March 17, 2013

Clay Nelson

Lent 5 
    John 12:1-8


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As I was sitting down to write this sermon, white smoke announced that a new Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome, was elected. As I listened to his first gracious remarks I was reminded of a time in a former life when all in one year it was my responsibility to guide seventeen congregations through the process of calling a new vicar. They all began by reflecting on what their mission had been, was, and might be. Then they had to identify the qualities they needed in a new vicar to achieve their desired future. Aside from wanting someone with gifts their previous vicar lacked, in every case the only person who could have even possibly filled the position was Jesus, and even he might have fallen short. With that in mind, I wish Pope Francis all the best.

The problem they all faced, of course, is if Jesus did apply would they recognise him? What we know about the historical Jesus is pretty sketchy and full of gaps and layered by the agendas of those who told his story. That has left free a lot of blank space over the millennia to project onto him our own needs, biases and hopes. So the question we must always ask ourselves is does the Jesus we think we know bear any resemblance to who Jesus really was? Do we have him right or have we created a Jesus who conveniently fits our own worldview? To some degree that is a rhetorical question, of course we have and we will never know for sure if we have him right. Yet it remains our task to keep trying to get Jesus right. To do so is essential if we wish to embody him today. If our personal understanding of Jesus challenges us or makes us uncomfortable we may be getting closer to the truth about who he was and what that means for us.

Today’s story from the Gospel of John gives us some clues. Structurally it serves the same purpose as a story in other Gospels when Jesus asking Simon Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” In that story Simon Peter gets the dubious honour of getting it both right and wrong. He answers correctly, “You are the Messiah,” and then gets it wrong by objecting to how it has to end for Jesus if that is right.

In John’s version, Mary of Bethany is the one who gets it right and it is Judas, trusted enough to be the disciples’ treasurer, who gets it wrong.

Let us look more closely at the story. On his way to Jerusalem Jesus stops in to see his old friends Mary, Martha and their brother, Lazarus. John tells us he loves them, but not why. Perhaps it was not important why, he just did. They knew whom he was but were not formally listed amongst his disciples. They appear to be just friends with whom he could be himself. He certainly had a costly history with them. He had recently brought Lazarus back from the dead, an act that had been the final straw for the temple authorities. By raising Lazarus he had crossed the line from “manageable nuisance” to “serious threat.” The high priest Caiaphas makes clear their fear that Jesus’ heretical views are a threat to national security by arguing, “It is better for one man to die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” So his days are numbered and he knows it when he arrives at their home and certainly Mary, and perhaps her siblings, can see it on his face even if those he is travelling with can’t.

The story doesn’t say but one can imagine their hearts going out to him. Out of compassion they want to give him one night he can shut the world out and what awaits him. I suspect they carefully avoided the elephant in the room, enjoying a meal together while talking about the weather and gossiping about their mutual acquaintances. At some point it seems Mary can’t ignore reality anymore. She needs to express her deep love for him as he faces the difficult week ahead. She leaves the room returning with a clay jar filled with a precious perfumed ointment that fills the room with a scent between mint and ginseng. She then loosens her hair in a room full of men, which an honourable woman never does. She pours perfume on Jesus’ feet, which is not done. The head, maybe — people do that for kings — but not feet. Only the feet of the dead are anointed. Then she touches him. A single woman did not touch a single man, even among friends. Then she inexplicably wipes the perfume from his feet with her hair. It is a bizarre end to a bizarre act.

It is hard not to be moved by the story even though we are far too removed from the cultural norms to even notice how bizarre it would’ve seemed to those present. The point is that she loved him, right? Right. 

We tend to confuse this account with three others in the Bible -- one each from Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the first two, an unnamed woman anoints Jesus' head at the house of Simon the Leper during the last week of his life. In the third story, the scene happens at Simon the Pharisee's house, much earlier in Jesus' ministry. There Jesus is eating supper when a notorious sinner slips into the room and stands weeping over his feet, then drops to the ground to cover them with kisses before rubbing them with oil of myrrh.

Only in John's version of the story does the woman have a name, Mary -- and a relationship with Jesus -- not a stranger, not a notorious sinner, but his long-time friend -- which makes her act all the more peculiar. He knows she loves him. He loves her too. So why is she making this public demonstration in front of all their friends? It's extravagant. It's excessive. It’s bizarre. She's gone overboard, as Judas is quick to note.

"Why wasn't this perfume sold for a whole lot of money and given to the poor?" That's what Judas wants to know. He must have felt he was on safe ground. Jesus had lots to say about money, about the plight of the poor. He was pretty harsh on conspicuous wealth. He spoke frequently about the importance of responding to the needs of the poor with compassion and generosity. But no, Jesus brushes him aside. "Leave her alone," he says. "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" -- which is about as odd a thing for him to say as what Mary did. Here is the champion of the poor dismissing Judas’ plea as not getting it. It is Mary’s extravagance that gets it right. Where compassion is required we can’t be parsimonious.

Mary understands that her friend’s insistence that there are no insiders and outsiders, no clean and unclean, no worthy and unworthy, no deserving and undeserving can only end in provoking the wrath of those who maintain order and control by dividing and sacrificing. Such provocation has inevitably made him the target -- the one who must be sacrificed. Her gift lavished on him is actually an act of compassionate service to the poor. She is attending to the one who represents all the victims of this violent world’s callousness and greed.

What Judas doesn’t get is that Jesus was not about dictating new laws to do good. He was about actual service to our neighbor. While there are times and places when we need to be sober and measured and careful so as to ensure that our resources meet the most urgent needs of as many as possible, Jesus is calling us to love lavishly with whatever we have with those who are in front of us right now. Extravagant generosity of time and resources to one might not bring an end to poverty, but it is a sign of a new culture. 

When Jesus says we will have the poor with us always it is not a statement of resignation. He is not saying, “Oh there is nothing you can do to end poverty, so don’t worry about it.” Instead he is saying you will never be without opportunities to serve the poor, so understand where true compassion and care begin. They begin in knowing the love and freedom rooted in the divine. They begin in experiencing the freedom to respond in extravagant devotion to the one who would rather get himself nailed by the powers that be than let all the violence of their exploitation and impoverishing go unchallenged. It is his compassion, that willingness to suffer for the most vulnerable that is bizarrely extravagant.

His embodiment of compassion is the essence of who he was and who we are created to be. Getting Jesus right means being as extravagant as Mary was to him, to those we encounter every day.