The period that Christians call "Holy Week" begins Sunday, with Palm (or Passion) Sunday--the entrance Jesus makes into Jerusalem for the final week of his life as a human being.
The website Faith and Values has an excellent collection of resources for understanding Holy Week in the various Christian traditions.
Friday, April 02, 2004
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Listening for God's call
Our callings from God aren't always immediately clear--nor do they always follow a straight line.
That's the essence of a Wise County Messenger article about our pastoral intern, Diane Oswald, and the path she's followed to ministry with the Presbyterian church.
That's the essence of a Wise County Messenger article about our pastoral intern, Diane Oswald, and the path she's followed to ministry with the Presbyterian church.
Are you abundant?
A sermon based on John 12:1-8.
Not far from our house in Fort Worth is a neighborhood the police call The End. It’s less than two miles by car, but a world away by culture.
The End anchors Fort Worth’s drug trade. You can buy crack cocaine or amphetamines on the street corners the way you can buy ice cream from a handcart at the park near my house. The sound of guns is an every-day occurrence.
I try not to go to The End if I can avoid it. But one day, The End came to me.
On a Monday afternoon, a skinny old man knocked on our door.
“Howdy,” he said. “I’m a neighbor of yours and I’ve kind of gotten myself stranded. Do you think you could give me a ride?”
His body odor was overwhelming, and his speech had a rapid, staccato cadence you sometimes hear in a drug addict or a person who is mentally ill. He wanted a ride. My gas tank was on empty; I had a chapter write and a sermon to prepare for; I didn’t really have the time to give the man a ride. But I took him anyway.
Immediately, it became clear that he didn’t live where he’d told me. He wasn’t a “neighbor” at all. The directions he gave after we were driving took us deeper and deeper into The End, and I began to wonder where he was taking me, and why. I was afraid for my safety, if not my life.
And as I drove, surrounded by the stench of this dirty man, I began to wonder: Am I being noble or am I just being stupid?
The end of the story, of course, is that I made out just fine. I dropped him off, he said “God bless,” and I high-tailed it home like a mule deer startled by a gun shot. Nothing dramatic, nothing bad.
For the viewers at home: Do not attempt to replicate this stunt on your own; the driver in this story was a trained professional ignoring all of his professional training.
But the incident left me wondering: What will I do the next time someone—maybe even the same man—comes to my door asking for a ride?
Just what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in a situation like that?
II.
Imagine for a moment that you are having a dinner in honor of an out-of-town friend. Yours is a casual house, and everyone is barefoot, seated around the table, laughing, sharing hors d’oeuvres and maybe a glass of wine.
And then your sister walks into the room with a huge, unopened bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume—16 ounces, a whole pound of the stuff—and someone says, “Whoa, Mary! What did you spend on that perfume?”
“Oh, a bit,” Mary says, kneeling before the guest of honor. “About $30,000, I think—a year’s salary.”
And then she empties the entire bottle on the feet of your out-of-town friend. The perfume runs down his ankles, over his toes, puddles on the floor, fills the room with its sweet odor. Then Mary begins to use her long, dark hair to wipe his feet clean. No one says a word. Everyone is stunned.
And then your brother, the one who embezzled all that money from the local Food Bank, explodes: “Geez, Mary! If you wanted to spend your money, why didn’t you give that $30,000 to feed the hungry and poor people of Wise County instead of wasting it like this?!”
You have no idea what to say or what to do. What would it mean to be a disciple of Jesus—not to mention an astonished host or a perfume-drenched guest of honor—what would it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in a situation like this?
III.
It is six days before Passover, and Jesus knows as he walks into Bethany, two miles from Jerusalem, that the countdown has begun. The priests and the Pharisees are waiting for him in Jerusalem, where they will arrest him and put him to death.
In the gospel of John, raising Lazarus from the dead was the act that cinched Jesus’ fate: The powers-that-be cannot tolerate this prophet or the allegiance he’s evoking from the poor and the outcast. He’s becoming too popular, too powerful, and the leaders are worried he will bring the wrath of the Romans down on their heads. So he must die.
But first, he will spend some time at home with Lazarus, with Martha and her sister Mary. In fact, the household is preparing a special dinner tonight for Jesus and his disciples.
Why has Jesus come to Bethany just before his death at the hands of the authorities? After all, this village and the house of Lazarus both are associated with the stench of death. Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days before he was raised—Martha herself complained about the odor even before the stone was rolled away.
Has Jesus returned to Bethany to remind himself of the stink of a decaying body, to meditate on his own impending death?
Or has he returned to Bethany, to the house of Lazarus, to remind himself of the power of God to resuscitate a dead man?
