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Shabbat Shalom. This morning we will be continuing our series on the parables of Messiah Yeshua. This shabbat we will be looking at two of my favorites in the Gospel of Luke. The parable of the Two Debtors and the parable of the Rich Fool. Both parables share a theme in looking at life from Adonai’s perspective and not our own. In both parables we see the danger of trusting in our own understanding and having a very limited perspective.
Our first parable is the parable of The Two Debtors. It is found in Luke 7:41-43, but to really understand this parable we need to understand the story surrounding it in Luke 7:36-50.
We begin with Yeshua being invited to the home of a Pharisee named Simon to have dinner with him. This was a meal for Simon to evaluate this popular prophet and rabbi. Most likely he had heard of Yeshua’s reputation and wanted to see things for himself. But this was not a casual dinner like we might have inviting a friend over. Simon hosted a banquet for Yeshua which would have had many people attending. It was also Jewish custom to have these sorts of banquets in an open setting. The doors would be open, and strangers were welcome to come in and see the meal. There might also been some who were poor who would come to ask for food and receive it.
Simon as a Pharisee would have been well read on Jewish Law and customs, trying to live a life of serious ritual and moral purity. Many people today see Pharisee as synonymous with “bad” and that’s a real oversimplification. While there were many issues with the Pharisees that Yeshua pointed out they were also the champions of the poor and the common person. They were not the elites like the Sadducees but were more middle-class businessmen and the minority.
Yeshua arrives and reclines at the table. Everyone is eating a delicious meal and having engaging conversation. The dinner is pleasant and benign until something scandalous occurs. Something that would be scandalous to most Jews, but especially to a Pharisee like Simon who takes the Law and being pure incredibly seriously.
We read in Luke 7:37-38: A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Yeshua was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
For this woman to approach Yeshua and begin anointing Him means she had probably heard Him preach before, maybe even earlier that same day. She had heard that He was offering forgiveness for sins and His message pierced her heart. The Lord had gotten hold of this woman and she decided to act when hearing where Messiah Yeshua was. We don’t know this woman’s profession, she may have been a prostitute, in which case her perfume would have been used in her profession, or she may have just been a woman known for adultery. Regardless of her sins, she is a woman who is well-known to Simon and his guests. This is a very unwelcome visitor to what had been a great meal.
Imagine someone shunned and despised like this woman stepping through the people watching to approach the table. To go up to Yeshua and begin began kissing and anointing His feet and wiping them with her hair. To us today this would be shocking, but to this dinner crowd it was much more serious and an incredible breach of manners. Just the act of her being an unclean person touching Yeshua would have been bad enough. Add to that she is kissing his feet, something only done in the very low circumstances. Finally, to let down her hair in public would have also been considered a shameful and possibly seductive act.
But we know there was nothing sensual taking place here. She was a woman weeping over her sin and the joy of who she had found in the Messiah. These are tears of gratitude and a showing of that gratitude in lowering herself to anoint Yeshua’s feet.
Simon’s reaction is shared as the story continues.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Simon saw this woman as just a sinner, a woman of bad reputation who should have been nowhere near Yeshua. Simon has now made up his mind about this rabbi, that He was not a prophet at all. Because a good prophet to Simon should keep sinners at a distance. They should minister to the people but make sure to keep a wall up. You can approach but not too close and certainly nothing like what this woman was doing. Simon could only see this woman from a human perspective. He saw her just for her reputation and judged her accordingly and Yeshua as well. He couldn’t see that something different was taking place here, that this woman had been changed.
Too often those in the world around us and especially those of Messiah’s Community only see people for their issues or surface appearance. We push away people who are different than us without getting to know them or where their hearts are. We quickly judge whether someone is “good” or “bad” and then tend to ignore anything that contradicts our first judgement. Psychologists have determined that it takes us less than a second to make a first impression about someone. We also can suffer from confirmation bias, where we set aside information that disagrees with our opinions and elevate anything that confirms it.
Simon let his opinion of this woman cloud his judgement. He did not see that her crying over Yeshua showed something had changed in this woman.
Yeshua though answers Simon’s thoughts with His parable, showing that He is indeed a prophet even though Simon does not realize it and that He sees things very differently.
Yeshua answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Yeshua said.
So, as Simon sits there silently casting judgement on Yeshua and this woman, Yeshua speaks to the heart of the issue with His parable. There is a very big difference between these two debts. 50 Denarii represents a few months of work, 500 represents several years of pay. Simon would have most likely seen himself as the one with the smaller debt and this woman with the bigger debt.
We can see Simon reluctantly agree with the obvious, that the one with the bigger debt will be more grateful and loving when they are released from it. Yeshua then explains the message of the parable and shows everyone present how they should be looking at this woman. He finally acknowledges the woman who has been showing love and gratefulness to Him.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.
Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Yeshua of course knows that Simon can physically see this woman, but He is asking Simon to look deeper. Does Simon really see this woman? Who she is, what she is doing, and most importantly where her heart is? Or does he just see her reputation and his own judgement of her?
Simon was not required to do everything listed for Yeshua, giving Him a kiss and water for his feet. But his lack of generous hospitality shows how little he loves and how little his compassion is. In contrast this woman has a higher place in the eyes of our Messiah because she has shown such overwhelming love and gratefulness in her actions.
She has shown that her sins have been forgiven and the proof is in her gratefulness. In her actions she demonstrates the fruits of the Spirit and while Simon could not see this, Messiah Yeshua clearly did.
After comparing Simon to this woman, Yeshua makes an even more startling statement to him and his guests.
