A man wanders into a small antique shop. Mostly it’s cluttered with knickknacks and junk. On the floor, however, he notices what looks like an ancient Chinese vase. On closer inspection it turns out to be a priceless relic from the Ming dynasty whose value is beyond calculating. It’s worth more than everything else in the store put together. The owner clearly has no idea about the value of this possession, because it’s filled with milk and the cat is drinking out of it.

The man sees an opportunity for the deal of a lifetime. He cleverly strategizes a method to obtain the vase for a fraction of it’s worth. “That’s an extraordinary cat you have,” he says to the owner, “How much would you sell her for?”

“Oh, the cats not really for sale.” said the owner, “ She keeps the store free from mice.”

“I really must have her,” the man countered, “Tell you what-I’ll give you a hundred dollars for her.”

“She’s not really worth it,” laughed the owner, “but if you want her that badly, she’s yours.”

“I need something to feed her from as well,” continued the man, “Let me throw in another ten dollars for the saucer she’s drinking out of.”

“Oh, I could never do that. That saucer is actually an ancient Chinese vase from the Ming Dynasty. It is my prized possession, whose worth is beyond calculation. Funny thing though, since I’ve had it I’ve sold seventeen cats.”

Let’s talk about the ability to properly assign value, and we are going to focus particularly on the value of human life. Yours and others. Every human being carries a invisible sticker from God that says, “made in my image, worth the life of my Son, the Savior of the world , Jesus Christ. My prized possession whose value is beyond calculation.

I want to talk to you on the subject ;

Becoming like Jesus

What I’m going to do is take a series of snapshots at different intervals in Jesus life and we’ll dig deep into just what his character and behavior were like then we’ll look at how that should affect our own lives and responses.

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2 NIV)

Let’s take this just a little piece at a time

36 Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table.

Jesus arrives at the home of the religious leader for dinner. Luke makes a point of telling us that Jesus came at the invitation of the Pharisee because an invited, visiting rabbi in someone’s home automatically meant that certain rules of etiquette would have to be followed.

Week before last my wife invited Miss America 1997 and her husband, a former congressman to stay in our home. My wife’s first move of etiquette was to make sure that I wouldn’t be home most of the time they were there…. What you wouldn’t do in that kind of a situation is yell from in front of the TV for them to come in, then let them mill around the house fending for themselves while you sat surrounded by Twinky wrappers watching the rest of your favorite TV program. It would be such an insult to invite a dignitary to your home then treat them as if they didn’t matter.

In effect, that’s what this Pharisee did to Jesus that day. The customary greeting should have been a kiss. Not an expression of affection, just a polite acknowledgment of the guest arrival. (You still see the same custom in Europe and the Middle East.)

The kiss took different forms; If the guest were a person of equal social rank, the host would kiss him on the cheek. If a person were meeting someone they regarded as a teacher and they were the student; a kiss on the hand was in order. To neglect the kiss, particularly when the guest came at your invitation was a direct slap in the face. We know that is what happened because Jesus brings it up later.

Even more important was the washing of feet of a guest before the meal. You’ve all been watching the sandstorms and just plain dirt filled conditions of the Middle East and these people ate reclining. It’s bad enough to live a society of few showers and little deodorant but it wouldn’t improve the taste of your cheese curds to have someone else’s dirt caked feet brushing against your face. If a guest was of high status the host would do it himself. At the very least a guests feet were to be washed by a servant. A terribly arrogant host might just provide water for self-bathing but to provide no water at all was a total insult. In this case no water was even provided, we know because Jesus said so.

A good host would provide oil…scented oil…perfume to his guest to put on his face. It helped mask any other unwanted and unappetizing odors.

So…Jesus arrives; he is no longer an obscure carpenter, He is a renowned teacher; people are coming from other countries to hear what he has to say. Yet He’s invited to the home of a Jewish religious leader, then deliberately denied a greeting, water for his feet and anointing oil for his head.

Believe me when I say…everyone noticed. The tension in the room was probably thick enough to cut with a knife. That’s the setting of this story, that the border of the snapshot, but that not what the picture is about…..

II. The Divine Appraiser begins Appraising

In the courtyard of the noble and well-to-do in the first century it was not uncommon to see all kind of locals looking on at the guests. A good host might even provide some food for those on the periphery. Somewhere around the periphery was a woman She may have even been an employee of the Pharisee… she was a prostitute! (I didn’t accidentally put those two sentences together) Let me tell you about this woman:

This was not some Jewish girl who decided to become a prostitute to make good money. We know from other scriptures that a Jewish girl who was caught in any sexual act outside of marriage was condemned to death. Roman law had stopped them actually putting adulterers to death but it was a cinch that this girl was not just a rebellious teen. Prostitutes were usually slaves who had been captured in war or abandoned as infants then raise to be involved in the sex trade. Sometimes daughters were sold to pay a debt. It’s interesting who seemed willing to buy someone’s daughter and use her in a little home based business It’s significant that those who forbid illicit sex among their girls would embrace it with someone else’s little girl.

Here was a woman who had known rejection on every side. She knows what it means to be used by people who despise her. No decent person would speak to her, welcome her or acknowledge her, in front of other people. Strangely doors that were closed to her in public would mysteriously open to her in private.

Perhaps this hopeless girl hears Jesus speak and in his voice she hears something different. Perhaps here is finally a person who would value her, not for any sexual reasons but just because He appraised her as having worth.