As he sat at the table with Lazarus and the apostles, was Jesus surprised to see Mary approach with a jar of oil usually reserved to anoint the dead? Or did he expect Mary—this woman who had sat at his feet in admiration, listening so closely to his words—did he expect Mary to recognize what was about to happen, to anoint him in preparation for his death, to anoint him in reverence to make up for the rushed and haphazard anointing he would receive in secret after his shameful death on the cross? Is that why he returned to Bethany?
There’s no way we can know why Jesus has come here, to sit at this table, and I suppose the reason isn’t all that important. What is important is that Mary approached him with a pound of oil scented with nard. She knelt at his feet—gnarled and callused, hardened against the rocks and sharp thorns, dusty from his wanderings—she knelt at his feet and gently took them into her own callused hands.
And then she poured the oil, all of it, on his feet, ignoring the way it puddled to the floor, the way its scent filled the entire room, driving away the stench of death. And when his feet were slippery and soft under her fingers, when she had massaged the bruised and aching muscles, she began to wipe his feet clean with her own long, dark hair.
Is there a more sensuous scene in the bible than this incredibly intimate moment between Mary and Jesus, two people who love each other, a moment lived out in the midst of their friends, gathered together at the table for a meal?
It is a moment of worship, pure adoration. I imagine Jesus reclining against the cushions, eyes closed, inhaling the odor of the perfume, a smile of pleasure on his face. It feels good to have someone rub your feet with oil and then wipe them clean.
Mary’s devotion that night at dinner foreshadows the way Jesus will wash the feet of his own disciples before the week is over. It also foreshadows his death six days later.
Mary is anointing Jesus as a dead body would be anointed, but taking it to an extreme. Rather than using a few drops of scented oil, she uses a whole pound. Her act is beyond reason, extravagantly so, a moment of overflowing abundance, a gratuitous response to love that wells up and spills over, enveloping the whole dinner party in its sweet, sweet smell. The fragrance of her love fills the whole house.
And then Judas speaks: “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
It is a show-stopping question, and it begs another: What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus at a moment like this?
IV.
If Mary brings the fragrance of love to this dinner party, Judas is the stench of death. In him, the power of darkness has manifest itself even in the intimate circle of Jesus’ closest friends. And his question—“Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor”—his question seems to negate Mary’s simple act of devotion.
So often in life the stench of death seems to overwhelm the fragrance of love.
There are the times we speak harshly to our child or spouse, spitting out words of death rather than words of life.
There are the times when depression and anxiety fill us with a loathing for ourselves and for all of life.
There are the times when we boast about ourselves instead of celebrating the achievements of others.
There are the times when build ourselves up by tearing others down.
There are times when people we thought were friends hurt us or let us down.
There are the times we choose allegiance to family or the lure of money over the liberating message of the gospel.
There are times . . . there are times. But you know what I’m talking about. You’ve experienced it in your own life. And at some time or another, each of us hears that voice that says: The good you’re doing isn’t good enough. You’re not really a disciple of Jesus.
V.
Some of you might remember the Church Lady, a character that Dana Carvey played twenty years ago on the comedy show “Saturday Night Live.”
Whenever she found someone doing something good, the Church Lady managed to twist it around so that the do-gooder was actually in the service of the devil.
“I notice you’re wearing your red gloves as you shovel the walk of your disabled neighbor,” she would say. “But do we maybe know whose color red is? Hmmm. I don’t know—maybe . . . Satan?”
And then she would do her Superiority Dance to celebrate her status as a true disciple.
That is perhaps the twentieth-century version of what Judas is doing at this dinner party in Bethany. He’s showing off, as if saying, “I have a better grasp of the gospel than you do.”
One of the purposes of this passage in the Gospel of John, I think, is to contrast the false discipleship of Judas with the authentic discipleship of Mary.
Judas thinks he can fake his way through, by appealing to the care of the poor and ignoring the death of Jesus that will occur because of his own betrayal.
Mary, on the other hand, doesn’t try to be a good disciple. She simply pours herself out, overflowing with love and devotion, adoring Jesus with all her being.
She is the first to serve him, the first to love him, the first to prepare his body for burial through the act of anointing. The sweet smell of that perfume fills the room, allowing everyone present to participate in her act of worship and thus in their teacher’s death.
This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus at a moment like this: to participate in his death while nonetheless acting in ways that proclaim the extravagant love of the living God.
In Mary the stench of death—both death in the past, as represented by Lazarus, and death in the future, as represented by Judas—in Mary, the stench of death is replaced by the fragrance of humble love.
V.
