Once, driving on the dual carriageway in Cardiff, I pulled out to overtake and completely failed to notice a milk delivery truck, stationary in the outside lane. I didn't see it, I explained to the attending police officer, until I was a few yards away. Far too late to do anything other than simply pile into the back of it – doing £16,000 of damage and writing off my car. The officer was a little less inclined than me to reflect on how amazing it is that we can fail to see things that are right in front of us. Instead of engaging with this as an interesting philosophical point, he wrote me up for driving without due care and attention.

In my defence, (I fortunately didn't have to argue in court) there is a famous experiment in psychology where subjects have to watch a ping pong game with 4 players and 2 balls and count the number of times the ball crosses the net.

At the end, they are asked “who saw the gorrilla?”

To their shock and amusement, so focussed on counting the shots are they that about 80% of people fail to notice the man in a gorilla suit who has been happily wandering round the frame for about half the clip.

We see what we want to see – we see what we are conditioned to see – we see what we think is there – rather than what actually is there.

For Luke in his gospel, right 'seeing' (together with listening) is central. Seeing for Luke becomes synonymous with having faith. In the stories in chapters 6 and 7 seeing is a thread that draws them all together. Jesus teaches about removing the plank from your eye before attending to the speck in someone else's. It is when Jesus sees the widow in chapter 7 verse 13 that he is deeply moved by compassion for her, in verse 22 Jesus tells John's disciples to go and tell him what they have seen – the blind receiving their sight. As they leave, Jesus asks his critics what they had come to see when they looked at him and John the Baptist.

After our reading Jesus goes on to tell parables about being careful how you listen and about a lamp shining brightly to reveal everything to those who can see the light.

And at the centre of the gospel reading, Jesus asks Simon “Do you see this woman”. Luke ever record his body language as he does so. He does not turn to Simon and point at the woman – 'See exhibit A' lets use this person as an example of what I'm talking about. Rather it says, Jesus turned to the woman and said to Simon “Do you see this woman”.

Do you really see her Simon? Not what you think you see. Not what you have become used to seeing, what you have been conditioned to see – do you see her. Do you see her as I see her?

But what we might wonder did Simon see?

We know that in Jesus he saw someone who was in his eyes not a prophet – because a prophet associating with sinners was like a gorilla playing table tennis to him – like a milk lorry stopped in the fast lane – just something that had never crossed his mind.

We know he assumed, as many people do, that a leopard cannot change its spots. That whatever this woman had been, that she must be still and always would be. He could see little hope for any of us, through the spiritual sunglasses he was looking through.

We know what he did not see – in her tears, in the use of a costly ointment, in her kisses, in the tender use of her hair – do did not see her love for Jesus.

But we don't know what he did see in her. What it means to be 'a sinner'. Two traditions seem to have grown up around this story which sadly are just as judgemental and unseeing as Simon. Most bibles that have added headings to stories in the text – headings which of course are not original to the bible text but have been added by modern interpreters, call this story something like “A sinful woman is forgiven” or “Jesus anointed by a sinful woman”. Neither of these is accurate – like Simon, these interpreters are seeing only her past – which, the story makes clear, has been forgiven some time before. Jesus has clearly already met her, talked with her, forgiven her, before she comes to show her love for him in return. She is not 'a sinner' she is a disciple now by his grace.

Jesus' parable makes it clear that her tears and kisses are a response to forgiveness, not a way of earning it – something central to Paul's argument in Galatians where he is urging people to respond to God's salvation by loving action, rather than trying to earn that salvation by keeping themselves, as they see it, pure and separate and aloof.

A brownie point then perhaps to the Good News Bible which on this occasion gives the title “at the house of Simon the Pharisee” perhaps pointing out that it is Simon, not the woman, who is the sinner in the story – the one who needs to see his need of forgiveness – although you could argue that this has robbed the woman of her central place in the story and relegated her to the role of visual aid in an argument between two men. You could perhaps chide Luke in the same way for recording Simon's name, but not affording the woman the same dignity.

But if these titles have done her a disservice, how much more has the tradition surrounding this story libelled her? A great many commentaries, discussions and sermons make a slightly bizarre judgement that she is a prostitute.

Now I'm not all that qualified, I must point out, to be able able to identify 'ladies of negotiable virtue'. I've only met one to my knowledge and I thought she was a hitch-hiker. The conversation went something along the lines of (me) 'where would you like to go' – (her) 'No the question is what would you like sweetie'. Followed by (me) errr......I think there has been a misunderstanding, followed by my trying to dive off as quickly as a Lada will go (which isn't quick enough in some circumstances).

So maybe I don't see prostitutes where there actually are some – but why do commentators see them in this story where there is no evidence for one at all?

Is there an assumption that her acts with her perfume and her hair are erotic – rather than simply intimate? If that is the assumption, then some scholars need to get out more or have an extra cold shower or two. They also need to explain, if these are sexual acts, what Jesus is doing engaging in them at the dinner table.

Is it simply that many commentators can't think of a woman being 'a sinner' without sex being involved? Are there no other ways women can sin, without resorting to prostitution? Perhaps she had just bought too many pairs of shoes?

Again – its cold showers all round for the theology faculty, followed by a chance to explain why when Peter meets Jesus and falls down and calls himself a sinner, no one assumes that Peter spend his early years leaning against a lamppost and asking passers by whether they fancied a trip to his boat to view his fishing tackle.

We see what we want to see. We see what we have been conditioned to see. Or we can see things through the eyes of Jesus – eyes of love and charity. It is possible perhaps that the term 'a sinner' here, as elsewhere in Luke, in the previous chapter for example, simply refers to a Gentile – someone, like you and me, who lives outside of the law and is therefore a great sinner by definition. And someone who would also be understandably grateful to be shown spiritual acceptance in a land where she was a religious outsider. That would make sense of Simon's comment “who and what kind of woman she was” a repeat that points to her identity more than her actions.

But there is one more thing assumed. One more thing not seen. And that is that Simon is also sinner. What is plainly set before his eyes, if he could shift his gaze from someone else's failings to his own, is that he is the one acting shamefully – not her. No water for his guest, no kiss, no oil – a major faux pas of hospitality in his culture, but also a more important omission in any culture – a rush to judgement and a failure to love.

So, Simon discovers, he needs to see better, but seeing better may result in your eyes hurting.

That is the theme of a poem by Audre Lorde – a reflection on going from wearing glasses to having contact lenses fitted, but which reads as a parable of something more profound than that.

It's called Contact lenses -

Lacking what they want to see
makes my eyes hungry
and eyes can feel
only pain.

Once I lived behind thick walls
of glass
and my eyes belonged
to a different ethic
timidly rubbing the edges
of whatever turned them on.
Seeing usually
was a matter of what was
in front of my eyes
matching what was
behind my brain.
Now my eyes have become
a part of me exposed
quick, risky and open
to all the same dangers.

I see much
better now
and my eyes hurt.

Simon needed to take of the sunglasses of religion that were skewing what he saw – and put on the contact lenses – contact being the operative word on this occasion – having true contact with someone he would rather have avoided, and allowing that encounter to become real, rather than a meeting of stereotypes.

Like him, we need to see as Jesus sees and that means seeing both the fullness of other people, and the fullness of ourselves. Our eyes may hurt, but we should not be afraid to examine ourselves in this way – as this woman knew, whatever her sins may once have been, whatever we discover about ourselves is not a reason to think less of ourselves, it is simply another reason to love Jesus more.

Amen.