Moving on Up

First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 25, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Isaiah 43:16-21 /Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32/John 12:1-8

Years ago there was a television show, “The Jeffersons,” a spin-off of “All in the Family,” which had “Moving on up” as its theme song. The song implied moving on up the ladder of success, as they moved to a “deluxe apartment in the sky.” Ladder imagery has been around for a long time and has given us expressions like “he’s a climber,” “top rung,” “he’s still on the bottom rung,” which denote success or the lack of it. The notion is one starts at the bottom and then moves up the ladder, achieving success along the way. We also hear about programs that are based upon “twelve steps,” which then bring us up out of whatever difficulty we’re dealing with. There are twelve step groups, the most famous being Alcoholics Anonymous, for many different types of addictions and difficulties.

Ladder and step imagery has been used in spirituality long before any of the means to move on up that we’ve just talked about. We’ve all heard the story of Jacob’s ladder in Scripture, but not many of us have heard about John Climacus, the second name means “of the ladder.” John was the abbot of the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai and wrote a classic spiritual text, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Climacus teaches a step-by-step approach to union with God. Another abbot, Benedict of Nursia, founder of Western Monasticism, talked about “degrees” or “steps” of humility in his Rule. Benedict’s little book is about seventy-five percent quotations from Scripture and is now being used as a basis for all sorts of spiritual movements and approaches.

Later writers in the Western Church, like Guigo II, the ninth prior of the monastery called Chartreuse, the motherhouse of the Carthusian order, wrote a ladder of spiritual ascent, as did the English spiritual writer Walter Hilton. Many others followed, like that of Geert Zerbolt, one of the followers of the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion). This was the movement that would later produce Thomas a Kempis and his Imitation of Christ. Zerbolt said that four steps would help us to ascend to union with God. The steps become basic for much of later Western spiritual thought: lectio (spiritual reading), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer) and contemplatio (contemplation). I appreciate what one historian of spirituality, Otto Grundler, has written describing this approach to the spirituality of ascent. “Spiritual reading prepares for meditation, meditation for prayer, and prayer for contemplation. Reading without prayer is arid; meditation without reading erroneous. Prayer without meditation is tepid; meditation without prayer fruitless; contemplation without prayer rare or miraculous.” (in Christian Spirituality vol. II)

The goal is to give us a different perspective, a different way to look at God, our own lives, and the lives of others. The whole point of moving on up is to find ourselves closer to God, allowing ourselves to accept what God offers to us again and again, the Divine embrace, the invitation to be one with God. What do you think Mary's perspective was as she came to kneel at the feet of Jesus? What picture do you think she had in mind? She had spent time with him, learned from him, laughed with him, and admired him as a great rabbi. Not long before this Jesus had done a remarkable thing for Mary and her sister Martha, he had raised their brother, Lazarus, from the dead. Now, Martha was again "busy about many things" seeing to the hospitality, Lazarus was there at the table quite alive, and Mary, Mary was overwhelmed.

So, Mary knelt before this wonder-worker, this gentle teacher and sought to show her gratitude. She took an alabaster box filled with perfume, opened it and anointed Jesus' feet with it, gently wiping the excess away with her own hair. It was a generous act to offer thanks for one even more generous.

We are told that the box contained a pound of perfume. Can you imagine the fragrance that filled the room? It would have been overwhelming, wouldn't it? Perhaps that's why Judas Iscariot was so quick to criticize what she had done, and to criticize Jesus for accepting it? After all, it was a terrible waste of resources. A pound of perfume like that cost three hundred denarii. The average worker's wage was a denarius a day, so this would have been close to a year's wages for someone. We’ve learned a new term around here with the reading the church council has been doing in Graham Standish’s Becoming a Blessed Church – rational functionalism. From what I read here in John’s Gospel I think Judas may have been the first rational functionalist in the church!

Why should we look at this from Mary's perspective and not from that of Judas? All of us probably find ourselves identifying a bit with Judas, don't we? That money could have done a lot of good for people and here it was wasted, poured on feet and the floor, its aroma filling the room.

Was it really wasted? Jesus didn't think so. He saw the act for what it was, a generous gift given from the heart. Mary very likely didn't realize the significance of what she had done. She simply wanted to honor Jesus and demonstrate the profound gratitude she felt for his kindness to her family. Jesus had brought enlightenment, peace and healing into her life. He had, indeed, moved her up and given her a new perspective on her life and her relationship with God. Now her action anticipated the Lord's Passion and death. Her costly ointment was preparation for his burial.