Unless you’re asleep this morning—and I’m not unaware of that possibility—you’ve probably noticed how often this morning I’ve emphasized the extravagance of Mary’s anointing of Jesus.
That image of Mary pouring forth the perfume, the way it cascades over the feet of Jesus and puddles on the floor, the way its scent fills the house, all of those details echo an ancient understanding of God.
Pseudo-Dionysius, a Greek theologian and mystic, wrote of God as a hidden spring, gushing forth, overflowing to fill the world with the power of divine energy so that everything participates in the generous and abundant love of God.
We are made in that image. Each of us. And in anointing the feet of Jesus in her extravagant way, Mary is activating that divine image in herself, living out what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus.
She is being sanctified. In telling Judas to leave her alone, Jesus is choosing Mary as one of his own. And being chosen as God’s own means she is participating in the nature of God. What belongs to God is holy, as God is holy. Those who are sanctified lead a special life because, instead of living according to the ethics of their own society or their own egos, they increasingly live according to the law of God’s kingdom. And God’s kingdom rests on a hidden abundance, an embarrassment of riches, built into the heart of reality and showering down on creation.
To be a disciple of Jesus is to live out of this abundance. To be a disciple of Jesus is to act in ways that communicate the fullness of life to others. To be a disciple of Jesus is to participate in his death, knowing that not even the grave can stop the love of God flowing through us and into the world.
Reformed theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes:
If whatever God has made and loves is holy, then life is holy in itself, and to live life with love and joy means sanctifying it. . . . To sanctify life does not mean manipulating it religiously and morally. It means being freed and justified, loved and affirmed, and more and more alive. Life in God’s Spirit is a life entrusted to the guidance and drive of the Spirit, a life that lets the Spirit come. . . . The Spirit of life is poured out and flows. . . . Through the Holy Spirit, God’s eternal life brims over, as it were, and its overflowing powers and energies fill the earth.
No one can “make” this life happen, be it through giving money to the poor or doing things intended to make us “better Christians.” One can only let this life be and let it come, as Mary did when she anointed the feet of Jesus. The life that Moltmann writes about is not achieved by works, but received as a gift, a gift of God’s grace flowing into the world through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
Receiving that gift and becoming a channel by which it flows into the world to bless the life of others is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus at any time.
As Lent comes to an end and we move into the passion of Holy Week, may we prepare a way in the wilderness of our lives so that the living waters of the Lord might flow through us and into the life of others.
As God claimed us in the waters of baptism, so might we also claim God’s grace, participating in the death of Christ by which the fragrance of love replaced the stench of death for all time.
To that God of overflowing abundance, whose passionate love creates and sustains the universe as a graceful gift to those chosen as God’s own, be blessing and glory and wisdom and power forever and ever! Amen.
Not far from our house in Fort Worth is a neighborhood the police call The End. It’s less than two miles by car, but a world away by culture.
The End anchors Fort Worth’s drug trade. You can buy crack cocaine or amphetamines on the street corners the way you can buy ice cream from a handcart at the park near my house. The sound of guns is an every-day occurrence.
I try not to go to The End if I can avoid it. But one day, The End came to me.
On a Monday afternoon, a skinny old man knocked on our door.
“Howdy,” he said. “I’m a neighbor of yours and I’ve kind of gotten myself stranded. Do you think you could give me a ride?”
His body odor was overwhelming, and his speech had a rapid, staccato cadence you sometimes hear in a drug addict or a person who is mentally ill. He wanted a ride. My gas tank was on empty; I had a chapter write and a sermon to prepare for; I didn’t really have the time to give the man a ride. But I took him anyway.
Immediately, it became clear that he didn’t live where he’d told me. He wasn’t a “neighbor” at all. The directions he gave after we were driving took us deeper and deeper into The End, and I began to wonder where he was taking me, and why. I was afraid for my safety, if not my life.
And as I drove, surrounded by the stench of this dirty man, I began to wonder: Am I being noble or am I just being stupid?
The end of the story, of course, is that I made out just fine. I dropped him off, he said “God bless,” and I high-tailed it home like a mule deer startled by a gun shot. Nothing dramatic, nothing bad.
For the viewers at home: Do not attempt to replicate this stunt on your own; the driver in this story was a trained professional ignoring all of his professional training.
But the incident left me wondering: What will I do the next time someone—maybe even the same man—comes to my door asking for a ride?
Just what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in a situation like that?
II.
Imagine for a moment that you are having a dinner in honor of an out-of-town friend. Yours is a casual house, and everyone is barefoot, seated around the table, laughing, sharing hors d’oeuvres and maybe a glass of wine.
