Jesus Speaks to Women: Chapter 6, The Sinful Woman Anoints
Meditations for the weary, wounded, and wondering | Luke 7:36-50
Introduction to the Jesus Speaks to Women Series
The Gospel writer John records these words of Jesus to the religious people who opposed him: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). The Scriptures are meant to introduce us to a person—Jesus. And our friendship with that person is meant to change everything. My goal with this studies is to help you see and hear the real Jesus more clearly by meditating on the words he spoke specifically to women. Do you know there are more than 20 accounts in the Gospels of Jesus’ words to women? Would you step into these stories with me and imagine how they experienced Jesus? Will you listen to what Jesus might have to say to you too? Thanks for joining me here!
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: Mary at the Temple
Chapter 2: Mary at the Wedding
Chapter 3: The Samaritan Woman at the Well, Part 1
Chapter 3: The Samaritan Woman at the Well, Part 2
Chapter 4: The Woman Caught
Chapter 5: The Widow
The Scripture: Luke 7:36-50
The Poem:
I have been
a fixture
an eyesore
unworthy of
even a glance
a splintered
written off
written out
woman
but the Good Teacher came
broke bread
even laughed
with sinners like me
as if he liked—me
like a good doctor
he banished
maladies and evil
like a trusted judge
he confronted hypocrites
their eyes bulging planks
and like no one else
forgave sin—
the sting so deep
extracted
a balm applied
so I come,
undone and beholden
with my costliest fragrant oil
and find him here
reclining
at first I only
stand and weep
until tears mix
on his dust-caked feet
muddy
I stoop to wipe and wash
and pour oil
fragrance engulfing the room
a pantomime of
what he did for me
in his tale of
two desperate debtors
I am the grateful
inexplicably
freed one
Your sins are forgiven.
Your faith has saved you.
Go in peace.
and so I’ve been
now written in
a fixture of grace
A few notes on this passage before we begin:
Accounts of a woman anointing Jesus are also found in Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, and John 12:1-8. Much has been written both on the identity of the women in these accounts and whether they are one, two, or even three different events. I have decided here to treat Luke’s account as completely separate from the other three.
Matthew, Mark and John all place the story outside Jerusalem in the town of Bethany just before Passover and Jesus’ impending death that week. John alone identifies the woman as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. In Matthew and Mark, it is Jesus’ head that is anointed, not his feet, and the host is Simon the Leper (in Luke the host is a Pharisee named Simon, a common name). Matthew, Mark and John all include Jesus’ statement that the woman’s act was done to prepare Jesus for burial. Matthew, Mark and John all link this story—and the woman’s “waste” of the expensive perfume—with Judas’ greed and betrayal of Jesus.
Luke’s account is much earlier, does not give a location, and makes no reference to Jesus’ death. Luke’s account alone focuses on forgiveness and includes the parable of the two debtors. Luke’s anointing woman alone covers Jesus’ feet with her tears and kisses. In Luke’s account, it is her grief and gratitude that are emphasized.
You can find a helpful chart comparing all the details in each account in this article.
Just before Luke tells us about Judas’ betrayal of Jesus in 22:1-6, he notes that “each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives” (Luke 21:37). The Mount of Olives was in Bethany, a few miles east of Jerusalem, and was a less crowded place to stay during Passover week in Jerusalem (The Cultural Background Study Bible). It would make sense then, that Matthew, Mark and John’s account of Mary’s anointing at Bethany took place on one of those evenings as Jesus dined at the home of Simon the Leper.
Why doesn’t Luke include the Passover week anointing here like all the other Gospel writers? There are a few possibilities. One is they all refer to one event, but Luke has rearranged the chronology for his own purposes, something I find unconvincing (as Darrell Bock argues). It’s also possible that these are all stories of the same woman who anointed Jesus twice, once here in Luke before she became a disciple and once again to prepare him for burial the week before his crucifixion. It’s also possible that they are just two different women who both anointed Jesus at different times. For whatever reason, Luke only included the one story. Maybe he decided that for clarity’s sake, he would only include the one. I explored these ideas further in this previous blog post.
Whatever we conclude about these stories, I think in the end we can only faithfully read Luke if we honor his intentions and follow the narrative he is crafting. I hope I can show you in the study how this woman’s story fits in with Luke’s themes.
