Just before this passage, Jesus has been defending John the Baptist's approach to ministry and his own against the Pharisees. John came eating no bread and drinking no wine, Jesus says, and you say, He has a demon. I come eating and drinking, and you say of me, Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. You can't win. John has no sense of humor, and Jesus has too much fun. Wisdom is vindicated by all her children, Jesus says. This way of his and that way of John's will both show their worth by the people of God they produce.

So now a Pharisee invites Jesus to his home for dinner. I wonder, is Jesus hopeful or suspicious? Simon is probably wealthy and possibly curious. Maybe Jesus hopes for a convert from the respectable establishment. Maybe he will even sponsor Jesus' ministry. Who knows?

I was a young pastor of a young church in Mobile in the mid-'80s. A well-monied and well-respected couple started visiting our church. They were disenchanted with the pastor of their very large church nearby. I was excited when they asked me over to their home for a visit. I assumed we would get to know each other and I would tell them about our church and how much we hoped they would join us and support our mission. I went in and was sat down in the formal living room that didn't look overused. We got to business right off, without even the polite offer of a cup of coffee. If you know me at all, you know that left me empty-handed and conversationally handicapped. Anyway, they proceeded to point out problems with my preaching and why as a young minister I would never go far unless I learned to do as they thought best. God only knows where I'd be today if only I had just listened!

I don't know if Simon the Pharisee had a similar agenda or if he just thought Jesus would make for an interesting night. The two of them, and God knows how many others, recline at the dinner table, which was the way they ate back then-not like da Vinci's Last Supper painting. The table would have been just inches off the ground, the diners lying on one elbow with one hand free to eat with, legs dangling awkwardly behind them, making their feet accessible.

All at once a woman came into the room. A woman of the city. A woman of the city who was a sinner, Luke says, tongue in cheek, I think-as if there is any other kind of woman . or man, don't you know?!

But how did they know she was a sinner? Other than the general fact that all of us are, I mean. Hard to say. Some have said she was Mary Magdalene, who is mentioned just a few verses later as having had seven demons cast out of her by Jesus. (We'll get into that tonight when we talk about The Da Vinci Code at 6:30 in Fellowship Hall-invite your friends!) Some have said she was a prostitute-a woman of the city being like a woman of the street. Luke didn't say she was a prostitute; she might have been a known adulteress. Who knows? It was probably a sexual thing, though, since a woman can break all ten, but it's only that one commandment that gets her marked. Even if she were any of those things, though, why would that matter? Well, it would have mattered to Simon the Pharisee. Can't have someone like that around the good people, especially when there's talk of God going on.

Let's pause for a moment to take in what Luke is up to in telling us this story. Jesus contrasts the hospitality of Simon to that of the unnamed woman. This is about the everyday life of the people of God, in other words. Luke is concerned about the house of God, the church-his church and ours: whether it will be a Jesus church that welcomes sinners of all kind -or only some kinds, whether it will be a people of scandalous joy or only scrupulous judgment. Luke selects what to put into his gospel and what to leave out as much to shape the church in a certain way as to report stories of Jesus. Simon represents a way of hospitality that the church will be tempted to fall into . but must not!

So here's this woman with nothing much to offer but gratitude and love. She rushes over to Jesus and begins to wash his feet. She has no basin of water because Simon did not even extend that much welcome to Jesus. No worries. She is so overcome with love for Jesus that she uses her tears to bathe him. You can almost feel the dampness, can't you? She doesn't have a towel, either, so she lets down her hair and dries his feet with her flowing locks. (The heavy breathing starts here.) Such a thing would have been appropriate in those times only between a husband and wife. A woman's hair, you see, was considered part of her sexual apparatus. They had a strange notion that it was a key to sexual fertility, something I will be glad to go into with the over-18 crowd another time. This is why women were told to wear head ,coverings to church for modesty's sake. Suffice it to say that by the time the woman got to the perfume and the kissing of his feet, the whole lot of them must have thought they were watching pay-for-view in a hotel room.

Well, the least Jesus could do was to stop her and not let her make a fool of herself. But he didn't. He would not dishonor her lavish love. He did not think she needs to conform to cultural standards of respectability in order to protect her character or his. He knew that love unexpressed is love unrequited. That love undemonstrated out of fear of what others might think leaves the beloved bewildered and puts a chill into the heart. What's more, Jesus probably enjoyed himself. Which is what he had been criticized for doing by the parsimonious, perspicacious purveyors of pious pomposity-who are with us still.

