3.10. The Woman who Washed the Feet op Jesus with HER Tears — Forgiveness and Love

CHAPTER X The Woman who Washed the Feet op Jesus with HER Tears — Forgiveness and Love IN the time of Christ access to a large Eastern house would seem to have been as free as it is in our own day. Through the open doorway into the central courtyard strangers could enter uninvited and unchallenged, at all events on an occasion of hospitality; and the guests, reclining on couches at the table in a sort of raised alcove, would be within reach of anybody who chose to approach them. In this way it would be quite easy for the woman who, as St. Luke tells us, was seeking to do honour to Jesus, to effect her purpose. Mingling with the servants as they came and went in their attendance on the company, she would be able to step up behind His seat almost unnoticed; while our Lord, resting His elbow on the table, according to custom, and leaning lengthways, would be just in the attitude to permit her to bend over His feet, now divested of the sandals only worn for travelling.

It was not to weep at His feet that this woman came. Her purpose was to anoint them. But she could not control her feelings. Oblivious of the publicity of the place, heedless of the unsympathetic surroundings, overwhelmed with a flood of mingled emotions, she burst into tears; then, to the disgust of propriety, she loosed her hair to wipe the sacred feet on which her tears had fallen; and after that she kissed them again and again. It all came from a full heart — it was spontaneous, unpremeditated, washing the feet of Jesus irresistible. You cannot analyse a woman’s tears. And it was the presence of Christ that opened the long-sealed fountain. The terrible past still haunts this woman as a dark and dreadful memory, and the nearness of Jesus brings the horror of it into her mind with redoubled intensity. We never discover how far we have fallen till we come into the presence of Christ. Then for the first time we really fulfil the old Greek philosopher’s advice and come to know ourselves. Even the pardoned soul must experience a pang of agony at such an appalling revelation. It is true that no one deals so tenderly with the sinner as his Saviour. But that only makes him deal the more hardly with himself.

After sin has been forgiven by God and Christ and even by his fellow-men, the last person to forgive it will be the penitent. He always finds it hard to forgive himself. And there is an irreparable past, although there may be no unpardonable past. The restored soul is not just the same as the innocent soul. The Paradise regained differs from the Paradise that was lost in this essential point, that ignorance of the forbidden fruit never returns.

All this would make redemption itself a disappointing boon if there were not another side to the case. But there is another side. The penitent can only weep tears of sorrow, and very bitter tears they are. But this woman is more than a penitent; she has met a Saviour, and there has come to her a gospel that has transformed the whole outlook of her life, banishing despair, and lighting up the horizon with a new, undreamed-of hope. And now it is the joy of this glad discovery in a heart that had been seared and crushed and where no true happiness had been known for many a day that brings her to the feet of Jesus. She is there not to lament the past, but to give expression to her gratitude for a new Hfe. She weeps; but it is His goodness rather than her own shame that starts her teara The significance of this behaviour was quite unintelligible to the strict religious man at whose house such an unusual scene was witnessed; and so was the way in which Jesus received it, Do not let us be unjust to him. The Pharisee does not offend against the first principles of hospitality so far as to say or do anything overtly antagonistic to Christ. We have no repetition here of the charge that Jesus is the Friend of publicans and sinners. The host is politely silent. He only thinks, and his thought is a natural one under the circumstances. Jesus is accepting the effusive homage of this woman. Then the Man of Nazareth cannot be a prophet! If He were He would know what sort of a person it was who had the impertinence to be actually holding^ His feet. Thus the Pharisee argued with himself, and from his own standpoint very naturally. Apparently he had asked Jesus to his house in some curiosity, with a real desire to know a man who was so much talked about. That rare phenomenon, a Pharisee with an open mind, he would exercise his own judgment and draw his own conclusions. But this one incident is quite enough to determine what they must be. Possibly he was a little disappointed, for with some courage, at a risk of being charged with latitudinarianism, he had patronised the rustic prophet. A prophet indeed! and he cannot read the character of this notoriously abandoned person We may grant that this hasty verdict was inevitable. And yet, oh, the blindness of it! In His reply to Simon’s unuttered comment Jesus showed that He was not unaware of the character borne by the weeping woman; He also showed that He could read His host’s secret thoughts. This was a double refutation of the man’s hasty superficial judgment, a twofold evidence of the possession of prophetic gifts. But there was much more in Christ’s insight. As the word in the Greek means more than tmiching, and it indicates a continuous grasp. regards the woman He did not merely perceive as by a sort of second-sight a character that was only too well known to her neighbours. He saw something else in her and in the whole situation which was quite new, and to a recognition of which neither His host, nor the strict set to Avhich the man belonged, nor the people generally, had at all approached. The rude assumption of the Pharisee was erroneous. If Jesus were a prophet He would know that this woman was a sinner. Would He? What would Simon say to the totally unexpected position that for the very reason that He was a prophet and more than a prophet He could declare that to be a false judgment?

