The following is an excerpt from a guest blog I wrote for my friend Cameron Combs.
If you wanted to sum up Jesus’ central message to the Pharisees it would be “Loving God is not a competition, and even if it were, you’d all be losing.”
When a sinful woman barges into a pharisee’s house to anoint Jesus’ feet with expensive oil from her alabaster jar, the religious leaders look down on her ridiculous act. If she really loved God, she wouldn’t be so sinful, and she wouldn’t have wasted that oil. She would have sold it and given the money to the poor. Duh. Obviously.
Jesus then shows them that they’re judging this competition all wrong. In pharisee’s eyes, the one who is the purest, cleanest, most right standing is the winner. They’re the ones who love God most. But that’s not how Jesus sees it. It’s actually the one who is the most sinful, yet turns to God. It’s the one needing the most forgiveness who would love God most because they would be the one who fully understands how incredible His love is.
It’s almost like Jesus is being sarcastic.
Those poor Pharisees. If only they weren’t so perfect. If only they were open about the sin in their hearts, then maybe they could love God as much as this woman with the alabaster jar. But alas, from how they speak about themselves, you can tell they’re far too good. If it really were a competition for who loved God most, they’d all be losing.
This is from a post in a series of reflections on Flannery O’Connor’s short story, Parker’s Back. It’s a great short story. You can read it here. Then read the rest of my post (here) to see how this ties to O’Connor’s story.