"Abundance in the Midst of Scarcity"
First Congregational Church - Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 21, 2010
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Isaiah 43:16-21/Philippians 3:4b-14/John 12:1-8]

Part of my Lenten observance is reading a book with a colleague. The book we’re reading is by the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and Christian ethicist Samuel Wells. It’s an excellent, provocative book titled God’s Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics. The argument Wells builds his book around is this: God gives his people everything they need to worship Him, to be His friends, to eat with Him. In this thesis Wells is trying to remind us that to be a companion is to be one who, literally, “shares bread,” because that is what the word ‘companion’ means, and what God is trying to get us to understand, and live out – which is the point of ethics – is the value of shared life and relationship.

At the outset of the book, Wells looks at three stories from the Gospel of John. What he notes is that each one of the stories is God offering abundance while we take the attitude of scarcity. Jesus’ first miracle at Cana resulted in too much wine. Later, when he encounters the woman at the well in Samaria there is too much water. In the last the result is too much bread, as Jesus takes a few small loaves and a couple of fish and feeds a multitude – and there are leftovers! I like what Wells has to say about the first story – and, of course, it holds true and builds for the others – “This is not a story of the transformation of poison into safe water. It is not a story of a world deformed by sin being converted into a clean and healthy community. It is not a story of the obliteration or extermination of evil by a divine cleanser. It is a story of the inadequacy of fallen creation and the inadequacy of Israel (the six ritual water jars) being transformed by the generosity of God. It is a story of a good creation, become subject to the economy of scarcity, having no resources to help itself, being brought under the economy of abundant grace. It is a story of enough becoming not enough becoming too much. It is a parable of the person and work of Christ. This is the story of the Gospel: God in Christ overwhelms his despondent people by giving them far more than they need.” [p. 19]

Based on Wells’ point – that God invites us to overcome scarcity with the realization of abundance -- 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 -- as my old New Testament professor used to say, she never got the point that Jesus was trying to say, “Martha, Martha, coldcuts would have been plenty!” -- 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.

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 – it was an act of abundance and extravagant generosity. 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. 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’ option for scarcity rather than abundance, or for that matter, generosity. 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. And God knows if he’s doing all this for this lady, maybe there won’t be enough for me? Isn’t that the culture of scarcity? Well God can’t bless all those people. If he blesses all those people, there won’t be enough for me! It reminds me of something Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, “We are God’s chosen few, all others will be damned. There is no room in heaven for you, we can’t heaven crammed!” That’s an attitude of scarcity, isn’t it? We don’t have any room for you; there might not be room for me. That’s where Judas was. He couldn't receive the gift Jesus had to offer because his perspective was too self-centered – abundance was all around him and he couldn’t see it because what was in his heart, and thus in his eyes, was scarcity.

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, and makes us want more, so do loving actions. I heard a story several years ago about a Holocaust survivor who spoke at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison when I was serving Heritage Church in that city. 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 is it a waste, really? The fragrance of that man's love, his action for his child, fills this room right now. From his perspective that was not a wasted effort, nor a waste of resources, it was an act of abundance in line with God’s. He loved unconditionally and demonstrated that love in his action.

Again, it's all a matter of perspective: abundance or scarcity, enough and more or never enough. His action was that of abundance over against that of scarcity. His action reminds us that we are to be extravagant in our love and abundant in reaching out to God’s people. Why? Because God IS abundance. With God there is no scarcity, only abundance. There is only fullness. If there is scarcity, if there is too little, it is because we have failed to live into the abundance and not been open to the wonder of what God has to offer us.

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 he 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, this new expression of abundance. 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. Who showed us the way of abundance in the midst of scarcity. In Jesus we see God’s abundance in human flesh, to the point of encompassing our lives so that we might renewed and restored to live as God intended for us to live – in a creation that was good and more than enough.

For some people, like Judas, God was not visible from that perspective. Yet, there he was. Others, like Mary and Paul, had their perspective changed and were willing to leave everything behind, as Paul said, "because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ." Paul also gives us the perspective of the "big picture." The race is still going on, the prize is still out there for us, God is no less abundant. And it's all wrapped up in our learning to love, and learning to accept love, as Jesus did, realizing all along that there is more than enough. The glass isn’t half-empty……..it isn’t half-full. . . .. .the glass is just full.

What perspective are we taking today as we sit at the feet of Jesus? Do we come with a vision of scarcity? We’ve been going through one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression of the last century. Still, we live far better than we did then, don’t we? And even though there are increases in prices for various products, we have more things and more varieties of things than any society before us, don’t we? Why, then, do we see scarcity in the midst of abundance? Why do we limit our world-view and, indeed, our imaginations to such strictures, when God is calling us to a life that is abundant? One of Jesus’ sayings that has always touched and inspired me is this: “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” Why should we be practitioners of scarcity when God is the giver of abundance? So my question to us today is, how will we live? Will we operate following Wells’ premise, that God gives us everything we need to be what God has called us to be? Or, will we close ourselves to God’s abundance and think that there’s never enough; or, always living in fear that there’s not enough?

If you want two contemporary examples – from the world of Hollywood film – “Blind Side” is about abundance. “Up in the Air” is about scarcity, though there is a glimmer of hope in it. So today 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 as a waste or as an offering? What God do you serve – the one who gives us everything we need or the god of our making, who pushes into scarcity? What perspective do we have today…….because the truth is that there is abundance in the midst of scarcity, if only we bother to see it. May we see it – there’s more than enough.