Despicable Me

Luke 7:36-47 (New Living Translation)
Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman
36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat.[a] 37 When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. 38 Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting 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 what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”
40 Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”
“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.
41 Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver[b] to one and 50 pieces to the other. 42 But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”
43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”
“That’s right,” Jesus said. 44 Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.
47 “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.”

I remember the first time that I listened to a minister preach on this passage. I was attending a United Church at the time as either a new believer or someone who was searching. I really can’t say for sure, because I don’t exactly know when I really believed. I should have marked it on the calendar.

As I listened to the story of this woman and as I considered what she had done for Jesus, it was easy to tell that I didn’t express my love for Jesus in the same way. In my heart, I knew that I didn’t love Him the way that this woman loved Him.

It’s odd in a way. It was the very words of Jesus Himself that made me feel ok about my indifference to him.

“But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.”

The way I saw myself in this passage, I really didn’t have all that much to be forgiven for. There was no reason in my mind why I should be compelled to be broken before Him or grateful for the privilege of lying at His feet.

There are different ways in which we live out a self righteous life. I believe most of us as believers tend to think of the rule following Pharisees in this regard. However, that wasn’t the kind of self righteousness that I was living. Self righteousness can be just as prevalent, perhaps even more so, in a life which doesn’t strive to live by any rules at all. That was the kind of self righteousness that I had lived for much of my life.

Maybe the greatest benefit to living that kind of life, was that nobody every finds it necessary to call you a hypocrite. The moment we take a stand on anything, there is always someone there willing to bring some inconsistency to light. Yet when we live life however we see fit, without much regard to what is right or wrong, who can bring such a charge before us?

I had believed myself to be a decent person, who really had little need to be forgiven. As I continue in my walk with Christ, there are two truths which continue to make themselves more and more evident. I realize just how disgusting I have been. I don’t know how it happens or how that little United Churched me couldn’t have recognized or even remembered the filth. It’s almost as if our conscience protects us in some way from seeing ourselves in light of complete truth. Otherwise, without Jesus, I question whether or not I could have handled the truth about myself at that point in time.

I also grow in my amazement at how forgiving our Savior is. There are many things that I don’t even want to speak out loud, things that have been brought to mind especially as of late, but these, as despicable as they are have been nailed to the cross of Christ.

I had been forgiven more than I knew I had need of.