Episode 627 A Sinful Woman and an Unmoved Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50)

This week, we are reading Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus, a Pharisee named Simon, and a woman who is a sinner come together at a dinner party. The emotional intensity of this story is hard to overstate. As the woman cries over Jesus’s feet, we wonder – what is the tenor of emotion that has cracked her open? Is it guilt & pleading? Gratitude or vulnerability? Is it longing?  Jesus says that her faith has saved her, but what can we say about her faith from this short story where she never speaks? And how is it that she is laid bare in Jesus’s presence, when the dinner host seems so ... calm?