Luke 7:36—8:3
June 17, 2007
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
After almost every wedding service is completed, the many guests make their way to the restaurant for the banquet. In Chinese traditions, the ten-course Chinese banquet is the actual wedding when it is preceded with the newlyweds serving tea to their parents and family elders; rather than the Christian wedding service held earlier in the day. At the banquet hall, guests would line up at the hospitality table seeking for their table assignments. You become curious about who else will be assigned at your table. Now, let’s be honest, how many times would you admit that when you get to see the list of other guests at your table, you secretly would rather be at another one?
Today is Father’s Day but unlike Mother’s Day when we at least have a carnation for every woman in church that Sunday, for fathers, we are simply reminded about how important it is to keep the company at your table. On this day, fathers are expected to include every member of his family to come to dinner and in most cases picking up the check. We don’t have the choice on who will be at our table. For me, we are going to Fresh Choice in Novato! If you want to join us, we’ll see you there!
In our passage for today just prior to what we read in Luke 7, Jesus was being criticized for the company he has at his table—“The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, ‘Behold, a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Lk. 7:34) Luke’s Gospel acknowledges that Jesus did eat with tax collectors and sinners but he recorded incidents when Jesus ate with Pharisees too. Jesus didn’t seem to discriminate over the people he dined with—rather he saw all of them worthy of his presence.
Dinner Date
The story is about a Pharisee named Simon who invited Jesus to his home for dinner. Simon is the inviting host and Jesus is the invited guest. But before they sat down to eat, a woman, an uninvited guest or a party-crasher from the city who had the reputation as a sinner and having learned that Jesus was dining with Simon the Pharisee, came in with an alabaster jar of ointment.
This unnamed woman started to cry and proceeded to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. Then she kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment she had in her jar. Proving that Simon was a lousy host, publicly humiliated in front of Jesus by this woman, Simon tried to defend himself by saying that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that this woman was in sin. Simon asked, “Why would a prophet allowed this to happen to him if Jesus was really a prophet?”
Then Jesus turns to Simon and told him that he had something to tell him. Jesus told him a parable of a creditor who had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty denarii. When these two debtors could not pay back their loans, the creditor cancelled their debts. Jesus asked Simon, “Which of these two debtors will love the creditor more?” Simon answered correctly by saying that the one who had a greater debt cancelled.
Jesus turning to the woman but speaking to Simon told him that this woman whom you called a sinner performed all of these acts of hospitality because of her love for God. Simon was right that this woman had many sins, but since God has forgiven her, she now shows great love for Jesus. Whereas Simon should have extended hospitality to Jesus when he came to his house as the invited guest, Simon failed to offer a basin of water to wash his feet or offer a kiss or a handshake of welcome or any oil to anoint his head.
Forgiveness
Jesus turns to the woman and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus knows how hard it is for people who are seen by the social elites to be at the bottom of society’s worthiness—the poor, the sick, the sinful and undesirable. But for healing to be complete, profound forgiveness must be offered and received.
In spite of one’s real or what others have deemed unworthiness, Jesus offers forgiveness that points to the ultimate source in God. God loves sinners, welcomes home the prodigals, and defends the dignity of women like the one in this text.
What kind of sinner she was and how she first felt understood and accepted by Jesus, Luke does not say. She appears in this story as someone who though still defined by others as a sinner has already experienced profound forgiveness—already felt its power to melt through the hard layers of fear and self-hate to know her self as one who is affirmed and loved. This is how she could pass through a room full of judging eyes with such openness and courage—as if the only eyes that mattered were Jesus’ eyes, eyes in which she saw herself loved and accepted. So deep was her gratitude that her own eyes supplied water for the act of hospitality.
The other guests accused Jesus of playing God but Jesus comes to defend her because her faith in the forgiveness that has brought her healing is Jesus’ faith and the love this faith inspires is his love. Jesus is affirming what he and she already accept as God’s ultimate and unconditional love for every human soul. When Jesus praises her for her faith he is not praising her for “getting religion” or “cleaning up her act” as a precondition for his forgiving her. He is praising her for her faith in God’s grace, her willingness to accept it and to rely upon it even in the face of this world’s judgment.
The woman who anointed Jesus’ feet was saved by her faith. Jesus did not forgive her because she washed and anointed his feet. Jesus forgave her because of her faith. In Galatians 2:16, “We know that a person is justified not by works but through faith in Jesus Christ. No one is justified by works.”
Simon would never have included this woman on his guest list. She would not be the company he keeps. But when Jesus sits down to dine, at his table both the woman and Simon have a place.
Jesus’ Table
There are sinners who know they are sick and need a physician and there are sinners who do not know they are sick, but they are both sinners. And Jesus chooses to eat with both groups of sinners.
Where would you be seated at Jesus’ table? I surmise that some of us here today are like that of Simon, the Pharisee—good at being good, religious, and upright. Others of us identify with the woman, that publicly “sinful” woman. For some of us, our sin is in our lifestyle, for others of us our sin is in our condemnation of others’ lifestyles. Some of us sin in our sinfulness; others of us sin in our righteousness. And Jesus eats with both types of sinners.