Since she had passed through a new birth into a new life, it was not only ungracious, it was distinctly unjust to cast up any old charges against her. From these charges she had been freed by the grace of forgiveness.

Even if the woman at His feet had been still one of the multitude of lost sheep whom He had come to seek and to save He would not have shared the Pharisee’s treatment of her. He knew full well the abominable hypocrisy of it; He knew how often men whose private lives were far more vile than the lives of the miserable victims of their ostentatious zeal for purity were foremost in the condemnation of the outcasts. And then in His treatment of the fallen His one object was to restore them. He said expressly that He had not come to condemn; He had come to save.

Condemning other people for their sins was the pet diversion of the professors of piety in His day. The occupation has not been unknown in subsequent ages. It was wholly averse to the mind of Christ; and yet none could have loathed all sin with a deeper horror than the holy Jesus. In the present case, however, we are not watching Christ’s treatment of a sinner. Tho peculiar interest of the narrative comes from the fact that we meet tho character in question at a later period of her career. And the point at issue is that while Jesus knows this and acts accordingly His host has no glimmer of perception of it. The fact is brought out distinctly by the use of the Greek perfect. Jesus does not pronounce absolution on the penitent, there and then declaring her to be free from the guilt of her past, in an immediate act of forgiveness. He states that her sin has been forgiven. Then the right course is to recognise the fact frankly. The way of the Pharisee is the way of the world. It is to disbelieve in forgiveness, or at least to disbelieve in its fruits. The Pharisee is as cynical as the man of the world, and inevitably so, seeing that his religion is no better than canonised worldliness — an external, superficial conventionality. So long as this is the position assumed it will be impossible to understand either the action of the woman who stood at the feet of Jesus or the view He took of it. But now, enhghtened by His revelation of the truth, we are able to see both the meaning of her conduct and the way in which Christ received it. In the first place, there is no reason to minimise the evil of the past. Since oimon is coarse-minded enough to call attention to them, the shame and sorrow of the facts are not to be denied. This weeping woman had been a sinner, and her sins were many. So much is to be admitted, to the satisfaction of the censor. That terrible word “ many,” covering as it does an awful tale of depravity, points to a long course of vice. This is not an instance of one unhappy lapse from virtue attaching an undying stigma to the character for life. And yet how often is it the case that the sin which began with the weakness of trusting a traitor has been visited by such harsh condemnation from a world of Pharisees as to induce the recklessness of despair, and then that has led on to a subsequent career of ever-deepening guilt. A heavy charge must be brought home to the man who took the first step in driving a young soul down the road to perdition. Still it is the road to perdition.

