Only Love Can Save Us
The Pharisees are often portrayed as self-righteous and judgmental in the New Testament. It’s a broad brush that certainly doesn’t apply to all the Pharisees of the time and especially not to the Jews then or now more generally. Nonetheless, there were some Pharisees, like the one in today’s Gospel, who fit that mold. Though he hosted Jesus in his home, he was shocked by Jesus’ willingness to cross the boundaries of cultural and religious sensibilities. In fact, 
Jesus’ acceptance of the sinful woman scandalized the Pharisee. He thought to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”
Of course, the Pharisee was right about one thing. The woman was a sinner. She had “many sins” according to Jesus. What the Pharisee failed to see is that he, too, was a sinner. If Jesus shouldn’t have allowed her to touch him, then neither should Jesus have entered his house. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof” is what we say just before receiving the Eucharist. The woman would understand that prayer; the Pharisee would not.
Who is the Pharisee today? Who among us feels comfortable having Jesus in our own home but casts aspersions on those we deem unworthy of Him? Who makes an idol of the law, continuing to think that “justification comes through the law” and failing to recognize that it is “through faith in Jesus Christ”? Who is self-righteous and judgmental about whom we deem worthy or unworthy of Christ? It sometimes seems that we require a person to save him/herself and become perfect, and then they will be holy enough to approach Christ. (Sometimes we demand this of ourselves.) It is bad Christian theology. It is the opposite of faith and is, in fact, a form of the heresy of Pelagianism.
Who is the woman that bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair in our world today? Who is it in your family and mine? Who is it in our churches and in our communities? Is there someone we judge unworthy? Is there a group we think is beyond the saving grace of Christ? Is there a sin that we think is unforgiveable or a form of repentance that we think is not enough? It seems that we can become very comfortable in the house with Jesus, so proud to be hosting Him, and easily forget about those whose tears are bathing His feet. That is, of course, unless you are one of those wounded people who loves Christ but feels scorned and unwelcomed by some of His followers. Then the rejection and condemnation is poignant.
In the story, the woman’s sins were forgiven by Christ who said, “Your faith has saved you,” but we don’t know if the Pharisee’s were. He had two problems. He didn’t seem to recognize that he, too, was a sinner and he didn’t know who Jesus was the way the woman did. He didn’t have her faith. If he did, he would have turned to Christ with love, a love that would have extended even to that sinful woman, and then his sins would have been forgiven just as hers were, because they had “shown great love.” In the words of Pope Francis (that have become a book of the same name), “Only Love can save us.” We are all the Pharisee sometimes. We are all the woman sometimes. We need to work on a better ending for the story, one where the Pharisee embraces the woman and dries her tears, and then joins her in her loving gestures towards Christ. How do we do that in our world today?
- Editorial Credit: Renata Sedmakova / Shutterstock.com for the image of the sinful woman/Last Supper
