²⁹ Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors^(A) and others were eating with them. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect^(B) complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”^(C)

³¹ Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ³² I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”^(D)

³⁷ A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. ³⁸ As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

³⁹ When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet,^(A) he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”