“We must not let a righteous indignation against the monstrous social iniquity that spares the tempter and tramples his victim in the mire blind us to the truth that her dreadful course is also one of real guilt. The greater blame lies at the door of the tempter — that is still to be insisted on. So many cruel forces combine to impel the woman who has made one slip down the headlong way to ruin that we must regard the result with profound compassion. But this is not all It is ruin, the most unspeakably awful ruin of a soul. That is the tragedy of it. A woman is lowered in moral and spiritual nature, almost below recognition as belonging to the ranks of womanhood at all, when she has come to make a trade of vice. And then in turn she becomes the temptress; and ignorant youth has to be warned that the entrance to her house is the gate of death. Nothing that Jesus has taught in opposition to the harsh, cruel judgment of the Pharisee at all affects the stern admonitions of the Book of Proverbs on this subject. Can it be said that the abandoned person who lays her traps and resorts to cunning enticements to catch her prey is other than a sinner 1 And this one sin does not stand alone, like a single blot on a white sheet of paper. ISTo sin is solitary. Sins ever go in troops, great sins accompanied by a train of attendant minor faults, or small sins opening the door to wickedness of Satanic magnitude. The course of vice is mai’ked by falsehood, dishonesty, cruelty — a black host beyond reckoning. This is not a subject on which to expatiate in the story of a wretched woman, because she is so wretched, first foully wronged by another and then plunged into hopeless misery. Still, since a foolish, superficial, sentimental treatment of the matter has sprung up in our day — it needs to be said for the vindication of womanly purity, the most precious preservative of social well-being, that the loss of it is sin — the word must be written without reservation — and the source of a multitude of sins. But having said this in order that there may be no mistake as to the right estimate of the facts of the past we may hasten away to other regions, and we must do so if we would follow our Lord in His treatment of repented and pardoned sin. The sins which are many are all forgiven.

There is no rebate, no reservation, no casting up of the past against the offender in any way whatever, A halfhearted faith in forgiveness will not go so far as that. The worldly, pharisaic habit is to be perpetually harping on the old charge of guilt. The wound is not allowed to heal. It must be repeatedly abrased. Even if in some confused way it is perceived that the sin is forgiven, still the person to whom it belonged is reckoned to have lost caste for life, as if there could be any such thing as the forgiveness of sin without the forgiveness of the sinner, or as if there could be any real forgiveness of the sinner without full restoration. The difficulty is to believe in the great Pauline idea of justification — Pauline, that is to say, in the full exposition of it, though it is in truth an idea that the apostle had derived from his Maste.y just the expansion of Christ’s teaching about full and complete forgiveness. In the parable of the Pharisee and the publican the latter goes down to his house “ justified.” The forgiveness puts the man in the place of a righteous man; from thenceforth he is regarded as righteous and receives from God the mead of righteousness. Then no slur remains on the character of. a person who has been truly forgiven. It was a most daring act on the part of Jesus to receive such homage as was here given to Him by a woman of ill repute, and that in a Pharisee’s house, of all places. Perhaps this was the most courageous position He ever took up. Many a man who would not like to be regarded as a moral coward would have shrunk from it, deeming it very inexpedient and liable to shocking misunderstandings. As usual Jesus now acts as with sublime indifference to convention, with a perfectly daring independence. Here is the Divine ideal of chivalry; for what a noble defence He has for the friendless woman!

He does not shock the spectators’ prejudices in sheer recklessness. He has a deliberate purpose in shocking them.

They are unjiist and untrue. By His action He is setting the model for a higher principle of judgment than they have dreamed of — the grand, inspiring principle, that when the past has been forgiven it must not be brought up as any disadvantage to the person who has received this perfect gift of the grace of God.

Further, while Christ’s teaching about the reality of forgiveness explains His own position and the view He takes of the homage offered to Him, at the same time it explains the fervour of the woman’s devotion. In itself her action was not so startling as a similar thing would be among us.

It would be impossible according to Western manners, but it was quite usual among the Jews for an admiring pupil to kiss the feet of a great teacher. A caricature of the old Eastern custom is preserved in the Roman Catholic rite of kissing the pope’s foot. What has now become ridiculous in the eyes of Protestants was rravely allowed by Orientals of Christ’s time as a fitting sis^n of reverence. Therefore it was not the woman’s act, which to us seems so strange, that offended Simon, but only the well-known character of the person who performed it, and this was all that the Pharisee complained of.

What, however, is remarkable in the present case is the passion which converted a beautiful kind of homage into a perfect outpouring of heart and soul. This is no formal sign of devotion; nor is it like the dignified, graceful act of the lady of Bethany who anointed the head of her Guest with costly spikenard, filling her house with the luxurious fragrance — a deed of affection and true devotion, but calm and self-possessed. A greater contrast cannot be imagined than that between Mary’s stately service and the outcast woman’s enthusiastic outburst of emotion. And yet when we consider the case in its essential features, the wonder is not that such an incident appears once for all in the story of Jesus, but that it is a solitary one. The motive being the joy and gratitude of forgiveness, the strange thing is that this is not more frequently seen in some outward demonstration, since the gift of forgiveness is so freely bestowed. But it would seem, while the decency of thanksgiving may be commonly observed, real gratitude as an emotion at all commensurate with the unspeakably great boon of forgiveness is exceedingly rare. The indifferent behaviour of our Lord’s host serves well as a background on which the penitent’s love and adoration are shown in their power and beauty. Simon had made but a shabby host. He had neglected the common customs of hospitality, either from cool indifference or in sheer insolence. If the latter was his motive his offence was gross and odious. He had been under no obligation to invite the peasant Prophet to his house. But when he put himself out of the way to do so of his own free choice he was bound to behave with decent friendliness and take some pains to see to his Guest’s “omfort. His manners show that he treated Jesus as quite an inferior kind of guest.

Even with that idea in his mind his rudeness was unpardonable, for then he should have been all the more solicitous.

He had given no kiss of welcome; had provided no water for the washing of his Guest’s tired and travel-worn feet; had not followed custom in having a simple fragrant oil poured on His hair. Did Simon think Jesus would not notice these little details? If so, he must have been startled and not a little ashamed at the discovery that this quiet simple man had observed everything. Jesus is not oblivious of small negligences, not, of course, because He thirsts for attention — did He not once say that “ the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister”? — but simply because they are signs of something deeper, proofs of an utter lack of real interest in Him. How different is this woman, washing His feet with her very tears, wiping them with the hairs of her head, kissing them, and anointing them, not with oil, but with the more precious ointment. But more important than the mere contrast of action is the revelation of character and motive that is thus brought out. That is the key to the whole position. The parable of the two debtors makes this quite clear. It is reasonable to suppose that the one who was forgiven most will love most. Was the woman’s sin great? And is it now all forgiven? Then this forgiveness is equally great; and the love that springs from it will be also great. Some confusion has come in here through a very common misunderstanding of our Lord’s language. Jesus says, “ Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” This is commonly read, in accordance with what may be regarded as its obvious meaning, so as to teach that the penitent was forgiven on account of her love, the greatness of her pardon arising from the greatness of her love. But there are several reasons for holding that this cannot be our Lord’s meaning. In the first place He is accounting for and explaining the woman’s effusiveness of emotion. But the sentence thus rendered supplies no explanation of it, and carries our thoughts off to another point.

Then it is out of harmony with the concluding clause which distinctly sets forth the smallness of forgiveness as the reason for the smallness of love — the reverse relation of the two things. If the common view were correct the final clause should run, “For to him who loveth little, little will be forgiven.” The close similarity in form compels us to give a balanced contrast of meaning to these two clauses as in a case of Hebrew parallelism. Besides, the reminder of Simon’s action points in the direction suggested by the final clause. It was because the Pharisee had no Luk 7:47. strong sense of the fact of being forgiven by Christ that he had no warmth of devotion to Christ.

