March 28, 2004 - Fifth Sunday of Lent
Philippians 3: 4b-14
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Psalm 126
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John 12: 1-8
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"Taking A Risk"

This is the fifth Sunday of Lent and next Sunday is Palm Sunday, where we commemorate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the upcoming Passion.  And so this week’s gospel lesson is told with that event clearly in mind.  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem by way of Bethany.  In the previous narrative he has raised Lazarus from the dead. This caused quite a stir, as we might imagine, getting the attention of the authorities and deciding the fate of Jesus himself.

So this story of Mary anointing Jesus, this provocative account of love and self-givingness, is framed by death.  It is a story sandwiched between two accounts of death:  that of Lazarus and Jesus.

On his way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover as any good observant Jew would, Jesus stops at the house of Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha.  Judas is there, and perhaps others.

In the middle of supper, Mary anoints his feet with expensive perfume.  The anointing is an act of extravagance, for it was a lot of perfume – a pound’s worth.  And it was expensive – it was worth three hundred denari, which the scholars tell us is equivalent to a year’s salary.  So Mary used up what would be worth an annual salary. It was an extravagant act, perhaps even a wasteful act, and Judas’ comment of why it should have been sold and given to the poor is not an unreasonable comment.  Judas is concerned for his own welfare, true, but even so, giving that much to the poor is a lot better than rubbing it on feet, for heaven’s sake.

But Jesus supports Mary’s gracious act and reminds the house guests that he will not be with them long, so this anointing is in part the anointing for death.

This act of Mary’s was extravagant, perhaps wasteful.  And it was, given the culture of the day, inappropriate.  This first century woman, Mary of Bethany, didn’t have a place at the table of the male disciples.  She was a woman among men. And this woman would dare touch the feet of her male master, an act questionable in that day, leading in part to many in later eras, up to our own, to think that this was Mary Magdalene who is often considered a harlot. (In fact, you may notice that one lyric of our closing hymn today – # 405, “Master, No Offering Costly and Sweet” – attributes this anointing to the Magdalene, though none of the gospel texts support this.  This is Mary of Bethany.  This is Mary the risk-taker, who would step outside convention in this bold act.

She risked consequences.  She risked her standing among Jesus’ other disciples, her reputation in the community, her relationship with her brother and sister. And in taking that risk, she has shown herself to be a true disciple.  She is not alone in this, actually. As our previous hymn suggests, women throughout the gospel stories are often shown to be the truly faithful disciples.

Mary’s loyalty is especially evident once we look at the culture of the first century regarding foot washing and anointing.  They were common practices in that era, though one would do only one’s own feet.  You would use oil or ointment on your feet, which was soothing for those wearing sandals.  In fact, a host welcoming someone after a journey would provide a basin and water so guests could wash their own feet before sharing the meal. The only person who could properly wash and anoint the feet of another was a slave.  So Mary’s act is understood as an act of deep devotion. 

And if the act of anointing were not enough, she then wipes his feet with her hair.  In the culture of the day, a woman’s hair was a source of pride.  Women took pride in their long hair, which was kept up, and damage to one’s hair was considered degrading.  And here she uses her hair as a towel.

In stark relief against this incredible act of discipleship is Judas’ criticisms.  Judas and his later betrayal leads to the death of Jesus and the destruction of the flock, whereas Mary’s actions suggest a life of faithful love. Both prepare Jesus for burial – she by anointing, he, by betraying.

Mary risked consequences because she loved Jesus so much.  Mary modeled an act of discipleship, an act that Jesus himself would soon replicate.  Just several days after this event, Jesus will sit with the disciples at the Last Supper.  And there he will wash the feet of the disciples.  Remember that only a slave would wash the feet of another, and yet here we have Jesus himself acting in that manner.  In the gospel text, the same Greek verb meaning “to wipe” – ekmasso – is used to describe both Mary’s wiping the feet of Jesus and, later, Jesus wiping the feet of the disciples (in John 13:5).

Of course, in today’s world, foot washing is no longer so necessary because of modern footwear as well as modern transportation, as we have more modes of transportation than our mere feet.  And yet the act remains with us in the liturgy of the church as a symbol of how we take care of each other.

During holy week we will gather at church for services on Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday.  We will have two services that day. One at 10 a.m. in the chapel and one at 7 p.m. here in the Nave.  The evening service will offer a ritual of foot washing for those who wish to participate.  Dr. Peay and myself will do the foot washing and we are hoping to find 12 people to fulfill the role of the disciples.  For those not interested in active participation of this part of worship, I invite you to Maundy Thursday worship to witness this ancient act of devotion and service.  This is a reminder to myself and to Dr. Peay that in serving God, we serve you, and so we want to take Jesus’ model of how we in the church might serve each other more fully.

Mary’s act of anointing Jesus has suggested a model of discipleship and a model of how one woman risked to participate in the life of God. She took a risk and this Biblical account suggests that we might think about how we have risked to advance the work of God in our own lives.

I look back at the risks I have taken and like most of us of my age, I have taken quite a few.  After I had been married about six months we decided we wanted to move to a larger city to seek our fame and fortune, and so we literally put everything we owned into one rented U-Haul and drove across Texas and arrived in Dallas with all our possessions, but without jobs.  We had to talk our way into an apartment lease with a landlord who at first didn’t want to rent to a couple with no income. But he took a risk.  We eventually got jobs and he got rent.

