Show Great Love
Luke 7:36-50
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
March 1, 2026
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPRyLgjDUDc
Once again, Jesus is at a meal in someone’s home, but for the guests who are leaders in the community, this is more than a dinner. It is a gathering of the respected and respectable to discuss matters of importance.
The flow of this important gathering of important men is interrupted by this sinful woman. She is described as a sinner more than once. We should take that seriously. “We probably wouldn’t have liked her or been at all attracted to her. And Simon, the host, may have been charming and kind. We have read these stories in a certain way for so long that we think we know the characters. But we should remember that Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors weren’t just “good” people that the world ostracized. They worked for the Roman Empire and extorted money from the poor. They did things that hurt people. And we probably would have liked the Pharisees. Though the gospels often portray them negatively, they passionately believed that their faith was expressed in acts of loving kindness, especially to the poor. They are the rabbis who made the word of God alive.”[1]
The woman is sinful. We can accept that without jumping to the conclusion that her sins are of a sexual nature. That’s often the assumption, isn’t it? Two chapters before this, Peter said to Jesus, “Get away from me, for I am a sinful man.” By his own admission, Peter is a sinner, and yet, no one ever interprets that to mean that he is a prostitute.
Jesus would have been reclining, lying on a couch with his head close to the table and his feet extended behind him because in the ancient world, that is how they ate. This woman crashes the party. She goes to Jesus’ feet and washes them with her tears, dries them with her hair, kisses them with her lips and finally anoints them with oil. If you aren’t uncomfortable in this scene, you aren’t paying attention. It is scandalous. She already has a reputation. This just plays right into what people already believe.
Surely Jesus wouldn’t let her touch him in such an intimate way. The Greek word for touch also means to light on fire. Simon thinks “don’t do it Jesus. Don’t let her lure you into temptation. What kind of moral leader are you?” Jesus could have said, “Please stop that. I’m not interested.” She’s making a scene, being inappropriate, ruining the evening.
He could have politely asked her to leave.
Whatever is going on, it is obviously important to her and therefore, to Jesus. How do we respond with love when other people’s behavior makes us uncomfortable?
In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? author Philip Yancy tells the story of a Chicago social worker who tried to help sexworkers quit. A young woman was talking with the social worker, telling the reasons she became involved in prostitution—the money, the lifestyle, the near-impossibility of walking away, the living with a permanent sense of shame and guilt. She even told about hiring out her daughter. The case worker wrote:
I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. . . I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last, I asked if she had ever thought about going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure naïve shock that crossed her face. “Church,” she cried. “Why would I go there? I already feel terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”
And Phil Yancey reflects: “[People] fled toward Christ, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she was to see Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?”[2]
Jesus doesn’t ask her to stop touching him. Instead, he turns to Simon. I imagine him making eye contact with Simon and holding it, letting Simon know that Jesus is aware of his thoughts. Jesus says, “do you see this woman?”
Of course, Simon sees the woman. Everyone sees her. She has taken over the party. But Simon sees her in the way that the powerful and privileged see those beneath them, the way that men are allowed to see women, the way that the majority are allowed to see minorities, as less than, as objects for their disposal.
But Jesus has the ability to see her as God sees her. Simon and the other men in the room see her as a problem. Jesus sees her as a person.
Jesus was a human being who thoroughly inhabited his culture. He knew the social norms about men and women not touching in public. Being touched, having his feet washed, not in the usual way with water and a towel, but with tears and her hair and with oil – that probably made him uncomfortable too, and yet, his response was loving enough to spare her embarrassment.
Pastor Debbie Blue writes, “I don’t think we’ll get to the beauty and complexity of forgiveness and the grace of God until we are somehow given to see that Jesus is really on the side of the sinner. When you glimpse this, it’s always breathtaking. . . . The truly sinful woman is truly forgiven.”[3]
Jesus connects forgiveness with great love. But did the woman love because she had been forgiven? Or was she forgiven because she loved Jesus?
Verse 47 can be accurately translated in two different ways. The New International Version says, “Therefore I tell you her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much.” But the NRSV says “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”
She is forgiven because she loved. Alternatively, as a result of being forgiven much, she is able to love much. Or maybe both.
She brought the alabaster flask with her which suggests that she experienced acceptance and forgiveness prior to this event. We don’t know her sin or when she repented of it, but even if other people insist on labelling her a sinner, even if they continue to hold her past against her, she has come to trust that Jesus has forgiven her, that she is released. She has received that. She relies on it in a profound way and because of that, she can live with more love and freedom.
There is a backstory here that we don’t know. Just like we often have no idea what a person has lived through or what they’re currently carrying at any given moment.
“Does love lead to forgiveness or is the ability to love the result of being forgiven?” Yes.
The Rev. Michael Lindvall was a pastor in New York City for many years. It was his practice, when he performed a wedding, to ask the couple to write each other love letters. They were private, not to be shown to anyone, especially not to each other. The letters were sealed in envelopes and delivered to him. He asked permission to share excerpts from the letters in the wedding sermon. He said that they were usually quite moving and meaningful.[4]
One was especially memorable. Lindvall said that this groom talked about how his wife-to-be loved him. Not knowing that he was penning Lukan theology as well as declaring love, he said that his fiancée’s love was most amazing because she loved him as he was, imperfections, male foibles and all. That was amazing enough, he wrote, but even more wondrous was the fact that her unconditional love had this way of pulling him to grow to be more worthy of it.
Her love did this without ever implying that he wasn’t worthy of it. Her unquestioning love took him as he was but somehow nudged him to be a better man without ever saying that there was anything wrong with him.” Lindvall says, “Maybe that’s why the entire congregation—including the couple, the family, the hired cellist and me—were in tears.”
“Jesus accepted the woman’s expression of love as a sign that she had been forgiven much. Love is the natural response of the forgiven, but the capacity to love is directly related to the ability to receive grace, forgiveness and love.”[5]
The story is about an offering of love, an excessive, scandalous love that renews life and shares deep joy. A joy that this woman tries to share with an entire community. This love is barely contained. It makes a spectacle of itself and makes us uncomfortable. It offers a challenge to really see people as people, to accept them as they are and love them anyway. It unleashes the love of God so that we can see more like God sees and love more like God loves, recognizing people as human beings to be accepted and not problems to be solved or objects to be used.
Anne Lamott asks
You want to know how big God’s love is?
The answer is: It’s very big.
It’s bigger than you are comfortable with.[6]
How big is God’s love? VERY big. Bigger than we are comfortable with. Thanks be to God.
[1] Debbie Blue https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-06/blogging-toward-sunday-0
[2] Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? Revised and Updated: The Key to Transforming a Broken World, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023) p. 11
[3] Debbie Blue https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-06/blogging-toward-sunday-0
[4] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2004-06/scandalous-behavior
[5] R. Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p 171
[6] Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, (New York: Riverhead Books, 2007), p. 125