"When Jesus is Invited for Thanksgiving" Luke 7:36-50 Thanksgiving Day Sermon

This is a wonderful story for Thanksgiving because the heart of this story is a formal meal with lots of protocol and ritual and which you stay at for a long time.

So in the American culture, there is nothing at all like that except for Thanksgiving.

So you understand the dynamics of a Thanksgiving meal, you understand there's certain things that are eaten and certain people that have to be invited and certain people that invite themselves, like you get that on Thanksgiving.

And if people are looking at you right now, at least you came to church with them.

What leads into this story is people accusing Jesus of being a sinner because he eats with sinners.

And they accuse him of being a drunkard and a glutton because he eats with drunkards and gluttons.

So that's the intro to this story.

Before that, if you were to go back to Luke 6 and see this in the flow of Luke 6, there was another banquet where a tax collector, uh, Levi, a sinner, invited Jesus to a banquet.

Levi, who went on to write the Gospel of Matthew, invites Jesus to a banquet.

He is a sinner.

In Luke's gospel, when he uses the word sinner, it's usually referencing the tax collectors and those kind of people.

So you have this like raging sinner who is hated by all the Jews, who invites Jesus to a banquet, and the Pharisees crashed the party.

The self-righteous Pharisees burst in and accused Jesus of being a glutton and drunkard for eating with sinners and tax collectors.

That whole thing.

So now you've got the second banquet in Luke's gospel, and it's not hosted by a sinner and crashed by Pharisees, but the tables are, in a sense, literally turned.

It's hosted by a Pharisee.

Jesus in verse 34 was accused of being a drunken and a glutton, a friend of tax collectors and sinners because he ate with them.

And so Luke lets you know he doesn't only eat with the drunkards and the gluttons, he also will lower himself to eat with the self-righteous.

And that's where you see in verse 36.

One of the Pharisees, and we don't need to name him because he's going to be the villain in this story, so it would not be polite to use his name.

It just wouldn't.

Luke doesn't want to use his name, he doesn't want to embarrass him.

So Luke's just going to tell you this is this is a Pharisee.

Let's just call him, for the sake of discussion, a Pharisee.

So one of the Pharisees asked him, Jesus, to eat with him.

He went into the Pharisee's house.

Again, let's not use his name.

So went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table.

Now, this language is letting you know this is a very formal meal, maybe a Sabbath meal.

There's these banquets that they would host, not necessarily on the Sabbath.

And there's no event in the Jewish world that is more fraught with social danger than one of these banquets.

There's so much protocol.

And even our Thanksgiving meals don't come close to the sensitivity of these kind of meals.

They were extravagant, they were big.

It would start with the servants going out into the streets or the slaves going out in the streets to hand-deliver invitations to the right people.

The invitations had to be delivered in kind of descending order, starting with the most important and most significant guests all the way down, because if a more important guest heard that so-and-so was invited before they were, it would be a problem.

So again, even that kind of detail is in part of the story.

The event would come, you would come early in the afternoon, you would stay for a long time.

You'd arrive early, your feet would be washed, you would perhaps be given a more proper robe to wear, your head would be anointed with oil, your feet would be anointed with oil.

In the American parlance, it would be, you know, somebody comes in your house and they say, Can I take your jacket?

Can I get you something to drink?

Like just a normal way you would start when families come over to your hash for dinner.

Can I grab your jacket?

You want something to drink?

And you say, Do you want me to leave my shoes on or off?

Like just that little social protocol.

This is to like the millionth degree in the Jewish world.

So you arrive and there's a whole rig and roll you go through.

You sit down at a table.

You're not sitting like in a chair, you lay down at these formal feasts, you like lay on your left hand, uh, your feet go outwards, so you're sitting in a circle, and lots of these little circles will be around.

Laying on your left hand, your right hand is for eating.

Uh your feet are pointed away from the table because your feet, even though they're cleansed now, supposedly, you're walking in the world.

You walk.

Nothing in America is like this, but you walk into the bathroom in these places, and so that's why your feet are the least clean part of you, uh, because they were standing, if the bathroom is a hole in the ground, so to speak, you're standing there, so you wouldn't have those anywhere near the table.

So you sit in a way that your feet are away, even again, though they've been cleaned, they're away from the table.

You sit in order of priority, it's a big thing.

The host seats everybody, and the most important person is next to the host, the guest of honor, and it's descending order, and then the next table.