Simon wonders to himself if Jesus can be a prophet if he isn't insightful enough to know that this woman is a sinner. Jesus must wonder if Simon owns a mirror. He is prophet enough to know what Simon is thinking without his even saying so. So he tells him a story about a creditor who cancels the debt of one great debtor and one small debtor, both of whom could not pay him back. Which one will love their benefactor more? Jesus asks. "The one for whom he canceled the greater debt," Simon says. Exactly. Those forgiven most love most. Those forgiven little love little.

Notice how Jesus changes the terms of what makes for right relationships. Simon the Pharisee is all about adding and subtracting, tabulating good deeds against bad, figuring how people measure up in the balance. The woman is judged to weigh in on the side of sinner versus saint. Jesus has a different scale. He wants to know what we do with our forgiveness, not what have done to need it! He wants to know whether we weigh in on the side of hostility to imperfect people or hospitality to them. Do we err on the side of proper piety or limitless love?

If you are not God-and, by the way, you are not God, loving a sinner is easier when you regard yourself that way, too. Not in general, mind you-in particular. If I asked you if you are a sinner, you would say yes. But if I asked you to be specific, my guess is you would begin to crawfish on me. You would not want to admit any particular sin, because if you did it would take you off the lofty perch you would rather sit on, from which it is easier to see the faults of others. Admitting actual sins makes you vulnerable.

Jesus asks Simon, Do you see this woman? If he were being truthful, Simon would have to have answered no. He did not see her. Really. He saw a woman, a woman of the city, a sinner. But he did not see this woman. He did not see her. And he did not see her because he did not see himself in her. He did not see that they were more alike than different in their standing before God.

We have gone through a terrible time lately in admitting we have sinned against Iraqis in the shameful treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. The president and top officials have expressed rightful outrage at the behavior of some Americans that soiled our nation's reputation. But here's what troubles me. It's not just that some soldiers did dehumanizing things to other human beings; it is our need to isolate them as exceptions to the fine and high moral character that supposedly typifies America. Secretary of State Colin Powell: We have presented ourselves as a values-based country, and we are. This [scandal] does not reflect the America that we know. This does not reflect the America that is.

We have a hard time separating Muslim terrorists from Muslim values, but we want to be clear that American offenders do not reflect American values. We see it as our God-given duty to liberate the oppressed and to draw the world into more humane ways of treating one another. But then to behave in ways that conform to the very brutal behavior of those we went to defeat actually defeats us in the eyes of those we seek to free. We hear that 9-11 has changed everything. Has it changed the call to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? Do we suspend The Golden Rule in wartime? I didn't know. Anybody told Jesus?

The better strategy is to admit our sins and say that those who are guilty of crimes against Iraqi prisoners are Americans who do indeed reflect us at our worst. We are all capable of this, because we are all sinners. What scares us in saying this is that it puts us on a par with our enemies, so that we cannot defend our moral superiority. But America's greatness should not be measured in how high our standards are but in how we respond when we fail to live up to them.

The unnamed woman who bathed Jesus' feet with her tears, who dried them with her hair, who anointed him with perfume, understood she was a sinner and was so grateful for her forgiveness and so confident in it that she could love lavishly in public. She welcomed Jesus into her heart, while Simon hardly welcomed him into his house. The woman gave herself to Jesus completely and recklessly, while Simon kept Jesus at arm's length so that no one might suspect his admiration.

But let's not be too hard on Simon. There is hope for him, too, just as Jesus defended the ministry of John the Baptist. Forgiveness is not the victory of low standards. It is the launching pad to higher ones. Church people who have avoided scandalous sin but who know forgiveness anyway ought to look at the unnamed women and men in their midst who have known a profound forgiveness and celebrate with them. They can be advocates for them rather than judges. They can help restore them to the community. They can even encourage faithful following of Jesus from that point on, so that forgiveness leads to transformation, and love to a life worthy of it.

How do you welcome Jesus? The way you welcome forgiven sinners in your midst is the way you welcome Jesus. Err on the side of love every time, and you will never err.