and serve you with a quiet mind.

Pardon and peace, cleansed from sins, and living with a quiet mind. This captures the removal of objective guilt and rest from psychological shame. And Jesus did teach something similar. There’s a little noticed phrase where he brings together both this objective and subjective elements of forgiveness. It’s in the account of Jesus’ interaction with a sinful woman at the home of Simon the Pharisee. 

It is one of my favourite accounts of Jesus’ life in all his biography. Basically Jesus is invited to the home of a Pharisee (a religious conservative), and no doubt the house is filled with other religious conservatives, when a sinful woman (that’s how she’s described) walks into the house. And she’s gate crashing the party and weeps behind Jesus. Wets his feet with her tears and then wipes his feet with her hair and kisses them and pours perfume on them. It’s really dramatic. And of course the Pharisee is outraged and thinks that Jesus can’t be a prophet if he’s letting this woman touch him. And then Jesus sort of turns on his host and defends the woman by telling a parable. 

The parable is that there’s two people who owe a money lender different amounts, one owes 500 silver coins, the other 50 silver coins and the money lender mercifully forgives the debt of both. And then Jesus says to Simon, who do you reckon is going to love the money lender more? And Simon gets it right, he says, of course the person who’s had the bigger debt forgiven. 

When I came in, you didn’t greet me with a kiss. You didn’t wash my feet or anything like that. You didn’t put oil on my head, but this woman has been doing all those things for me ever since I walked in here. And, and so you can see that her many sins have been forgiven because she feels such great love. (paraphrase of Luke 7:44-47)

There’s this real sense in the story that the joy and love of relief that comes with forgiveness is a key part of what Jesus wanted the woman to experience. And then the text says, “Jesus said to her, your sins are forgiven.” He gives her this sort of dramatic statement of objective forgiveness. The other guests began to say amongst themselves, “who is this who forgives sins?” They know that only God can forgive sins and here is Jesus claiming to forgive sins, and that is first and foremost, what the account is about. Jesus’ extraordinary authority to forgive people’s sins, something only God could do.

But the woman’s joy and relief is definitely part of the story, and so part of the promise. Because the whole thing ends with Jesus saying to the woman “your faith has saved you, now go in peace.” So here is in the climax of the story, both objective and subjective elements in the Christian faith, his parting words: your faith has saved you (that’s the objective element), but also, go in peace (that’s the subjective element). I suppose it’s possible to interpret the word peace to mean objective reconciliation with the almighty, but I think that’s a mistake. 

This woman has experienced shame, a public shame. Even at this dinner party, she was a scandal, but Jesus wants to send her on her way, assured of both objective mercy from God, the relief from a debt she couldn’t pay, but also the blessing of peace, a sense of relief from shame, which produces joy and love. Go in peace. So I think my prayer book gets it right. The message of Christ provides pardon and peace cleansing from sins, and a quiet mind.

By John Dickson

Want to hear the rest of the episode?
Check out episode 39: “Guilty Conscience”