And you know, we have some kind of weddings in our in our culture, it could be like that, where you've got the reserve tables up front, and then you've got like the general mission tables in the back, you know.

Good luck.

So we have something like that.

But it would be a part of Jewish hospitality that you're not fencing the place.

So some of these houses open up with big courtyards, and visitors can come to the banquet.

They don't have to be invited, but they don't get to sit at the table.

They can be hovering around the outside, they'd be against the wall, and it's not unusual for that kind of thing to happen.

There's lots of secular sources that tell you that kind of thing happened.

So that's all in the background with verse 36 that Jesus was invited and he went, which is a little bit surprising to me anyway, at this point, that Jesus would lower himself to go eat with the Pharisee, because he hasn't done anything like that yet.

It's also surprising the Pharisee would invite Jesus.

I was drawn to the story because even though it's you know, Matthew is kind of in a different order than Luke, this event, Luke is structuring his things around these parables, Matthew is kind of going more chronologically and geographically.

This event happens where we are in Matthew on Sunday morning.

So where we're going through Matthew with the John the Baptist showdown and the Pharisees wanting to kill Jesus, that's when this happened in Jesus' life.

So a Pharisee invites him in from the wilderness to eat with him.

And Jesus goes.

That's the background.

The Pharisees are trying to kill Jesus.

Jesus knows that.

The Pharisees are angry at Jesus for forgiving sins.

Remember the man through the roof, and he said, Your sins are forgiven, like rar.

How dare you forgive sins?

Who do you think you are?

And then he answers that by saying, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath, and that's it's all over at that point.

He's off in the wilderness.

But now he's back.

Verse 37, they're reclining at table, and that means you know, they do appetizers first, and they're, you know, laying down at the tables is probably before the main meal is served.

There would be wine involved, olives, and that kind of thing.

So eating with the right hand, feet out.

Behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment.

Now, a lot to be said in verse 37.

People want to go crazy in identifying what kind of sin this woman did.

Like maybe she was a prostitute, maybe she was a tax collector.

In Luke's gospel, it's more likely she was the latter than the former, but Luke doesn't say, and that's because this story ultimately isn't about her, it's about our unnamed Pharisee right now.

This woman's also not named.

Uh so she's there, but the focus is on the Pharisee.

So Luke doesn't tell you what kind of sin she had.

And people make up all kinds of things about this, like, oh, her hair was unkempt, and that means she is a prostitute.

People say that.

And all single people kept their, all single women kept their hair unkempt, so it wasn't like unique to something.

People say, oh, only like the harlots, they would have perfume.

You know, well, yes, they would, but so would lots of other women.

So doesn't, you know, you can like reason from this to like paint her what kind of sin she has, but Luke doesn't tell you what her sin was, and so probably best not to guess.

But let me tell you who knew what her sin was the Pharisee and Jesus.

Those are two people that know what kind of sinner she is.

Well, we don't get to know.

If you're curious about it, you can ask um, well, Jesus in heaven.

Ask him.

I wouldn't waste your question on that, though.

I would come with a better one.

She has this alabaster flask of ointment.

It's a it's a thing of perfume.

It's got, you know, kind of a round cylindrical bottom, it's got like a gooseneck.

You, in theory, could open the top and get some perfume out, or you could break the neck of it and empty the whole thing if you wanted to use it for anointing.

These were often inherited.

They were very, very common.

And I say they're very, very common because if you go to any archaeological find in Israel, they have this is the first thing they find.

Like they have these everywhere.

Very common in the Greco-Roman world.

They have these kind of things.

She has one, she brings it to anoint Jesus.

There are other stories of ladies anointing Jesus with perfume and crying on his feet, like that happens in other stories in the New Testament.

This is the only version of this story.

So this is not the same story that happens in Matthew or Mark, where the women do this.

Uh, there's just too many details that are different, which leads you to deduce that it's very common for sinful women to come and weep at Jesus' feet.

Uh, and that is what's driving the Pharisees crazy.

This is not a one-time event.

Like, this is par for the course.

Jesus always has these women who are forgiven from sins coming and crying at his feet, and it drives the Pharisees bonkers.

They can't imagine it.

The host is probably upset this woman is there.

He's too kind to throw her out, but he's bugs that she's there, and she's got her jar of perfume with her, which implies she was scheming this.

She's standing behind Jesus at his feet.

So remember, head in, feet out.

