The Alabaster Touch
The Alabaster Touch
This, again, is a story in which we would never expect to find a religious teacher. Jesus is at the home of a respected Pharisee named Simon when an uninvited and unwelcome woman of dubious reputation forces her way into the room and over to the table where the guests are reclining to eat, falling at Jesus’ feet. She begins to weep so profusely that her tears fall on his feet and begin to soak them. She unties her long hair and uses it to dry her tears from his feet and then, before the silenced guests, she opens a small alabaster jar and pours the costly ointment, the aroma of which fills the room, over Jesus’ feet.
The most interesting thing about the incident is that so little is said about her and who she was… just enough that her story would be told wherever the gospel was preached. The Pharisee, with his sense of self-righteousness, was convinced that Jesus obviously didn’t know the character of the woman who dared to lay a hand on him or he would never have allowed such a thing.
But Jesus not only knew who she was, he knew what Simon, the Pharisee, was thinking and caught him off guard by asking him a question:
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred [dollars], and the other fifty. 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 Jesus said to [the woman], “Your sins are forgiven… Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:41–50 NIV).
Jesus very subtly pointed out that it was not so much the extent of the debt that was important, but the sense of the indebtedness. The woman recognized something the Pharisee had not: that she needed forgiveness. This is so much at the core of the gospel. The worst effect of sin is that one may not even sense his or her sin. That is the ultimate pride. The woman gave her richest possession for her most impoverished self. Jesus did not respond to the monetary value of the ointment, but to her tears, which reflected the depths of her remorse for her sin and motivated her to part with the only thing she could have claimed as her treasure. This, again, is a story of contrasts. The one who was rejected is the one who was actually accepted by Jesus. The self-righteous Pharisee was far from him in spirit.