I think the Gospel is a collection of Jesus’ shocking attitudes, actions, and comments. Today we find Jesus in a really shocking scene. He is invited to dine in the home of a pharisee. That home and that supper would have been completely proper and formal in regard to the religious, legal requirements for food, dining, hospitality, and reception of guests. Throughout the gospel the pharisees are portrayed as having a strict, external, rigid faith life that led them to be sanctimonious, to judge others, and to feel important. Their strict religious lifestyle led them to believe they were already saved, already saints, through their own actions. That attitude left little room of God’s action and really little need for God’s action in their lives. They had a rigid relationship with the Law. That law was many times was centered on rules and laws that did not originate in God but in their own interpretations. Maybe they were moral folk, maybe even good neighbors. But they had a poor relationship with love, pardon, forgiveness and simply living human life.
This is the shocking point that sticks out when one reads about Jesus’ encounter with the pharisees in that home on the one side and on the other an intrusive, uninvited women in that same home. The pharisee apparently extended an absolute minimum of hospitality to Jesus as his guest. Not more, nothing less than the minimum requirement. One could not criticize him for breaking any rules regarding hospitality. The woman was apparently a public sinner in that town. Everyone knew she was a sinner and her sin. She had an experience of forgiveness and of God’s presence in her life that led her to be exorbitantly generous in expressing her love and joy. She went above and beyond the demands of hospitality and thanksgiving in taking care of Jesus when he arrived at that house.
When we build a life based on ridged laws, self-righteousness and sanctimony, we have no need of God, God’s love, or God’s forgiveness in our lives. As a consequence, we don’t know how to love or forgive because we have never opened up to love or forgiveness, mostly because we think we are already perfect.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus breaks that scheme and calls us all to recognize that we have a heavenly Father who loves us. The forgiveness and love in our lives comes from God who created us and sent Jesus into our lives. Love and forgiveness do not originate in us or come from our own rigid legal controls. God’s forgiveness and love for us lead and empower us to serve, love, and forgive others. The pharisee in the Gospel did nothing beyond a mere minimum while the woman in today’s Gospel burst into action.
So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven;
hence, she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.
Image: https://pastorsblog.com.au/2013/06/17/be-sinner-luke-736-50/