Forgiving Lord

Reflection on Luke 7:36-8:3

Jesus was a guest at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. So, he was not an enemy of the Pharisees after all. He had nothing against them as persons. He only disagreed with many of their attitudes ways of doing things. Simon had failed to extend a courtesy to Jesus that was customarily given to invited guests. In those days, in Palestine it was customary to pour water over the feet of one's guest before he entered your house. Simon did not do that, perhaps out of contempt for Jesus. He was not being a good host. One wonders why he even bothered to invite Jesus at all.

We can imagine that the other guests at table with Jesus were Pharisees too and other respectable persons in the community. All of a sudden, an uninvited woman barged in and proceeded to shower unusual attention on Jesus. "She waited behind him at his feet, weeping, and her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them away with her hair; then she covered his feet with kisses and anointed them with the ointment." Trouble was the woman in question had a bad name in the town. Everybody in the town knew it, so that no self-respecting person would associate with her. Jesus was likely not an inhabitant of that town. So, he might not have known the kind of person she was. But, then, if he was a prophet, as many people believed he was, he should have known it by some special insight. Since he did not seem to know, then he could hardly have been a prophet. He was an impostor. So Simon thought, until Jesus sprang a surprise.

The surprise was that Jesus knew what he was thinking. Only a prophet could do that. A mere man could not. So, Jesus might be a prophet after all. Simon and maybe other guests might have been prepared to concede that to him. But they were not prepared to concede that he was divine. Prophet, yes, divine,-definitely not! That was what Jesus implied by saying to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven." Only God could forgive sin. Jesus was not God. So, he was blaspheming. So, they thought, and they were put off by him.

Later on the disciples of Jesus and subsequent generations of his followers would know that he was not blaspheming. They would learn that he was a divine person, Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. As such, he was quite capable of forgiving sin. That was something Jesus did time and time again, like when he forgave the sin of a paralytic before curing him of his paralysis. (Mark 2:1-12) Indeed, Jesus said that was why he came into the world: "I have come not to call the righteous but sinners." (Mark 2: 17)

Jesus' attitude in this regard was the same as God's attitude in the Old Testament, as we can see in the first reading (1 Sam. 12:7-10, 13). King David had committed two of the most despicable sins of his time and all time. After committing adultery, he attempted a cover-up to conceal the result of his sin. He tried to induce Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife. When Uriah, unwittingly, refused to play ball, David compounded his sin with the murder of an innocent man, whom he had earlier cheated of his wife. David deserved to roast in hell for his double crime. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him with his sins. No sooner did David confess, "I have sinned against the Lord" than Nathan said to him, "The Lord, for his part, forgives your sin. You are not to die." God forgave him just like that. He exacted no price beyond the death of the illegitimate child Bathsheba had conceived from him.

Such is the character of our God. He is not a God of vengeance, as some people would want to make him out to be, and the Pharisees definitely made him out to be. He is a forgiving God. The ancients might have conceived of him as "an avenging God". Today's first reading and gospel story tell a different story, that he is a forgiving God. People had better get used to that, including all the Pharisees in every age.