She's standing at his feet.

Don't picture a table where she's under the table.

Like picture, she's standing up while all the guys are laying down and she's doting on Jesus' feet.

On an awkward scale of one to ten, this would be like a million.

She's wetting his feet, it says, with her tears and wiping them with the hair of her head.

And, you know, have you ever seen somebody cry that much?

That they could wet somebody's feet with their tears?

Um, I have, I have, the the soccer team I coach lost our state playoff game.

And I'm too polite to name the players that were crying that hard.

Just like you would never name this, this Pharisee, of course, way, way not polite.

But this woman is weeping so much in the feet of Jesus that she can dry his feet with her hair, and she's kissing his feet and anointing them with her ointment.

So she's putting oil on his feet while she's standing, so she's kneeling over, Jesus is laying.

If you're crying enough to put tears over somebody's feet, it's not the quiet sobs.

This is not like a servant doting on the feet in the background.

This is a woman wailing, washing Jesus' feet.

Now, verse 39.

When the Pharisee, again, not polite to name him, who had invited him, Jesus, saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.

So the Pharisee, what is bothering him is that this unclean woman is in Jesus' house.

And what is bothering him is that Jesus is not giving any sign of indication he's aware of how unclean she is, or he would give her the hee-ho from this fancy dinner.

He calls himself a prophet, and he can't even tell how wicked this woman is who's washing his feet.

What kind of prophet would let that happen?

Not any kind of prophet the Pharisee would vote for, that's for sure.

So he's upset, and she's a sinner, and she's touching him, and this is bonkers.

And Jesus answering, notice that Simon, whoops, again, not polite to say his name.

Notice the Pharisee doesn't say this out loud.

And you could write, somebody one day should write a book on all the times Jesus answered somebody's unspoken question.

I think that would make a great book.

This would be one of them.

Jesus, and it's the Greek word for answering him, answers him.

Simon, remember what I said a second ago?

You don't need to name him, that's just embarrassing.

Jesus calls him out.

Simon, I have something to say to you.

Wait, I thought we were talking about the sinful woman.

Why are we addressing Simon?

And he answered, say it, teacher.

Which is a pretty curt response, isn't it?

Like there's a couple ways you could say there's a difference in Spanish between dime and digame.

This is the the digame.

This is okay.

What?

Teacher?

And you know, if you are a parent of unnamed teenagers, you know this kind of response, right?

I have something to say to you.

What?

Dad?

That's this response.

Tell me, teacher, what what are you what are you scheming right now?

Well, let's see what Jesus is scheming.

A certain moneylender, it's story time with Uncle Jesus.

A certain moneylender had two debtors.

One owed him 500 denarii and the other 50.

When they couldn't pay, he canceled the debt of both.

So this is like Wells Fargo.

You owe Wells Fargo 50 denarii is two months' wages.

So let's pretend you make$100,000 a year.

Typical salary in this area,$100,000 a year.

You owe two months' wages to Wells Fargo, that would be$16,000.

So you can you can actualize this hypothetical here.

That's that's your car, maybe.

Some of you might have$16,000 of credit card debt, maybe.

You might owe a car, you might have sixteen thousand dollars that you still owe on a car.

That's a very reasonable amount that somebody might owe on a car still.

So imagine you get a phone call on Thanksgiving Day from Wells Fargo.

And they say, hey, banker's error, monopoly style, banker's error, we're giving you$16,000 back.

The car is yours, the debt is canceled.

And you understand that debt like that doesn't disappear.

Wells Fargo is assuming the debt.

Like if you forgive somebody the debt, that means you're assuming it.

Wells Fargo paid, you know, Nissan for your car.

They're canceling it, they're assuming the debt.

$16,000, you would say, that's amazing.

I'm so excited for that.

Lovely.

Okay, now, second guy owes Wells Fargo$200,000.

$500 in there, that's two years of wages.

What would you owe$200,000 on?

Like your house, maybe?

This is a different kind of phone call.

They call you on Thanksgiving to say, hey, banker's error in your favor.

We're giving you the deeds of your house.

Your mortgage canceled.

That would be exciting, wouldn't it?

It's a two very, I mean, they're absurd scenarios.

That's not actually gonna happen.

You don't turn your phone on all Thanksgiving lunch in case Wolfsworgo calls.

But that's the story he gives.

What are you gonna do?

Now, which one of them?

This is the question Jesus asks Simon.

