Luke shares the story of when Jesus was invited to the home of one Simon the Pharisee. Despite His unflattering regard for the Pharisees, He accepts the invitation. In that act alone, we see the mercy and patience and compassion of Jesus. Who among us would like to go to dinner at the home of a serpent, a viper, someone we can’t imagine escaping the award of hell?

One of the attendees at this dinner was a woman who was a known sinner. And the problem for Simon the Pharisee is that he has no sense of his own sinfulness and his own need of forgiveness and salvation. He imagines himself to be far superior morally to this sinner woman who has entered his house. One wonders how, just by looking at her, apparently, he knew she was a sinner. Maybe he knew her from some other place?

It is a very common thing to compare ourselves to others. Comparison leads to two things: pride or despair. Some people like to keep in mind that they’re not as bad as other people. They think, “I may be lazy, I may gossip, I may drink too much on occasion, I may let a cuss word slip out now and then, but at least I’m not as bad as my neighbor Smith. Now there goes a first class sinner. Smith is certainly in the Sinner’s Hall of Fame. Of course I may have a fault or two, but I just know that I score higher on God’s worthiness scale than Smith.”

A similar attitude is what characterized many of the Pharisees. They were overly concerned with the technical details of ceremony and ritual without much thought for the content and meaning of those things. The Pharisees had a reputation for being proud and arrogant about their orthodoxy. They wanted other to see how they kept the Law, and in their own eyes they were high and mighty because of it. From their perspective, others groveled in the dirt, wallowing in immorality. To be continued . . .