"Embodiment" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

April 7, 2019

Scripture:  John 12:1-8 (with brief references to Isaiah 43:16-21)

Jesus has gathered for a meal with his friends.  His disciples are with him, and they are eating at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  Not too long ago, Jesus has wept at the death of Lazarus, then, at the pleading of his sisters, raised him to life again.

It is a cozy scene.  We can imagine oil lamps lit around the room.  We can imagine the intimacy that this small group might have shared.

Yet outside the walls of the house, the air must have crackled with the tension.  Raising Lazarus from the dead had made the powers that be very uncomfortable with Jesus.  After all, if he can raise people from the dead, what’s to stop him from overthrowing the political and religious structures?  Plots were being hatched in the places of power to kill both Jesus and Lazarus.

But our story today keeps us inside that house in Bethany.  Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, enters the room and falls at Jesus’ feet.  This isn’t the first time she has fallen at his feet.  The last time that they met, Mary fell at Jesus’ feet weeping and berating him, “If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”  But this time, she falls at his feet in gratitude and hospitality.  She takes out a bottle of perfume that would have cost a full year’s salary and she pours it over Jesus’ feet, then rubs it in, and wipes away the excess with her long hair.  And the smell of that beautiful, expensive gift wafts through the air of the whole house.

It is a beautiful story, but one that can make us uncomfortable.  Maybe we are uncomfortable with how sensuous it is – Jesus’ bare feet, Mary’s long hair, the extravagant gift of anointing.  Or maybe we are uncomfortable because we find ourselves agreeing just a little bit too much with Judas, the betrayer, thinking that the money spent on that perfume might have been better spent purchasing food and blankets for the poor; even though the narrator helpfully tells us that Judas really wanted to embezzle the money instead.  But still.

This story marks the start of the Passion narrative.  As soon as Jesus and his disciples leave this home, they are going to travel a little under two miles to the gates of Jerusalem, and there they will enter in the parade that we are going to read about next Sunday.  And a few days after that, Jesus is going to have his final gathering with his disciples, he is going to be arrested, and he is going to be nailed to a cross.  This final sequence of events in Jesus’ life begins with our story today.

In the days ahead, in the final days of Jesus’ life, Jesus is going to be very human, living in his human body.  Today his feet have been anointed in an act of extravagant generosity and intimacy.

Nard, the perfumed oil that Mary uses, was one of the components in the incense used in the temple, to carry prayers from humans to God.  As the oil was poured over Jesus’ feet, it would have evoked memories of prayers offered in the temple for the others who were present.  It might have also reminded them of the oil poured over the kings head at the time of coronation.  It might even have reminded them of the fragrant incense that is buried with bodies.  And if anyone present was familiar with the stories of Jesus’ birth, they might even have been reminded of the gifts brought to him by the magi, gifts that included the other fragrant incenses of myrrh and frankincense.

This is a moment in time that looks backward, and also looks forward to what is ahead; but it is also a moment in time that keeps us very grounded in the present moment, as Jesus’ feet are anointed and wiped dry.

I wonder if it is Jesus’ feet that make us uncomfortable.  Feet can sometimes make us feel uncomfortable.  We keep them hidden in socks and shoes.  When our shoes and socks are off, we feel vulnerable.  Some of us paint our toenails in an attempt to make them more presentable.  When people are asked to take their shoes off in a doctor’s or physiotherapist’s office, they often react with embarrassment.

And here is Jesus, with bare feet, having his feet anointed by a woman.  Here is Jesus in all of his vulnerable humanity.

We proclaim that the God who created the heavens and the earth became human in the person of Jesus; the Word of God that spoke creation into being has become human flesh.  And here, the Word-Made-Flesh is having his flesh, his feet, anointed.  It is a story that can fill us with awe if we pause to consider what is happening here.

And yet it is.  God is.  The great and holy “I AM” of ancient scriptures is here reclining before us, feet exposed, allowing them to be ministered to.

So often, the world tries to make us ashamed of our physical bodies.  So often, the world tries to make us conform to unrealistic standards, tries to dictate how we should present ourselves.  Yet here is Jesus, embracing the flesh that he has become.

And because God became human in Jesus, our humanity, our flesh and blood, has been brought into contact with God.  And so instead of being ashamed of, instead of rejecting our physical bodies, maybe we are called to embrace them in the way that Jesus did.  Our fleshy-ness has been made holy because of Jesus.

This morning, we baptized Eldon and welcomed him into our church family – into the family of Christ that encircles the whole world.  But we didn’t baptize him with words only.  We baptized him in his physical body with water.  We celebrate every aspect of him – his Eldon-ness, his body and his spirit.

Jesus allowed Mary to minister to his physical body.  He didn’t reject his physical body in favour of spirit.  I wonder if maybe we can do the same?  If we can learn to not only accept, but to love our physical selves – to enjoy our physical senses, and to respect our bodies as the home of God, as the temple of the Holy Spirit as the apostle Paul writes.

God is always doing a new thing.  A new thing began in Eldon’s life this morning.  A new thing begins in each of our lives when we wake up each morning and get out of bed.  Let us celebrate our bodies; let us celebrate our lives; let us celebrate each gift from God that every day brings to us!

May it be so.  Amen.

JESUS MAFA. "Jesus speaks about forgiveness," from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48384 [retrieved April 7, 2019]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr