We see it a lot in Luke's gospel, the gospel of mercy:
In 8:43-48, a woman with an incurable flow of blood has the audacity to touch the garment of the Lord. In 18:38, a blind man in Jericho won't stop yelling out "Son of David, have mercy on me!" even when rebuked to be quiet. In 5:17-39, a paralytic is lowered in through a roof in Capernaum to be healed.
These were physical maladies to which the desperation to be healed thrust them forward. But it is the quiet picture of the sinful woman in chapter 7 that moves me. Her shame is palpable. She has no regard for the massive "waste" of perfume she lathers on Jesus' feet. Maybe it is hard to see through the flow of tears from her eyes as the memories of her sin play before her like a cinematic film. She knows her debt to sin is huge. The Lord, too, turns to Peter and says, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.
Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown.
But whoever has been forgiven little loves little (Lk 7:44-47)
Sometimes, we don't know love until we know loss. We don't know what it is to be innocent until we have lost innocence. We don't know what it means to lose an inheritance until we're eating cornhusks in a famine.
You have been bought with a price, St. Paul says (1 Cor 6:20). "Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool." (Is 1:18)
Try as we might to appreciate each day, live in the present, say I love you, not take things for granted...it's all an effort of sorts. But when you are taken ransom, or someone you love is, you realize the pricetag on your life. Not your networth. Not your accomplishments. "You pay with your life," as the saying goes, and are a slave to what you give yourself to. Everything becomes visceral and real and desperate. Minutes are rented; memories are clung to. The freedom to come and go as you please is a textbook theory, a distant memory of another life.
When you sin, you are a slave to sin (Jn 8:34). Slaves do not have rights. You forfeit them. The woman washing Jesus' feet with her hair and tears was so burdened by her slavery, and knew so intuitively that the man before her had the power to free her from the cell of captivity, to redeem her dignity, to raise her up, that she had no composure. She smashes the jar of perfume as it is were water during a rainstorm; she puts all her poise aside to weep before the one she knows can--and does--pay the ransom for sin.
Love is proportional to the debt. And our debts--even those who others may regard as holy or with few sins to confess--are insurmountable, for the debt is our very life. Who can know what living water tastes like except those who have drank from the rancid well of sin for so long? Who can manufacture a gratefulness to the one who bought you back sans tears?
No, love recognizes the debt. It covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). It has no composure or tact or poise when one is gripped by it, but simply spills out like a smashed vessel on the floor. Charity is patient, charity is kind...but charity is desperate to consummate with the one who brought you back from the dead, paid for your life with theirs. You can never love such a benefactor enough, this one you owe your life to. This is true contrition, which waters the seedbed of ransomed love.
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