Four times he's called the Pharisee, Jesus drops his name, and now Luke's gonna pick it up.

Which one of them will love him more?

It's not a hard question.

Simon answers him.

The one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt.

That's kind of a spicy response, isn't it?

I suppose.

Okay, do you want me to walk you through it slower?

Would that help you, Simon?

Fifty thousand or sixteen thousand dollars?

Two hundred thousand dollars.

I'll say it slowly.

Which one is going to be more grateful?

Which number is bigger?

Fifteen thousand or two hundred thousand?

I suppose.

I suppose.

Maybe he feels like he's walking into a trap.

Probably.

He's been around Jesus long enough to know that maybe one is coming.

Whenever Jesus tells a story about contrasting a Pharisee and a sinner, you're like, I detect a trap.

I suppose.

Picture him with his cigar.

I suppose.

For whom he canceled the larger debt.

And Jesus answers almost equally in a spicy way, doesn't he?

You've judged rightly.

Like, good job carrying the one on your math there, Simon.

Good job.

200,000 is more than 16,000.

Good work, buddy.

Judged.

You know, the word judged is used almost exclusively negatively by Jesus.

He says, judge not lest you be judged.

The world is under judgment.

With the measure you judge, you will be judged by it.

Your, oh, the passage we looked at Sunday, your sons who cast out demons, they will judge you, he says.

The woman says, Hey, tell my sister to split my inheritance with me.

And Jesus said, Who made me the judge over you?

He tells you, Settle with your accuser so you're not judged.

He tells the parable of an unrighteous judge.

He says, the father judges no one but has handed it over to the son.

And so when Jesus says, You've judged rightly here, it's a kind of a condescending pat on the head, like add a boy.

Simon, good work on this one.

I know it was a hard question, but you navigated it.

Then he turns to the woman, still unnamed, and says to Simon, the third time we get his name.

Now that is a funny question.

Do you see this woman?

What?

Which woman?

The one standing, wailing, washing my teeth, my feet with her tears?

Is that the woman you're talking about, Jesus?

Do you see this woman?

I love it.

I entered your house.

You gave me no water for my feet.

Americanize it.

You didn't know.

This is the guy sitting at your table for dinner and he's wearing his puffer jacket.

You know, and you're like at the main course and he's still wearing a jacket.

The neighbor walks in and says, Can I take your jacket from you?

Oh, I noticed you don't have any water to drink.

Can I get you some water?

Like that's the scene here.

Jesus says, I walked in.

You didn't take my jacket from me.

You didn't give me water for my feet.

She's wet my feet with her tears.

She's wiped them with her hair.

You didn't kiss me.

Which is, again, in our culture, we we don't have that, but Simon apparently didn't kiss Jesus when he came in, which would have been a normal thing to do to receive your privileged guest, the guest at the seat of honor.

Of course she would kiss him.

No?

You gave me no kiss.

But from the time I came in, she hasn't stopped kissing my feet.

You didn't anoint my head with oil.

She's anointed my feet with ointment.

Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven.

She loved much.

But he who's forgiven little, oh man, that person loves so little.

This is a scandalous irony here.

This is the woman in Simon's mind that means Jesus is evil and Jesus is not a prophet and Jesus is unclean and Jesus is dumb and he's a friend of sinners and tax collectors.

Like all of the accusations against Jesus are personified by this evil, sinning woman.

And now she's in Simon's house, the righteous Pharisee who is too righteous to lower himself to eat with sinners and tax collectors, too righteous to even entertain Jesus, although he's doing so now to make a point.

And somehow Jesus has turned his unspoken antagonistic thought as a weapon against him.

The tables got turned on him.

All he did was think, Jesus is such a fraud because he doesn't know how sinning this, how sinful this woman is.

That was just a thought Simon entertained.

And Jesus takes that thought, leverages it, and drops a bomb on Simon.

Again, these meals are so fraught with social danger, nothing could be this is the what we call the worst case scenario.

The guest of honor yells, rebukes, scolds.

I don't know his volume, scolds the host.

Is that a fine word?

Scolds the host in front of everybody about all the things he's doing wrong in hosting the meal.

That's again Thanksgiving Isaac.

Okay, you you brought your uncle to Thanksgiving.

You haven't seen him in years.

