March 25, 2007
(Fifth Sunday in Lent)

Overture to the Passion

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Isaiah 43:16-21  •  Psalm 126  •  Philippians 3:4b-14  •  John 12:1-8
(From The Lectionary Page)

After Linda Sue and I had been dating for several months, we occasionally talked, ever so hypothetically, about what the future might look like. And in the course of such completely hypothetical conversation, we nonetheless talked about the need to better understand what each other was passionate about. Linda Sue had a bit of an edge on me because she was a devoted Episcopalian whose parents were church musicians, so she knew a bit more about my life that I knew about her life as a musician and music teacher.

My learning curve was huge. And since from time-to-time her parents or friends would talk musician-speak and throw technical terms around almost as freely as priests do about our vocation, I sought to learn some of that terminology. As Linda Sue was playing in the pit orchestra for the musical 1776, I set out to learn about the components of a musical by accessing www.musicaltheatrefordummies.com.

Thus, when I drove her to opening night, I shared my new knowledge with her. The only thing I could accurately describe was that the overture contained major themes that would be performed throughout the production. But that evidently was enough because she agreed to go on at least one more date.

Today’s Gospel lesson, while not at the beginning of John’s Gospel, does read something like an overture for the Passion, for several themes that will be performed in the days ahead are present in this reading. In fact, a theme that we encountered last Sunday is also present.

John tells us that it is six days before the Passover, and indeed, he means THE Passover. Not simply the holy days, but THE events by which all creation will pass-over from darkness to light, from slavery to sin into the freedom of grace, indeed, from death into life.

Six days before THE Passover. There is no Passover without the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of God. The first theme of the overture.

In Bethany, Jesus is at the home of Lazarus, who has recently been raised from the dead, walking out of the tomb, and released from his burial shroud. According to John, when Lazarus was raised, the religious authorities decided that Jesus must die. [F. Niedner, New Proclamation, pp 182-3.] Another theme.

John writes that “they gave a dinner for him.” The line is nearly a throw away, but what a tender and intimate expression. Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and Judas are mentioned by name as being at table. Lazarus, freed from his grave clothes and beginning a new life, represents the neophyte, the newest member of Jesus’ community of disciples. Martha is serving at table, a deacon, and Mary who anoints Jesus acts as a priest. Judas is the thief, who robs from the bag that contains what the disciples collected, probably a reference to the money intended for the poor. [Ibid.]

In this overture, the whole Christian community is present:
• the newcomer,
• the faithful proclaimer and servant,
• the leader of worship,
• and the one who betrays the community and its mission, stealing meaning from, and sucking life out of, the community.

This curious group, together, selects by their actions Jesus as their Paschal Lamb. For not only [does] our faithfulness and worship make Christ our sacrifice, but also our sins and treachery cry out for Jesus’ saving grace. [Ibid]

In the midst of this whole community, on center stage, Mary anoints Jesus with costly nard, extremely expensive oil whose fragrance fills the whole house. This anointing points to death and the garden tomb, and the fragrance may well serve as the proverbial elephant in the room – Jesus’ death is inevitable. And the overture continues, perhaps now in the minor key.

When Judas blasts Mary for wasting the money, Jesus says “Leave her alone” which could also be translated, “Forgive her.” And the overture comes to an uncomfortable end. [Ibid.]

We don’t know if Mary’s lavish act is in profound gratitude for her brother’s second chance at life, or is because she knows that Jesus is the Anointed One come to free God’s people from death, or she simply realizes that for some reason or other, Jesus must give himself to death on the cross. [J. Stendahl, New Proclamation, pp. 194-5.]

What we do know is that Jesus recognized the beauty of Mary’s act, and that it meant that his death was at hand. He lovingly received her gift. He did not protest her devotion, and assured all at the table that they would continue to serve the poor after he was no longer with them.

An overture gives but a glimpse of what is ahead. And as the events leading up to the Passion unfold, and together we journey through the Sacred Three Days, we must recognize that those around the table in Bethany – the one newly reborn, the one who serves, the one who worships, and the one who betrays – are not only all found in the community of faith, but are all found in me, and in you, and in us all. And Jesus loves us all, no matter who we are at any given time. His love is deep, broad, and high.

Too often you and I live as if we are an overture – we show glimpses of love, when we should be playing or singing a never-ending song of love. Too often as the Church, we settle for the overture, and actually prefer such short bursts of servant hood to the complex and complicated mission of sacrificial love our Lord calls us to carry out.

