Scandalous Grace: Jesus and the Woman with the Alabaster Jar

Jesus consistently broke social norms to reveal God's heart, as seen in Luke 7:36-50 when He welcomed a 'sinful woman' who anointed His feet with perfume and tears. While Simon the Pharisee judged both Jesus and the woman, Jesus used this moment to teach about forgiveness and true worship. He highlighted how the woman's extravagant display of love demonstrated her faith in His grace, contrasting with Simon's prideful restraint. This story challenges us to examine whether our own worship reflects the magnitude of forgiveness we've received and calls us to welcome the broken with the same scandalous grace Jesus offers.

Transcript

We're going to open up this morning with some scripture, which I think is the best way to start. So if you have your Bibles, I'm going to invite you to open them to the book of Luke. It is in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, third book. We're going to start in chapter seven.

We're going to read from verse 36 to verse 50. Friends, here's the word of the Lord for us today from Luke 7:36 through 50. When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisees house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisees house. So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

As she stood behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who was touching him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner. Jesus answered him, simon, I have something to tell you. Tell me, Teacher, he said, two people owed money to a certain money lender.

One owed him 500 denarii and the other 50. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more? Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. You have judged correctly, Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss. But this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.

You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven loves a little. Then Jesus said to her, your sins are forgiven to the other guests, or sorry. The other guests began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins?

Jesus said to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

Friends, we live in a world obsessed with reputation, right? We often measure people by their resumes, by their social media profiles, the kind of car they drive, how much the watch on their wrist cost. But this morning we're talking about the scandalous grace of Jesus, the Kind of grace that finds us in our lowest moments and lifts us and brings us to the table. The kind of grace that walks in and flips the script. The kind of grace where the broken become honored, the unworthy become treasured.

I hope that by now that we've read enough and talked enough about Jesus that you know that Jesus continually breaks the social rules of his day. But he doesn't do this just to be provocative, but instead he does it to reveal the very heart of God. One of the most overlooked yet deeply radical moments in Jesus ministry comes in the scriptures that we just read. It's a moment when he welcomes the extravagant, scandalous acts of a woman who pours out perfume on his feet and washes his feet with her own hair and tears. Through this bold act of worship and devotion, we see a woman whose heart is laid bare.

She honors Jesus in that moment with all that she has. And at that moment, we see a savior responding with forgiveness that lifts her from shame and gives her dignity. We get to witness the kind of grace that Jesus regularly offered, the kind of grace that rewrote this woman's story from disgraced to beloved church. One of the most important things that we have to remember about Jesus is that when society sets up walls of shame, Jesus builds a table of grace where the shamed become honored guests. So I'd like us to dive a little bit deeper into the text that we read this morning.

And so here's a warning for you this morning. If you know anything about me, you know I'm a nerd in many, many ways. But today I'm going to be a little bit nerdier than usual because we're going to talk a little bit about Greek. So be prepared. I'm a dork.

I get it. It's fine. So let's talk about the boldness that happens here in this moment. The story that we read starts out like this. We're going to reread the scripture and we're going to go through it.

Break it down a little bit. In verse 36 or 38, it says, when one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and he reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house. So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her with her tears.

Then she wiped them with her hair and kissed them and poured perfume on them. It's not a normal day. Right. The scripture starts off with an invitation from a Pharisee to Jesus to come and have dinner. And then Jesus accepts.

Does that seem weird to you? In this moment, this moment, the very beginning of this scripture section should kind of set us up for the rest of the story, right? So what's strange about a Pharisee inviting Jesus to dinner? Anybody have any thoughts? Why is that weird?

They doubted him. Yeah. They didn't like each other. Right. Some of Jesus harshest words were to the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jews.

So one invites him to come and hang out with them. And Jesus says, sure, what could go wrong?

So he goes to the house of a Pharisee. Do you know his name? Did you catch it? Simon. So from this moment on, we're going to basically call him either Simon or Simon the Pharisee.

And so Jesus shows up at his house. And so the context of this moment where a Pharisee asks Jesus and Jesus says yes, and they go and spend some time together should give us some context clues that nothing in the story is going to be like we expect it to be.

So the next thing that happens is we are introduced to a woman. What kind of woman? Sinful woman. What is her name? Oh, it doesn't matter.

Right. Women. Let me be very clear. You matter. You deserve a name.

In this situation, in this moment, Scripture is just living into the society that it was a part of. So this woman, the only thing we know about her is that she's a sinner, She's a sinful woman. And I have a bit of a problem with the way the niv, the new international version of scripture, kind of paints this. This particular woman. So we're gonna.

Here's where we're going to talk about the Greek. In the original Greek, what is a little bit different? And I think it sets our expectation differently. In the version that we just read, it says that this woman is simply a woman in that town. When you think about town, what do you think of?