He's at your Thanksgiving meal, you've got your extended family there, and it's about turkey time, and he stands up at the table and says, You didn't take my jacket, you don't have the right things to drink, you didn't serve me an appetizer, you didn't put your dog outside when you know I'm allergic to him, you didn't all the things you did wrong.

Now it's turkey time.

That's the equivalent of what is happening here.

Only, you know, more so here.

All the things he didn't do.

And then he says, I tell you.

This woman.

Jesus isn't ignoring.

He's not minimizing her sin.

Some people take away from this, oh, whatever her sin was, Jesus doesn't care about it.

He's allowing it.

No, he doesn't minimize her sin.

He says, he agrees, she's a sinner.

She's a very bad sinner, very, very bad sinner.

Her sins, which are many, that's what Jesus says about her.

They're forgiven, though.

For she loved much.

But he who is little loves little.

Now, it can be confusing in English, for she loved much.

There are those, especially in the Catholic religion, that say her actions here are what is producing her forgiveness.

Like she, because she washed Jesus' feet, she has her sins forgiven, kind of thing.

And that's not true.

In the Greek grammar, it's very clear there's a cause and effect.

She is loving much because she the four here is what came before it.

She's loving much because she was already forgiven.

In other words, Jesus is the fountain of her forgiveness, not her own actions.

She is forgiven, therefore she loves.

She is forgiven.

That's why she's crying on Jesus' feet.

Maybe she knew Jesus from before.

Maybe she was in the wilderness with him.

Maybe she had an encounter that's not recorded in Luke's gospel.

Who knows?

For whatever reason, she knew who Jesus was.

She knew she was forgiven of her many, many sins.

She sought Jesus out, she wept at his feet, she broke the oil on his feet, anointed it with perfume, did the whole thing.

She's been forgiven so much.

But what about Simon?

What are his sins?

Ask him.

Simon, what are your sins?

So little.

So little.

He's hardly forgiven of anything.

Verse 49.

Those who are at the table with him begin to say among themselves, Who is this who can forgive sins?

This is the same problem he had earlier with the man through the roof.

This is why they don't like him.

He keeps telling people their sins are forgiven.

Nobody can do that.

And now Jesus does it at this formal meal of all places in a Pharisee's house.

And Jesus tells the woman, Your faith has saved you.

Again, her faith is the means of her salvation.

Not all of her actions, her faith has saved you, go in peace.

This is a scandalous story.

It's scandalous.

Because it takes this woman with her multiple sins and puts her in a better light.

Won't even name her, because she's a sinner.

And just ridicule Simon from top to bottom.

How can you be an obnoxious Thanksgiving guest?

I'll tell you how you can.

You want to be an obnoxious Thanksgiving guest?

Be cold, be ungrateful, focus on other people's sins, and be antagonistic to Jesus.

How can you be a grateful Thanksgiving guest?

Remember that your sins are so many.

You're so thankful because the Lord has forgiven you.

You've had difficult trials in this year, bad things have happened to you this year.

Perhaps it's been a difficult year, you've lost a loved one, your problems in your family, and you think, I don't have anything to be thankful for.

That's Simon talk right there.

Do you have anything to be thankful for?

Be thankful that your sins are forgiven.

Be warm to Jesus, not hostile toward Jesus, not dismissive to Jesus, not argument, not spicy towards Jesus.

Of course, you wouldn't be spicy towards Jesus around the table, but in your own heart, being antagonistic to him, wondering why some people that are worse than you are having a better life than you, some people who are worse than you seem to have a better relationship with Jesus than you, some people who are worse than you get this and that from the Lord.

He seems to love them more than he loves me.

That's all Simon talk.

If you feel your heart drawn that way, go back to your sins, which are many, and rejoice that the Lord has forgiven even you.

Lord, we are so thankful for our forgiven sins.

I've seen the story of a woman who was seeking out Jesus, going to Jesus, acting towards him, anointing his feet, kissing his feet, anointing his head.

Paul was a Pharisee.

Friends with Luke, of all people, called himself the chief of sinners.

It's not a stretch to imagine the Apostle Paul seeing himself as Simon in this story.

We don't know what happened to Simon if he was humbled and forgave.

We don't know what will happen to those around us who are here today.

I know there are many who are here today that are not believers.

I pray that they would take account of their sin.

They would recognize that they are great sinners.

They would see in this story, they would identify with the woman more than with Simon.

Lord, help us have the grace to do that, the humility to do that.

So that you get all the glory.

We're grateful for you, our Savior.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.