There have been other risks of my life.  I have risked leaving one career to enter ministry.  I have risked moving great distances to new parts of the country to establish my ministry.  I have risked many things, and not all were success stories.  But as I look back at all these risks I have to admit that most of them were, in one way or the other, about benefiting me. Less often have I lavishly and gregariously stepped forward in faith.  Less often have I not thought of consequences to give my love to God in such a generous way.

Perhaps in your life you have a story where you have risked something for someone else; where you stepped beyond convention to show your admiration, your love.  Perhaps someone else risked for you, provided you with a needed advance to get you to the next step.  And perhaps there have been times of your life when you didn’t risk; where you stayed within comfortable convention, and in looking back you realize you would have been better served if you had taken the chance.

It is easy to look back and wish you had done differently.  But we live life in forward, not in rewind, so we live life with a certain blindness, with a certain inability to understand fully the consequences of our actions. That’s where faith steps in.  When we live and act, not merely believe, in accord with what we understand our faith to be, in how we understand God to be working in our lives and in the world

Mary understood.  So did Paul. In fact, Paul risked more than Mary, perhaps, for Paul had more to lose.  As he recounts in his letter to the church at Philippi, before his conversion, Paul had great standing in the community.  Paul’s resume is impressive; he comes with great credentials, as he lines out in the text from Philippeans.

Paul was certainly in the mainstream of the powerful.  He was a good Jew, “circumcised on the eighth day.”  He had good lineage, “of the people if Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews.”  He knew the law and he loved the law, “as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.”  So he was clearly in the solid, upper middle class of his day.

But it wasn’t enough.  For him, it wasn’t enough. In his own way, like Mary, Paul wanted intimacy with Jesus.  Like Mary, he is throwing caution to the win.  “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”  For he wants to know Christ.  That is all. 

Paul risked what he was; he gave up what he was and what he had previously understood and stepped forward in the new faith of the new covenant, of the new way of living in the world.

Paul speaks of gain and loss.  We could say that Paul suggests a rearrangement of the price tags of life, so that items previously thought of as valuable are recognized as worthless.  And items once regarded as not valuable are now cherished.  This is a new epistemology, a new economy, if you will, inherent in the gospel.  A new way of understanding value, of realizing what is really real.

Judas sees only the monetary value of the ointment (and really only a way to supplement his own purse); Mary sees the ointment as way to demonstrate love and relief the suffering of her beloved master. Both Paul and Mary risk losing their old selves and opening up to love, the love divine that Jesus promised and that Jesus expressed.

When I was a chaplain in a hospital, part of my requirement for preparing for ministry, one of my duties was to attend to families when a patient died.  The very first death I “worked,” as we would say, was with a large family whose elderly matriarch, the grandmother, has passed.  I tentatively entered the room, a new and nervous chaplain walking into what I assumed would be a family in grief.  Indeed, they were.  The woman who had died was still in the hospital bed.  The thing I found odd was how the women of the family were so busy taking care of the body:  they were combing her hair and rubbing her hands and arms (and perhaps, though I do not recall, her feet) with lotion. And they were wailing and crying and touching and massaging the body.  And I wondered why they were paying such attention to the body, moisturizing the skin of this dead woman. And the men were on the perimeter hugging other family members and trying to console and they were crying too, unashamedly.

For me, it was a scary situation.  My own family was much more retentive emotionally and I found this scene odd.

Much like Mary of old, they were anointing the body, but not with expensive perfume, only an economy-sized bottle of common drugstore hand lotion.  But the aroma filled the room just as much.  Their grief was honest, and their self-givingness apparent.  I tried to minister to them but I will admit it seemed rather silly that they even needed me there, as it was clear they knew how to take care of each other.

As it turns out, the very next death I attended was completely different.  It was either that day or a later day, but again an elderly woman had died.  Her son, an older man himself, and his wife sat in the family lounge.  They had been told that his mother had passed and I approached them.  They were silent, but clearly in grief.  There were a few tears, but controlled.  They handled their grief differently.  Even though they were together, it was as if they were grieving individually.  They wouldn’t let each other in; they wouldn’t express so openly the emotions they were experiencing. I invited them to go back to the room, thinking perhaps they would have a need to be with the body, to take care of the body, thinking of my previous family.  But they heartily declined that invitation; they didn’t want to be near the body.

Now, I tell this story carefully, for I don’t mean to imply that there is a correct way to handle grief—these two families handled it in their own way, which is fine.  The cultural and ethnic background of each family no doubt informed the way they handled death.  My role as chaplain was not to push people beyond the boundaries of their comfort.  But since that day I have thought often of the contrast between these two families.

I think of them perhaps because the second family reminded me most of my own larger family.  And I am a bit jealous of the first family – at the readiness to show emotion, to care for each other, to grieve loudly and openly and to love just as boldly.

Perhaps there are times when we are presented with an opportunity to reach out, to touch, perhaps physically, to anoint, to give graciously, gregariously, extravagantly.  For it was in washing the disciples feet at the Last Supper, modeling what Mary had done for him, that Jesus gave us the New Commandment:  “… that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34). 

So Mary’s anointing of Jesus anticipates the love commandment that Jesus will give his disciples. The depth of Mary’s love for Jesus is matched by the extravagance of her act.  Mary models the robust faith that makes it possible to embrace Jesus’ gift of new life.

As we go from this place may we remember Mary’s gift and may we love more boldly, more extravagantly.  May we risk more with ourselves, with each other, so that we might more fully participate in the life of God.