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All of the words of the Saviour are important, even the words spoken that were strictly rhetorical. One such utterance is found in the story of the sinful woman, told in Luke 7:36f.
The story is told of a day that Christ entered the house of a Pharisee in response to a dinner invitation. We may surmise that the Pharisee was mostly motivated by curiosity about Jesus rather than by true devotion. Or perhaps he had one fearful eye on what his fellow-Pharisees would say about him entertaining the controversial Nazarene. Anyway, for whatever reason when Jesus arrived for the meal the usual social niceties and conventions were pointedly omitted: Jesus’ feet were not washed (usually the job of servant or the youngest boy present), He was not kissed in greeting by the host, and the customary festive anointing of the head with oil was not done.
Then at some point during the meal a woman, notorious for her immorality, burst into the room, crashing the party. She had learned that Jesus was there and was determined to see Him. Apparently she was well-known for her immorality, and was probably the town prostitute. Upon entering the room where Jesus and the others were reclining at table (the usual posture for such meals), she stood there behind Him crying. Then she fell down at His feet, soaking His feet with her tears. She then dried them with her hair, kissing His feet and then anointing them with the perfume she had brought with her.
Long Christian familiarity with the story can make us insensitive to how shocking this display of devotion was to those present. Such was the separation of the genders in that day that pious Jewish men would scarcely speak to a woman in public, and so this display of emotion and tactile contact was way over the top of what was acceptable. The scandal was made all the worse by the fact that she was well known as an immoral woman.
The Lord was not shaken or shocked, and He received her devotion calmly. When His Pharisaical host indignantly rose to kick the woman out, Jesus had two questions for him, only one of which he answered.
The first was about the connection between forgiveness and love. Jesus asked the teacher of the Law an ethical and legal question: if two men owed vastly differing sums of money and couldn’t repay the debt and both were freely forgiven, which of the men would love his creditor most? The obvious answer (given by the Pharisee) was: the one who had been forgiven the most. Christ agreed—and drew the obvious conclusion, namely that the woman’s great love was the result of her being forgiven a great debt. She had obviously heard Christ’s message, responded to it with repentance, and came to express her gratitude to Him for the forgiveness she had claimed. He therefore sealed her forgiveness with the assurance that her sins were indeed forgiven.
But Jesus asked the Pharisee a second question, a rhetorical one: “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44). In the context of their conversation Jesus was simply calling attention to the woman and her devotion—a devotion that contrasted sharply with the Pharisee’s lack of courtesy as a host. But the question is worth pausing to answer, because in fact the Pharisee did not see the woman. To him, she was invisible. All he saw was her reputation, the rumours of her sinful deeds—and the harm to his reputation if he let her stay at the meal. The actual woman before him he never saw at all.
The spiritual myopia of the Pharisee is one common to the children of men. Oftentimes we also do not see people as they really are. We see them as annoyances, as sinners, as bad drivers provoking our road rage, as transgressors not keeping religious laws as we think they should. We do not see them as they really are—that is, as flesh and blood like ourselves, men and women with secret struggles and undivulged heartbreaks.
Almost everyone we meet is fighting an unseen battle we know nothing about, and sometimes they are only hanging on by a thread. We do not see them or their pain, their fear, their insecurities, or their well-hidden anguish. Like us, they cover it up so well. “Do you see this woman? Do you see this man?” No, no we don’t. We only see their surface, and cannot penetrate to their hidden heart where doubt and fear lie. If we did, we would have more compassion on them than we do.
That is the message tucked away in Christ’s rhetorical question. We must look more closely at those around us. Of course we cannot penetrate the surface of those we see and observe their secret sorrow. But we can know that such sorrow exists in them, for it exists in us. Christ had compassion on the sinful woman, as He has compassion on all. We must at least try to see others as they are so that we might share with them Christ’s compassion.
