It seems odd that the temple authorities and rulers over Israel did not recognize Jesus as their Messiah
who would save them from their oppressors and establish the Kingdom of God. He did
all the things the prophets said this special God-anointed deliver would
do. Indeed, things that God had promised
that he himself would come and do for his people. Jesus had openly
manifested the Kingdom of God, the
Reign of God, in his wanderings around Judea and
Galilee and even in the surrounding nations.
Everywhere he went he had openly been proclaiming, healing, exorcising,
and doing miraculous feedings that revealed who he was. Even the non-Israelites in Syria and Jordan
and even the demons realized that he was the Son of God; but not the powers
that be in Jerusalem. They simply had
too much power to loose.
In contrast to these powerful rulers blinded by
their power and prestige, is a young woman, probably a former prostitute, who
wastes a bottle of very expensive bottle of perfume on Jesus because she kind
of gets who he is and especially that he is going to die. All the Gospels tell
the story of a woman anointing Jesus for his burial in the days following his
triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In
Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s version Jesus speaks highly of this woman saying that
she had done a beautiful thing and that everywhere the Gospel was proclaimed
what this woman had done for him in anointing his body for burial would be told
also. Apparently she got it.
As
Jesus said, this woman had done a beautiful thing. In the Jewish faith one could say she
performed an act of Chesed, an act of
loving kindness that truly reveals the nature of God; pure, unconditional,
wasteful, and one could even say broken-hearted love. The perfume she poured out on Jesus in an
extravagant act of wasteful love was worth upwards of three years salary for
any of us here. Yet, to Jesus it was a
beautiful act that revealed the very heart of God. You see, her anointing of Jesus with this
perfume corresponds to God the Father’s wasteful act of letting God the Son’s life
be given, his blood be shed for the bearing away of our sin and the cleansing
of our hearts which in turn is our reconciliation to God made real by
his giving us God the Holy Spirit. Jesus
wastes his life to restore value to ours in that we are reconciled to him,
united to him by the Holy Spirit to become his sisters and brothers and beloved
children of God the Father just as he is.
With the wasteful gift of his Spirit God has truly united us to the love
which God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
By anointing us with the perfume of the Holy Spirit, God has made us
partakers of the relationship which Jesus the Son shares with God the Father in
the Holy Spirit.
Well,
enough of this theology stuff. God has
wasted the perfume of his very self on us.
He has wasted the life-giving blood (life; cf. Lev. 16-17 esp. 17:14) of Jesus the Son on us in the
gift of the Holy Spirit to us. I have
said wasted. This is not a very nice
thing to say of us, especially as we know that God loves us dearly, indeed
loves all people dearly even the most evil of us who have ever lived. Yet, when we look at the whole condition of
human existence – the wars, the poverty, the diseases, the way we abuse one
another, our pride, our self-involvement, our self-indulgence, our
self-righteousness, the way we judge one another – it would make more sense for
us like Judas the thief and betrayer to turn to God and say, “Why have you
wasted the gift of yourself on us. Certainly you have a better use for yourself.
Destroy us all and start again!”
Well,
here is how Mary’s act is so significant, why it was a beautiful thing. Of all the disciples only she understood that
Jesus was going to die. In fact, she was
the only human outside of Jesus who got it.
Even though his disciples knew who he was, they wouldn’t believe him
when he said he had to die. Instead, they
were blinded with their own hope and belief that he would ride into Jerusalem,
cleanse the temple, kick out the Romans, and establish the Kingdom and…they
would rule with him. Hmmm, we’re back to
that power thing again. But Mary (in full reflection of the image of God), knowing no other way to express her
overwhelming grief at knowing Jesus whom she loved would die, she rather spontaneously takes
this bottle of very fine, very expensive, very pure perfume and wastes it on
Jesus’ dirty feet. An act that simply says,
“My heart is broken, but I understand that you must die.” All she could do with her grief was this
futile, wasteful act of preparing his feet for burial.
