Introduction

A. Seeing Differently

I once saw a video where they asked a group of women to describe themselves to a police sketch artist, behind a curtain. The artist drew them based on their descriptions. After that, they had a friend describe the person to the sketch artist, who would then draw another picture based on that description. Afterward, they showed the subjects the two sketches for comparison. They were all quite different. We don’t always see ourselves or others exactly the way we are.

Today, I want to look at a story about Jesus that shows how differences in perception are important. In this story, Jesus interacts with two other characters: a Pharisee named Simon and an unnamed woman with a checkered past. The text lets us see these two characters through two different lenses. One from the perspective of the Pharisee, and the other from the perspective of Jesus. Spoiler alert: Jesus doesn’t see people the way others often do.

We read the story in Luke 7:36-47

³⁶ When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. ³⁷ 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. ³⁸ As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. 

³⁹ When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “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.” 

⁴⁰ Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” 

“Tell me, teacher,” he said. 

⁴¹ “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 

⁴³ Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” 

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. 

⁴⁴ Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. ⁴⁵ You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶ You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. ⁴⁷ Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:36–47, NIV).

In this story, Simon is convinced he’s above reproach. He views the woman as scandalous, and he thinks less of Jesus for his willingness to be near her. But Jesus flips the narrative on its head, showing that it’s the woman who is righteous, while Simon falls short. At the heart of the story are two different visions of how we understand holiness.

B. Cultural Context

i. Pharisees

Before we can fully appreciate what is going on in this story, we need to understand some cultural context. Simon, the host of this meal, is a Pharisee. The Pharisees are people who pursue holiness as a way of courting God’s favour. At times in the gospels, the Pharisees can come across as two-dimensional villains. But there is more nuance here. Simon isn’t just opposing Jesus because, as a Pharisee, that’s what the plot requires him to do. He has invited Jesus over for a meal. He’s at least showing an openness to Jesus that many Pharisees do not.

So the conflict in this story doesn’t just happen because Jesus is Jesus and Simon is a Pharisee. It really comes down to how two diverging understandings of God’s heart lead to two very different visions of what righteousness requires.

ii. The Meal

The details we’re given about the meal give us important clues about the setting. This isn’t just someone inviting Jesus over for a casual meal sometime. It says Jesus reclined at the table, which was customary at formal banquets. Jesus and the others would have gathered around the three sides of a U-shaped table. They would lie on couches on their left side, with their heads pointed towards the table. This is why the woman can approach Jesus from behind and reach his feet.

Several scholars I read in my research noted that this appears to be organized along the lines of a symposium, a Greek cultural practice in which a host would invite people over for a meal, followed by a lively philosophical discussion.Simon, it seems, wants to probe Jesus’ teaching.

Now, when the pagan Greeks practiced symposia, they would include ‘flute-girls’ who would serve the food, provide musical entertainment, and then, afterwards… other kinds of entertainment…If you catch my drift. Simon seems to be borrowing the format, but, no doubt, he would omit the… extracurricular activities as totally inappropriate for a pious Jew.

While Simon is borrowing the Symposium format from Greek culture, he is still a Jew, and so he should be expected to follow his culture’s minimum standards of hospitality. He should have given Jesus water to wash his feet, a kiss of friendship, and, since Jesus is the guest of honour, he should have anointed his head with oil. But Simon has neglected all of this, which seems to communicate an “I’m doing you a favour by giving you this invitation” vibe.

With that Cultural Context out of the way, we will now turn to the two competing ways of seeing the characters in the story.

I. The World According to Simon

As I said, Simon is a Pharisee. Even casual readers of the New Testament come away with the impression that the Pharisees are a self-righteous group. Their posture towards others comes down to their understanding of what went wrong in Israel’s story, and how that ought to be fixed. Pharisees assumed that the Jews’ exile to Babylon, and the long misery the people had endured ever since, was a direct consequence of the people’s failure to obey God’s law properly.

