Filled With The Fragrance

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Lent 5C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 12:1-11

¹“Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” ⁹When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, ¹¹since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”

There are different angles from which we can approach the passage this morning: 

There is the literary angle, where this text serves as a bridge connecting the resurrection of Lazarus in the previous chapter to the triumphal entry and subsequent passion of Jesus. Set exactly a week before the last supper and Jesus’ subsequent arrest and torture and death, the act of the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary with this nard, this incredibly expensive and fragrant ointment, prepares the listeners and readers of John’s Gospel for what is to come, and on another level makes a statement about who Jesus is … the ointment being fit for a King… the Messiah, our Savior. 

There is the Social Justice angle.  Which kind of straddles the position Judas takes and the statement Jesus makes, drawing on the fact that Jesus’ response to the criticism of Mary’s use of the ointment to wash Jesus’ feet  - his statement that in the passage is inserted as “you always have the poor with you…” is taken from Deuteronomy 15:11, which reads: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”  It is a clear call to care for the poor, not to relegate them to invisibility and marginalize them.  God’s command is to engage and care for them. 

That’s not going to be the message this morning, as much as I think both of those angles are worth unpacking.  They are for another time. 

This morning I would like to focus on the act itself:  the extravagance, the “shocking intimacy” of a woman using what in Hebrew culture was considered her ‘crowning glory’ – her hair – to sop up the excess ointment that she had just used to clean the most humble part of a person’s body – the feet, since they were commonly covered with dust or mud, depending on the time of year, and would be unsightly and generally better left ignored. 

In the Gospel of Luke, the woman is left unnamed, but not uncharacterized.  She is called ‘a sinner’, the implication being that she was a prostitute, and not only does she bathe Jesus’ feet with the ointment, but also with her tears.    

I can’t completely remove us from those other two angles I mentioned.  I DO have to draw on them, the literary and the social justice angles, to fill out the picture we are viewing.

This meal DID take place sometime after Lazarus’ resurrection … in John’s Gospel it is found just a few verses earlier… it is worth noting that there is a repeated reference to the sense of smell in these two chapters … in verse 38 of chapter 11 there is a mention of the stench that will waft from the tomb where Lazarus has been laying for four days if the stone is rolled away, as Jesus has requested before raising Lazarus.  And now, in chapter 11, the house is filled with the fragrance of expensive perfume …

I’ve heard … and experienced, that the sense of smell is the most powerful sense when it comes to triggering memories.  You’ve heard me say before, the smell of chopped cilantro puts me back in the neighborhood feria, walking past the stand with all the spices and condiments… it takes very little to take me back there when I am smelling that.  I know if we went around the room and asked what smell triggers the most vivid memories for each of us, there would be little hesitation in identifying exactly what the smell was and what the memory was.  I would suspect that the writer of John’s Gospel had experienced that as well … and was communicating that here. 

There is a suggestion that the ointment – the nard – was something that Mary had been saving – or saving up for – for some time… the idea, again leading into the literary angle, of preparing Jesus’ body for a ‘proper burial’ – something that Mary was apparently able to discern was coming, but that the disciples were not – since most victims of execution by crucifixion were usually left to hang and at least partially decompose in the elements, later to be thrown into a common pit for burial with other bodies indiscriminately, there was no opportunity for preparing the body for religiously sanctioned burial before it was too late.  The element of foreshadowing comes into play. But again, that is part of the literary angle.

What I’d like to focus on is the statement that Mary was making in the simple act of washing Jesus’ feet with – whatever – it happened to be horrifically expensive perfume here, and she was doing it in front of everyone … which in and of itself was proclaiming how she felt about Jesus – after all, he HAD just resurrected her brother from the tomb, and he was already a close beloved friend. 

Can you imagine what it would have been like to share a meal with a family who, days earlier, would have been preparing a meal for mourning the passing of their brother, and have it turn into a meal WITH the brother in attendance?  … It makes you wonder what dinner conversation might have been like … it gives a whole new meaning to the question “what have you been up to lately?”  (Oh, not much, you?)

Two things stand out in the washing of Jesus’ feet by Mary.  The first IS the costliness of the ointment.  It was worth roughly the equivalent of a years’ wages for a regular workman in first century Palestine.  Roughly speaking, that would be like spending the cost of a really nice SUV on something that was going to get washed down the drain in a couple of minutes. 

The other is the element of the intimacy of the action.  Mary didn’t care that it would be considered improper for a respectable Hebrew woman to be touching a man who wasn’t her husband or her son in public, much less that she would be using her hair – which was kept covered except for her husband in a private setting – to wipe the part of the body held in lowest esteem in their society – the feet – she was, in essence, giving herself up – her name, her reputation, her standing, for Jesus. 

I remember as a younger man, I was more than willing to be considered a little excessive, a little radical, for Jesus.   There was no sense that I needed to protect anything in order to be seen as someone who was GIVEN to Christ.  

Planning a lifetime of service in ministry, it only seemed natural that I turn every expectation over to the service of the Kingdom.  Family, Home, belongings… on some level it has remained so.  But on another, it has changed slightly.  Now I have to REMIND myself that I am doing that.  It’s not so obvious.  Having a family, having responsibilities, duties, filling a place in this community – not only within this community of faith called Jerusalem Baptist Church, but also in the Warsaw and the Northern Neck communities, it has become something different – this telling myself that what I am and what I have here now is all the Lord’s to give, and the Lord’s to take away …

I guess it’s just the fact that I have to remind myself that makes it different… that’s all. 

How are we alike in this way?  As believers, I would think that on some level we all came to a point in our lives that we realized that all we had and all we supposedly ‘owned’ belonged to the Lord and would be available for the purposes of the Kingdom … but how often do we have to remind ourselves of that fact?  How long has it BEEN since we did that reminding? 

I think our reminder call comes this morning, with a woman spilling a year’s wages worth of perfume on Jesus’ feet, and wiping it up with her hair, and looking up at us and asking ‘what are you willing to give – and to give up for Christ?’ 

Let’s pray.