Luke 7:36-50 (Thanksgiving)

11/21/10

Luke 7:36-50

Thanksgiving

When I think about passages in the Bible that teach us about giving thanks, I cannot think of any that do a better job than this one.  It reminds us that our actions speak louder than our words and that it is what we do that shows whether we are truly thankful.  In this passage, Jesus shows us that we are not always the best judge of our own intentions or actions.

In our passage, we have Jesus eating dinner at the house of a Pharisee, who invited Him into their home and provided a meal for Him.  During the course of the meal, a woman, who is called in the Scripture “a sinner,” came in and, “weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume.”  It is very likely that this woman was someone of very ill-repute, someone who was well known in the community for being a sinner and one who showed incredible boldness by even showing up to the Pharisee’s house, let alone to touch one of his guests.

To all observers, it was clear that the Pharisee knew just how sinful this woman was, probably showing revulsion in one form or another.  However, Jesus seems to be completely unaware of who this woman is.  The Pharisee began to think to himself, “If this man were a prophet he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”  The implication, of course, is that, if Jesus knew that this woman was a sinner, He would not allow her to touch Him, He would cast her away and put her back in her place, so to speak.

Jesus, knowing that the Pharisee was thinking these things, but not announcing it, decided to tell a parable.  “A moneylender had two debtors:  one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty.  When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both.  So which of them will love him more?”  The Pharisee knew the answer, of course.  “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”  The man knew the right answer and Jesus congratulated him on it, but there seems to be a little bit of buckshot, almost sarcasm, in Jesus’ response.

We have all just heard the rest of the story.  The Pharisee did not give Jesus any water for His feet, a common sign of hospitality in the Ancient Near East.  However, this woman, who had nothing, who was probably not even welcome in the Pharisee’s home, did not stop showing hospitality toward Jesus.  Jesus finishes up His explanation by saying, “For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

This is not just an interesting teaching that Jesus meant to go in one ear of His hearers and out the other.  Jesus is breaking one of the cardinal rules of politeness:  Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.  To think about it using the language of thanksgiving, we might say, “Hey Jesus, you don’t seem to be very thankful to this person who has invited you into their home and has given you dinner.  It seems that, even if this Pharisee didn’t give you water to wash your feet, he is still paying for your meal and is being kind to you, even though you don’t seem to be responding in kind.”

So, maybe Jesus wasn’t very polite at that point in time; after all, it is clear that He is saying that the Pharisee is the one who does not love very much.  He certainly broke the social rules of the day.  The people at the table are upset and begin to say, “Who is this man who even forgives sins?”  They weren’t saying it out of amazement at the power of Christ but because they were amazed that someone would be that arrogant to dare to take God’s power upon themselves.

So, what are we to make of this whole story?  Jesus explained that the one who is forgiven much loves much but the one who is forgiven little loves little.  Are we to conclude that, while the woman desperately needed to be forgiven, the Pharisee wasn’t really all that bad and so didn’t need to be forgiven?  It doesn’t seem so.  Remember the parable that Jesus told.  There were two people who had their debts forgiven.  One of them owed ten times as much as the other but the really important bit of information was that neither of them were able to pay what they owed.  It was not as if, left to their own devices, they would both have been able to clear their own debts, it just would take one longer than the other.  It is clear that, even though one owed more than the other, they were both helpless.  It doesn’t matter if you are drowning in a pond or in the ocean, you are still drowning.

Maybe, if we were able to play what I like to call “Big sin, little sin,” and make a list of all the things that this woman has done wrong and a list of all the things that the Pharisee has done wrong, we might be able to show that the Pharisee really isn’t as bad as the woman in some kind of objective sense.  Even if we could do that, what would that prove?  It would still mean that he was in a hole he could not get out of, even if his hole is a little bit shallower than the woman’s.

The real issue here seems to be that both the woman and the man were debtors to God, the woman has received forgiveness gratefully, the Pharisee, if he accepted forgiveness at all, treated it as if it were not that big of a deal.  He clearly did not think of himself as a sinner.  If Jesus’ parable here shows us nothing else, it should show us that, sometimes, what we think we believe is not what we actually believe.  If you want to know what someone really believes, don’t listen to what they say; watch what they do.

