A Pharisee named Simon has invited Jesus to dinner. A woman known in the city as a sinner has entered uninvited, wept at Jesus's feet, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with expensive perfume. Simon is quietly scandalized. Jesus reads Simon's thoughts, tells a parable about two debtors — one forgiven much, one forgiven little — and then names the equation that the parable illustrates. The woman's extravagant love is the fruit of an extravagant forgiveness. Simon's critical distance is the fruit of believing himself to be a small debtor.

From the writers we read together

Brennan Manning

Franciscan priest and author of The Ragamuffin Gospel (1934-2013)

Manning spent his ministry arguing that the problem with most Christians is not a shortage of moral effort but a shortage of experienced forgiveness. The woman in Simon's house is the patron saint of the ragamuffin: she knows she owes everything, she does not pretend otherwise, and so her love is unguarded and excessive. Simon knows the same theological facts but has not felt them at the depth that produces weeping at Jesus's feet. Manning would say that is Simon's real poverty: not sin but the illusion of its absence.

The verse contains a warning that is easy to miss: “he who is forgiven little, loves little.” This is not a description of a different category of person. It is a description of what happens when any person — including the church, including the long-term Christian — loses contact with how much has been forgiven. The love of the house-church becomes polite and managed rather than extravagant and weeping. Manning's prescription was simple: go back to the debt. Count it again. Let the number land. Then see what comes out of you.