As the Passion draws near, the ultimate act of Love, let us learn from Mary that we cannot lavish too much love on Jesus, on the poor, and on one another. [Niedner.]

The Expense and Expanse of Love

by The Rev. Dr. Michael Johnston, Scholar-in-Residence

The Revised Common Lectionary has caught me off guard again. And twice in less than two weeks! In the good old days of the Book of Common Prayer, the lectionary for tonight would have given us The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.

Now there’s story I can get my teeth into, and I’ve preached it many times. But this business about anointing the feet of Jesus with “pure nard, very costly” had me scratching my head all last week with what to do about a troublesome text. And it turns out I’m not alone: the majority of the commentators on this passage seems conflicted and contradictory. So much for congruent, coherent scholarship!

Then along came a copy of the Christian Century. It’s published bi-weekly and includes a pair of sermons from which you can always pirate little bits and pieces. But the one for today’s Gospel began: “What does God’s love smell like? Like honeysuckle on a warm spring day? Like a salty, fresh ocean breeze?” Oops! No help there. Because my mind immediately jumped to God’s love smelling more realistically like a homeless guest at the Community Kitchen who’s in bad need of a bath! And bare feet in a basin on Maundy Thursday.

So I’m in something of a muddle about this passage. And I’ll warn right up front that when I’m wrestling with a piece of Scripture I don’t really know; haven’t preached before; working out new ideas for the first time; the congregation is usually the worse off. Sermons emerging out of the mix tend to be too long and too academic. But let’s see if we can slog through to something meaningful and still get you home in time for supper.

Part of the problem with Anointing at Bethany –- leave aside that edgy, nervous-making piece about the “poor you always have with you” –- is that there are three versions of the story: in Mark, Luke and John. And over the centuries, they have been confused and conflated in transmission, interpretation and popular piety.

There is first of all, according to Luke, an incident in Galilee at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 8:36-38) where an un-named sinner woman off the streets invades a dinner party being given for Jesus. And once inside, she weeps in Jesus’ presence. Her tears fall on his feet, and she hastily wipes them away with her hair -– an exposure and an exhibition that would have outraged social propriety in the ancient world. Hence her identification in imagination as a prostitute; but that is not in the Lucan text.

Then, in the popular mind, after the Gospels were written down, the sinner of Luke gets crisscrossed with the Mary of Bethany from John, and she becomes identified as Mary of Magdala. A case in point: in the Cathedral Church of Arezzo, there is a fresco (painted by Piero della Francesca, mid-15th century) of a lovely, young Tuscan woman. She is consistently identified by art historians as Mary Magdalene, specifically because she carries what looks like a jar of perfume. Indeed, things become so muddled that even until modern times the unnamed sinner from Luke, John’s Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene all came to be honored on the same day in the Roman Catholic liturgy as the same saint!

But back to the texts. Next, there’s Mark’s version at the home of Simon the Leper, where a woman –- now named Mary –- breaks a jar of expensive perfume over Jesus, thereby anointing his head, but not his feet. The gesture is as extravagant, and just as socially unacceptable, as the tears of the prostitute in Luke. Accordingly, this woman is rebuked:

There were some [note that the “some” is not Judas Iscariot, as in John] …there were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was this anointment thus wasted? For this ointment might have been sold and given to the poor? But Jesus says, ‘Let her be. She has done a beautiful thing to me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burying. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.’

It strikes me that the key phrase here is this one: “… wherever the gospel is preached…what she has done will be told in memory of her.” That is to say, in Mark’s Gospel, it is always those who offend the social order who thereby seem to understand what Jesus’ ministry is all about –- and it will be preached in memory of them! In Mark, they are the ones farthest from the centers of power -- the slaves, the children, the gentiles, the women, the halt, the lepers, and the blind. They are the living paradigms of true discipleship. In the Kingdom of Heaven, “…the lame shall enter first.”

So this Mary in Mark is not a sinner seeking forgiveness with her tears, she is an idealized disciple who understands –- to use a phrase I’ve used before -– that the Kingdom belongs to the least, lost, last, little and dead. And when this Mary anoints Jesus’ body “beforehand for burial,” she’s the only one in the entire Gospel who gets it: Life for Jesus, and life for us, will pass through the Cross before it emerges from the Empty Tomb.

Which brings us to the John text. But the truth is, Anointing at Bethany isn’t really any clearer just for our having looked at the parallel stories in Mark and Luke. First of all, John’s Mary is not a regretful weeper –- no evidence whatsoever in the Johannine text of lavish sin confessed in return for lavish forgiveness given.

That would actually work with the Lukan text, which, by the way, is paired in the Prayer Book lectionary cycle for Proper VIC with the treachery of David’s plan to kill Uriah (II Sam 11:14-17) –- which he does for the single purpose of bedding Bathsheba. But when David fesses-up to the enormity of his crime, God says through Nathan the prophet, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you will not die” (II Sam 12:13b). Trifling sins, one might well assume, get trifling amounts of forgiveness. But Mary in John is neither notorious not needful of absolution.

Nor is the Mary of John an idealized disciple who embalms Jesus’ body in anticipation of his death, with full appreciation of the salvific implications of his dying. In fact, recall that it is Martha, not Mary, back in John 11:27, who says, “Yes Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”

Then remember also that it is a pair of rather dubious disciples –- Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus stealthily “by night” –- it is this pair of late-on-the-scene, would-be followers who secure the body of Jesus from Pilate and bring something like a hundred pounds of “aloe and myrrh” to inter the dead Messiah! Thus Mary’s few drops, remaining in the alabaster jar, will hardly add to the majestic rites of the Johannine funeral. Moreover, Mary actually wipes away the fragrant perfume once she’s applied the ointment. Go figure, as they say!

So what’s really going on in this text? And maybe – before we hit the punch line –- one or two more comments about what’s not going on.

It seems to me, first of all, that Anointing at Bethany is not a story about hospitality extended to the privileged guest who enters your private home. In the ancient Near East, you washed their feet as they came inside from the dusty roads of Judea. But you didn’t grease them up. And, in any case, foot-washing would have been done not by the host –- or in this case, the hostess –- but performed by a slave, which Mary clearly is not.

Secondly, there are a hefty number of New Testament scholars who argue that Anointing at Bethany is Mary’s act of recognition of Jesus as Messiah. As this argument goes, Martha, like Peter in the Synoptics, verbalizes the confession; but Mary confesses by action. And, indeed, in Israelite tradition, kings, priests, and prophets were routinely anointed with sacred oils. The Greek word that gives us messiah actually means the anointed one. But you did their heads, not the feet! So where are we?

I think that where we are –- or where I am after a week’s worth of tearing my scholarly hair and reading the tattered commentaries –- is how expensive that jar of ointment really was.

And on this point, the evangelists and the commentators agree: this was no small bottle of cheap perfume from Walgreens. Which just might, by the way, smell saccharine like honeysuckle or slightly salty like fish.

Rather the texts are clear that the jar of “pure nard, very costly” was worth somewhere around 300 denarii, just a hundred more than the disciples think they’ll need for Feeding the Five Thousand. In the first century Judean world, a denarius was roughly equivalent to a day’s wages for blue-collar worker.

So there is no question that Mary’s Anointing at Bethany involves no small piece of change. Rather, it is an expensive offering in support Kingdom praxis. And it also occurs to me, that the expense of the ointment signals the expansiveness of Kingdom Life –- not to mention the costliness of crying, especially for those whom you love.

In other words, I’m going to suggest is that all these stories, which conflate their narrative details, are actually clusters of metaphors that serve as stand-ins for the unbridled generosity of God’s love. Keep in mind, that the God of our Bible is a Mediterranean, and thereby prone to every kind of excess. So he’s likely to sneak in by the back door and disrupt all your well-laid plans for dinner. What, in fact, happened to that damned salad fork!?!

He is likely to kill the fatted calf for a prodigal son’s return just because his favorite thing to do is throwing elaborate parties in the afternoon on a work day.

He’s likely to run down the road bare-footed and fall on your neck with kisses even before you can get your crummy little confession out.

And she’s just as likely to spend the entire morning molding by hand dozens and dozens and dozens of little tortellini stuffed with pecorino just to drop in your chicken soup. Or take hours and hours to stretch the phyllo dough so it’s just so thin and the pastry is just so flaky.

And as to the cost…well, the life of your Beloved Son is no small price to pay just because you love the cosmos so much. So maybe all those ladies, named and unnamed, in all those stories got it right the first time. And would that we could somehow share in some small measure their expansive, expensive, and reckless love –- towards God, towards Jesus, and towards one another.