When we gather at Jesus’ table, we all have come with sins. Read the morning paper at the breakfast table and you will see that we are sinners. Take a Western Civilization history course and you would know that we are sinners. Visit your city dump and see all of the things that we have thrown away and you would know that we are sinners. Look within your own heart, and you will see that we are sinners.
Despite our alleged progress and our good intentions, we really do need saving. We can’t seem to help ourselves by ourselves. We set out to do good and unintentionally cause great harm. We try to set the world right with our armies and our power only to cause a bigger mess. We launch forth to make the world safe for democracy only to bomb and make mayhem among the very nations we presumed to save. Is it any wonder that, in an embarrassingly short time after creation of humanity, Genesis says sadly, “The Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth and it grieved him to his heart”? (Gen. 6:6)
While the woman knew that she was a sinner and grateful for God’s grace, love, and forgiveness, Simon thought he was righteous and was in no need of any forgiveness. He was so engrossed over other people’s sins that he had overlooked his own. Instead of Simon acting as a welcoming host, it was the woman who served as host in what she did for Jesus.
Simon wanted to make up the table assignments according to his view of who were acceptable and in good company. But Jesus comes to disrupt us from the discrimination of our narrowly conceived religion. He has come to destroy all the barriers that we erect between “sinners” and “righteous.” As far as Jesus is concerned, all are sinners and all are welcome at his table.
Babette’s Feast
There’s a beautiful 1997 film by Gabriel Axel by the name of Babette’s Feast. It’s a modern parable that illustrates the power and dignity of true hospitality. It’s making sure that everyone is at the table. The story revolves around life in a small Danish village in the 19th century. There’s a small Protestant church that serves as the social and cultural center for the villagers.
Members of the tiny congregation followed the teachings of their revered pastor. His two daughters, Martina and Philippa give their lives to serve both their father and his tiny church. After his death, the daughters take up the mantle, leading prayers and hymns and Bible study.
A French refugee, named Babette comes to work for the sisters and their aging father. While this village was austere and bleak, Babette was a lovely breath of fresh air. Everything about Babette exudes life and vitality. The sisters assume Babette is a simple homeless waif, not realizing that in her life in France, she was an accomplished gourmet chef.
Following their father’s death, Martina and Philippa decide they want to hold a dinner in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth. They approach Babette with the idea of having the congregation gathers for a simple supper of broth and turnips, but Babette has other ideas.
Having won the lottery, Babette asks permission to throw a fancy banquet in honor of the kindness shown her by the sisters and their father. The sisters reluctantly agree, and Babette spends the entire lottery fortune on a gourmet seven-course meal with fine wines, linen tablecloths, china and crystal.
Unaccustomed to such finery—for years they have been taught that all luxury is sin—the small congregation approaches Babette’s feast with some trepidation, but as the meal progresses, a glorious transformation occurs. The men and women of the village relax, and they began to enjoy one another’s company as they enjoy the food. They confess their sins to each other, seeking and receiving forgiveness for hurts old and new. They become, for the first time in their entire lives, a true community, bound by their table fellowship and the gift of God’s (and Babette’s) bounty and blessing.
Think of a world where each and every person makes a commitment to “love one another with mutual affection, outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10). This means showing hospitality to all, not just those we like, but even strangers and people we don’t care for. When we are assigned to a banquet table and we discover who is the company at the table, we don’t try to change our seats. And we would have to include sinners, for if we excluded sinners, we would have to exclude ourselves.
At the Lord’s table, not us but God gets to make the table assignments and any table that includes Jesus, includes sinners as well. Hospitality is a two-way street—we cannot extend our kindness to Jesus and withhold it from those Jesus dearly loves. At Jesus’ table, there’s enough for everyone. When it comes to kindness, grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness, our God is a God of never-ending supply.
Father’s Day
As a father myself, it would be okay for me to say that there are times when we are more like Simon the Pharisee then the woman in this story. We come across being self-righteous focusing on our children’s sins that we fail to recognize our own.
Writer Philip Yancey identified an old Japanese saying that lists “ the four most awful things on earth as fires, earthquakes, thunderbolts and fathers.” It is fairly common in Japan for children to have “authoritarian fathers who never apologize, who remain emotionally distant, who shows nothing resembling love or grace, who offer much criticism and little if any encouragement.” As a result, missionaries in Japan have found that instead of communicating how God is a Father, they have been much more successful among the Japanese people if they help them to understand how God’s love is also mother-like, a “love that forgives wrongs and binds wounds and draws, rather than forces, others to itself.” I think it’s safe to say that this old saying applies to Chinese too.
As fathers on Father’s Day today, keep all the company at the table as Jesus would. Don’t leave anyone out. Whether your children or spouse is cooking up a dinner today or going to Fresh Choice like me, invite everyone to sit at your table and pick up the check too.
Let us pray.
O God, we pray that we would always welcome everyone to your table. Thank you for inviting us to be in good company with you. Now give us the courage and steadfastness to invite all to come and sit at your table since we are all sinners and have come up short to what you are expecting us to be and do. We pray in the name of Jesus who welcomed both Simon the righteous Pharisee and the woman with the bad reputation to sit together with him. Amen.