Who are you Part 4

It is probably accurate to assume our questionable woman had no remaining self-esteem. She wept on a man’s feet and wiped the dirt off with her hair. I want to take a slight rabbit trail. There is the inherent danger in the idea of self-esteem. It’s not that I don’t think self-esteem is important, I just believe it is a ‘second-best’ option. Self-esteem is your own personal value and is depended on being able to find something of worth and value from within – it depends on one’s ability to find it and to muster it up or on the skill of someone else to convince me it exists (a friend or paid professional). I don’t that my value is found in myself, or what I can prove to you. I don’t believe that we were created to have or find self-esteem. I believe that we were created to possess and be given something far greater --- God-esteem – A God gifted value. I am made in God’s image, not yours. You are made in God’s image, not mine. You are not obligated to live up or measured by anyone’s standard of value. Your value is not based on anything that you or anyone else can create – but on whom God has created and declared you to be – His son, His daughter. Whether you know – or able to ‘know’ it – it exists. All have value, because God says so. He seeks to enter into our being and close that Abyss bringing and offering His forgiveness so that we can realize that image.


That brings up another other issue for me. She does not come believing that she can and needs to find self- forgiveness. That just starts a cycle of self-justification. Self-esteem says, “I need to forgive myself. The only way I can find forgiveness for myself is by either denying the impact of what I’ve done, or what others have done to me. It is essentially setting me up as a god, even if only of myself (a very very small world). Somehow ‘I’ must possess the power, strength and authority to forgiveness, if only myself. I often ask ‘How is that working for you?’ Although I hear people say it all the time, it’s rarely with a conviction that I find convincing – it’s offered more in defiance than in the knowledge of true a peace and healing that comes with Christ’s forgiveness.

No, she was seeking forgiveness and acceptance from Jesus. Maybe she has heard Jesus declare forgiveness and seen the change that comes with it to others. Perhaps she knew, or knew of, the paralytic man that Luke 5 tells us about “my son, your sins are forgiven – arise, take your mat and go home’. Or maybe she was friends with the Adulterous woman who was brought before Jesus to be stoned, and he intercedes and says to that woman “where are your accusers, neither do I accuse you, your sins are forgiven…” Perhaps she stood at the fringes of the crowd and listened to Jesus on the mountain side and proclaim “blessed are the poor in spirit for they will inherit the earth”. Maybe she had just recently attend another dinner party one which Levi the tax collector had invited the sinners. One in which the roles were reversed. It was the sinners that where the invited guests, while the Pharisee’s watched and grumbled. If she had been at Levi’s dinner, she would have heard these words which fuel her wildly abandoned act “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:29).

She did not reject, defend or justify that fact that she was a sinner. She knew who she was – and it was that fact that she knew that she was able to find Jesus. She’s miles ahead of Simon – for Simon does not yet know who he truly is. For her the label ‘sinner’ was no longer a grave stone of death, but a signpost to hope. Sinners, she discovered have hope, and are wanted by God. They do not need to be buried underneath the crushing burden and loneliness of the abyss – but are invited to find forgiveness of their sins and enter into the light, into the family of God-- all who once where sinners.

Simon doesn’t get it – he is as lost and as great a sinner as she – he needed Christ every bit as much – yet his pride, his self-esteem, his sensibilities, his own belief hold him as prisoner – a captive to the very thing he declares makes him worthy and in control. She has no such preconception.

So without thought, but driven by love, gratitude and hope, she falls to her knees breaks open that vial of perfume – already weeping she washes his feet with her tears and wipes his feet with her hair. She commits the ultimate act of humility, servant hood and intimacy – total surrender of her own self-esteem. She gladly exchanges it for God-esteem. We have already seen Simon’s inner response. Jesus sensing this or knowing it – answers him

“Simon, I have something to say to you” -- the whole scene falls silent – no one breaths in fear of missing what is about to be said. The air is filled with that aromatic perfume. Jesus then tells a bizarre little story. I can almost see the confusion and bewilderment on Simon’s and his guests face.

Jesus says, “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver 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?”

Simon’s not following - he’s not seeing himself and the woman in this little play. He’s not seeing the deeper point has very little to do with the amount of debt, and everything to do with the fact that ‘neither could repay’ – Simon and the woman owe a debt that neither of them could repay, both are equally debtors. In the story both debts are cancelled. For a poor man 50 pieces of silver might as well be 500. Once source suggested that 50 pieces of silver could be equivalent to six months wages for a good job. Anyway, it’s not the amount here that is important, though Simon believes it is, as is revealed in his answer “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt” You got to love the non committal tone of Simon’s answer “Um, I suppose….” He leaves himself wiggle room. But see the answer is again, not in the “sum being 50 or 500” of the debt, but in the perception of the debtor of what he owes. This is the difference between Simon and the woman -- she is undone by her awareness of her debt and her inability to repay – Simon is oblivious and believed he has no need. She obviously owes the great debt because she is a sinner, and he is not. But why then does Jesus answer as he does “You have answered correctly”. I believe the answer to be in ‘awareness’. What was the woman’s awareness of her debt, and inversely what was Simon’s awareness of his debt? Simon compared himself against the sins of the woman, therefore I’m not as bad as her, opposed the Holy and pure Sinless presence of God. Perspective is everything.

This is what separates and explains the acts of both this sinful woman and the righteous Pharisee – of his neglect and her abandonment, of his pride and her sorrow, of his arrogance and her great love, of her finding freedom and healing in forgiveness and his still being in captivity – of her emergence from hold the abyss – and his continued lost-ness in it.


Neil