Text: Luke 7:36-50
Topic: How contrast helps make us grateful

Introduction
• Illustration: Schmidgall tells how his family took for granted the front door until it broke. Then they had to deliberately stop to ensure the door closed each time they walked out.
• Illustration: College students, after eating institutional food for three months, look forward to eating food at Thanksgiving.
• Contrast is important in developing an attitude of gratitude in our lives.

The story of Simon the Pharisee and the sinful woman is a lesson in contrasts.
• Simon invites Jesus to the banquet to make himself look good. He is critical, superspirtual, and proud.
• However, the woman is humble; as she weeps, she washes Jesus' feet, a behavior in stark contrast to her past.
• Jesus stops to teach Simon the lesson of contrast.

The first lesson in this event is the importance of understanding or revelation.
• Simon has a false sense of security: he doesn't realize that while the prostitute has a debt, he is in debt too.
• Illustration: Operation Greylord was a scandal in Chicago in which judges stole $50 and $100 at a time, which they justified, saying it was only small amounts of money.
• Illustration: Saved at a young age, Schmidgall never did anything he percieved as terrible; he did not recognize a lot of contrasts in his life.
• Sometimes we have contrast and don't know it; we need to recognize that apart from Jesus we are nothing.
• The woman has this attitude; she knows she has a debt and although she is a hardened person, she accepts her obligation to welcome Jesus.

The second lesson in this event is the importance of perspective and wisdom.
• Gratitude grows out of our view of both the nature of sin in our lives and the nature of God's love, as evidenced by the woman's actions in the story.
• Simon was not grateful because his pride blinded him to the contrast of himself to Jesus.
• Illustration: Schmidgall asks which is worse: a tornado wiping out a town, or poison in the water destroying the population. The tornado is no worse than the poison; likewise, the woman's sins are no worse than those of Simon.