Sermon preached by Lee Barstow  on the fifth Sunday in Lent, March 28, 2004
South Congregational Church

Amherst, Massachusetts

 

Text: John 12:1-8

1Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" 6(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.) 7Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

 

Here we are, most of the way through the season of Lent. At the beginning of the season, Pastor Fran explained that the overarching theme of Lent is understanding and deepening our relationship with God. Today, in the tradition of our faith, as in so many of our sister faiths, we are given a story to help us.

We're in the home of Martha and Lazarus, who we already know are deeply loved by Jesus. This is the same Lazarus whose death Jesus wept over, and whom people are saying Jesus raised from the dead. The Lazarus story has given this night an ominous mood because we have now turned the corner that leads to the cross.

The Jewish elders are scared. They are saddled with the burden of keeping their culture alive under the Romans, and Jesus has been filling their heads with subversive fairy tales about equality and justice and trust in God. They have forgotten that equality and justice and trust in God are the very principles that formed the substance of  their own nation. And now there is this powder keg of the Lazarus story. People are flocking. The idea that such a man could enable a miracle. It is a sacrilege and a deadly threat to their way of life. They have declared their need to silence him.

This dinner is thick with the tensions that are at the heart of the gospel: People are more important than power. There is a seat at God's table for everyone, notably women and others incorrectly labeled "unclean." The holy spirit works miracles when we let it.

The tiny handful of Jesus' followers are under an unbelievable amount of pressure. They are surrounded by the swelling crowd of people attracted by the story of Lazarus's resurrection, most of whom are at the end of their ropes. They are poor, living in an occupied state, having a hard time finding hope. They live in an upside-down world, where the powers that be keep too much for themselves, and everyone feels like they have to fight just to survive. The Jesus followers are painfully aware of the darkness that is all around them, and that more is coming.

You know, the darkness of that night is reminiscent of another pivotal point in the Jesus story – the darkness during Advent. In that story, in the words of this same author, John, we are told that a light came into the world to overcome the darkness. And think of the other of this story – the darkness in the garden – which precedes the light of the resurrection. Let's see what John says about darkness and light today.

It is from within the enveloping darkness of this night that Mary captivates the story with her extravagant witness of faith. She has received the grace to see past the darkness to the light.

She lavishes nard on Jesus' feet, and then she wipes his feet with her hair. This is not a ritual act, but an act of radical love. It is an act of humility, of trust, of gratitude. For us, today, as we work through our days in our own upside-down world, Mary's act is a powerful symbol of our ideal relationship to the divine. Mary exemplifies discipleship, not as a duty, but as a gift.

John gives us more about the meaning of discipleship in a later scene, during the Passover seder called the Last Supper. In fact, today's dinner is a foreshadowing of that dinner to come in less than a week. At that dinner, the night before his execution, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, much like Mary – in our story today – "washes" Jesus' feet with nard.  In fact, John uses the same word for "wash" in both accounts. It one of the many ways he has Jesus show that whatever greatness we find in him, whatever holiness, whatever strength, whatever love – it is all because he recognizes himself as a willing servant.

John has Jesus say this explicitly just a few verses after today's lesson, in chapter 13: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." Now we have a complete picture of discipleship according to John's understanding of Jesus. Discipleship is connecting with God and serving others. In different words, discipleship is loving God and loving our neighbor.

Loving God and loving our neighbor. These are the laws Jesus said were above all others. They are also at the core of Judaism, in Deuteronomy, where they are called the Schema. And lest we think we have a patent on these ideas, let's realize that all our sister faiths have their own words for them, and value them every bit as highly. Check out what the Buddhists have to say on the subject of compassion, hear the Muslim speak of the "beloved," and the listen to Native American stories about the our responsibilities within the family of all life, and the Hindus, and on and on. And given our place in this valley, let's not leave out secular humanism, which craves truth and beauty as much as any path and has its own ways to reach them.

