Texts: Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; and John 12:1-8
So here we are in Babylon. Life is not altogether bad. But it is Lent—and we Christians, in our habit of reliving the old, old story through our liturgy, are moving pell-mell towards that awful day of arrest, of torture, of crucifixion, that day when the chasms of heaven will tear the fabric of life as we think we know it. It is a desert full of jackals that chase and nip at our heals and ostriches that stick their heads in the sand. A dry and parched land lies ahead of us if we would go home. Off in the distance, perhaps faintly, we will hear again the agonized voice: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And the terrible cry, “Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.”
The non-believer protests: “what a waste!” The believer replies, “Yes, praise God—what extravagance.”
Last week we heard that the scribes and Pharisees grumbled because of the crowd of sinners with whom Jesus associated. This week our Gospel lesson comes after Jesus has returned to Bethany, in the suburbs of Jerusalem, a dangerous place for him as the Passover season approaches, because of what had happened on his previous visit. His friend, Lazarus, has died, and four days later, John tells us that Jesus came to Bethany, and bellowing against all the powers of death, has shouted the dead man out of his tomb.
This deed caused no little stir in the local news, and made the religious establishment all the more edgy, and determined to get him silenced. John says that the religious leaders gathered and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” Jesus clearly upset the status quo, the very bedrock institutions of his society.
If we juxtapose this story over against the parable of the prodigal son that we heard last week, we can see the parallels: the brother, Lazarus, who was dead, is now alive. In the parable, it was the wayward younger son who had wasted his life in dissolute living. In the reading for today, it is Lazarus, whom Jesus loved, that has been returned to life. It is time for a party. God seems to like parties, it would seem.
And—on the other side of this story, Mary also enacts a parable of what is to come: Jesus’ own actions with the disciples in the upper room, when he strips down, takes a towel and wash basin, and—like a slave—stoops to wash the feet of his followers. She is the female counterpart of the prodigal father in the parable we heard last week.
Judas, too, in some ways is like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son. His discipleship has been primarily undertaken for his own benefit. Just as the elder brother must have harbored not love for his father but conformity in doing the expected thing, and expecting to be rewarded for it some day, Judas has managed to stay close to Jesus. He is known as the group treasurer, who, John tells us in an aside, has embezzled from the money bag. At the last supper, he sits close enough to Jesus at the table to receive bread from Jesus’ outstretched hand. He was so good at hiding his complicity that the other disciples around Jesus were clueless.
In short, he faked being a follower of Jesus perfectly, much as the elder son in the parable of the prodigal had faked his love for his father.
So we need to ask ourselves whether we are fakers or true followers of Jesus? Mary and Judas portray, in some ways, the continuing struggle of the church, of Christendom. Judas is the practical one, the man who believes that churches should be run like a business. It is he who will try to get Jesus to be what he wants him to be, and to tempt him to take matters into his own hands for the cause of the liberation of his people.
Mary is profligate, extravagant. She would be one whom people would call naïve, idealistic, foolish. She is the one who wastes a year’s income for an average day laborer in Israel on a bottle of perfume, and then does not, in John’s Gospel, anoint him on his head, but puts the expensive nard on the lowliest part of his body, his feet. Her action would be like taking the price of a BMW and spending it on the most expensive perfume in the world. Talk about profligate.
Judas represents the church that clings to the old ways, repeating the 7 last words of the church over and over, “we’ve never done it that way before.” Despite his protestations about what the money could have done for the poor, Judas’ heart has not yet been opened to the prodigal love of God, and to the presence of God’s love in the man Jesus, whom he follows.
Mary represents the inclusive and unbounded love that, despite the efforts of many, still keeps the Gospel alive in the church, giving good news to those weary from the roads of life, those under threat, those who are deemed dangerous to society, those who are wanton in their words and deeds. Mary is precisely the sort of Christian that the Glenn Becks of this world find so odiously offensive. They hold their noses at the extravagance and wasteful energy that the church pours into lost causes and social justice.
Judas, of course, protests mightily, that the perfume, worth nearly a year’s worth of wages by the typical laborer, could have done a lot for the poor. “Let her be,” Jesus says. “You will always have the poor with you so that any day you might and should give to them. But Mary knows that I will not always be here. She knows I am about to die, so her act is preparing me for my burial. You should try to see and understand this, Judas.”
But Judas could not understand such extravagant love. It was not in his heart to give or his mind to understand. He understood wealth and power, not the love of a God who could become so vulnerable that in Jesus, God would suffer hideously, and die, as we die.
This story tells me that I will not always have time to show my love for Jesus and others. That when I feel my heart swelling with love, bidding me open my heart like that jar of nard and extravagantly pour out my love, that I should do it. For I have felt this before, only to wait, to think I would do it another day, only to have that impulse fade away and lose the opportunity.
Don’t squander your opportunities to show your love for Christ and for the poor among us either, my friends. You may never get the chance again.
The Good News is, my friends, that Jesus did go to the cross and there poured out the sweet aroma of his very life for us and the whole world. The story of the Prodigal Son, of Mary’s bottle of perfume, all are but a foretaste of the extravagance of God’s love that will be evident on a cross, in not too many days ahead.
Love divine, all loves excelling joy of heaven to earth come down; fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown; Jesus thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation; enter every trembling heart.Let us pray: Lord, may your love, like a fragrant perfume, come to us and stay with us today and everyday. We want to be like Mary, sitting at your feet, soaking in your teachings, pouring out our love and adoration on you, for that is what you have done for us in so many ways. Help us to love like Mary and like you, with no thought of cost, but extravagantly, wholeheartedly, selflessly, and right now while we have the time. Amen.
