The relationship between love and forgiveness

Sermon for the Festival of Mary Magdalene

Song of Solomon 3:5-6, 8:6-7  +  Luke 7:36-50

This Friday, July 22^nd, has historically been a day for remembering and giving thanks for Mary Magdalene. There were several Marys among Jesus’ disciples. We probably know Mary Magdalene best from her role on Easter Sunday, as one of the faithful women who had gone to attend to Jesus’ supposedly dead body. When she saw the stone rolled away from the tomb, she ran straight back to tell the apostles, and after Peter and John saw the empty tomb for themselves, Mary stayed behind weeping. Then Jesus appeared to her alive and finally revealed Himself to her by saying her name, “Mary.”

Mary Magdalene is first mentioned in Luke 8 as a faithful woman from whom Jesus had driven out seven demons. The Gospel you heard this evening from Luke 7 describes a sinful woman who had found forgiveness with Jesus. It may have been Mary Magdalene, but from the way she’s introduced in the following chapter, I’d say it’s doubtful.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. The story of this sinful woman is representative of any sinful woman (or sinful man) who loves Jesus specifically because she has acknowledged her sins and found forgiveness with Him. But it’s also representative of the lack of love shown by people who don’t see themselves as needing the forgiveness that’s found with Christ. In this text we learn the relationship between love and forgiveness.

The three main characters here are Jesus, the unnamed woman, and Simon the Pharisee. As Jesus sits at the table at Simon’s dinner, a woman enters and approaches Jesus with great humility. She stands before Him crying, and her tears fall on Jesus’ feet. She wipes them with her hair. She kisses them. And she pours expensive perfume on them.

Remember what Isaiah wrote? How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” That verse is applied to all ministers of the Gospel, but only because it was Jesus Himself who first proclaimed that good news, that “Gospel” of good things, of salvation, of the free forgiveness of sins through faith in Him, even to the sinner who is guilty of the filthiest acts and who has lived in open or in secret hostility toward God his whole life.

To a person like that, like the sinful woman in the Gospel, whether it was Mary Magdalene or another woman, the feet of Jesus, the One who came from God to atone for her sins with His own blood and to bring her a promise of free forgiveness, were truly beautiful, and her tears and her peculiar attention to Jesus’ feet flowed from a heart that knew just how badly she had offended her God, just how tightly she had formerly embraced the filthy devil, just how close she had been to eternal death, but now, just how wonderful her God was, who loved her still and who offered her forgiveness, life, and salvation through this Son of Man and Son of God sitting at the table in front of her.

But to Simon, as a self-righteous Pharisee, who already thought he was better than most people, who had never lived an openly detestable life, her behavior there in his house was disgusting, and Jesus’ acceptance of it spoke poorly of Him, in Simon’s eyes. If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of a woman this is, and he would send her away in the disgrace she deserves.

But Jesus took pity on Simon, too, and told him a very simple, very gentle parable to snap him out of his self-righteous condemnation of that woman who had shown such humility and love to Jesus. Two men owed money to a lender. One owed 500. The other owed 50. Neither could pay, so the lender forgave them both. Which one would be more grateful? Which one would love the lender more? Obviously, the one who owed more, and, therefore, had been forgiven more.

Then Jesus goes on to show how that little parable played out in real life. The woman who knew how terribly sinful she was, who knew she owed a huge debt to God and had no hope of saving herself, was promised the forgiveness of her enormous debt through Jesus, so she loved Him very much, like the woman portrayed in this evening’s first lesson from the Song of Solomon, who sought out the one whom her soul loved and wouldn’t let go of him once she found him, because “love is strong as death.” She showed that love by her tender, humble acts of kindness toward Jesus, with her tears and her hair and her kisses on Jesus’ feet and her pouring out of the perfume that she used to use on herself as she practiced her sinful adultery, but now pours it out on Jesus’ feet, as one who has abandoned her sinful life and has found forgiveness with Jesus and a new life devoted to Him.

Simon, on the other hand, didn’t even show Jesus the customary courtesies of a dinner host. No water for Jesus even to wash His own feet. No kiss of greeting. No oil to anoint the head. Simon thought very little of Jesus, because he thought very little of his own sins, and so he didn’t view Jesus as having done anything great for him. The one who thinks little of his sins thinks little of Jesus, too.

But the woman’s demonstration of love showed everyone the faith that God had already worked in her heart, and so Jesus says to her, Your sins are forgiven…Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Now, which came first, the pronouncement of forgiveness, the faith, or the acts of love? Well clearly the faith came first, which came from the word she had already heard about Jesus, which brought her to this dinner hall and which already made her a forgiven daughter of God. Then came the acts of love. And then came the pronouncement of forgiveness, affirming that her love flowed from faith in sins forgiven, a testimony of the righteousness that was hers by faith. And so Jesus told her, Your faith has saved you. That pronouncement of forgiveness, like the pastor’s absolution, also gave her another firm and solid word of God on which to rest her faith and build her faith, so that the next time her conscience troubled her over her past sins, the next time Satan tried to remind her of what a wretched person she was, the next time a Pharisee or another person should treat her with contempt because of her sinful past, she could turn back to those words Jesus spoke to her again and again and be comforted again by the word of Christ.

Today’s festival of Mary Magdalene is about the basics of Christianity: Repentance, faith, forgiveness, and love. Your debt of sin is far greater than you imagine it to be. Not one of us here needs to be forgiven only a little. So come to Jesus daily in humility and repentance. And believe, trust in the faithful Lord Jesus, who is the atoning sacrifice for your sins, and not only for yours, but for the sins of the whole world. Know that God promises to forgive everyone who believes in Jesus. And so, whether it’s the promise of the Gospel that you hear in every sermon, or whether it’s your Baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, or private absolution from the pastor to you individually, cling to those promises and know that when God pronounces you forgiven, not even hell itself can override it. And finally, let demonstrations of love flow from your faith in Christ and in the free forgiveness promised for His sake, so that everything you do is for love of Jesus. Resolve each day to abandon your sin and to live for Him who loved you and gave Himself for you, that you might no longer be a slave of sin, but a “slave” of righteousness. Let the example of the woman in this evening’s Gospel—and of Mary Magdalene herself—spur you on to love Jesus as she did, always remembering the depths from which Jesus pulled you up, so that you never despise His forgiveness as Simon did.

Repentance, faith, forgiveness, and love. These are the things we learn from the Gospel for St. Mary Magdalene’s day. May the Lord make us imitators of her and of all the believing women in the Gospels who loved much because they were forgiven much. Amen.