Then Yeshua said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
Yeshua said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
It was not because this woman was so righteous that she was saved or because her sins were so few. After all, Yeshua specifically say her many sins have been forgiven. She was saved because she put her trust in the Son of God. She was blessed by Yeshua’s unearned favor and Simon was forced to consider if his heart was wide enough. He might have saw himself as the one with the smaller debt, but the reality is that they both were under the burden of sin and had fallen short of our perfectly holy heavenly Father.
The lesson here for us is that we need to be less like Simon and more like this forgiven woman. We need to see people beyond their sins and station in life and instead look at them the same way that God sees them. When someone comes into our congregation that seems different, we need to try and not make a snap judgement based on how they look or what we think we know about them. But to let their character tell us who they are. We must be willing to reach out to those who are considered outcasts by our society and not judge them based on outward appearances.
We also need to remember the huge debt of sin removed from us through Messiah Yeshua. We need to be grateful and show great love as well towards God and His people. That our response to God’s forgiveness should not just be a minimal amount of effort but a great outpouring of love and gratitude through His Holy Spirit. I am reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
The spirit of the Lord enables us to see people from His perspective and not a human one. To acknowledge the sins of others but share with them the hope that is found only in Him. In this passage it is clear embracing someone in love does not mean ignoring their sins. Yeshua allowed this woman to approach Him but did not encourage her sinful behaviors. Instead as she repented of her sins, she found forgiveness and was able to show her acceptance of this grace through her gratitude.
Of everything we read in this passage perhaps nothing is important as the truth Messiah Yeshua shared that whoever has been forgiven little loves little. If we have no love, then are we truly forgiven? 1 John tells us if we do not share in the love God wants us to have, we do not know Him. I am challenged by this passage to ask myself if I am showing love and gratitude for what the Lord has done for me. I also must ask myself if I am seeing people from His perspective or if my heart is narrow and I am only seeing people from my own. Am I willing to step out of my comfort zone and reach those who might be difficult, different, or distraught?
We move now to our second parable for this Shabbat, a story about a rich fool which we find in Luke 12:13-21. We begin with Yeshua teaching a crowd of people as was His custom when an interesting request takes place.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
Yeshua replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
It wouldn’t have been unusual for a Rabbi to render a judgement on something like inheritance but there is a deeper issue Yeshua wants to teach on beyond dividing up property. There is more than one kind of greed, we can be greedy for attention, power, money, and just owning stuff.
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
Notice that the man does not get rich because of how amazing he is. He becomes enriched because the ground has a great crop. We do not cause the crops to grow but the Lord, so in a very direct way this harvest is a gift from the Lord.
Now this man had gotten so rich that he had ran out of room to store his crops. It is okay to have savings, to tuck away for the winters of life, and to have a barn. But how many barns does a person need? In our times it is good to have an emergency fund, but should that fund be so huge as to never need to work again? Should we store everything away and begin to trust in our savings?
The answer is that we should not and that this rich man foolishly decides to trust in his savings. He relaxes in the supposed safety of his many possessions, but it is all for nothing. It’s interesting that Yeshua doesn’t even address this man’s eternal destiny, but rather just focuses on this life and that he dies before ever getting to enjoy it. It will be left for others to enjoy but not him.
The lesson of this parable is given to us in the final verse of the passage.
“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
It is not a sin to have money and it is not a sin to save your money. It is the love of money that is the root of evil. It is a sin to be so dedicated to money and stuff that it consumes your life. We need to look beyond our own individual concerns and to the tasks the Lord has given us.
It is important to be good stewards of what the Lord has blessed us with. Part of good stewardship is spending wisely. When we just store everything away it distances us from God because it gives us the false sense that we do not need Him. It also is bad stewardship because we are not using those resources the way we know the Lord would want. We stop helping those He puts in our path and supporting the works He has placed on our hearts. Giving to those in need and supporting His works on Earth is being rich towards Him. If we are stingy and unwilling to look at our possessions from God’s perspective, then we are in very serious danger of Him taking it all from us and teaching us the hard way what it means to depend on Him.
Both these parables I said are united in their theme of looking at things from Adonai’s perspective and not our own. In the first we see the dangers of judging people based on our own supposed understanding and in the second we see the dangers of judging our blessings and circumstances from our own understanding. In both parables there is a level of selfishness taking place. Selfishness in being so concerned how things affect us that we forget how it affects others.
There is also a lack of love in both parables. Simon shows little love for Yeshua and the rich fool shows little love towards God and those he could benefit with what he has been blessed with. Both parables remind me to widen my heart, to be willing to include those the Lord would have me reach, not just the people I like.
Our society hearing these parables would judge the rich man and Simon as being correct in their actions. That it is wise to only keep company with those who make you look good to others and to only take care of yourself. But in both cases, we see that God clearly has a different standard. The Lord makes it clear that we cannot be self-centered but must be other-centered. To be willing to forgive and to reach out around us to a lost and dying world.
So as we reflect on these parables we have to ask ourselves which standard are we following? Are we focused on ourselves or are we focused on the Lord? Are we being rich to the Lord with our possessions or are trusting in them for our security? Are we pushing away those the Lord is drawing to us because they aren’t like us?
This morning it is my prayer that the Lord would widen all our hearts. That He would expand our love and desire to help people beyond just those we are comfortable with. May He make us a community that is other-centered and not self-centered. May we look different than the society around us and that we would be known by our love for one another. May we be able to forgive one another and see each other as more than our struggles and sins. Finally, may each of us experience the deep gratitude and love that comes from being washed clean by our wonderful Messiah.