When they read the Old Testament books like Joshua and Judges, they assumed that it was the Israelites’ failure to put distance between themselves and the pagan Canaanites that seduced the Jews into idolatry, and that this eventually was what led to the exile. But other signs in the Old Testament suggest this isn’t the full picture. In the prophetic books, there are plenty of criticisms for idolatry, but also for injustice. So Jews couldn’t just blame their pagan neighbours for their predicament. The rich and powerful had exploited the poor and the needy. People had used the sacrificial system as a way to get away with sin and injustice. “If I offer a sheep or goat, I can be forgiven for the sinful act that I want to do? I’ll take that, thank you!” The Jews’ problem wasn’t about the presence of sinners near them, but about the sin that lurked beneath the surface in their own hearts. They were enticed by their pagan neighbours not because they were neighbours, but because, in their hearts, the Jews envied what the pagans had. And they committed injustice because their hearts were focused on getting what they wanted rather than helping others get what they needed.

A. How Simon Sees the Woman

Anyway, Simon believes that God desires purity expressed in staying away from sinners. His philosophy is that righteousness requires separation from sin by excluding sinners. Because of this, he sees the woman—the uninvited guest—as an unbidden contagion who could contaminate them all with her uncleanness. If this were set today, he’d be thinking of how after supper, he’d have to disinfect the whole place down with bleach and UV lights to purify it from its defilement.

In that cultural context, the woman’s actions could be seen very negatively. The text insinuates that she was a prostitute. She came in and let her hair down, which could be interpreted erotically (which seems to be exactly how Simon interprets it). Her kissing Jesus’ feet could also be interpreted as an erotic gesture. Because Simon is primed to believe the worst about her, he assumes that this woman is trying to make his nice Jewish symposium into the kind of immoral party the Greeks liked to host.

And because Jesus is supposed to be a Rabbi, and many would say a prophet, Simon is dumbstruck that Jesus seems fine with what is going on. Simon concludes that either Jesus doesn’t care about purity, or he’s completely naïve about who this woman is, which, to Simon, proves Jesus is no prophet.

All of this makes sense if you accept Simon’s basic assumptions about righteousness: righteousness is about staying away from sinners.

B. How Simon Sees Himself

While Simon sees the woman as completely unrighteous, he sees himself as the opposite: an exemplar of righteousness. If he were lax in his observance of the law, he wouldn’t be a Pharisee. Simon probably sees himself as fair-minded because he gave Jesus a chance.

Still, because Jesus tolerates the presence of the immoral woman, Simon likely feels totally justified in concluding that he is an ignorant or immoral man who is beloved by the unwashed masses because they are foolish rabble.

Simon is the hero of his story; The woman is an embodiment of the problem, and Jesus is a counterfeit who is dangerous because his example is leading the Jews away from the kind of rigorous faithfulness that will restore God’s blessing to the Jews. That’s the world as Simon sees it, But to Jesus, things look quite different.

II. The World According to Jesus

Simon’s assessment makes sense if you accept his assumption about what God wants, but Jesus shows that when we tweak our assumptions, a small change makes a big difference. If Simon believes righteousness requires separateness from sin by excluding sinners, Jesus shows us that righteousness requires separateness from sin by restoring sinners.

Notice what Jesus says to Simon, “Do you see this woman?” Jesus doesn’t mean, “Do you perceive that she is present in this room?” Simon, after all, has likely been staring at her in disbelief the whole time. Jesus means, “Do you accurately see who she is?”

The woman is not a contaminating presence; She is a new creation. She is no longer the prostitute trying to solicit work, but a child of God expressing her immense gratitude to Jesus for changing the trajectory of her life.

Now if we don’t read this text carefully, we may misunderstand the situation. Jesus doesn’t forgive the woman because she expresses love;Jesus says she expresses love because she’s already been forgiven. The text doesn’t say this explicitly, but it very strongly implies that this isn’t the first time this woman has encountered Jesus. In a previous encounter, Jesus had forgiven her. Her actions at this dinner are not heroic acts of piety meant to win forgiveness, but acts of love born of a thankful heart.

As John puts it, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The initiative for forgiveness begins with God. He makes the first move, and we choose how to respond. Somewhere in this woman’s recent past, she had encountered Jesus, and he had forgiven her. That forgiveness made her new, as her actions towards Jesus demonstrate.

