June 17, 2001

Sometimes we human beings are strange.

We turn things upside down. What is small we turn big and what is big we turn small.

A Norwegian saying is "A small mound may turn over a large load".

Jesus once said "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?"

Usually we are good at watching the sins of others people. We compare them with ourselves and learn how good we are. We get the upper hand.

The scene in the text is clear.

Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus for dinner. This is an upper class party. Many of the well-to-do people of the city of Jerusalem are put together at the table.

Then the back street woman shows up and she approaches Jesus. She is weeping. She is weeping because of herself. She is carrying a burden of debt and remorse.

She anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment and dries them with her hair. Can you imagine!

Simon the Pharisee thought she was too big a sinner for this action of honor toward Jesus. He considered himself to be perfect.

Simon thinks he knows very well the big difference between her and himself. He feels he gets the upper hand and uses it for whatever he can. He even seems to think Jesus is being in a tight spot because he does not understand the big difference.

The woman does not think about the situation in the same way. She has more than enough to handle with her feelings of shame and guilt. But she has some great thoughts about Jesus. He is the one who can make her become free and all her focus is on Him.

She violates all the conventional attitudes, they do not matter, for what really counts in life, to be free from debt and having a good conscience is so much more valuable.

This is the life, to the one who wants to become free it does not matter whether the debt is big or small.

How is the reaction of Jesus? He loosens her, the one with the big guilt but the one who thinks about himself to be perfect he keeps bound. Jesus himself does not make any difference. The difference is how the two deal with their sins. That is the difference between Simon and the woman.

Therefore there is no difference between the big forgiveness and the small. Both of them are fully complete. The forgiveness of sins that Jesus offers takes away all the guilt whether it is big or small. The two who owed a different amount of money to the moneylender, had their debts cancelled. Both of them became completely free.

No difference.

Simon did not see his own debt. He was thinking he was just and good by his doings.

Thinking about ourselves as good and just, we often realize from comparing with the mistakes and sins of other people.

It is a saying "Our own success is very good but the mistakes of others offer some benefit to us as well".

It is a real big difference: the love.

Jesus says "her sins, which are many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little".

Great love – little love.

The forgiveness of sins is the source of love and kindness in our life.

Do we see what we are forgiven?

Do we see the kind of just we have received?

Nobody is justified by himself. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ.

Thus is God’s grace.

We love because he loved us first.

Jesus says to the woman "Your faith had saved you; go in peace".

This is God’s gift to the world, to you and me.

"O Jesus, ever with us stay!
Make all our moments fair and bright!
Oh, chase the night of sin away!
Shed o’er world your holy light".

Amen.

The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church ·  924 E. 21st St, Minneapolis, MN 55404-2952 ·  (612)874-0716