Meditations on the Scripture
It was around 1983 and I was five years old. My dad was the pastor of a tiny Southern Baptist church plant in Cottonwood, Idaho that met in a little white house. The first floor living room and dining room had been carpeted over and several pews installed to create a sanctuary, never filled with more than 10 or 15 people, including my family of four.
It was in that humble place and in the everyday conversations with my family that I first understood that there was something special about Jesus that I wanted to claim for myself.
Over the years, I would hear many different messages about Jesus in different church settings. During a revival service at another church four or five years later, I would walk a longer aisle to “accept Jesus” again. Talk of hell and my sin scared me. How could I be sure that my humble prayer had done the trick?
Lisa Sharon Harper, in her book The Very Good Gospel, explains that in the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 and 3, Satan’s underlying lie was that God’s Word could not be trusted. She continues,
“And even deeper, the lie that God does not have your best interests at heart. And the lie that goes the deepest: God doesn’t love you. . . . The lie burrows more deeply: ‘You are unlovable as you are.’”
I think in wanting to call people to God, like sensitive and conscientious little me, we in the Church use “levers,” or method, that Jesus never did. The lever of fear. The lever of guilt. The lever of the threat of God’s anger.
Here, I picture that classic scene in the Disney movie, The Emporer’s New Groove—”wrong lever!!!”
When we use these wrong levers, we can unwittingly perpetuate that fundamental lie about God—that he doesn’t love us or even like us. Sometimes I think we talk about the Gospel as if it’s merely a transactional affair—that God only loves us because of what Jesus did—otherwise it’s wrath for you, sinner!
But in Scripture, we find the reality that the love and tender mercy of God for us flow from his very heart.
By the way, I think we can draw a line from this misrepresentation of God to the cruelty and callousness we see in many Christians today.
Before we jump into today’s story, I want to map out a few of the themes Luke has been developing in his narrative that I think we see played out in this story:
The favor of God (see Luke 1:25, 28, 43; 2:14; 3:22; 4:19). Here are two key verses:
Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
Luke 4:19: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Here Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61:1-2, but leaves off the end of the passage that says, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” The “year of the Lord’s favor” likely references the Old Testament “Year of Jubilee,” when slaves were set free (Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible). This was an Old Testament picture of “God’s new age” and of “total forgiveness and salvation” (Bock).
The Mercy of God (see Luke 1:50, 54, 58, 72, 78; 6:36). Twice in Zechariah’s prophecy upon the birth of John the Baptist, we see references to God’s mercy, particularly this verse:
Luke 1:76b-79: “for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” The phrase translated “tender mercy” in 1:78 is “dia splanchna eleous theou” in Greek. Splanchana literally mean bowels, but was uses to express “deep-seated personal feeling, especially compassion” (Bock).
The peace of God. As we saw in Luke 1:76-79 (“to guide our feet into the path of peace”) and Luke 2:14 (“and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests”), peace with God would define Jesus’ kingdom.
Now we come to our story!
We meet the woman in the house of a Pharisee named Simon who had invited Jesus for dinner. We don’t know much about her past except that it was common knowledge in her town that she lived a “sinful life.” We don’t know her specific sins—she could have been the wife of a “dishonorable” husband, a debtor, an adulterer, a prostitute, or all of these (Bock).
We also don’t know how she encountered Jesus or the experiences that led her here. Looking back in Luke, we can guess that she may have witnessed (or even experienced for herself) Jesus doing any of the following:
healing people of demons and sickness in a very personal way, with “hands on each one” (Luke 4:40)
preaching the “good news of the Kingdom of God” (Luke 4:43)
traveling with a band of disciples from a variety of backgrounds, some admittedly sinful (see Simon’s words in 5:8)
exercising his authority to forgive sin (Luke 5:17)
eating with “tax collectors and sinners.” When he was questioned about this by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, he said “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (5:30-31).
Did this woman meet Jesus at one of these meals, perhaps, observing him carefully, and shocked to find that he had good news even for her?
Did she hear him preach about those who were blessed in his kingdom—the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the insulted (Luke 6:20-26)?
Did she begin to hope when Jesus warned against judging others (6:37-42)? How often had she been judged and excluded? How often had she witnessed the hypocrisy of those who judged her, a plank protruding from their own eyes (5:42)?
Did she recognize that her life was without good fruit, her heart corrupt (6:43-45)? Had she built her life on sand, only to see it washed away and collapsed by storms again and again (5:46-49)?