A. How Jesus Sees the Woman

Simon assumes Jesus must not be a prophet because he doesn’t know the kind of woman he’s dealing with. Jesus shows he is a prophet because he responds to Simon’s unspoken thoughts, and he sees the woman in a way Simon could not.

While the woman was a sinner, she has been renewed. Simon’s faulty interpretation of her actions is grounded in who she was, not who she now is. Jesus, on the other hand, responds to the woman not according to her reputation or her past sin, but according to her new identity: a forgiven child of God. Seen in that light, her actions take on a whole new meaning, and they cast Simon’s actions in a very different light.

B. How Jesus Sees Simon

Simon’s vision of righteousness is negative: it’s all about the things we must avoid. Jesus’ vision, by contrast, is positive: it’s about how we must love. According to Jesus’ positive vision of righteousness, Simon falls woefully short, and the woman he condemns puts him to shame.

As I mentioned earlier, Jewish culture had minimum expectations of hospitality that Simon failed to meet. What’s important isn’t really that he failed to follow customs (those are man-made) it’s what Simon’s failure reveals about his heart. Simon’s attitude shows that he doesn’t even treat Jesus as an equal, but rather as someone beneath him. He shows that his heart towards Jesus—and the one who sent him—is cold and unloving.

But the woman, by comparison, more than makes up for Simon’s failings. Simon failed to provide Jesus with water to wash his feet (let alone a servant to wash his feet), but the woman humbles herself to wash Jesus’ feet, and not just with water, but with her own tears. Simon provide a towel for Jesus to dry off his feet, so the woman lets her hair down, not because she is morally loose, but so that she can dry Jesus’ feet with it. Simon failed to give Jesus a kiss of friendship (usually given on the hand or cheek), but the woman kisses Jesus over and over, on the feet, the dirty part of him. Simon didn’t anoint Jesus’ head with olive oil, but the woman anoints Jesus’ feet (the ‘lowest’ part of him). And she doesn’t use oil, but expensive perfume.

Simon fails to love Jesus by not even meeting the minimum expectation. This shows he is not the holy man he assumes he is, because genuine holiness is expressed through love. The woman, on the other hand, is a hero of holiness, because her holiness comes from her being forgiven, and it is expressed with extravagant love.

Jesus is saying, “Simon. You are looking at this situation upside-down. You see yourself as the righteous one who pleases God. You see this woman as the one who falls short. And you see me as complicit in her wickedness because I tolerate her presence. But in reality, you don’t have a clue. This woman’s extravagant actions towards me prove that she has been made holy, and your failure to even meet the minimum expectations shows that you’re the one with the problem. Because I’m not the complicit bystander. I’m the one you claim to love when your actions say otherwise.

III. Who Are We?

Simon is a good, religious person who is totally blind to what God wants and what he is doing. If Simon can make this mistake, we have to take an uncomfortably honest look at ourselves to see whether we risk making the same error.

A. How Do We Evaluate Others?

First, we have to ask ourselves: how do we evaluate others? We Christians often determine who is an insider and an outsider by creating boundaries. If you tick all of these boxes (doctrinal, cultural, or political), then you’re one of us. If you don’t, then you’re other. But when we approach our community identity this way, we end up including people for what they believe or how they vote, but not how they love. And we become happy to pronounce certainty about the fate of people who out-love us. An example might be the recently deceased Dolly Parton.

Dolly Parton claimed to believe in God, to pray and to read the Bible. But she didn’t tick all of the boxes some Christians often look for. She didn’t use language like “born again” or “Jesus is my personal lord and saviour.” So some people confidently pronounced that she wasn’t a Christian. But her conduct showed what I think we could call Christian love. Even though she made her name as an entertainer, after her death people talked more about her generosity;

• She supported childhood literacy, sending out an estimated 330 million books to pre-school children to encourage a love of literacy.
• She set up a foundation in her hometown where high school students could buddy up and support one another. If both buddies graduated, each got a $500 reward. Thanks to the program, the dropout rate plummeted from 35% to 6%.
• She also supported families affected by Hurricanes and floods.
• When Whitney Houston made a cover of her Song “I Will Always Love You,” a worldwide mega hit, she donated the royalties to help a black neighbourhood and business district in Nashville.