And then your sister walks into the room with a huge, unopened bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume—16 ounces, a whole pound of the stuff—and someone says, “Whoa, Mary! What did you spend on that perfume?”
“Oh, a bit,” Mary says, kneeling before the guest of honor. “About $30,000, I think—a year’s salary.”
And then she empties the entire bottle on the feet of your out-of-town friend. The perfume runs down his ankles, over his toes, puddles on the floor, fills the room with its sweet odor. Then Mary begins to use her long, dark hair to wipe his feet clean. No one says a word. Everyone is stunned.
And then your brother, the one who embezzled all that money from the local Food Bank, explodes: “Geez, Mary! If you wanted to spend your money, why didn’t you give that $30,000 to feed the hungry and poor people of Wise County instead of wasting it like this?!”
You have no idea what to say or what to do. What would it mean to be a disciple of Jesus—not to mention an astonished host or a perfume-drenched guest of honor—what would it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in a situation like this?
III.
It is six days before Passover, and Jesus knows as he walks into Bethany, two miles from Jerusalem, that the countdown has begun. The priests and the Pharisees are waiting for him in Jerusalem, where they will arrest him and put him to death.
In the gospel of John, raising Lazarus from the dead was the act that cinched Jesus’ fate: The powers-that-be cannot tolerate this prophet or the allegiance he’s evoking from the poor and the outcast. He’s becoming too popular, too powerful, and the leaders are worried he will bring the wrath of the Romans down on their heads. So he must die.
But first, he will spend some time at home with Lazarus, with Martha and her sister Mary. In fact, the household is preparing a special dinner tonight for Jesus and his disciples.
Why has Jesus come to Bethany just before his death at the hands of the authorities? After all, this village and the house of Lazarus both are associated with the stench of death. Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days before he was raised—Martha herself complained about the odor even before the stone was rolled away.
Has Jesus returned to Bethany to remind himself of the stink of a decaying body, to meditate on his own impending death?
Or has he returned to Bethany, to the house of Lazarus, to remind himself of the power of God to resuscitate a dead man?
As he sat at the table with Lazarus and the apostles, was Jesus surprised to see Mary approach with a jar of oil usually reserved to anoint the dead? Or did he expect Mary—this woman who had sat at his feet in admiration, listening so closely to his words—did he expect Mary to recognize what was about to happen, to anoint him in preparation for his death, to anoint him in reverence to make up for the rushed and haphazard anointing he would receive in secret after his shameful death on the cross? Is that why he returned to Bethany?
There’s no way we can know why Jesus has come here, to sit at this table, and I suppose the reason isn’t all that important. What is important is that Mary approached him with a pound of oil scented with nard. She knelt at his feet—gnarled and callused, hardened against the rocks and sharp thorns, dusty from his wanderings—she knelt at his feet and gently took them into her own callused hands.
And then she poured the oil, all of it, on his feet, ignoring the way it puddled to the floor, the way its scent filled the entire room, driving away the stench of death. And when his feet were slippery and soft under her fingers, when she had massaged the bruised and aching muscles, she began to wipe his feet clean with her own long, dark hair.
Is there a more sensuous scene in the bible than this incredibly intimate moment between Mary and Jesus, two people who love each other, a moment lived out in the midst of their friends, gathered together at the table for a meal?
It is a moment of worship, pure adoration. I imagine Jesus reclining against the cushions, eyes closed, inhaling the odor of the perfume, a smile of pleasure on his face. It feels good to have someone rub your feet with oil and then wipe them clean.
Mary’s devotion that night at dinner foreshadows the way Jesus will wash the feet of his own disciples before the week is over. It also foreshadows his death six days later.
Mary is anointing Jesus as a dead body would be anointed, but taking it to an extreme. Rather than using a few drops of scented oil, she uses a whole pound. Her act is beyond reason, extravagantly so, a moment of overflowing abundance, a gratuitous response to love that wells up and spills over, enveloping the whole dinner party in its sweet, sweet smell. The fragrance of her love fills the whole house.
And then Judas speaks: “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
It is a show-stopping question, and it begs another: What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus at a moment like this?
IV.
If Mary brings the fragrance of love to this dinner party, Judas is the stench of death. In him, the power of darkness has manifest itself even in the intimate circle of Jesus’ closest friends. And his question—“Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor”—his question seems to negate Mary’s simple act of devotion.
So often in life the stench of death seems to overwhelm the fragrance of love.
There are the times we speak harshly to our child or spouse, spitting out words of death rather than words of life.
There are the times when depression and anxiety fill us with a loathing for ourselves and for all of life.
There are the times when we boast about ourselves instead of celebrating the achievements of others.
There are the times when build ourselves up by tearing others down.
