Do you see this woman – 14 June 2013?

Turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?  [Luke 7:44]

Well, no, he didn’t.  What Simon the Pharisee saw was an exasperating interruption to his dinner party, a scandalous event in his home, an embarrassment with his guests, a nuisance, and the effrontery of this local woman.  I imagine Simon was himself an upright and exemplary man – although he evidently thought he could omit the normal courtesies of foot washing when he welcomed Jesus as a guest.   I don’t see him as hypocritical.  To Simon it would have been normal and necessary to see people under important social and religious labels – the righteous and the unrighteous, the devout and the irreligious, male and female, Jew and foreigner, safe and unsafe, clean and defiled, productive and idle.  So no, he did not see this woman.  I imagine he neither knew nor cared about her personal circumstances or the demons she endured. 

Contemplative life typically and steadily renders us uneasy about social labelling.  We come to see that pinning a label on someone, placing them in some convenient category, may satisfy our need for order and control.  It may justify certain courses of action – this person is loose living, so my kids may not play at their house – this person brought his problems on himself, so it’s his own fault and I won’t be coming to his aid – this person is hopeless, so lock him up and throw away the key.  Pinning labels belongs to a simplistic moral universe, because the labels are at best only partly true, and because they relieve me of having to understand things better.  In contemplative life and prayer we may see the shallowness and injustice of labels that have been pinned on us – and even when they were true, they were short on mercy and grace. 

So no, Simon didn’t see the woman.  Jesus did.  Maybe he didn’t like all that he saw, but he knew there were things to understand.  She had been speaking the language she knew, which was pain and sorrow – and, said Jesus, also love.  She washed his feet, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with oil.  Whoever she was, she was capable of something beautiful.  And if Simon is blind to it, how sad is that.  Her sins, said Jesus, which are many, are forgiven – because she loves.  So there is something utterly basic in spirituality for Simon to learn here, for all his religious leadership and authority.  She may have broken all the rules, but what God sees is her heart’s longing and her love.