"An Extravagant Love"
John 12:1-11
I’ve been
reminded this week as I worked on the gospel lesson that this is a “fragrant
text.” And that angle of considering the
story intrigued me, as I thought about how fragrances can affect how we
experience things and remember them.
Think about it-- about scents that evoke pleasant or painful
memories. Maybe it’s the smell of chlorine,
that brings back memories of summers spent at the swimming pool when you were a
kid.
Those of us who are gardeners look
forward to the fragrance of lilac or lavender or hyacinths when they bloom. Those of us who showed up at the Lenten study
got to smell homemade soup and Keith’s amazing three-cheese mac-and-cheese. Each of us has different comfort foods that evoke
feelings of pleasure: fresh baked apple
pie or a favorite dish our mother made.
Scientists say that while words go to
the thinking part of the brain, smells go to the emotion part if the brain—the amygdala. That’s why the smell of Grandma’s bread
baking brings her back to us for a moment, and for some, why a bit of incense
is “the smell of the divine.”[1]
The fragrance of pure nard wouldn’t
have evoked warm memories for Mary and Martha’s dinner guests. It would have reminded them of loved ones’
deceased bodies, prepared for burial.
That would have been a very fresh memory, because they’d been through
that very recently with their brother Lazarus.
In the previous chapter of John’s
gospel, Lazarus was very ill, and his sisters Mary and Martha had sent a
message to Jesus. Though Jesus loved
Martha and Mary and Lazarus, he stayed two days longer in the place where he
was, before he headed to Bethany. When
he got there, Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days, and the mourners
were there to console Mary and Martha.
Jesus went to the tomb and said, “Take
away the stone.” Martha—always a
practical woman—said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has
been dead four days.” But they took away
the stone that closed the tomb, and Jesus prayed and then called, “Lazarus,
come out!”
Imagine the scene, as Lazarus came out,
his hands and feet bound with strips of grave cloths, and his face wrapped in a
cloth. Jesus told the people, “Unbind
him, and let him go.”[2]
Now, some of the people who witnessed
Lazarus coming out of the tomb went to the Pharisees, and the chief priests and Pharisees called a
meeting of the council, and said, “What
are we to do? This man is performing
many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe
in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our
nation.”
Caiaphus, the chief priest, prophesied
that Jesus was about to die for the nation.
From that time on, the leaders of the religious establishment plotted to
put Jesus to death. So Jesus no longer
walked openly among the Jews, but stayed with his disciples in a region near
the wilderness.
The religious leaders kept looking for
Jesus and were wondering, “What do you think? Surely he won’t come to the Passover
festival—will he?
Six days before the
Passover, Jesus comes to Bethany, to the home of Lazarus. Once again the
house is filled with family and friends, and the table is covered with
food. Martha is hard at work
serving. Lazarus is reclining with
Jesus.
John doesn’t give us details about the
fragrances at the dinner party. But we
can imagine that there may have been a mingling of death-related smells in the
room. Lazarus is at the dinner table
with Jesus—Lazarus who was in the tomb four days before Jesus called him
out—about whom his sister said, “But Lord, there’s a stench!”
Mary slips away and comes back, holding
a clay jar in her hands. Without a word
she kneels at Jesus' feet and breaks it open, and the sharp smell of nard fills
the room. She does a series of remarkable things:
In a room full of men, Mary loosens her
hair-- which a respectable woman never
did in that culture. She pours balm on
Jesus' feet, which also is not done. Then
she touches him-- a single woman caressing the feet of a rabbi. Also
not done, not even among friends. Then
she wipes the salve off again-- with her hair.
It is totally inexplicable-- the bizarre end to an all-around bizarre act.
Judas is quick to point out how extravagant
and excessive Mary’s action is.
"Why wasn't this ointment sold for three hundred denarii and the
money given to the poor?" That's
what Judas wants to know. A day laborer
and his family could live on that much money for a year, and here she has poured
it all out on your feet!"
But Jesus doesn’t see it that way. "Leave her alone," Jesus says, brushing all objections
aside. "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."
Now that is about as odd a thing to say
as anything Mary did. Jesus, who was
always concerned about the needs of the poor and marginalized and putting their
needs ahead of his own, suddenly pulling rank.
Leave her alone. You will have
the poor to look after until the end of time.
Just this once, let her look after me, because my time is running out.
Mary’s action is a free and exuberant
expression of love and gratitude. In
contrast, Judas sounds practical and calculating, and John tells us that Judas
had selfish and dishonest motives as well.
While Mary’s behavior may have seemed strange to
those who were gathered in the house that night, it was no stranger than that
of the prophets who went before her. Ezekiel,
who ate the scroll of the Lord as a sign that he carried the word of God around
inside of him. Jeremiah, who smashed the
clay jar to show God's judgment on Judah and Jerusalem. Isaiah, who walked around Jerusalem naked and
barefoot as an oracle against the nations.