Lastly, in dismissing the woman Jesus says, “ Thy faith hath saved thee,”— “thy faith,” not “thy love.” No doubt the two work together, but it is important to keep the ideas distinct. To expect love to Christ before the experience of forgiveness is to expect an impossibility. The motive for love is not there. A great mistake is made when young people are approached with the question as to whether they love Christ, in a way implying that this is the first step to the Christian life. When Jesus saw the fisherman by the lake at the beginning of His intercourse with him He did not ask the question, “ Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?” That question came at the very last. His first word was simply, “Follow Me.” We do not begin with love, we grow to love. The first step is faith. This is orthodox Protestant theology; it is also truth experienced in life; and it is what the incident before us would suggest. But then we do not find it quite easy to understand our Lord’s language in the first part of the utterance just quoted. The only interpretation that is agreeable to the drift of His teaching throughout must be that which understands Him to be giving, not the reason for the forgiveness of the penitent, but the reason for His own statement that her sin had been forgiven. It is because she loves much that Jesus makes the assertion that her sins are forgiven. In other words, the woman’s love is the sign of her forgiveness, since it is its fruit.

Thus we are brought round again to the main idea, the great truth that crowns the whole incident with light and hope — love the fruit of forgiveness. Where there is a deep sense of forgiveness there will be a great awakening of love. This is the secret of love to Christ revealed not only in the incident of the woman at Simon’s feast, but in many another story of redeemed souls. It is seen in St. Paul’s enthusiasm for the Christ who had set him free from the double bondage of the flesh and the law — in the passion of Augustine’s Confessions that throb and palpitate with a fervour not all to be accounted for by the heat of an African temperament — in the beauty of Dante’s Paradise, that rapture of the heavenly Rose, only attained after witnessing the awful sights of the Inferno and the piteous scenes of the Purgatory — in Luther’s glad devotion to Christ following his immense sense of relief at the discovery of the perfectly free forgiveness of God’s justification by faith — in the story of Bunyan’s Grace Abounding, that story which tells of a soul passing through agonies of guilt and shame to come at last to rejoice in the exceeding goodness of Christ its Saviour.

It is always so. Light estimates of sin leave us with cold feelings towards Christ. But where the deepest horror of guilt has been first awakened and then the great wonder of forgiveness has followed, the natural result is the outburst of a passionate love to the Redeemer whose grace has wrought the transformation of Gehenna into Paradise.

Thus this woman’s action, at which Simon the Pharisee affected to be so scandalised, is explained and justified. For we may go yet one step further. Real love must express itself. At all events that is but a poor and feeble affection which can live on without making some sign of its existence. Oriental methods must be left for the East. But some method even the phlegmatic Saxon must and will have for bringing out his love and devotion to Christ if any such passion is glowing in his breast. Our Lord’s final words show that an expression of love is not unwelcome to Him, even though it take a form at which those who do not understand what it implies are shocked. There ia danger lest devotion should be smothered by propriety.

We have come to erect into the first place of honour in the Church the very worthy but still secondary apostolic precept, “ Let all things be done decently and in order.”

Too often this is interpreted as meaning little more than decent burial, the burial of passion and enthusiasm. Thus the typical air of devotion tends to approach the correct manners of an undertaker. We have lost the freedom of emotion. The danger is that we should lose the emotion itself.

Finally, this woman whom Jesus had understood so well and justified so graciously, is sent home with a message of peace. As she departs, once again she is assured that her sins are forgiven. It is the great fact in her life, never to be forgotten, also never to be doubted. We meet with no other case in the gospel story in which Jesus gives this assurance so repeatedly or so emphatically. Comforting words of farewell are much needed, because in our hard world the penitent has a cruel time of it. God’s forgiveness is given, but not her fellow-sinner’s. The most difficult task for this woman will be to win any faith from womankind. She will have to stand quite alone in a chill atmosphere of social contempt. Still she is forgiven. That is her pearl of great price, and as she dries her tears and goes out from the Pharisee’s house, it is with God’s bow of hope in her sky. Dark as may be the world around her, her heart can be radiant with the joy of her Lord.