Sermon on forgiveness from Luke 7, preached by Rev Harry Newton at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church
Rev Harry Newton preaches on the story of the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus' feet at a Pharisee's dinner party.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton of Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church delivers a sermon on Luke 7:32–48, centring on the unnamed woman who weeps at Jesus' feet and is declared forgiven. He challenges the long-standing tradition — traceable to a sermon by Pope Gregory in 591 AD — of identifying this woman as a prostitute, arguing that the Greek word hamatolos simply means "sinner" and carries no specific sexual connotation. His central argument is that the woman represents every person who carries shame and baggage, and that Jesus' offer of forgiveness is universal and unconditional. He draws on personal stories — including a childhood theft, a financial crisis resolved through unexpected generosity, and a cousin's ongoing struggle with addiction — to illustrate what it looks like to receive and live out forgiveness. He closes with a strong challenge: that forgiven people are called to forgive others, however difficult that may be.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome and childhood memory
Rev Harry Newton: Kia ora, everybody. That's what you're supposed to say — kia ora back to me. Kia ora, everyone. Oh, that's far better. It's like being back at school, isn't it? I went to this one school — I'm not Greek — and I went to a Greek school, and every morning the teacher walked in and said something, and everyone responded, and then she'd whack me with the cane every single morning. So I've obviously got some baggage there. I'll process it another time.
When I was a kid growing up — well, she's still alive but she's nearing the end of her life now — there was a woman called Barb. I called her my Aunty Barb. She's not actually my aunt, but you know those people you call Aunty when you're growing up? They're just really cool. You know that Guns N' Roses song where it says, her hair reminds me of a warm safe place where as a child I'd rest? Does anyone remember that? No? Just me? Alright. One other person — great.
Barb is one of those people. There's something about her when she gives you a hug — it just transports you right back to when you're a child. She still smells the same. She's still wearing the same perfume she was when I was about five.
Anyway, the reason I mention all that is I remember we came back to New Zealand when I was about seven, on what we call furlough — mission circles. For those who don't know, my mum and dad were missionaries working in East Africa and then the Middle East. At this point we were living at an international school in the Middle East. We came back to visit, and I loved GI Joes. Anyone not know what a GI Joe is? Probably half the room. GI Joes are these awesome little — they're dolls, but they're cool. They're little soldier men that run around shooting each other.
I came back and Barb had this super cool GI Joe, and I really, really wanted it. Now, if I ever asked Barb for anything, she always gave it to me. More sugar? Sure. Honey fried in sugar? Excellent. It didn't matter what I asked for, I got it. And I went to her and said, "Hey, Aunty Barb, can I have this GI Joe?" No. You have to leave it behind, and next time you come back to New Zealand — which was three years away, for the record — you can play with it again.
So she left, and guess what Harry did? I slipped it in my pocket. And then I'm on the aeroplane flying back overseas, and I had it, and I couldn't play with it — it was joy. Every time I pulled it out, I felt guilty about the thing. Anyway, it lived in my room for three years. I looked after that thing like it was the best, most important thing in my life.
I came back to New Zealand three years later and went back to see Aunty Barb. I got to the house and went to sneak it back into the box, and she saw me. And she remembered. Have you ever been caught doing something naughty? Rush of blood to the face. I'm so sorry. And she just said, "It's okay. I love you." And she gave me a hug and said, "You still don't get to keep it. Let's go have some ice cream."
There's just something really beautiful about that story for me. It's a personal memory — it probably doesn't sound that good to you, but to me it's one of those things I remember about Barb. As I say, she's near the end of her life now, getting quite elderly, and it's one of those things that at a funeral I'll probably share. I just remember that about her.
The woman at Simon's dinner party
Anyway, it was a beautiful feeling, and it pales in comparison to the sense this woman in our story must have had this morning. She's at a dinner party — Jesus is there, they're eating — and this woman with a dubious reputation comes in and she begins to cry, snot everywhere. It's a bit awkward. And then she pours some oil on him, which is a bit more awkward. Then she starts kissing his feet, which would be next-level awkward. And then she cries and wipes and cleans up with her hair. Funnily enough, this is a bit awkward, and everyone gets a bit awkward at dinner.
This results in Jesus admonishing those around him for judging her. And he turns to the woman and says, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." What a beautiful story.
Correcting the "prostitute" label
Here's the thing, though. If you've been around church for any period of time — and if you haven't, awesome — but if you have, you may have heard this story quite a few times and heard the woman referred to as a prostitute. There is no evidence that she was a prostitute.
