Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday March 26 – 5th Sunday in Lent
Scripture Reading: John 12:1-8
Last week we read about the time when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and we pondered how both Lazarus and Jesus were changed by this episode in their lives. This week, we are back at the home of Lazarus and his sisters, but this time Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, takes centre stage.
What must these days have been like for Mary? She and Martha watched their brother get sicker and sicker. They sent word to their friend Jesus, someone who was known to everyone to be a healer and miracle worker, someone who could give sight to a blind man, someone who could make a lame person walk again, someone who could even walk on water. But then after they had sent word to ask their Jesus to come to their brother’s side to do for his friend what he had done for strangers, after they had sent word, but before Jesus arrived, Lazarus died.
And still Jesus didn’t come. They prepared their brother’s body for burial. They anointed his body with the prescribed ointments and perfumes. They wrapped his body in bands of cloth. They had someone unseal the family tomb by rolling aside the stone that covered the entrance. They laid the body of their brother in the tomb, and then they resealed the mouth of the cave.
And then they and their community continued to mourn, but still Jesus didn’t come to them.
Four days after they buried their brother, finally Jesus shows up. Martha runs out to greet him first, and then tells Mary that he is here. Mary leaves her house and goes to the edge of the village where the tombs are, and standing there is Jesus. She falls at his feet, and there in the dust she sobs out her accusation, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”
Her heart must have been broken into a million pieces. Her brother is dead, and the one person who would have been able to save him didn’t get there until 4 days after he was buried.
But she watches. She watches as Jesus begins to weep, mourning the death of his friend. She watches as he orders the other people in the village to move the stone away from the mouth of the grave. She watches and listens as her sister protests – after 4 days, Lazarus’s body would be beginning to decompose and the stench is going to be some awful. She watches as Jesus prays, then calls into the mouth of the cave. And then she watches as her brother scrambles out of the tomb, still with the bands of cloth wrapped around him.
From grief to amazement to joy to maybe a little bit of fear at what is happening, all in one short story.
And now, with today’s story, we are back at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and this time the siblings are hosting a banquet in honour of Jesus. Lazarus is there at the table, along with Jesus, his disciples, and the other guests. Martha is busy in the kitchen, overseeing the food preparation, and serving their honoured guests.
And in comes Mary, carrying an extraordinary amount of expensive perfume made of pure nard – a thick, yellowish coloured oil with a heavy, woody, sweet, spicy, musky smell. As she pours it over Jesus’s feet, the smell of it would have filled the room. The smell of it likely lingered in the room for days, for weeks after that night. And then to the amazement of everyone watching, she gets down and uses her hair to rub the oil into his feet.
Washing the feet of a guest isn’t what is amazing about this story – it was the practice to welcome guests to your house by washing the dust off of their feet… or, more likely, having a servant was their feet for them. Oil for anointing isn’t what is amazing about this story – again, it was the practice to pour a little perfumed oil on the heads of your guests as a sign of welcome.
What is amazing about this story is the extravagance of the gesture, almost a pound of rare oil, costing 300 denarii, or almost a full year’s salary for a day labourer. Can you imagine taking $20,000 worth of perfume and pouring it over the feet of a guest to your home? This is Mary’s gesture of gratitude for what Jesus has done for her family.
This story that we heard today looks back to the chapter that came before – the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. But I also think that it looks forward to the story that comes in the next chapter.
The next day, when Jesus and his disciples leave the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, they are going to enter the city of Jerusalem. This is the Palm Sunday parade that we are going to read about next week. And then in a few days, Jesus and his disciples are going to gather together to celebrate the Passover… this is the story that we will be reading on Maundy Thursday at Westfield. Remember that during this meal, Jesus pours some water in a basin, and gets down on the floor, and washes the feet of his disciples. Granted that this is water that he is using, rather than perfumed oil, but Jesus is now putting himself in the same position that Mary was in just a few days earlier, washing and drying the feet of the people around him.
And Jesus tells his disciples, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” Mary washes Jesus’s feet. Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. Jesus tells his disciples that they are to wash each other’s feet.
Which, I think, circles us back to the story we heard today. One of the challenging bits of the story is when Judas argues that the perfume ought to have been sold and the money given to the poor. This is challenging because I have a deep sympathy for what Judas is saying here, and given what is about to unfold, I don’t want to find myself on Judas’s side! And then Jesus replies that “You always have the poor with you, but you don’t always have me.”
We are to serve the poor in the world as if we are serving Jesus, literally or metaphorically washing the feet of anyone who carries the image of Christ within them… which, to me, is everyone. Every time we love our neighbour with our actions, we are serving someone who carries the image of Christ. Every time we live our love in the world… making sandwiches for Romero House, putting food in Ida’s Cupboard, offering a ride to a neighbour who doesn’t drive, phoning someone to check in with them, offering to pray for someone… every time we live our live, we are serving Jesus in the same way that Mary did.
And so this story of extravagant service, when we read it alongside the story of raising Lazarus that came before, and alongside the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples which is going to come next – these stories become an interconnected web of love and service and gratitude, looping back and forth, weaving together into one story.
And at the heart of that story is love. We are grateful for what we have. We love God and love our neighbour. We serve God by serving our neighbour. And at the heart of all of it is love. Thanks be to God. Amen.
by Jim on flickr
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