Prophets do these things. They act out the truth that no one else can see. Those who stand around watching either write
them off as crazy... or fall silent
before the disturbing news they bring from God.
When Mary stood before Jesus with that
pound of pure nard, it probably could have gone either way. She could have anointed his head and everyone
there could have proclaimed him a king.
But she didn't do that. When she
moved toward him, she dropped to her knees and poured the salve on his feet, anointing
him for his death.
This was the action of a faithful disciple:
washing Jesus’ feet. Jesus received from Mary what he would soon
offer to his disciples, wiping his feet with her hair, as Jesus will wipe his
disciples’ feet with a towel.
Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment
so precious that its sale might have fed a poor family for a year. Mary’s act was an extravagant act of love, a
model of faithful discipleship—in contrast to Judas’s unfaithful response. Judas represents the voice of reason and practicality.
I think this story invites us to
identify not just with Mary or Judas. In the figure of Mary, Christian
discipleship is an act of adoration and gratitude to the One who is holy. In her silent, prophetic act, she draws our
attention not to herself--but to Jesus.
In the figure of Judas, Christian discipleship is God’s making righteous,
or “justification” of those who have rejected or betrayed Jesus. The good news
is the grace of Jesus Christ includes
them both, both the faithful and the unfaithful. Both are included within the bright,
transforming light the cross casts in a dark world. [3]
“And the fragrance filled the
room.”
One of my colleagues wonders if Mary
had the Song of Solomon in her heart. [4] We don’t normally associate acts of witness
with the sense of smell-- but why not?
The smell of freshly baked bread given to another, a basement full of Peace Camp kids in the heat
of summer, the aromas of a meal prepared to share with those in need.
Steven Shoemaker tells how Anne Smith, who
began Charlotte Food Rescue, was hauling a station wagon full of donuts to a
food shelter. She stopped off to make a
pitch to executives of what is now Bank of America. As she rode the elevator to the top floor,
someone said, “You smell like donuts!” She laughed and told why, and by the time the
elevator door opened, she had recruited somebody. “The fragrance of love’s actions is carried
on the wind to places we never see.”[5]
How do we respond to Jesus’ self-emptying,
extravagant love? With a calculating,
practical, careful way of life, like Judas?
Or does Christ call us to live lives of
extravagant love?
The heroes in the scriptures are at
their best when they live out their faith abundantly, extravagantly. Noah building an ark when there isn’t a cloud
in the sky. Abraham and Sarah packing
up everything they owned and heading for
God only knows where. Joseph marrying a
woman who is pregnant with a child who is not his. Peter and John announcing to those who
imprisoned them, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” As Paul said, “We are fools for Christ’s
sake.”
Over history there have been other
fools for Christ: Saint Francis, giving
up his material wealth, living among the poor.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer returning to Germany and witnessing to his faith,
eventually dying for it, rather than staying safely in New York. Desmond Tutu, challenging the powers that
be, when he knew it could cost him.
Fools for Christ do not live a careful, calculating life-- but an abundant, extravagantly loving life.
Mary’s love was uncalculating. She was too caught up in her love and
gratitude for Jesus to be concerned with her own scandalous behavior and
extravagance.
Jesus said, I came that they might have
life—life abundant. We are called to a
life of extravagant faithfulness.
Common sense tells us, “Love your
friends, the ones who will love you back.”
Our faith calls us to love our enemies.
Common sense says, “Be kind to those
who can help you.” Our Christian faith
calls us to care for “the least”, for those who are most in need.
If we follow Christ, we will not
calculate what is easiest or what will look best. If we follow Christ, we will not be stingy or
calculating.
Mary showed us that she was beginning to understand that we don't need to
hold back, out of fear. Whatever we
need, there will be enough to go around, for there is nothing frugal about the
love of God, or about the lives of
those who are devoted to him.
Where God is concerned, there is always
more-- more than we can either ask or imagine-- gifts from our extravagant,
lavish Lord."[6]
Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, when we
begin our journey to the cross with Jesus.
I pray that we will find ourselves filled with the sharp, sweet
fragrance of love. May the sweet aroma
of extravagant love be so powerful around and on us that what we want—more than
anything else—is to fill the world with that same sweet smell of extravagant
love. To do so is to live as Christ would
have us live.
Amen!
[1]
The Rev. Dr. Blair Monie, “A Lingering Fragrance.” A sermon posted March 13,
2016 at www.day1.org
[2]
John 11:1-44
[3] I
am grateful here to George W. Stroup’s insights, in Feasting on the Word: Year C, Vol. 2, Lent through Eastertide,
location 5070 in the Kindle edition.
[4]
Song of Solomon 1:12
[5] H.
Stephen Shoemaker, in Feasting on the
Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent Through Eastertide, Lent 5c, Location 5187.
[6]Barbara Brown Taylor, "The Prophet Mary," in
Bread of Angels (Cowley, 1997), p.
61.
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