Hmm, Brookside. Yeah, Brookside could be a town within a big. What city? There's a difference between a town and a city, right? Very different.

We all know that word gets around when you live in town, Right?

Sorry, that was my Oklahoma coming out.

The problem is that the word translated here as town in Greek, the word is poli. Everybody say poli.

That word comes from the Greek polis, which is a word that in Greek would have been often translated as city or city state. So we kind of get this picture of she's like this small town woman and everybody knows her business. Nope, it is a big city that they're in.

We recognize this Greek word part when we see it used in words like metropolis, which is, of course, the city that Superman lives in. Right. We all know this when we're talking about the city. We're not talking about a podunk little town like Sulphur or Slaughterville or Talihina. We're talking about a bigger city.

So this female city dweller is also said to have, quote, unquote, lived a sinful life. And scripture doesn't tell us here in this moment what kind of sins that she has committed. It just tells us that she is a sinner. But many theologians, especially early church fathers and even biblical commentaries, suggest that this woman has some sort of past that might be clouded in a sexual sin. These historical accounts lead us to believe that she's possibly a sex worker, a prostitute.

And based on this setting being a big city, that conclusion would absolutely make sense. And if this woman's sin was a sin of sexual nature and she was a Jewish woman, it would have meant that she would have been absolutely excluded from any sort of worship in the temple, and she would have been shamed everywhere she went. She would have been considered unclean. And those religious Jews who were reclining with Jesus at the table of the Pharisee in the house of Simon, they would have rejected her outright. Being associated with a woman of her reputation would have made these men unclean as well.

So they did not want her there. And let me say this. While this is the implied sin of the woman, the language is unclear as to what kind of sinner she really is. The Greek word used here is simply the word hamartulos. Everybody say hamartulos, which literally translates to sinner, or one devoted to sin.

Okay. Her sins are not named, but I would just say it's a safe assumption to say that she was some sort of a sex worker. That's biblical scholarship.

We'll talk about that here in a second. All right.

But this sinful city dwelling woman somehow learns that Jesus is reclining at the table in the house of a Pharisee. And she decides on her own, uninvited, I'm going to go and have dinner with them.

And she brings with her an alabaster jar filled with what in the Greek is fragrant oil. It's not necessarily perfume. It would have been acting as perfume. But the literal translation is fragrant. Oil.

So the implication that we can make in this moment is that she knows who Jesus is. She may not know the extent of who Jesus is. And what she knew about her prompted her to find him when he came close enough to the city that she lived in. And she wanted to do something special, right? So she brings with her this alabaster jar filled with scented oil, and she wants to anoint Jesus.

So let's paint the picture a little more clearly. A sinful woman hears that Jesus is coming to eat dinner at a Pharisee's house in the city in which she lives. And because she has heard that Jesus is special, some kind of rabbi that shows compassion to people especially like her, who are desperate, she shows up uninvited to the house of a religious leader. She begins to anoint Jesus with perfume, and she cries so hard that she wets his feet with her tears and wipes. Wipes them with her hair.

You good with me so far? You get this. Do you get the picture? Have you ever had a good cry?

Now maybe you're thinking about the last time you cried. When was that for you? Was it recently? Did someone pass and your heart was grieved? Was it the type of good cry that sometimes comes when you feel just so happy with your life that you can't do anything but just shed tears of joy?

Those are cute. That's not what I'm talking about. Scripture again, paints this beautiful and tragic picture of this woman and her tears. This is not the kind of cry when you sit through a Walk to remember or the Notebook or Old Yeller. This is very different.

This is not a one Kleenex kind of cry. The way the picture presents this. Sorry. The way that Scripture presents this picture is that this woman would have been causing a scene. I bet every eye in that room had shifted from Jesus to this weeping, sobbing woman that was a lump on the floor.

And there is no way she was weeping that intensely and being silent about it. To wet a person's feet with tears, she must have been crying. Pretty.

And also, this woman is in the wrong place. For any woman to enter into a Pharisee's home uninvited was a social violation of the highest order, Right? For this particular. Remember, Scripture calls her sinful woman. It would have been even more inappropriate.

And here she is causing a scene.

Scripture says that she pushes past barriers of propriety so that she can find the healing that she needs in Jesus. Her brokenness becomes a doorway to a bold faith. So to compare the story to what it would have looked like with a more modern context. Imagine someone walking into the fanciest, most exclusive dinner party today. Maybe it's being hosted at the Mayo or Southern Hills Country Club.