Mary’s
beautiful act mirrors God’s understanding and deep grief over our fallenness
and the inescapable fact that we, his beloved children, must die. God is a grieving God not an angry God
demanding righteousness and obedience. His
children are dying by their own demise.
Of course, he’s angry about it. But, what else can he in his great love do for us in this life of death other than to anoint us for our death and
burial with his very self that we might live through death and be healed in
resurrection? God our Father, Brother,
and Constant Companion is not this sourpuss, judgmental, angry, old man of a God
who demands an inordinate standard of morality from us that we cannot possibly
live up to. God is not eternally angry at us and
wanting to destroy us if we don’t repent.
God is not going to destroy us and start over! Indeed, not!
He loves us each as his own dear children. Instead of destroying us God the Father in an
act of wasteful love sent God the Son who wasted his life as one of us and died
so that God the Father and God the Son might wastefully give us their very life
in the gift of God the Holy Spirit that we might live through death. Praise be to God! Praise be to God! He understands. He understands that the end result of the skubala[1] of our lives is that we must die, but
out of his love for us he will raise us just as he did his only begotten and
beloved Son, Jesus because the same Spirit that lived in him lives also in us.
Just
a closing note, in John’s Gospel, this account of Mary is located within the Lazarus
Story which foreshadows what is to become of us and in classic Johannine form
describes us, the church, as we are now.
If you remember, Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary were dear
friends of Jesus. Lazarus became ill and
died. Four days after the fact when
Lazarus corpse is obviously decomposing Jesus shows up and Mary lets him have
it. “Lord, if you had been here, my
brother would not have died.” Mary here
cries out for every human being who has ever cried out at God saying, “Where
the hell are you God? If you really
cared and really were here this skubala would have never happened.” Jesus wept and proceeded to the tomb where he
commanded Lazarus to come forth. Next,
we find Jesus a few months latter in their house where they are throwing him a
feast and all the faithful are gathered around.
The Lazarus Story,
from his death/resurrection to the feast, tells us of the Day of Resurrection
and the feast we will share with Jesus in his Kingdom when all things have been
made new. But, John here doesn’t want us
to let this slip by as simply being a picture of the way things will be. Rather, he is describing very well how things
are within the church, the community of believers who know the wasteful love of
God because they know he has wasted it upon them by the gift of the Holy Spirit
they know they now have. The Lazarus Story
describes the many communities all over the world just like us who are a living
testimony to the wasteful love of God.
Gathered around Jesus
at this feast, the feast which we now share, are many people just like us just
like we are gathered here together today.
Among them are the people like Lazarus whose healing or conversion
experience has been so vivid that it is like being raised from the dead. There are the untold number of Martha’s who
do and do and do and do. There are the
untold numbers of disciples who know Jesus yet they just silently stand by and
watch what the others are doing. There
are also those like Judas, thieves and betrayers whose motives are always for
their own gain. There are the poor to
whose aide we are called. There is
Jesus, our Lord, seated confidently in our midst. Finally, there are the Mary’s who most
beautifully and simply love Jesus and get what he’s all abut and love
accordingly having no better way to respond in the midst of the futility of
this broken world. They waste everything
they have to love as they have been loved.
So, to wrap this up,
how about you; where are you in this story?
As someone who knows Christ, who knows the wasteful gift of the Holy
Spirit, who understands his death and understands that God understands that we
must die, who understands that God grieves for us, who has the hope of
Resurrection, where do you fit in here in the Kingdom? I guess a better way of asking would be,
“Would your neighbours say that you are a silent disciple, a busy Martha, a
thieving and betraying Judas, or a wastefully loving Mary?” Amen.
[1] That’s New
Testament Greek for s*#t. Paul uses it
at Philippians 3:8 where he recounts his achievements prior to his encounter
with Jesus on the Road to Damascus. “Yea
doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and
count them but dung, that I may win Christ…” (KJV).