The word used to describe her is hamatolos. It's a Greek word. It means sinner. It comes from a word hamartia, which means to miss the mark in archery. So essentially hamatolos is a Greek word meaning to miss the mark in some sense, and it's the word that we translate in our English versions as "sinner." For her to be called hamatolos means that she's often — according to a lot of people — best identified as a prostitute. But that's not actually a thing.
Pope Gregory in 591 AD preached a sermon and got her confused with someone else in the Bible. Kid you not. If you're a Catholic and you're here today, I apologise, because I know Catholics believe the Pope is inerrant. However, in the 1960s, the Church actually admitted — a long time later — that he was wrong, and they went back and acknowledged the error. Ever since 591 AD, we've had this narrative in church circles that this woman was a prostitute.
But also what's going on here is something of a historical gender bias in the way we interpret these texts. In the original text, when she's referred to as hamatolos — sinful — interpreters would default towards assuming that a woman referred to as hamatolos was sinful because of sexual impropriety. But when the same word is used to refer to a man, they usually assume it's due to some sort of financial impropriety — for example, a tax collector, or maybe a Roman collaborator.
The point here is that the word hamatolos simply means sinner — someone who has missed the mark of God's standards — but the word itself isn't restricted to one particular course of action. The word is actually used 32 times across the four Gospel accounts in the Bible, and it's even used twice by people referring to themselves, and both times it's used by men, and both times it's not referring to anything sexual.
Peter, for example. Anyone know who Peter is? If you haven't heard of Peter, he's a bit of a twit — one of Jesus' followers — who declared, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am hamatolos," often translated as "I am a sinful man." And if you don't know the story, what triggers him to call himself a sinner is simply that he's fishing. He doesn't catch anything — apparently he's a useless fisherman. Jesus says, "Throw your nets on the other side." He does so. He gets so much fish it starts to sink his boat. And he goes to Jesus, falls to his knees with a sense of being overwhelmed, of being unworthy in Jesus' presence.
Here's my point. When Jesus says to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven," she was being forgiven for whatever it was in her life that she was carrying. She wasn't just a specific, special type of sinner.
I think the problem with saying that she was a prostitute, or a tax collector, or something specific, is that it puts her in a pigeonhole, in a box. And either we say, "Well, I'm not as bad as her — she's a ratbag," or "I'm worse than her," or something. Does that make sense? But actually what's going on here is she's the everyman — or to put it better, she's the everywoman. She is the person who represents anyone and everyone who carries a label and a past, whether it be big or small. She doesn't just represent people who have done particular things. She represents anyone who's got baggage.
And so in the same way that Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven, go in peace," Jesus says the same thing to you and me. Which is great news.
Forgiveness through grace
There's a guy — his name's Paul, St. Paul. His original name was Saul. He was an absolute ratbag. He wrote a letter once to a group of Christians known as the Colossians, and he said this: when you were dead in your sin, God made you alive in Jesus. He forgave us all our sins and has taken them away and nailed them to the cross. Not because of merit, not because we've earned it, but simply because of something called grace — meaning God's unmerited favour.
On the cross, Jesus took on all our shame, all our failings, all our inadequacies — what we mean by the word sin. And tonight at our 7 p.m. service, if you're interested, you're welcome to come. We're going to be unpacking how that happens — what the whole cross thing does and how it makes sense, because otherwise it's a bit random. But for now: he took it upon himself on the cross and proclaimed us forgiven, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but will have eternal life.
So here's the thing. Jesus offers to every single person forgiveness — for everything and anything. There is nothing that he will hold against you.
And people say, "Oh yes, but what about Hitler?" Which is fair, because no one really likes Hitler. Or Pol Pot. There's a guy called John Lennox. Anyone heard of John Lennox? If you haven't, he's in his eighties. He's an incredible man. He was at the head of Oxford University — a mathematician. I was watching this interview with him the other day. He's talking about AI and ethics, all very interesting. But in it, he talks about how he went to a Russian death row. He goes in and walks up to this barred area, and there are all these men just crammed in. And this guy walks up to him — very skeletal — and he says, with what seemed to be a ghastly grin: "I have murdered twelve women, and I deserve to be here, and I deserve to die." And then his smile broke out. He said, "But I met Jesus in this cell, and I am forgiven."
How do you make sense of that? I'm not too sure. Because what about the women — it's all horrific. But the point is, no one is beyond redemption, regardless of how terrible they may have been in life or how terrible they might feel.
