In the episode titled “He Didn’t Get Jesus”, I pointed out that Luke emphasizes Jesus’s dealings with society’s overlooked and downtrodden, and Jesus was especially compassionate toward them.
We see another such outcast in Luke chapter 7…
Here, Jesus was visiting the house of Simon where He was eating with a group of judgmental people, when it says…
a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that he was reclining in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 Standing behind at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
Picture this woman and her posture… just how low her face was in order to wash Jesus’s feet with her hair; probably the only thing she could see was His feet and the ground beneath them.
The people around were appalled that the woman did this, but Jesus pointed out that neither Simon nor anyone else in the house had offered to give Jesus such an honor.
He said,
47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” 48 He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Even though this woman was a victim in the sense that she received harsh judgements and hate from others, she did not see this ill treatment as justification for a life of sin. She did not feel entitled, but ashamed, and she approached God penitent… with her face down.
Her attitude and actions serve as an example to us as she embodies the scripture:
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
