Do You See This Woman?

In this continuation of lesson 13 in his series on the Gospel of Luke, Charles Sebold concludes the narrative of Simon the Pharisee's dinner party in Luke 7:39-50. Picking up where he left off the previous week, Sebold walks through Jesus' parable of the two debtors — one owing five hundred denarii and the other fifty — and Simon's reluctant but honest admission that the one forgiven more would love more. The teaching's emotional center is Jesus' question to Simon: "Do you see this woman?" Sebold draws out the devastating irony that Simon, who prided himself on discernment, could see the woman's sin but not her worship, her category but not her personhood. Jesus contrasts Simon's dutiful but dispassionate hospitality with the woman's extravagant, costly devotion — tears, unbound hair, ceaseless kisses, and expensive ointment — not to shame Simon as a bad host but to expose the gulf between someone who thinks he belongs at the table and someone who is astonished to be in the room at all. Sebold connects this woman to Peter in Luke 5 and the centurion earlier in chapter 7, showing a pattern of people who recognize the gulf between themselves and Jesus and receive far more than they asked for. The teaching culminates in Jesus' declaration that the woman's many sins are forgiven — past tense, no conditions, no contingencies — and that her faith, not her works, saved her. Sebold emphasizes that Jesus does not minimize her sin but names it and then declares it finished, sending her away in peace as a daughter of the Father. The lesson closes with a personal challenge: are you the woman who is stunned by grace, or are you Simon, who never realized he was lucky to be here? https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermons/3...