And so, as I say, Jesus offers forgiveness to everyone. If you've made a decision to follow Jesus and that forgiveness is real in your life — wonderful. And if you haven't, the forgiveness is there on offer.
So here's the thing: act like it.
The courage of the unnamed woman
Be bold and courageous like the woman in our reading. It was weird for her to go into that room. It's the house of a Pharisee — a highly respected and well-regarded member of society. In some cases, they were actually feared. Not all Pharisees are bad — some of them are really good people — but some of them are ratbags.
There's a story where there's a man — he doesn't actually have a name — who's been blind since birth. Jesus comes along and slaps him in the face with some mud, heals him, and walks off. The guy goes, "Oh, that's a bit gross." Walks over, washes his face, and suddenly he can see. He doesn't know what Jesus looks like. Goes home, and everyone goes, "Wow, how did that happen?" He says, "I don't know. This guy called Jesus came up and slapped me in the face with some mud and now I can see." They say that can't be true, so they take him to the Pharisees. The Pharisees hate Jesus so much that they excommunicate the man from his community. He loses everything. His only sin being that he was healed by Jesus.
The point being, Pharisees were known to be mean-spirited. They were powerful and scary, and they could ruin your life if they wanted to. So many people — particularly people on the margins, like this woman — avoided Pharisees because they were scary.
When I was growing up, we lived in a dictatorship for a short period. You did not upset people of power. If you did, you disappeared, and you had no right to do anything about it. We have a family friend who's currently missing in Uganda. No idea what's happened to her, but she's an activist. She's disappeared, and her family are upset, but there's no one they can go to. They can't go to the police. And it's a similar thing with the Pharisees. They had power. And if you were nobody, you avoided them.
And yet, despite all that, the unnamed woman in our story put aside her fear. She not only entered the house, but went up to the table where the men were reclining and eating. She kneels at Jesus' feet, and weeping, begins to bathe his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. It's pretty dramatic.
Now, we don't know what compelled her to go in, but evidently some sort of prior interaction with Jesus — one we're not told about — had happened, and that's what compelled her to seek him out.
Honouring Jesus in contrast to Simon
What she did in her own way was honour Jesus in a way that stood in stark contrast to the Pharisee. His name is Simon. In first-century Jewish culture, if someone turned up at your house, you'd give them a kiss of welcome as a sign of honour and respect.
Has anyone ever shaken hands with a farmer? If you haven't, you can probably still use all your fingers. When you walk up and shake hands with a farmer, it's this big hearty handshake. When I became a vicar in the North Island, I went to visit this family on the farm, shook Andrew's hand, shook Paul's hand, and he goes, "Oh, you're a good man. My wife's the first vicar I've met who doesn't have a limp wrist." Okay, that's a bit random. But their point was: it's a sign of respect that you shake my hand firmly. When someone comes to your house and you greet them with a handshake or a hug, there's an element of respect and hospitality involved in that.
Likewise, in ancient times, if a visitor came to someone's house — particularly if the person was well-to-do — they would anoint the head of the visitor with a small amount of oil. What it did was push through your hair and cool you down after a hot day, also got rid of the body odour, and it was just a sign of respect.
The other thing you'd do — in sandals, as I was as a kid, wearing a garabia, which is very similar to what they would wear in ancient times, like an Arab gown, with a belt you tie up, and if you need to run you hoik it up — that's what "girding your loins" means — your feet would always be dusty and dirty. And the same thing in ancient times: if someone came to your house, you would offer them a bowl of water to wash their feet. Or if you were wealthy, you'd get your slave to do it for them. It was a sign of respect and good hospitality.
And yet Simon the Pharisee — despite knowing how to behave in polite company, the kind of person who would dine with royalty and feel completely at home — it is Jesus who has to remind him: "When I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet. But she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment."
Here was a woman who had every reason to avoid a room full of important, powerful, self-righteous religious leaders, and yet here she was, with this incredible act of courage, showing Jesus honour and respect. She understood who Jesus was and what it meant. She understood that she was forgiven, and so she acted like it.
Gratitude that moves to tears
There's something else that struck me earlier this week when I was reading this text. Have you ever been so thankful that you've been moved to tears, or at least very close to it?
