22 - Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII THE TWO DEBTORS
Luk 7:36-50. IN the Pharisee and the Tax-collector Jesus taught that complacency with ourselves excludes us from citizenship in the Kingdom, especially a complacency based on the fulfilment of certain legal requirements on which we ourselves happen to have placed the emphasis: the citizen of the Kingdom does not keep laws; he shows a certain spirit. In the Prodigal Son we have learned something of what that spirit is; to qualify for citizenship one must abandon the self-centred life in which one seeks one’s own happiness and fights for one’s own interests; the citizen sees the world as his Father’s world, makes it his home, lives as a son and a brother and asks only that he may serve the common good. In the Prodigal Son Jesus told of the joy in heaven over one sinner that returns from the far country of estrangement from God; in the Two Debtors he shows us the other side of the picture, the overwhelming sense of indebtedness of the man or woman whose past record of selfishness and wilfulness is cancelled and forgotten. This is one of the parables that help us to realize how much we have lost in being deprived of the historical context of so many of the parables. By itself the story of the Two Debtors would have been intelligible, beautiful, powerful; but with the background of the dinner in Simon’s house, when we know who the two debtors were and the conduct that called forth the parable, the abstract becomes the concrete and the figures take on flesh and blood.
Simon was one of those in the parables who spoke ’ within themselves.” Others were the Rich Fool, the Pharisee at Prayer, and the Unjust Steward. Perhaps if they had given others the benefit of their thoughts, it would have helped them to see their folly. Jesus as usual read the man’s unspoken thought. ’ Whatever else this Jesus is, he is no prophet, as so many call him; a prophet is one who can see beneath the surface; evidently Jesus does not realize that this woman, who is coming into such close contact with him, is an ’ untouchable.’
Jesus says to Simon in effect: You have been speaking to yourself; let me now say something to you.” That something was a comparison between Simon and the outcast.
One can imagine the surprise with which Simon heard himself placed in the same category as the woman of the city, the greater surprise with which he learned that the comparison was all to his disadvantage. The apostles at Thessalonica were accused of turning the world upside-down; their Master before them had delighted to make the first last and the last first. With an outspoken courage which we do not always appreciate, Jesus reminded Simon that he had neglected those hospitable and kindly customs with which an honoured guest was received; the obvious inference was that Simon had invited him simply out of curiosity. Satisfied with himself, the message of Jesus brought to him no thrill, no welcome answer to any of life’s questions, no fulfilment of any longing. The duties which Simon had neglected, the despised woman from the city had discharged, not with water from the well but with her tears, not with a towel brought by a servant but with her hair, not with the routine of the well-trained domestic but with loving gratitude. ’ The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, can separate soul and spirit and penetrate between joints and marrow.” So could the living Word; Jesus read Simon’s unspoken thought and invited him to turn his criticism on himself; yet he answers Simon’s unspoken gibe only indirectly.
It was just because he was a prophet that he allowed, nay encouraged, this woman to touch him. Love must be allowed to express itself, and wherever there is forgiveness there is love.
There has been much unprofitable discussion about the precise relation of love and forgiveness. Hope, forgiveness, penitence, love; what does it matter, except to the theologians, which comes first or whether they all come together, whether the woman loved much because she was forgiven, or was forgiven because she loved much. Where there is forgiveness, there is love; and where there is love,; such as this woman had, there is forgiveness.!’
Simon thought that what had to be explained was Jesus’ willingness to let the woman touch him. “ No,” said Jesus; ’ what has to be explained is the woman’s love, and incidentally your want of love.” Jesus does not say: ’ He who has little need of forgiveness loves little, but he who is forgiven little loves little.” The parable is of the simplest kind, hardly more than a simile; yet it lights up the whole subject of forgiveness. Most of us would confess that in this matter we are in the position of Simon rather than of the woman. We can see how thieves and other criminals, if they repent, may feel surprised that God is willing to receive them; in their case emotional gratitude is pardonable and commendable. But the case is different with respectable people like Simon and ourselves, whose sins are just the ordinary, every-day sins that everybody takes for granted and nobody worries about. In Church we pray, often at considerable speed, for mercy on us miserable offenders; we mechanically wait for the absolution, pass on to the rest of the service, and return to our work, our social life, and our miserable offences, with no feeling farther from our minds than gratitude for forgiveness. There is no point at which we are more out of touch with the spirit of the New Testament, indeed of the Bible, than in the absence from our minds of an overmastering consciousness of sin, of the need of forgiveness, of wonder and gratitude at God’s readiness to forgive. We divide sins into little and big; our own sins are the little ones. In some externals we do not correspond to the Pharisee of our Lord’s time; but in the great central fact of our complacency with ourselves, of our utter unconsciousness that there is anything seriously amiss with us, most of us might have sat for the picture. It has taken a World War to bring home to us with terrible power the deathdealing cruelty and heinousness of what we used to regard as trivial faults or even virtues in our national life. Perhaps it will take a similar upheaval at home to show us the true nature of our individual outlook, especially of the Prodigal’s view of the world as a place in which our business is to “ get on “ and enjoy ourselves.
It was no accident that when our Lord showed us a Pharisee at prayer, he put a publican in the background. It was the Pharisee’s thought and treatment of the publican and the Gentile that showed what Pharisaism meant; and if we would see what we are, it is not enough to look inside; we must look at our neighbours, our neighbours of all kinds and classes, and ask how far our selfishness, our indifference, our contempt are responsible for making them what they are.