“You know the stories. Time and time again Jesus defends a single woman, often a sinner, against a group of men. Why?”
I asked this question last Sunday when I preached in Oslo, and it has been asked everywhere since the Gospels were published. Even before that. “The stories must have happened as they were written, because it was completely incomprehensible and revolutionary for a man to defend a sinful woman back then,” I said from the pulpit in the Mission Church. I was invited to a conversation with Pastor Erik Andreassen and to preach from the story of the day a woman approached Jesus while he was about to eat with other men. She proceeds to wash his feet in her tears and dry them with her hair, and he lets her do it. It must have taken quite some time, and meanwhile the men just sit there and watch. “Why does Jesus bother with these sinners? Didn’t he have better things to do,” I asked, allowing myself to answer. “I know I’m a woman and that my words about other women can easily be dismissed as sweet sisterly solidarity, but I’m not actually talking about the women. I’m talking about Jesus. It’s about much more than gender roles. It’s about Christianity. It’s about the crucial step Jesus takes when he is sent into the world to walk around here. It’s about the core of Christianity. Only with Jesus are women counted as human beings. That’s the big change that Christianity brings. That’s the big difference.” Read the full sermon and the accompanying text below.

Or click here to watch my sermon streamed.

Sermon for February 25, 2024, Oslo Mission Church

Luke 7:36-50, The woman in the Pharisee’s house

One of the Pharisees invited Jesus to dine with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and sat at the table. Now there was a woman living in sin in that city. When she heard that he was sitting at table in the Pharisee’s house, she went there with an alabaster jar full of oil, stood behind him weeping at his feet, and began to wet his feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair, and she kissed his feet and anointed them with the oil. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he thought to himself: “If that man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him, that it is one who lives in sin.” Jesus then said to him: “Simon, I have something to say to you.” He replied: “Say it, Master!” “A moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. Since they had nothing to pay with, he forgave them both their debts. Which of them will love him more?” Simon answered: “The one he forgave the most, I think.” Jesus said: “You are right.” Turning to the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house; you gave me no water for my feet; but she has wet my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn’t give me a kiss, but she has continued to kiss my feet since I came in here. You did not anoint my head with ointment, but she has anointed my feet with oil. Therefore I say to you: Her many sins are forgiven, since she has loved much. He who is forgiven little loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at the table began to think to themselves: “Who is he who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace!”

She has loved much, Jesus says of the woman. She has lived much, he could also have said. She has been with many, given much, received much, exchanged love and skills, not holding back. She has lived life. Lived a little too much, you can understand. That’s what a female sinner is like. This is someone who goes to Jesus and lets her tears flow. She washes his feet in her tears. In her own tears. She even kisses them. And wipes them with her own hair. She gets close to Jesus. As close as you can get. Yes, actually closer. And Jesus lets her do it. Why does Jesus let her do that? Why does Jesus let the woman get so close? He gives the answer himself. First by letting her do what she wants. Then he puts it into words. It’s often like that with him. He shows us what the right thing to do is, and then he explains it in words. What is he showing and what is he saying? He shows us that he recognizes her and takes her feelings seriously. He lets her do what she wants to do. She wants to show him her love. And he accepts it. Meanwhile, the men sit and watch. They can’t help but notice her. A woman who has loved much, lived much. Only when they – we – see her, really see her and her whole life – only then can we see how much she does to show him that she loves him and wants to be forgiven by him. Only when we see the other person as Jesus sees them do we see the person. Jesus shows her off. He shows the men at the table who she is. And he takes the time to do it. It takes time to wash feet with tears and dry feet with hair. A long time. The men at the table just have to wait. Just have to sit and watch. They do nothing while Jesus teaches them. He shows them the wonder that we humans can love and forgive each other. But they see nothing. When she finishes, Simon speaks and shows that he has not had eyes to see with. Neither he nor the others have seen the human being that the woman is. They only see that she is a sinner. They do not see what Jesus wants to show them. They have no eyes to see. They sit there, a group of men, and they are blind. They refuse to see with Jesus’ eyes. Only when Jesus explains it to them in words do they begin to think to themselves, as it says. But it doesn’t help. They still don’t see her. They still don’t understand what Jesus wants to show them. They don’t understand Jesus.

They don’t accept his teaching – his display of the wonder of love. The men don’t seem to understand what he is doing. Not even at the end, when he tells her that she can go away in peace. They don’t get it. She’s a sinner, Jesus knows that, he doesn’t deny it. But she’s not just a sinner. She is a person, a person who loves and has the courage to show it. She loves Jesus and dares to show it in a house full of men who may have even slept with her, but on this day look down on her, despise her, are embarrassed to be in the house with her. Only Jesus takes her in. For me, the scene belongs to the day, the men – maybe the same ones, maybe different ones – that we hear about in the Gospel of John chapter 8. You know the story. A group of men come to Jesus with a woman they tell him has committed adultery. Like the woman in the Pharisee’s house, she is also a sinner. The man she slept with is not. Only she is. Again, a group of men are against a single woman – a single woman and Jesus. He alone defends the woman. The stories must have happened as they were written, because it would have been completely incomprehensible and revolutionary for a man to defend a sinful woman back then. Not only does Jesus stand alone in front of a whole group of men. He does it on behalf of a woman. On behalf of the kind of people who back then had no rights at all. Women didn’t own themselves. They were owned. They were slaves, as slaves were. Owned by fathers and husbands, or by the eldest brother or son if they were widowed. Why is Jesus dealing with these sinners? Didn’t he have better things to do? Why does he have to sit there at a lunch table and get covered in tears, or stand in a square and defend a woman every other man wants to stone to death? What is he doing? And why is it in the Gospels and not just out in some apocryphal text that wasn’t deemed good enough to be holy? What the hell is going on here? Why are these female sinners so important? Why not just another man or a pretty wife? Because those aren’t the only two female sinners. There’s also a female sinner he meets at the well in Sychar. She has had five husbands. But it is to her that he first reveals himself as the Son of God. Why not to someone who deserved that honor? I know that I am a woman and that my words about other women can easily be dismissed as sweet sisterly solidarity, but I am not actually talking about women. I’m talking about Jesus. What is he doing? What is Jesus doing? He’s the one I’m listening to, watching, following. What is it that we hear that he does? What is Jesus showing us?