She hears that Jesus will be having dinner with Simon the Pharisee. She makes her way among the onlookers. People noticed her and pull away. Some out of revulsion, some out of fear that she will acknowledge she done business with them. What if man is from God and what if God could actually love her, not for what she’s done but for who she is.

Something here emboldens her to do something she might never have normally done. I think that she along with others is waiting for Simon to kiss Jesus. He doesn’t…. He treats Jesus like other people have treated her. Something inside of her responds. She perhaps sees other people having their feet washed and then Jesus pointedly being overlooked and finally making his way with dirt caked feet to a place at the table that would certainly not have been a place of honor. Some may have expected him to stomp out of the house slamming the door behind him…. He didn’t. Maybe he walked around the table twice and there was no little place card with his name on it. Finally a couple of people grumblingly make room for this dirty ,unwashed guest. He accepts the humiliation without response.

You see. He had come to be the Savior of the world…He wasn’t there for the food, He wasn’t there to be seen in the presence of society’s greats. He had his eye on a used up shell of a woman standing off from the table and guests…. And she was starting to cry.

All of her anger and bitterness for years of mistreatment wells to the surface as she watched this gentle man mistreated. In his eyes there was no bitterness, there was compassion and love…. Perhaps He looked over at her…there was no lust in his eyes, there was no revulsion, there was compassion!

She couldn’t stand it! What could she do to right the wrong being done to this gentle man? She couldn’t provide the kiss of greeting, everyone would interpret that totally the wrong way. She couldn’t even kiss his hand. She glides up to where his dirt caked feet are sticking out behind the back of the guest beside him and crouches at his feet.

Jesus probably looks back at her as does everyone in the room. In all the eyes around her are revulsion or guilt, or lust. She looks directly into Jesus eyes, she sees what she has not seen in a man’s face in perhaps her whole life. She sees love, not lust, love! A pent up dam inside of her breaks and out gushes years of pain and heartbreak.

37 When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38 and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.

As she soaked his feet with her tears she did what no woman in her society would ever do. She took down her hair in public, something that would be grounds for divorce if a married woman did it in front of another man and began to wipe his feet with her hair. What did she have to lose? Her reputation couldn’t be any lower than it was.

38b Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

She took out her jar of perfume and poured it all out on Jesus feet in an act of complete consecration: This was probably an alabaster flash worn around her neck used in a day of low hygiene as a necessary tool of her trade. She pours out, not a little of the perfume but all of it…She empties it! She will not be needing it anymore!

III. The Divine Appraiser delivers his Judgment

Simon is watching this scene unfold; Luke gives us his exact reaction:

39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is-- that she is a sinner."

For Jesus this time of public humiliation is not about him. In his mind this, and every other scene that unfolds in his life, is about bringing the greatest amount of redemptive grace to bear in the lives of the greatest number of people. Jesus has no animosity toward Simon for being treated like dirt…in fact he is going to try to get Simon to repent right along with the prostitute.

40 Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." "Tell me, teacher," he said. 41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"

Simon knows where this is headed but he is powerless to stop it. Jesus so commonly used pure logic to trap those who thought themselves the wisest guys in town. Simon knew if he answered with the truth he would be opening the door for forgiveness to this nasty prostitute and condemning he and all the other nose-in-the-air Pharisees. If he answered wrong everyone would know he was losing the argument to this self-made Rabbi anyway. This is wonderful, he brings Jesus to his house, apparently for the purpose of humiliating him in front of the town and he ends up a pawn in the hands of one far wiser than him.

43 Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said.

Ding, ding, ding…. You’re the winner, give the man his prize.

Now watch this… this is one of the great conversations in Scripture. Up to this point the conversation is between Jesus and Simon, and it continues to be so but Jesus changes one dynamic. Notice what it is:

44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman?

He’s bringing the woman into the conversation. What he says will be as much addressed to her as it is to Simon; and he’s forcing Simon to look where he is looking…. At the prostitute. Simon is going to be forced to deal with forgiveness of this one he considers below forgiveness and the woman is going to get the full brunt of his lesson to Simon.

The woman tears running down her face is getting the first loving attention of perhaps her whole life. Everyone in the room is focused on her and what is getting ready to happen. In the next few seconds the religious pride of one is going to be stripped bare and exposed for how awful it is and the awful sin of the other is going to be wiped out as if it never existed.

"Do you see this woman?

44b I came into your house.

1) You did not give me any water for my feet,

(you should have washed my feet yourself)

2) but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

(she made a common courtesy an expression of the heart)

3) You did not give me a kiss,

(you should have kissed my hand)

4) but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.

(unwashed and dung covered like you left them)

5) You did not put oil on my head,

6) but she has poured perfume on my feet.

( she gave me the best she had; she gave me all she had)

Remember, the woman is taking in this whole conversation as Jesus recounts the faith in her heart that have actions have shown on the outside. And then says to Simon the one thing that the needs to hear more than any thing else in life…

47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven-- for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."

Don’t miss what just happened here. He’s not saying to Simon I forgave her a lot; but you don’t need much forgiveness because you don’t have much sin. Simon thinks he has little or no sin but Jesus is saying that his great sin has not been forgiven. His sins are every bit as great as the prostitutes and until he admits them they cannot be forgiven.

Simons sins of just the last hour are:

Lips that won’t kiss

Knees that won’t bend

Eyes that won’t cry

Hands that won’t serve

Perfume that won’t leave the jar

His sin is a heart that will not submit… a life that will not change.

If Simon could see it he would fall down beside the prostitute and beg for forgiveness. We have no account that he ever did. We do know the woman’s future

48 Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."

49 The other guests began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?"

50 Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

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