Or maybe somebody's rented a room in the Summit Club here in Tulsa. But everyone is dressed in suits and evening gowns. But this person shows up bringing a very expensive bottle of Cartier Pasha perfume for men. Then, grasping the feet of the most important person in the room, begins wailing, breaking the perfume and pouring it over his feet, meanwhile wiping his feet with hair. Every part of the scenario would have been unexpected and out of place.

The room would have been in shock and awe. No one would have had any idea how to react in this moment. If it happened today, there would for sure be somebody with a phone filming it to post, to Instagram or to TikTok. And that's the scene that we have here. It is dramatic, it is life altering.

It is unique. And we get to see that. However unclear the language may have been about who this woman is, it's very clear that Simon the Pharisee knew this woman. Right? This kind of goes back to what Jody mentioned earlier.

How do all these men recognize this particular woman? Scripture goes on Luke 7:39 through 43, it says this. When the Pharisee, who had invited him to see this, he said to himself, or sorry, saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner. Jesus answered him, simon, I have something to tell you. Tell me, Teacher, he said.

And then he tells a story. Two people owed money to a certain money lender. One owed him 500 denarii and the other 50. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now, which of them will love him more?

Simon replies, well, I suppose, which kind of throws some attitude in I suppose Jesus, the one who had a bigger debt, forgiveness, you have judged correctly. Jesus said, the broken often see more clearly what the proud can't. That our hope is found in Jesus. Simon uses this inner monologue here in his heart, right? He's not saying it out loud.

He says that if Jesus really knows who this woman is, then he would not let this woman touch him. And the way the text read it, reads it, it's almost as Simon is a little too familiar with who this woman was. But we're not going to make any assumptions about the text, about how he knows her, how he recognizes her. We're just going to move on. But the early readers of Luke's Gospel would have recognized that Simon the Pharisee was representing respectable religion, right?

They would have thought that he is a Pharisee would have been right in judging this woman as sinful by whoever this woman is, by his, by her reputation as a Pharisee. Simon's job was to help lead the people of Israel into a closer relationship with God. So that means there's quite a few things that a Pharisee does. Number one, it means that they interpret and teach God's people the laws of Moses. Number two, they preserve Jewish identity by making sure that they do Jewish things correctly.

They would lead worship in whatever local synagogue they were a part of. Or if they lived in Jerusalem, they might help lead worship in the temple. They would participate in legal issues in the Jewish high court called the Sanhedrin. Pharisees would have practiced and modeled for their people pious acts.

These were visible acts of devotion. They would pray in public, they would fast in public, they would tithe so that people see what they're doing. They're setting an example. The Pharisees in Jesus day were responsible for maintaining the right acts of Jewish worship. These men, and yes men, 100% of them all men, would have been responsible for helping Jewish people atone for their sins by offering sacrifices to make them right with God.

The irony in the story is that Simon misses what Jesus is doing because he's so focused on her sin and on his own righteousness. Here in this moment. Simon can't see that this woman's acts of worship, they do something special in this moment because he's blinded by his own pride. He's too busy meditating on the impurity of this sinful woman that he can't see the life change that has already happened right in front of him. His theology might have been spotless.

His worship may have been done right, but his heart in this moment was unmoved. He knew the law and the Scriptures. He knew all the right moves to make in the synagogue. But he missed the love and repentance that this woman showed from the very first moment that she's introduced in Scripture.

And Jesus, responding to the inner thoughts of this religious man's heart, challenges the blindness caused by his own self righteousness.

Jesus says, simon, let me tell you a story. Two people were drowning in debt. One owed $50,000 on a credit card. The other owed only $500. But neither one of them could pay it.

Then out of nowhere, the lender calls them both and Says your balance is wiped clean. We are writing off your debt. You're free.

Both of them obviously are going to be grateful. But the one who is buried under a year's salary of debt is just undone. He's weeping, he's hugging strangers on the streets, he's telling everybody about the mercy that Chase MasterCard has shown him. Hallelujah. Right?

Like that is a big deal. And if you've ever received any sort of forgiveness for debt, it is not a small matter. It can for some people be life changing. Jesus point here is absolutely clear. The deeper that we need forgiveness, the greater the love and response.

And when we realize just how much that we have been given and forgiven of our response shouldn't be a simple quiet thanks God. Instead it should be extravagant worship. It might be a little bit easier to think of Simon's lack of response in this way. Imagine someone living in an amazing apartment and they've got windows on every wall. They live on like the 23rd floor of a high rise building and it's gorgeous, all windows all the way around.

So every weekend this person spends an entire day cleaning the windows because they want to have the best view possible. Every single window in every wall. The only problem is she never realizes that the glasses she's been wearing are covered in smudges and scratches. So no matter how clean she gets the windows, her view is always going to be clouded and blurry.

Friends, we can never see the perfect clarity of the windows if our glasses are smudged.

