Extravagance
John 12:1-8
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. 3 Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5 “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 6 He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you,[c] but you will not always have me.”
INTRODUCTION
Yesterday I attended an Eagle Scout ceremony. Many of you know that Sean Powell achieved this distinguished recognition. To receive such an award demonstrates a number of accomplishments. One must develop a certain number of proficiencies in a variety of fields. One must demonstrate effective leadership by organizing and conducting a project that involves a number of workers. To achieve the rank of Eagle Scout one must necessarily persevere through years of scouting activities. I was reminded of the Scouting Motto, “Be Prepared.” There are a number of reasons one might find oneself unprepared. Preparation requires work. Sometimes we do not prepare out of slothfulness. Other times we fail to adequately prepare because we forget something of importance. As you prepared for the winter storm this week perhaps you too forgot to get a loaf of bread. Sometimes we do not prepare because we do not anticipate that for which we need to prepare. When I was a student in Kazakhstan I lived in an apartment about a half a mile from the University. My first morning going from my apartment to the school the host father Boris Vasilivitch walked me to the school. He was speaking Russian the entire time and I wasn’t understanding much. But when you let people know you don’t understand they slow down and speak loudly…and you still don’t understand so it was just easier to nod my head even though I had no idea what he was trying to communicate. It only occurred to me after my classes in the afternoon…that I wasn’t sure about how to get home. I had not anticipated this very obvious need.
Lent is a season of preparation. It is a time when we think specifically about our relationship with God. Are you examining your relationship with God in this season? Do you have a recognition of the importance of our response to God. The process of examining our relationship with God begins with a recognition of the importance of this relationship. In this morning’s text we find a story that may challenge us about how we value this relationship.
JUDAS OBJECTED
The name Judas is not popularly given to children these days. In fact it has not been popular for almost two thousand years. The reason for this is of course needs no explanation. Judas the traitor the one who would hand Jesus over to be crucified to name one’s child Judas would be to in some ways be making a provocative assertion. There are performers who have chosen to take this approach for this very reason. In show business the saying goes any publicity is good publicity. But holding one’s newborn child in the hospital bed you will not find parents discussing the possibility of naming their new child Judas. While this is completely understandable it can also have a negative influence on our ability to learn from Judas. The name has become so interwoven with all that is perverse we can dismiss Judas as an arch villain with whom we share no similarity. Our text today challenges us on this point. I think for many people as they read this candid encounter find Judas objection sensible. The disciples are gathered for a meal at a home in Bethany. This is the town where Lazarus lived. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are all present at this meal. When suddenly Mary washes Jesus feet with a bottle of expensive perfume. This is not a little amount of money. Judas describes it as being a years worth of wages. This is new car kind of money….and a nice new car at that.
During this season of reflection about our relationship with God it is especially prudent to consider Judas. Judas we know though often neglect to really pay much attention was one who answered Jesus call to follow him. In fact Judas was specifically singled out to be on the disciples one of the twelve when crowds of thousands gathered to hear and see Jesus Judas was one of the inner circle. It can be interesting to explore though we do not have any specific answers offered to us in scripture, how Judas might of thought of his relationship to Jesus. Might he have thought of himself as a follower of Jesus? I think he must have to some extent. He had left his home and joined this teacher. He traveled with him for perhaps as long as three years. We do not really know what he might have thought…but we can give I think more firm speculation about what other people thought. No doubt people from the crowds saw and identified him with Jesus. They would have thought that he was a very serious follower of Jesus. There are some questions that require some deliberation. I do not know my 13 times tables. I don’t have to have a calculator but it might take me a little bit to figure 13 x 8. But there are some problems that require no hesitation. 2 + 2 this is the kind of arithmetic I can do in my head. It requires no hesitation to recognize that one can be by much outward trappings considered a follower of Jesus, and yet not be a follower of Jesus. This is a very important lesson we do well to remember anytime we consider the figure of Judas.
When we read this passage we immediately know that Judas’ is in the wrong. But we may be tempted to think he is in the wrong because of his attributed reason for his concern. This is wasteful spending it should be given to the poor. This is what he said, but the narrator tells us he was stealing from the money. We all know how such a dynamic can affect our forming of judgments. We can find ourselves using language to explain our decision that doesn’t really address our concerns. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the ability. Each of these kinds of explanations can merely be shortcuts to dismiss a problem without having to explore what we might have to sacrifice. It is interesting to note that Jesus’ response to Judas was not directed at his motive. He didn’t say to him anything about his motives rather he speaks to something that seems very strange. The poor will be with you always, but you will not always have me. I think we can perhaps in a way that we would not openly share be tempted to wonder why would Jesus accept such an expensive demonstration that seems to really have no significance?
MARY’S EXTRAVAGANCE
There are several immediate barriers we need to get around to understand Mary’s action. First we typically don’t have any perfume that would cost an entire year’s wages. There is some expensive perfume at Macy’s but not that expensive. At least not that I have ever seen. Secondly we don’t normally encounter someone pouring perfume on someone’s feet and wiping it with their hair. This seems like a very strange way of behaving. I had a professor in seminary who used to remind his students that whenever you are reading anything from a different culture you are confronted with the important challenge of seeing the actions from the culture situation. You must go native if your are to understand the text. Much misreading of history comes missing this very important step. First the washing of feet is something that would have been a more common practice. We of course see Jesus doing this very act at the Last Supper. In the ancient world people wore sandals. Their feet would get very dirty. Washing the feet of guests both had a practical necessity and it was usually done by the servants. The value of this perfume can also be understood when we realize that there were not as many ways to store wealth in the ancient world. This jar of perfume likely was an important savings for the family. It may have been the dowry that Mary would have had to be given to a suitor at the time of marriage. We do not know what this would have been used for exactly, but it wouldn’t have been to put on one’s neck before an evening out. It was the family savings.
