Sermon Tone Analysis

What a great passage of Scripture this is!

And some basic things to grasp as we see a woman come along and by faith is forgiven and saved.

Why did Simon invite Jesus to his house?

Was he curious to know Him? Was he interested in what He was? Was it a pure motive or a negative one?

Did he invite Him to dishonour Him?

Despite inviting Jesus there was a real lack of hospitality which, for these times, was just plain rude.

The lack of kindness shown to Him would have been evident to the other guests.

There had been no kiss of greeting when he arrived, no water for his feet to get rid of the grit and dirt, there was no bathroom facilities to freshen up, no anointing with olive oil which was customary.

He was not made to feel at home.

The invitation seems to me to be totally disingenuous.

Mind you, us men, generally, don’t really have a grasp on hospitality.

Women normally, on the other hand, seem to pull out all the stops and know just how to make someone welcome and we men should learn from them.

As a bachelor I did not realise how lacking I was!

Living in Macedonia hospitality is central to life.

You can drop in anytime to people’s homes and you would be made welcome.

f they did not have snacks or pop they would send the kids to the shop, they’d make some coffee, give you a drop of home-made brandy, and maybe even cook some meat.

I really miss this about living there; not the eating, but the hospitality.

I find hospitality in the UK missing some important ingredients even among Christians.

I don’t know how things were in the past but most people don’t like you inviting yourself to their homes for you need an appointment arranged 2 week’s in advance and there is the feeling that you are imposing on their, what those across the bridge say, an Englishman’s home is his castle.

Or you have an open house and say to people you can always come round but nobody does for they feel awkward.

Should hospitality feel like this?

I think that having experienced the culture of another nation where I initially found it to be a bit disconcerting and feeling like I was putting people out but quickly, I discovered, it was not like this at all for there was a genuine, glad welcome.

I hope that you will always find this in our home - but this can only happen if you knock on our door!

Jesus, though, was not shy, He accepted the invitation to go along to Simon’s house and would have known the reasons why He had been called to be a guest but went along anyway even if there were misgivings about it.

The things that Jesus does has purpose as we shall see.

Barely had they reclined to eat that a notorious woman turned up and she was definitely not specially invited.

Out English translation loses a bit here, what it actually says is: “Look, a woman!”

It was shocking she was there.

She stood behind Him at His feet.

How do you stand at someone’s feet?

The word ‘stood’ here is a metaphor that simply means that she was present at His feet and therefore was not standing but kneeling.

And then she does, as we are told, all the hospitable things that Simon should have done in her own kind of way.

Maybe she had seen how mistreated Jesus was but she, she was so thankful for Him.

And there at His feet she started crying overwhelmed by her emotions and possibly embarrassed she had no towel to wipe his feet so used her hair instead.

She didn’t care what a mess she was anointing his feet with the perfume and kissing his feet.

It was all very shocking for everyone present!

As indeed it would be to us if something like that happened here.

Well, Simon was incensed.

What is THAT woman doing in my house?!

He didn’t say that but He certainly thought it.

And how disgusting what she is up to and how surprising it is that Jesus is allowing it.

She is touching Him and He should repel her.

The only thing that was right about his thoughts was that Jesus should know what kind of woman she is.

What kind of woman was she?

She was a sinner.

My, O my! What kind of sinner?

Well, many have speculated from her actions, especially the loosened hair, that she was a prostitute.

She could have been, of course, like some say that this is Mary Magdalene in this story but who she was and what she had done is speculation only for Scripture is not explicit about the details.

However, she had done some things that made her recognisable.

Let me ask a question: was she more of a sinner than me or you?

Maybe the kind of sin she committed had greater consequences in life but

And so the consequences of death is the same (Rom 6:23).

But she came to Jesus.

There had been a realisation in her of her need of Him to help her.

She knew that she was a sinner and came with tears of repentance to the feet of Jesus.

Oh how we should realise the depth of our depravity and realise the depth of our need of forgiveness.

Too easily we gloss over sin as if it has no consequences.

But death is the consequence.

So, Jesus tells a parable to deal with the prejudice of Simon, the Pharisee.

There were two debtors, one owed some, about 50 days worth of wages, and the other owed a lot, about 500 days worth of wages.

But both were in debt and unable to pay for even if you work you still need to pay your daily bills.

Outwardly the woman had the greater debt - but both were bankrupt.

The great supporter of the eighteenth-century ministries of John Wesley and George Whitefield, the Countess of Huntingdon, once invited a duchess to hear Whitefield preach and received this amazing written reply:

It is monstrous to be told, that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth.

This is highly offensive and insulting; and I cannot but wonder that your Ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding.

On the other hand there are those who think that they have the ability to pay the debt:

Some submit the currency of integrity.

“God, I work with compulsive liars.

The only honest man I know is myself.

Surely I’m acceptable.”

Others would argue that their domestic currency ought to make it.

“In this X-rated world, my life is a wholesome G. I’m faithful to my wife.

I love her and my children.

I am a good husband, father, and son.

I reckon that’s all I’ll need!” Social currency is a favorite too.

“I am truly color-blind.

My money (lots of it!)

goes to the needy.

I volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center.

I really do care.

The world needs more people like me, and so does heaven.”

Church currency is perhaps the biggest delusion.

“I live at church.

My goodness will surely be accepted.”

Those who think this way do not realise the depth of their debt.

Being in debt in the past is not the same as today: even in the early 1900s you would go to jail if you couldn’t pay.

Today you might get a CCJ or, at worse, be made bankrupt but these things are not so hard to deal with anymore for the whole process has been made easy, you can still have a bank account and after a year you are no longer deemed bankrupt.

Back in Jesus’ day it was not easy.

You could end up as a slave and your wife and children would also be sold.

The need for forgiveness of debt is desperate.

In a different form of the prayer our Lord taught we could say: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”.

We are all in debt to God and without forgiveness the prison called hell is the place we go.

But our God abundantly pardons when we come to Him through Jesus Christ.

There are none “so bad” that Christ cannot forgive!

And just how much love we have for our Lord is in direct contrast with the amount we feel we have been forgiven.

There has to be a consciousness of sin and how much we were in debt.

Those who have had radical conversions having been forgiven despite their crime-ridden lives tend to be the same ones who are radical in their discipleship of Jesus.

Those who are not growing in their faith are those who have forgotten they were forgiven their sins, we have forgotten how much we owed to God.

This woman who came before Jesus was very well aware and had come to realise she had the joy of forgiveness for she knew God paid it all on her behalf which is why she bought that jar of perfume to anoint the feet of Jesus which is extremely expensive.

It was an extravagant gift from an extremely grateful heart.