There are times when people we thought were friends hurt us or let us down.
There are the times we choose allegiance to family or the lure of money over the liberating message of the gospel.
There are times . . . there are times. But you know what I’m talking about. You’ve experienced it in your own life. And at some time or another, each of us hears that voice that says: The good you’re doing isn’t good enough. You’re not really a disciple of Jesus.
V.
Some of you might remember the Church Lady, a character that Dana Carvey played twenty years ago on the comedy show “Saturday Night Live.”
Whenever she found someone doing something good, the Church Lady managed to twist it around so that the do-gooder was actually in the service of the devil.
“I notice you’re wearing your red gloves as you shovel the walk of your disabled neighbor,” she would say. “But do we maybe know whose color red is? Hmmm. I don’t know—maybe . . . Satan?”
And then she would do her Superiority Dance to celebrate her status as a true disciple.
That is perhaps the twentieth-century version of what Judas is doing at this dinner party in Bethany. He’s showing off, as if saying, “I have a better grasp of the gospel than you do.”
One of the purposes of this passage in the Gospel of John, I think, is to contrast the false discipleship of Judas with the authentic discipleship of Mary.
Judas thinks he can fake his way through, by appealing to the care of the poor and ignoring the death of Jesus that will occur because of his own betrayal.
Mary, on the other hand, doesn’t try to be a good disciple. She simply pours herself out, overflowing with love and devotion, adoring Jesus with all her being.
She is the first to serve him, the first to love him, the first to prepare his body for burial through the act of anointing. The sweet smell of that perfume fills the room, allowing everyone present to participate in her act of worship and thus in their teacher’s death.
This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus at a moment like this: to participate in his death while nonetheless acting in ways that proclaim the extravagant love of the living God.
In Mary the stench of death—both death in the past, as represented by Lazarus, and death in the future, as represented by Judas—in Mary, the stench of death is replaced by the fragrance of humble love.
V.
Unless you’re asleep this morning—and I’m not unaware of that possibility—you’ve probably noticed how often this morning I’ve emphasized the extravagance of Mary’s anointing of Jesus.
That image of Mary pouring forth the perfume, the way it cascades over the feet of Jesus and puddles on the floor, the way its scent fills the house, all of those details echo an ancient understanding of God.
Pseudo-Dionysius, a Greek theologian and mystic, wrote of God as a hidden spring, gushing forth, overflowing to fill the world with the power of divine energy so that everything participates in the generous and abundant love of God.
We are made in that image. Each of us. And in anointing the feet of Jesus in her extravagant way, Mary is activating that divine image in herself, living out what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus.
She is being sanctified. In telling Judas to leave her alone, Jesus is choosing Mary as one of his own. And being chosen as God’s own means she is participating in the nature of God. What belongs to God is holy, as God is holy. Those who are sanctified lead a special life because, instead of living according to the ethics of their own society or their own egos, they increasingly live according to the law of God’s kingdom. And God’s kingdom rests on a hidden abundance, an embarrassment of riches, built into the heart of reality and showering down on creation.
To be a disciple of Jesus is to live out of this abundance. To be a disciple of Jesus is to act in ways that communicate the fullness of life to others. To be a disciple of Jesus is to participate in his death, knowing that not even the grave can stop the love of God flowing through us and into the world.
Reformed theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes:
If whatever God has made and loves is holy, then life is holy in itself, and to live life with love and joy means sanctifying it. . . . To sanctify life does not mean manipulating it religiously and morally. It means being freed and justified, loved and affirmed, and more and more alive. Life in God’s Spirit is a life entrusted to the guidance and drive of the Spirit, a life that lets the Spirit come. . . . The Spirit of life is poured out and flows. . . . Through the Holy Spirit, God’s eternal life brims over, as it were, and its overflowing powers and energies fill the earth.
No one can “make” this life happen, be it through giving money to the poor or doing things intended to make us “better Christians.” One can only let this life be and let it come, as Mary did when she anointed the feet of Jesus. The life that Moltmann writes about is not achieved by works, but received as a gift, a gift of God’s grace flowing into the world through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
Receiving that gift and becoming a channel by which it flows into the world to bless the life of others is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus at any time.
As Lent comes to an end and we move into the passion of Holy Week, may we prepare a way in the wilderness of our lives so that the living waters of the Lord might flow through us and into the life of others.
As God claimed us in the waters of baptism, so might we also claim God’s grace, participating in the death of Christ by which the fragrance of love replaced the stench of death for all time.
To that God of overflowing abundance, whose passionate love creates and sustains the universe as a graceful gift to those chosen as God’s own, be blessing and glory and wisdom and power forever and ever! Amen.
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