Every human being craves truth and beauty. We use the words of our own languages to talk about it, and our own cultural symbols to represent it, but we all crave it. And we're all talking about the same truth. The truth is the truth. It doesn't change, no matter what words or symbols we use.

As the Buddhists say, our teachings are like fingers pointing to the moon. And like the moon, the truth is plain for everyone to see. It isn't hidden away. We have all experienced it. When we do for someone else, we're happier, and so are they. We add a measure of beauty to the world. Even if just for a moment, we enter the Kingdom of God. Or, we can begin the process from the other end, by starting with an effort to connect God, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever we call that mystery at the source of all life. Loving God, loving neighbor. Two actions which are really inseparable, like a musical round. The end becomes the beginning, and the beginning the end. Alpha becomes Omega. Both lead to the other and evoke a single experience of beauty.

I experienced this just last Saturday. I was in a truly foul mood. No one could do it right, life was unfair, ya da, ya da, ya da. I happened to drive by Dana Snyder's place down on Bay Road, where he has been restoring his barn for quite a while now. I had been meaning for a long time to stop in and remark on it. And last Saturday, as I drove past, I had the thought, "If I'm not willing to take this little action to get out of myself, what hope is there?" So I turned around. I was there for about 90 seconds, just long enough to tell him how great it is to see a barn going up instead of coming down these days, and to hear that he decided to replace the slate roof tiles with cedar shakes because cedar was the material of choice when the barn was first built. And when I got back in the car, my misery had lifted a bit. There was some blue sky among the clouds. I thanked God for giving me the idea and the strength to carry it out, and when I got home I wasn't as much of a mean mad daddy.

This is how it works, folks. Spirit first. It's how the beauty of the natural world was created, and it's how beauty is created in each of our days. The spirit moves, swirls, and creation happens. We can see it not only in the awesome spirals of the galaxies, but also in the spirals on our own fingertips.

And we get to participate. We are the co-creators, which comes with an awesome responsibility to choose: my way or God's way? It is an act of will to humble ourselves so we can open to the spirit. It is an act of will to trust that the spirit will lure us in the right direction. It is an act of will to walk where the spirit leads.

And these acts of will all come down to one act: being willing. To know that we don't have all the answers. To look to spirit. To trust that if we relax our hold, if we let the blood return to the knuckles, life will unfold just fine.

How do we do this? By keeping the channel clear. It's a daily chore, like sweeping the kitchen floor. How do you do it? Meditation? Prayer? Walks in the woods? Running? There are so many ways…

The critical thing is to practice every day. To knock at the door. To remember that behind the door is everything we need. To have just a little willingness. For those of us who hold heroics in high esteem, this isn't easy. But it is simple. Willingness the key, and all we have to do is pick it up, as the Big Book says. When we drop it, as we will inevitably do, it is always there waiting to be picked up again. And when we do, the door opens almost by itself. And the spirit is waiting.

This is the secret that Mary knows.  She gets it. She has defined the full flower of discipleship. And it's worth a brief digression to note that John gives us a woman as the first true disciple. But that's for another sermon.  The point today is that through Jesus's example, Mary has learned the truth: as he is, so is she a channel of the Holy Spirit. She knows she has been given the potential to cooperate with the creative power of the universe.

It is this ultimate gift for which she expresses her gratitude so extravagantly, and Jesus understands. Yes the nard could have funded a lot of meals for poor people, but Mary's witness to the love and power of God, as expressed in Jesus, has the power to move mountains, to crack open closed hearts, to heal us and our world. It can even heal the economic injustices that breed poverty, and that would end poverty. Judas has turned the truth on its head, as we do so often. He has forgotten to put spirit first. Then results.

Our story begs the ultimate questions for each of us: how do we understand that mystery that created the stars and from them, our world and ourselves? How can we deepen our relationship to that source of all life, which we Christians choose to call God? And when we let go enough to listen, what does she say?

Amen.