Had she witnessed the merciful hand of Jesus on those around her and slowly begun to believe that his kindness could extend to her?
Had she heard the words, “I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (Luke 7:28)?
We don’t know exactly how she got here, but in Luke 7, she slips into the dinner party on a mission.
For special meals like this, it was common for the doors to be left open so the uninvited could join, listen to the conversation, and ask for any leftovers (Bock). Meals were served on low tables, with guests sitting around on couches with their feet extended behind them (Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible).
Although not a strict rule, hosts would usually provide water for guests to wash their feet (or possibly a servant to do it for them) and sometimes offer a kiss of greeting. As a special honor, a host might anoint the head of their guest with olive oil. Simon, the host, had done none of these for Jesus (Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible).
The woman first seems to stand behind Jesus weeping so much that her tears wet his feet. Maybe seeing the tears streak down his feet, mixing with dirt and becoming muddy, she bends down and begins to wipe them with her loosened hair. Married women would have kept their hair bound, and unbound hair would have been a sign of “intense grief” (Taylor, Women Remembered). She has brought with her an alabaster (a white marble-like translucent stone) jar of expensive perfume, which she either unseals or breaks open to pour on Jesus’ feet (Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible).
The room must have been filled with the smell of the perfume and the sound of her weeping. I love the way Henry Ossawa Tanner captures this moment so tenderly:
Jesus perceives that the woman’s actions have made the people in the room uncomfortable, particularly the host, Simon. Simon knows who this woman is, but he surmises that Jesus does not, could not possibly know the kind of woman touching him.
So Jesus does what he does best—teaches.
Jesus tells a parable about two debtors. One owes 500 denarii—imagine this as more than your entire year’s salary. How could you ever possibly pay it off and still support yourself? You are completely at the mercy of your lender who could inflict any of pain of their choosing. The second debtor owes 50 denarii, still substantial, but a much less precarious situation.
Jesus says that, in an unheard of act of mercy, the lender chooses to forgive the two debts. He then asks Simon which person will love him more.
In what must have been a head-spinning turn of the conversation for Simon, Jesus then praises the prostrate woman for the care she has shown him, pointing out that Simon has failed to fulfill even the most basic hosting responsibilities.
Luke is no stranger to this literary device of comparing and contrasting two people or ideas. We see the pairings of Zechariah/Mary, Mary/Elizabeth, John the Baptist/Jesus, wise/foolish builders, blessings/woes, the dead girl/sick woman (Chapter 8), Good Samaritan/religious people and Martha/Mary (Chapter 10).
“Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks Simon pointedly.
Just as the Pharisees failed to see the humanity of the woman caught in adultery in John 8, Simon doesn’t see this woman. He doesn’t understand her story or what led to this moment. But Jesus understands these things and speaks up for the woman through the parable.
Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.
Jesus uses the perfect tense of the word for “forgiven” in 7:47, indicating that forgiveness is the state that she is already living in. Darrel Bock explains that we see three phases of forgiveness here: forgiveness offered, forgiveness accepted, and forgiveness confirmed. The woman has accepted Jesus’ offer of forgiveness, but she longs for confirmation.
I wonder what grieved her so much that she couldn’t stop weeping? Was she weeping over the goodness of Jesus to love her, or was she still remorseful about her many sins? Whatever the complicated feelings in her heart, part of her was still not at peace.
Henri Nouwen, in his book, Life of the Beloved, says that “the first step to healing is not a step away from pain, but a step toward it.” The woman bravely faced her pain and brought it to Jesus, who in his patient way, confirmed to her, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
The “sinful” woman was loved from the beginning of this story. She was loved before she met Jesus. She was loved when she first encountered Jesus. She was loved when she repented of her sin. She was loved when she needed further confirmation of forgiveness. Her great sin was no barrier from such great love! The only love that could increase was hers for him.
What would I tell little me, so scared of hell and damnation, always wrestling with a guilty conscience? I’m sure my parents said words like to me even then, but here I am all these years later still needing to repeat them:
God’s love for you is fixed and unchanging.
His forgiveness is unwavering.
Nothing can separate you from his love, not even your sin—great or small.
Your faith has saved you. Go in peace!
Your thoughts, corrections, and suggestions are valued and welcomed in the process of writing these studies. I consider you part of my writing team, and I appreciate you joining me. If you have time and would like to, let me know your thoughts in the comments or email me at mary@marydeandraws.com.
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