Hello friends. Alas, I have been unable to stick to my commitment of daily posts here. I am sorry for that. At the same time, this has been a rich season for me. The devotional we are using at church is a daily encouragement and solace. The other activities I've been involved in have been deeply satisfying. Union Presbyterian Church, the congregation I serve has, as ever, been warm and loving, with hearts for service. My family is well and each, in their own way, thriving, even in the midst of the national (and now global) chaos set off by the administration.
Today I give you, again, my sermon from Sunday. I hope you are having a good Lent, and I'm sorry, again, for falling down on this commitment. I'll be seeking to do better these last two weeks.
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| Mary of Bethany (or Mary Magdalene) From Art in the Christian Tradition, Vanderbilt University Divinity Library |
Scripture John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
Sermon
It is night. A crowd is gathered in rooms illuminated by candles and oil lamps. Shadows flicker on the walls. Jesus’ disciples are there, and perhaps some of their wives. Jesus’ mother is probably there… after all, this is a celebration of her son. The host family are there, of course—the siblings Mary, and Martha, and recently raised-from-the-dead Lazarus. And Jesus—the guest of honor. Just days before this celebration the host family was in mourning—diminished by one beloved brother, wearing torn clothing as a sign of their sorrow, sitting at home with those who came to witness and participate in their grief. Lazarus was in the tomb—had been for four days. But all that changed when Jesus arrived. The one who was lost, was found. The one who was dead, is now alive.
This is a celebration! A thanksgiving dinner. The sisters of Lazarus and the man himself are filled with gratitude for his return to the land of the living. This is also the celebration of the end of the Sabbath, the sweetest day of the week, for tomorrow—the day following this dinner—Jesus will go to Jerusalem for the beginning of the Passover festival. There is every reason to celebrate this night.
Still. Many at this gathering are on edge. The mood is subdued. This is because the threats are out there, and they are getting louder and louder. For at least two years of Jesus’ ministry, there has been talk of killing him. Everyone who follows Jesus, everyone who knows him, everyone who loves him, knows that he has a target on his back. They know that there are people who will be all too willing to turn him over to the authorities.
The Romans are furious with Jesus for the whispers that he is king—whispers that began when Jesus’ preaching was brand new, and have only grown louder in the three years since. For Jesus to be king—even to be dreamed as king—is a threat to Rome.
The religious authorities gathered together after this last miracle, this last sign of Jesus raising Lazarus. What are we going to do? If he continues like this, soon everyone will believe in him—and then, all bets are off. The Romans will come and decimate our people and destroy our Temple. Wouldn’t it be better if one man died than a whole nation, a whole way of life? And so they decided to kill him. They put out word that anyone who saw Jesus should let them know, so they could go and arrest him.
All the fear around Jesus comes back to the struggle for power, in the political realm and in the religious realm. Jesus is too powerful. Dangerously powerful.
Jesus is all too aware of this. After he raised Lazarus, he and his disciples went to a village called Ephraim, out of the way, bordering on the Judean wilderness. It was a place where he could lay low.
But now he has traveled the fifteen or so miles to Bethany, to be with his friends, to be celebrated. But he knows what is coming.
Imagine the murmurs of the people, reclining on comfortable pillows around the long, low tables. The sound of clay goblets clinking, wine being poured.
Then, everyone stops. A silence falls as Mary, one of Lazarus’ grateful sisters, approaches Jesus carrying a vessel filled with a pound of the purest, most expensive and exotically fragrant oil known, spikenard. The aroma of it precedes her, but it is nothing compared to the strength of the fragrance when she pours it out, emptying the vessel, on Jesus’ feet. Imagine Jesus, sitting up, perhaps, to watch as the woman bathes his feet. Touches them, gently. And then, because there is so much, bends down and soaks up the excess with her hair.
This is a stunning act of love and devotion. It is a shockingly intimate act between an unrelated woman and man. The murmuring begins again. Maybe a few soft, nervous laughs. But everyone sees this moment for what it is: a loving gift, given in gratitude, in thanks for an unimaginable blessing upon her family.
But Jesus knows it is even more than that. In just a few days, Jesus will take this act and transform it into his own act of love and devotion: following the last meal he will ever share with his disciples, he will wash their feet. And then he will give them a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. Because everything Jesus has done, and everything he will do—for his disciples and for the many strangers he encountered, and fed, and spoke with, and healed—has been a pouring out of the love of God for the world.
And acts of love, and acts of beauty, as this one is, are also acts of resistance. In a dangerous world, where not everyone is safe and the desire for power is an enticement to recklessness and destruction, acts of love and beauty take courage. Acts of love and beauty require steadfastness. Acts of love and beauty say, “I will not live in the fear you are trying to drown me with. I will not forsake those with targets on their backs. I will stand alongside them, and walk their path of suffering with them, and do everything in my power to tell the world that they are worthy of dignity, they are worthy of love. Acts of love and acts of beauty are a form of resistance.
Judas breaks the moment. He crashes into it with his anger. He rages that Mary should have taken that ointment and sold it. It was valued at a year’s wages for a day laborer. Think of the good that could have been done with that money—they could have used it to feed the poor. Judas, who is said to have kept track of the money box for the disciples, is doing the math: should all this ointment have been spent on one man, or on many who needed it more than he?
Loving people, showing them love, costs us. Sometimes it costs us our time. Sometimes it costs us our money. Sometimes it costs us our reputation. Sometimes it costs us our lives. But the thing is, love returns to us—not in a tit for tat way, so that we’re all even-steven. But in the sense that love is contagious. Kindness is contagious. Love isn’t love until you do give it away, invest in it, show what it is worth to you. And when you do that, it spreads like a beautiful fragrance, until love is the language that is spoken.
When I was young, I was obsessed with Saint Therese of Lisieux, who is often called “the little flower.” She became a nun at age 15 and died of TB at age 24, but the writings she left, especially her Story of a Soul, are filled with the kind of wisdom you would expect from someone with decades and decades of life experience, not a young and sheltered girl. Her spiritual practice was to do small things with great love. On the cost of love, one of her lesser-known quotes is this: “God knows all the sciences, but there’s one science God does not know, God does not know mathematics.”
Judas is doing the math, but it is a kind of math that is nonsensical to Jesus, and to God. Jesus sternly tells Judas to leave Mary alone. He says, you will always have opportunities to help the poor, and well you should. My time here is short. She has anointed me for my burial.
The narrative of the celebration meal breaks off at this point. Soon crowds of people know that Jesus is in Bethany, and they come seeking him out. The religious authorities decide that they had better kill Lazarus, too.
But the love that was poured out in that dim, candle-lit room is still there, moving through the souls of those who witnessed it, moving in Jesus, as he plans for the last supper he will have with his friends. Acts of love and beauty are not frozen in time. They live. They breathe. They move.
You know this. This congregation, the people of this congregation, engage in acts of love daily. Last night’s One Great Hour of Sharing Trivia night was a great, rollicking act of love, in the end. An act of generosity and kindness—and a little competitiveness, but the love undergirded it all. Every kind thing you do—giving someone a ride, calling someone you’ve been thinking about, holding up a sign in a crowd expressing your care for the most vulnerable among us—is an act of love. Every act of beauty and joy in the face of fearful days and fearful events is an act of love, and an act of resistance.
So we, in this brightly lit room, with our own candles flickering, are called to acts of love, and beauty, and joy, every day. Go, and know that these acts will not be frozen in time. They live. They breathe. They move. And they go out into the world…
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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