He not only accepts the sinful women, he also emphasizes them. Gives them a prominent role in his work. And does it right to the men’s faces. Why, I wonder? It’s about much more than gender roles. It’s about Christianity. It’s about the crucial step Jesus takes when he is sent into the world to walk around here. It’s about the core of Christianity. Remember the story that comes a little further on in the Gospel of Luke? In chapter 13? That’s when Jesus enters the synagogue on a Sabbath, like the good Jew that he is. It’s packed with people, with men – the women are out in the galleries at the edge. He starts to teach. But then a woman comes up to him. It doesn’t say how. But again, it’s a woman against a group of men. A woman and Jesus. It says about the woman that for eighteen years she has been afflicted. For eighteen years she has been crooked, crooked crippled, bowed, bent forwards, it says different things. What is wrong with her? We are not told that she has arthritis, for example, as some translators have written, no, we are just told that she is bent, forward, downward, bent, forward, downward, by Satan and has been for 18 years. What does Jesus do? First he just says, “Woman, you are loosed from your disease.” Then he lays his hands on her and “immediately she straightened up and praised God.”
Immediately she straightened up. Immediately she straightened her back. The synagogue ruler is angry that Jesus wants to heal on a Sabbath, but Jesus rejects him and then says the words that from then on also apply to the sinners we have heard about at the well in Sychar, in the marketplace and at lunch with the Pharisee. Jesus is raw. He says: “You hypocrites, will not every one of you loose his ox or his donkey from the manger and draw them out and water them, even though it is the Sabbath? But this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen years, should she not be loosed from this chain on the Sabbath?” What is he saying? Abraham’s daughter. Abraham’s daughter he calls her. The one Satan has kept bound. Kept her bound? For eighteen years. That’s a long time. Until then, Abraham only had sons. Daughters didn’t count. Only now do they count. Only with Jesus are women counted as people. That’s the big change that Christianity brings. That’s the big difference. The love of God reaches out to everyone. As hard as it is to understand. For Jesus, there are no half and whole people, people with little or no value and people with much more value than others. People are children of God, siblings of Jesus.

I had never heard of Jesus talking about Abraham’s daughter when I reread the Gospel of Luke a few years ago. Never had I ever heard them mentioned. Abraham had sons, I knew that, but daughters? Nope. It’s weird, isn’t it? It was so strange and unfamiliar to me that I called the General Secretary of the Bible Society and asked if I was stupid? Stupid, since I hadn’t heard about the two incredibly powerful words, the daughters of Abraham? No, she said, but it’s not something we talk about much. But Jesus does, I protested. Yes, she said, he does. Jesus talks to and about Abraham’s daughters. He lets them come close, lets them wash his feet, such an intimate act of loving devotion. Why does he do this? Why are they the ones chosen by him to show what he means? Because they are at the bottom of the hierarchy. At the very bottom. No matter what social group he came into contact with, women are at the bottom of their hierarchies. And if they are sinners, they are at the bottom. Only Jesus goes to the bottom. The other men of his time line up in groups and condemn and understand nothing. In the square, they throw the woman into the gravel at Jesus’ feet, but they are the ones who have to leave. I wonder how they feel when they leave? I wonder how the lunch-eating men feel when the woman has washed and dried Jesus and hears him say to her: “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace!” I wonder how they feel? Do they realize how Jesus has put them in their place? Do they realize how powerful what he has just done and said really is? The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about that.

And yet.

There is no mention of the men’s reaction at lunch, in the square or after the meeting at the well in Sychar. But in the chapter about the woman he gets to join him in the synagogue, it does say something. It says at the end that “all his adversaries were put to shame, but the whole multitude rejoiced at all the glorious things he did.” All the glorious things he did. Exactly. It was glorious that he taught us that all people, regardless of gender, are children of God.
But what about us? Who are we? Are we men or sinners? The ones Jesus defends or the ones he raises? I believe we are all of them. We have it all in us. That’s the lesson we can all learn from what he does and says. None of us are perfect and none of us are only sinners. We are at times the sinful woman and at other times the blind men at lunch who think they know best but don’t understand what Jesus says and does. We are all sometimes like the men in the square, walking away from him in silent, embarrassed self-knowledge. And we are the sinners. The ones at the bottom. The wrong ones. The outcasts. Those who love and live a little too much. But still love and live. “Her many sins are forgiven, since she has loved much. He who is forgiven little, loves little.” So he says. He who is forgiven little, loves little. These are big demands. We must love much. We have to love. It’s not always easy to love. Especially not those who aren’t perfect. Like ourselves. But we must. Jesus commands us to love. And we can, because we are already loved. When we love, we realize that within the love we show others and ourselves is the great love for us and for all others – despite all our sins, all our faults. We are loved, as when Jesus says to the woman in the market square: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more from now on”. And as he says to the woman at the well, “It is I who speak to you,” and to the woman at lunch, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace!”

And for this we say: Praise and thanksgiving and everlasting glory be to you our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who were, are, and will be one true triune God, highly praised from the beginning, now and forever. Amen. Amen.

*