I remember a few years ago — Amy, my wife, is a teacher nowadays, but until recently she wasn't working. We were living on the stipend, which is what ministers get, and the car broke down. I took it into the mechanic and it was stuffed and needed quite a bit of work. The bill was massive. And at the same time that day, we'd had all these bills come through online and emptied our bank account. We had no savings because we'd used them all to pay some medical bills for our daughter.
I was on the side of the road feeling completely and utterly defeated. That feeling of not being able to provide for your family, despite doing everything right and doing your best, is soul-destroying — I think particularly for guys. I had no idea what to do, and then I had this brainwave: practise what you preach and ask God for some help. So I did, on the side of the road.
And I kid you not, my phone rang. I answered it, and it was someone very dear to me from the North Island, saying they'd felt compelled to send us some money and had just wired it through — it should be in your account any minute now. Cheerio. Hung up. I opened my phone and there was the money.
So I went back to the mechanic, and he offered to do it for as cheap as possible — I think he felt really sorry for me. He actually said, "Mate, go to the pub, buy yourself a pint. By the time you get back, it'll be fixed." I wasn't sure if he meant fixed as in it wasn't going to be fixed, or fixed for cheaper. I trusted him. It turned out the car wasn't a death trap — it was fine. I got back, hopped in the car, bills were paid, car was working, and we'd promised the kids we were going on a holiday — that's why it had felt so awful. And there was enough money left over that we could still afford to go away for the weekend.
I'm not ashamed to admit that as I drove away, I felt a tad emotional at how God had provided in what felt to me like a miraculous way. I was so thankful.
Now, silly in comparison to this woman. But this woman in our reading — I don't know what her story was, but I do know she was so thankful to Jesus that she was willing to embarrass herself in public with tears, snot, and awkward behaviour, all because she was thankful.
In ancient times, women did not let down their hair in public — and that's not a dig at anyone who's got their hair down today, please don't hear it that way — but you wouldn't let your hair down in public. And she does. She unlooses her hair and uses it to wipe. You didn't touch people's feet because that was really, really low. When I was a child in Egypt, we weren't allowed to point the soles of our feet at people on the couch. When you're a kid you've got small feet and they poke up, so we just learned to sit on the edge of the couch so our feet were always pointing down, because it was hyper-offensive to our guests even though we were children. The point is, in Middle Eastern culture to this day, it's a demeaning thing to touch someone else's feet — and yet she was willing to do it.
Not wallowing in self-recrimination
That led me this week to a third observation. This woman doesn't seem to have wallowed in self-recrimination. She was obviously really emotional and felt convicted by whatever it was she'd been doing, and yet she didn't hear Jesus' words of forgiveness and then start arguing with him about how she wasn't really good enough to be forgiven.
I hear this a lot as a minister. People say, "Yes, yes, I know I'm forgiven, but I'm not really, because I'm not really good enough to be forgiven." But that's kind of the point. She wasn't a good person. She was known to be hamatolos — a sinner — to the extent that everyone in the room knew it to be true. She wasn't forgiven because she was already good enough. As Jesus himself said, "Those who are well have no need for a doctor, but those who are sick do. And I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinful."
Nor was she forgiven because she had somehow earned it. Her abundant love for Jesus wasn't the cause of her forgiveness. Her love for Jesus was a result and proof of her forgiveness.
What I find really interesting about this woman is that she didn't wallow in self-despair. She didn't mentally beat herself up. She simply accepted her forgiveness while also contending with the reality of her brokenness. She intuitively understood that no one is so good they don't need Jesus, but no one is so bad they can't have him.
And so in this story, we see this unnamed woman — so convicted of her brokenness and so assured of her forgiveness — that she seeks out Jesus to honour and respect him regardless of the cost to her. She understood she was forgiven, and so she behaved like it.
What happens after forgiveness
Now, we don't know what happened next. That's the end. We never hear about her before, and we never hear about her after. Who knows what happened to her?
But in other stories in the Bible, people who encounter Jesus' forgiveness always radically change their life direction. Has anyone heard of a guy called Zacchaeus? If you haven't, he was — he was short. He was vertically challenged. He would have made a good gunner in the army. He was a known fraudster and a cheat. He climbed a tree to see Jesus. And Jesus calls him down, goes to him, they have a meal together, tells Zacchaeus he's forgiven, and Zacchaeus at the end of the whole thing throws a party and turns to Jesus and says, "Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor" — this guy is hyper-wealthy — "and if I have defrauded anyone" — and we're told in the story he's defrauded a lot of people — "I will pay back everyone four times what I stole."