This action is not simply a product of an ancient practice, but it is in the context of a cultural custom. We first want to see the cultural custom that we can understand the symbolic significance of this action. We make use of symbolic acts all the time. However we do not always describe our use of symbolism in such a common way. I think it is more common that we associate symbolic actions with somewhat marginal forms of communication. We might readily acknowledge that gangs make use of graffiti to convey some symbol about their control of a neighborhood. We see a flag flying at half mast and we know that someone has died…though we might not know who. We think of these as symbolic actions when in fact in a sense all forms of communication make use of symbols. Words are symbols. One way to think of symbols is to think of them as envelops. Envelops come in many different sizes. There are boxes, letters, tubes, etc….when we receive some parcel in the mail we are eager to open it up and find what is inside.
I think there are two ideas conveyed in this symbolic act. The first is that Mary offers to Jesus in this act of humble service everything she has. Mary’s brother you will remember had been raised from the dead. In this response to Jesus she is indicating that she wants to show to Jesus that there is nothing that is to her more valuable to her. Now if the message were to just stop here you might find yourself like Judas thinking couldn’t there be a better way of showing this love. After all while Judas might have had wicked motives wanting to steal the money couldn’t Jesus have directed her to use her gifts in a different way that might have impacted more people. The second part of this symbolic act is especially important at this point of reflection. While Mary doesn’t fully understand the implications of her pouring this perfume upon Jesus, He did. He knew that he was going to his death. This was perfume provided a foreshadowing of his death. His death is more important than anything else. Even if you righted every wrong in the world this minute we realize more wrongs would emerge. The problem that Jesus came to bring healing is this basic broken nature of our world.
MOTIVATED BY LOVE
So it is then natural at this point in a reflection upon our passage to ask ourselves the question of the implication of this symbolic act for our lives in the present. How might we be called to imitate Mary? I want to suggest that we explore how we are responding to Jesus. I think we might find that there are a number of underlying motives that may be at work in our participation in the community of God’s people called the church. I want to identify three. The first motivation I want to identify is that we may find ourselves participating in this community out of a sense of obligation. It may be that from a young age or at some formative point in your life you developed the habituated practice of being a part of congregational life. It may be that you have attended worship services, participated in Sunday School classes, done other activities of the church for so long that you feel like if you were not a part of them then they wouldn’t be able to continue without you. You may have come to a sense of value in the sense that this community depends upon your work and your effort or your presence. A sense of obligation can be a powerful bond for motivating a particular kind of dedication. It can be comforting for a congregation to have people who serve with such an obligation. It may be comforting financially to have certain counted upon revenue streams, certain counted upon volunteers, certain counted upon workers. And yet when our response to Jesus rests upon the bond of obligation we can fin ourselves actually becoming destructive to our own relationship with God, to our neighbors, to our witness to unbelievers.
A second motivation that can underlie participation in the congregation of God’s people is that what binds us to the community is a sense of expectation. I need to do this work so that I will be sure to be on the safe side when everything shakes out. We realize that we are not long for this world. It is amazing how one can simply close one eyes and travel back decades to remember one’s childhood, one’s years as a young parent, the passage of time is something that we realize we are all subject to. Especially as one starts looking at a calendar and realizing that there are fewer decades ahead than behind. We do not have to talk about this reality. And in fact it isn’t in our culture very good form to openly point this fact out. And yet to suggest that such a reality doesn’t motivate our actions is likely to be self-deceived. We are mortal. And one can even find one’s participation in community of faith to be a way of looking to some word that offers hope in the midst of an otherwise bleak outlook.
I don’t see either of these motivations to be what compelled Mary to this act of service. She has not poured out this perfume on the feet of Jesus because she owed it to Him for raising her brother from the dead. She did not engage in this act of service because she felt that she might somehow create a debt that Jesus would be sure to honor. We see in Mary’s act a response of love. She was filled with love for Jesus. We live in a time when there have been some popular shows that have claimed some romantic attraction between Jesus and Mary. There is no hint of this in the Bible. Even in the so called lost gospels which by the way were never lost they just were never a part of the Christian scriptures because from early on they were seen to be the products of some very fringe groups that believe very distorted things about Jesus. Even in these writings there is no hint of such a relationship. We see in relationships of love the desire simply to give to the beloved. There is no greater love than this that one give his life for another. Mary gave all that she had to Jesus and even still it was not as much as Jesus would give to her.
CELEBRATION
During this season of Lent of concerted self reflection about our relationship before God, I want to encourage you to think about your service to God. There is a place for the discipline create by both obligation and expectation and yet if these are the principal bonds that hold us in this community of faith I want to suggest that we are potentially choking ourselves off from the fullness of life than we are invited to experience in a relationship with the Living God. The Psalmist writes, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” It is with this conviction that I call us to a spirit of contrition before God as we recognize the ways in which our devotion can be stifled by disobedience.
Notice the detail easily passed over that the entire house was filled with the fragrance of Mary’s act of devotion. The word for household is one that often would be used to describe the church. In the household of God when we respond to Jesus out of love for who He is the entire church benefits. May we recognize who we are invited to serve. And may we respond in Love. God Grant it Amen.
Reflections 