Dolly Parton used the resources that she was given to love people in practical ways.

So was she a Christian? That question is above my pay grade. Only God can be the judge of what was in her heart, but when people say definitively, “She wasn’t a Christian” because she fell short of my idea of what a Christian must be doctrinally, I think we show a surprising lack of humility or generosity of spirit. Honestly, I doubt I would be as generous if I had the same wealth that she enjoyed. That should remind me to be less judgmental of others.

B. How Do We Evaluate Ourselves?

While we may tend to find fault in others’ lives, many people tend to cut themselves a break. Sometimes this is because we can only evaluate others’ actions, but when we evaluate ourselves, we can take our intentions into account.

But we might also cut ourselves a break because we tend to assume, whether it’s true or not, that we’re good people. We might hold a grudge, refusing to forgive and tell ourselves we’re just standing up for the truth. We might spread a juicy bit of gossip, while telling ourselves we’re just sharing so others can pray. We might condemn others for the sins we don’t struggle with while downplaying the severity of the sins that we can’t stop doing. As a result, our self-evaluation, like Simon’s, might be skewed.

What this means is that we must admit to ourselves that we’re not fit to give the final verdict on anyone, including ourselves. Only God can judge with total certainty. But our loves is the best indicator that we have. If our hearts overflow with love for God and for people, it means we’ve been forgiven and transformed. If, on the other hand, our faith is about judging others, then we should see that as a warning. Jesus doesn’t shame Simon to condemn him, but to invite him to humble himself, and admit his failings.

Admitting you’re wrong is hard, but it doesn’t need to be with God, because we can be confident in his continuing love If we open ourselves up to God’s spirit, the Spirit will examine us. He will help us see things that are out of place But this isn’t to condemn us, but to forgive us. The end of this is overflowing love for God and others.

So let’s spend less time looking for mistakes in others to criticize, And more time allowing the Spirit to examine our hearts so we can admit our problems and recieve God’s grace to transform us and fill us with love.

C. Leaving Ultimate Judgement to God

Judging others comes naturally to many people. But in the end, those people don’t rise or fall by what we think. Now we can’t completely avoid forming opinions about others, but we at least need the humility to recognize that all of our judgments are provisional and incomplete.

Because all of us are works under construction, who should be judged not according to what we have been, or even what presently are, but by what we are becoming. Let me illustrate. 11 years ago, my mother-in-law pre-bought a house. At one point while it was under construction, she took Carolyn and me through it. The framer had completed his work, but the plumbers, electricians and HVAC techs hadn’t yet finished their work. There was no flooring, drywall, paint, cabinets, siding, shingles, doors, or windows.

My mother in law wanted to know what we thought. If I evaluated the house as it was, I’d have to say, “I wouldn’t want to live here.” But, of course, that’s not what she meant by the question. She’s asking me to use my imagination, to envision what it will become. If I see it that way, then my reaction is totally different “I see where this is going. It looks like it’ll be great!”

So it is with us: Our present state is a step along the journey to what, by God’s grace, we will become. Just as we’re foolish to judge a building for being under construction, so we are foolish to definitely judge others, and ourselves, in our present state. We can leave that judgment to God.

Conclusion

So Maybe the question we need to ask ourselves is not, “What do I think this person is?” but, “What might God be making them?” Because when we look at one another, we usually see the structure halfway through construction. We see the exposed framing, the unfinished walls, the places where the work is still messy. But God sees the finished house.

So perhaps we need a little more humility in the way we see other people, And the humility to let God judge us, rather than judging ourselves. We are all under construction. And the good news is that the one who began the work is faithful to finish it.

So let’s leave the final judgment to God, and instead learn to see people the way Jesus sees them: not simply for who they have been, or even for who they are today, but for who God, in his grace, is making them to be.