There's another story of a woman caught in adultery — caught in the act, hauled out of bed, naked. Maybe if she's lucky she's given a towel to wrap around herself. Notably, the man is left out of the picture, which is hyper-sexist. They pull her before Jesus and throw her on the ground. They all pick up stones. "The law says we should stone her to death. What do you say?" And there's this interaction where Jesus says, "He who is without sin, throw the first stone," and they all begin to leave, one after another, until it's just him and her. And then he turns to her and says, "Where are they? Those who condemned you?" And she says, "They're not here." And he says, "Well, neither do I condemn you. Go on your way." But here's the key point: "Sin no more." In other words, change life direction.
My point is that heartfelt repentance, combined with encountering the forgiveness of Jesus, always results in a change of life direction. Doesn't mean we're perfect. Doesn't mean we never fall.
I come from a family with a load of addicts. My brothers and I are fine, my mum and dad are fine, but my dad has 64 first cousins, and almost all of them are high-functioning alcoholics or drug addicts. It's just a thing in our family. And I've got one cousin who has really struggled. He gets sober, and then he falls off the wagon. The point here is that he is not condemned and outside of God's ability to forgive just because he struggles to keep his life change on the straight and narrow. But he does his best because he understands that he's forgiven. And when he drops the ball, he understands that he's still forgiven and he gets another chance — over and over and over again.
And I think it's safe to assume that the unnamed woman in our story, having encountered Jesus, also took radical steps to change her life direction.
The call to forgive others
And so here's the thing. Like the woman in our story, you too are forgiven. So my challenge to you is: like her, act like it. Be brave. Don't be afraid to be seen to love and respect Jesus. Be thankful. Revel in the good news of Jesus. Don't wallow. Trust. Change life direction.
But most importantly, forgive others as you too have been forgiven.
I say most importantly because Jesus expected that forgiven people would forgive. He once told a story about this. There's a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants, and when he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. As an aside, that's Jeff Bezos-level money. 10,000 talents was the equivalent of 6,000 years of labour, and the guy owed him that amount — which makes you wonder how dumb the king was to lend out that much money. But anyway, since the man couldn't pay, the king ordered him and his family to be sold into slavery. Obviously the king's not going to recoup his costs, but it's better than nothing. And he condemns this man and his wife and his children to a horrific life of abuse and hardship as slaves.
And so the servant fell on his knees and pleaded with the king: "Have patience with me and I'll pay you everything." And out of pity for him, the king released him and forgave him his debt. Great story, hey?
But if you know the next half, you know what happens. As he's leaving, he runs into his fellow servant who owes him the equivalent of twenty dollars. Seizing him, he begins to choke him, saying, "Pay me what you owe me." And his fellow servant pleaded with him, "Have patience with me and I will pay you." But the man refused, went and put him in prison until he should pay his debt.
The king hears about it, summons him, and says, "You wicked servant. I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?" And in his anger, the king had him delivered to the jailers until he could repay all his debt.
There's a huge amount we could unpack there — I'm not going to. The reason I wanted to share it, just to end, is to highlight just how serious Jesus was about the need to forgive others.
I appreciate that some of us have had horrific things done to us, and forgiving others is not always easy. Sometimes it feels impossible. But the reality is that God has forgiven the inexcusable in us, so we are called to forgive the inexcusable in others. I know that's easy to say, but it's true.
I've got a friend up in the North Island who Amy and I walked through a very horrific thing in their family life. It's resulted in the family disintegrating, people going to prison, and a whole bunch of terrible things. And she comes to church every Sunday, and she just messaged me the other day saying the same thing she always says: "I just can't forgive them." And I say, "Yeah, that's okay. You just keep doing your best to forgive, and trust that you will, because God's already forgiven you." If that's you — if forgiveness feels too hard — just do your best. Because Jesus wants forgiven people to forgive others.
His point being: you're forgiven. So act like it. Be brave. Be thankful. Don't wallow. Change direction. Forgive.
Why? Because then, like the woman in our story, you will enjoy the blessing of a genuine sense of peace that surpasses all understanding.
It sounds silly, but when I stole that GI Joe from Aunty Barb, I couldn't sleep properly as a kid. I felt so guilty. And when I came back and she gave me that cuddle and told me off but also loved me and gave me some ice cream — life was good, man. It was awesome.
In a far more deep and fundamental way, you are offered a peace that surpasses all understanding through Jesus Christ. All you need to do is accept it, and then live appropriately.
That's enough from me. We're now going to have some prayers.