Jesus accepted the gift as it was and looked at the action from Mary's perspective. He received the love as it was it was given -- unconditionally. He didn't try to put it off or diminish the gift or the giver. Rather, he defended her in the face of Judas' selfishness. Judas wasn't interested in feeding hungry people, though he used that argument, but was interested in himself. Judas looked at what Jesus could do for him and not what it meant for others. He couldn't receive the gift Jesus had to offer because his perspective was too self-centered, he couldn’t get off the bottom rung of the ladder and look up to what God had in store for humanity through Jesus.

It was not just the fragrance of the perfume that filled the room that day. Mary's action itself, her good deed, was far more fragrant than ten boxes of the purest nard. Mary's love for Christ filled the room with fragrance. The teachers of the early Church saw the spread of the Gospel in her action. The good news of God's love fills the world in the same way that the fragrance of the perfume filled the room.

As the smell of really good perfume lingers so do loving actions. I heard a story some time ago about a Holocaust survivor who spoke at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison when I was serving Heritage Congregational Church. This gentleman told how his family had all managed to get out of Nazi Germany and flee to South America. All of the family made it out, but his sister, her husband, and her child. This man's father did all that he could to find a way to get them out. He mortgaged, and then sold, his property. He gathered everything he had of value and sold it to get the money he needed to pay the bribes necessary to rescue his child and her family.

Her worked and worked for their release, but to no avail. Always something stopped him. Something stood in the way, but he kept trying and trying. Finally, he learned that his daughter, her husband, and her child had perished in a concentration camp. We might look at this story and say, "What a waste." The man impoverished himself and didn't accomplish what he had set out to do. But was it a waste, really? The fragrance of that man's love, his action for his child, fills this meeting house right now. From his perspective that was not a wasted effort, nor a waste of resources. He loved unconditionally and demonstrated that love in his action. It's all a matter of perspective.

Long ago God spoke through Isaiah the prophet and told the people of Israel to look beyond their past, the thing that gave them identity, to see a new thing God was doing. Everything God did for Israel, all the events of salvation history, happened to give them the perspective to receive the "new thing" that God would do among them. Jesus the Christ was that new thing, humanity brought face-to-face with the Living God who showed us the way of self-giving love and humble service, a way to move on up from a life of self-centeredness to a new life centered in God and in unselfish service to others. In our relationship with God in Jesus Christ we are given a chance to climb the ladder to union with God, to what the book of Second Peter calls, becoming “partakers of divine nature.” We can come to share the very life of God and then allow that life to reflect in our daily actions and attitudes.

For some people, like Judas, God was not visible from that perspective. Yet, there God was. Others, like Mary and Paul, had their perspective changed and were willing to leave everything behind "because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ." Paul also gives us the perspective of the "big picture” when he says, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” That big picture, which shows up throughout this passage, can be described as synergy. Synergy means to work together, to be cooperators with God in the work of our salvation.

There is a clear synergy between the grace of God and human effort in Paul’s writings and also in the great writings of Christian spirituality. We read this from Macarius, one of the writers of the Philokalia, the love of beauty, the great Eastern Orthodox compendium on prayer: “We receive salvation by grace and as a divine gift of the Spirit. But to attain the full measure of virtue we need also to possess faith and love, and to struggle to exercise our free will with integrity. In this manner we inherit eternal life as a consequence of both grace and justice. We do not reach the final stage of spiritual maturity through divine power and grace alone, without ourselves making any effort; but neither on the other hand do we attain the final measure of freedom and purity as a result of our own diligence and strength alone, apart from any divine assistance. If the Lord does not build the house, it is said, and protect the city, in vain does the watchman keep awake, and in vain do the laborer and builder work (Ps. 127:14).”  The race is still going on, the prize is still out there for us, and it's all wrapped up in our learning to love, and learning to accept love, as Jesus did.

What perspective are we taking today as we sit at the feet of Jesus? How will we continue up the ladder of union with God? How will we open our perspective even more? Can we respond to God's love for us as generously as Mary did? As we look at our lives, our actions, do they leave a lasting fragrance of goodness that fills the room? Do we see what we've done in seeking God and in loving others as a waste or as an offering? It really is all a matter of perspective, isn't it? We can continue the climb; develop a new perspective by being diligent in our following after Christ, whether the steps be four or twelve. Please don’t ever hesitate to talk with me or one of the other ministers about your spiritual life, about how you’re moving on up. That is why we’re here. Know that you are in my prayers and that my prayer for all of us is that we will move on up, as Paul described pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Let’s keep moving on up, shall we?