Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 75 · March 16
Which of Them
“Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
You have read this verse and felt the floor move. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much. It sounds like a price. She produced enough love, and the forgiveness followed, which would mean everything hangs on the size of your feeling, and you already know what yours is like on a wet Tuesday.
Settle it from the story, because Jesus settles it a few lines earlier and makes Simon do the settling. A creditor, two debtors, one owing five hundred pence and one fifty, neither able to pay, and he frankly forgave them both. Then the question: Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answers, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. Jesus tells him he has judged rightly. In that parable the cancelling comes first and the loving comes out of it. Simon has just agreed to that arrangement, and he is the host at the table. Whatever the next sentence means, it cannot mean the reverse of the story told to explain it. And the last thing Jesus says to the woman rests on neither: Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace. Two people are in that room, and the verse reaches them from opposite sides.
Simon invited Jesus and skipped the courtesies, no water for the feet, no kiss, no oil for the head. His trouble is arithmetic. To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little, and Simon's estimate of his own debt is where all of it starts. Nobody is asking him to feel more; he is being told his figure is wrong.
The woman is at the other end of the ledger and knows precisely what she owes. She has walked uninvited into a Pharisee's dining room, in front of men who know her name and her trade, and is weeping on a guest's feet with her hair down in public.
The order holds for both of them. Love of that size is what being forgiven produces in a person, and it was never the fee. So if your love feels thin this week, the useful question is about the number you have written down for your own debt, and who checked it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 75 is Through Not Around (Isaiah 43:2).