I want to illustrate this with a true story.  A friend of a professor of mine from Boston who was in seminary was in an airplane with a business man, also from Boston.  It came out early in the flight that the one was a seminary student and the businessman was a committed atheist.  Both being from Boston, they got themselves into a loud, Bostonian argument in which half the plane was listening in.  They went back and forth until they finally realized that the real issue that divided them was their view of humanity.  The businessman believed that human beings were basically good while the seminary student believed that human beings were created good but were tragically flawed and sinful.  Eventually the seminary student said, “You don’t really believe that and I can prove it.”  They went back and forth, “No you can’t.”  “Yes I can.”  “No you can’t.”  “Yes I can.”  Finally the seminary student said, “Show me your keys.”

Now, in Boston, there is rather a lot of crime, so you lock everything.  If you have decent wheels on your car, you have to lock the lugs on your wheels or else you may find that they have been stolen.  So this businessman, who claimed to believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, had a big wad of keys that he carried with him.  The seminary student responded, “If people are basically good, why do you need all those?”  In spite of the fact that the business man said that he believed that people were basically good and he even thought he believed that, his actions showed that he really believed that at least a certain portion of humanity is not to be trusted.

Now, why would the businessman convince himself that people were basically good when he clearly did not live that way?  I think it is because, if he let himself admit that people are really flawed and not as good as they ought to be, he would be forced to admit that he was flawed and not as good as he ought to be.  I think the same is true with the Pharisee in our text.  If he responded to Jesus with great love, if he really allowed himself to behave as if he had a debt that he could never pay forgiven and his whole situation radically changed, he would have to admit that, in spite of all the appearances to the contrary, he really wasn’t all that better than the woman that he called a sinner.

What was revealed in this interaction between Jesus and the Pharisee is not that the Pharisee loved less because he was forgiven less because he was less of a sinner and so better than the woman.  What was revealed was that the man loved less because he did not realize what he had received and that made him worse than the woman.  Even if we could argue that he was less of a sinner than the woman and so was really the one who owed less, the fact remains, he was still a debtor and was still unable to pay.

When I think about passages like this, I am reminded to be humble.  In his Confessions, Saint Augustine said something to the effect of, “If you have not engaged in the same sinfulness that I have, remember that the same physician prevented you from the sickness that he healed me from.”  I needed to be reminded that I, too, have been forgiven, that I, too, was a debtor with nothing to pay.  Even if I was not a drug dealer or a flagrant sinner, it does not change the fact that I, too, have sinned and I, too, need forgiveness, a forgiveness that is given freely and lovingly, not dependant on anything that I had ever done.

I am thankful for many things today, as I imagine you are, too.  I am thankful for a loving and supportive family, a warm and safe place to live, a job, a community, and many other things.  But there is no question in my mind.  The thing that I am thankful for above all else, even my family, is that God has not left us alone in our sin, has not been strict to demand that we pay our debts, debts that we could never pay, no matter how hard we tried.  I am thankful that we have a God who knows exactly what we are going through because He has not remained far off in heaven but has entered into our broken world of space and time, enduring all the brokenness that goes with it, even suffering and dying on our behalf and in our place.  I am thankful because, not only has God forgiven me, He has given the gift of the Holy Spirit so that even my tendency to sin might be healed.  I am thankful because, in spite of this marvelous gift, I still sin and God is still there to accept me and continue to transform me so that my life looks more and more like Christ’s every day.

But these are not just things that I have to be thankful for.  These are promises and gifts that are offered to you as well.  There are some who are here tonight who know exactly what I am talking about because you are thankful for them, too.  If you have not felt the thankfulness that comes from being adopted into God’s family, receive God’s gift even now.  We worship a God who invites all of us and accepts all of us, in spite of all that we may have done.

So, as we leave this place tonight, let us not be like the Pharisee, who loved little because he had no idea how much he had been forgiven.  Let us cry out to God with our thanksgiving because He has given us everything that we have and continues to provide for us day by day.  Our God is good and He loves us.  Let us give thanks and let us be glad.  Let us pray.

AMEN