Simon the Pharisee was trying to see God, but he couldn't see in this moment because his own pride was clouding his vision. Does your pride do that for you?

It's just like cleaning windows with dirty glasses. Church we should all know by now that religious pride builds walls where Jesus builds bridges.

So I want you to ask yourself this morning, where might pride be clouding my own vision of grace today? Where might be there? Where might there be some areas where our pride and who it is that we are make us out of touch for people who are desperately seeking the hope and the grace and the forgiveness that Jesus offers, are we more stumbling blocks then steps to grace? Here Jesus shows us that love is a true measure of forgiveness and discipleship. So then he goes on.

In Luke 7:44 through 50 it says, Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, he's looking at her while speaking to the Pharisee, do you see this woman? I came into your house, you did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss. But this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. And Jesus says to her, your sins are forgiven. And then all the other Pharisees, right, the group around Jesus, the well to do, the folks that have been invited into the home of this Pharisee, the ones who are on par with his reputation, they begin to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins? Who does this guy think that he even is?

And Jesus says to the woman, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

Jesus points out all the ways that this woman has shown her love of Jesus and the places where the Pharisee has failed. To his face burn, right?

And to this man's face, Jesus basically tells his host that this sinful guest has treated him far better than the host has. And at the very end of the story in Luke, Jesus looks at the weeping woman who is broken in a lump on the floor and says, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

To be clear, faith for this woman wasn't earned by the acts that she performed. It's given as a gift. The woman's act wasn't a payment. Her act was a response to Jesus grace that she could count on and knew was coming. She trusted that she would be given grace, and she was.

And her love was loud, right? Meanwhile, the Pharisees silent and his silence was deafening.

Think of somebody paying off your mortgage. Hallelujah. Right? Not because you've done anything to earn it, but because they love you. I would hope that our response to that wonderful gift would not be a client.

Oh, thanks so much. In a handshake. But I hope that our response would be a life altering act of gratitude.

Forgiveness fuels love, and love proves our forgiveness.

So what do you think our worship should look like here on Sunday morning? We've been forgiven. We are sinners that have been forgiven of the biggest debt we can imagine. And oftentimes we show up and we sing, we love you, Jesus. It's so cool to be in church today.

That's our response. We should look a lot more like this woman who is crying at the feet of Jesus. And instead we show up and we're just. I don't want to be an embarrassment in the way I sing.

What if the songs that we Sing. And the Bible that we read tells us that we are truly forgiven and that forgiveness matters. If we read those things and believe that they're true, would that affect at all how we worship? Because it doesn't seem to be. We read the same Bible every single week.

We pray to the same Jesus who saved us every single week.

And the love that we show doesn't equal the grace that we've been given.

The woman left eventually. We don't hear how it all ends up, but she left as a free and forgiven and whole person.

Meanwhile, we know the Pharisee left unchanged. So the question we've got to ask ourselves is, which one of those stories do we want to identify with? Who are we? Are we the religious people that think we have all of our stuff together? Or are we the woman who is broken?

John Wesley understood grace in three different ways. Does anybody know the three different forms of grace that we talk about sometimes as United Methodists? Prevenient is one. Justifying and sanctifying are the three types of grace that we believe that God expresses his love through.

The sinful woman relied on Jesus unmerited, prevenient grace that called her even before she met him. This woman then got to experience the justifying grace of a savior that says, you, faith in me has saved you. And then she also began to live out God's sanctifying grace through the love in the acts that she showed as an outward response. Her actions proved that transformation was already underway. Our United Methodist faith requires that we believe in radical inclusion and a radical grace that we don't deserve.

And this story of a sinful woman bawling at the feet of Jesus embodies both of those aspects for us Church. The radical Jesus invites each of us to see what the Pharisee couldn't see. That transformative expressions of love are the evidence of the forgiveness that we've received. The radical Jesus calls us to embrace the broken, to challenge the proud, and to live out grace with a bold, scandalous love. The radical question is how will we respond to what Christ has done for us?

Will we be the Pharisee, or will we be like the woman with the alabaster jar? The scandalous grace of God doesn't stop at the altar. It doesn't stop at the back doors of Community Brookside. And it certainly shouldn't stop when you get to your car. The grace of Jesus through all of us should spill into the streets.

So I'd like all of us this week to think about this question.

Who are the broken that we're called to welcome this week. Who are those who need to experience the life change that Jesus can provide? Who is it that this week I can invite to come in and join in on this radical community of people who seek to look and love more like Jesus every single day? And then it is our call from God and our responsibilities of believers in Jesus to invite them along church. And I know it's a big job, and I know it's not often easy to invite people to church, but I believe that we're all radical enough to do it.

So let's do it church. Let's pray together.