A TIME FOR EXTRAVAGANT ACTS
The Stench of Death, The Fragrance of Life
John 12:1-8 (Isaiah 43:18-19, Philippians 3:13-14)
Paul Swartz - Lent 5: March 20 &21, 2010
A few years ago there was a man in New York City who was kidnapped. The kidnappers called his wife and asked for $100,000 ransom. She talked them down to $30,000. The story had a happy ending with the man returned unharmed, the money recovered, and the kidnappers caught and sent to jail.
But don’t you wonder what happened when the man got home and found that his wife got him back for a discount! Can you imagine how the negotiations must have gone: “$100,00 for that old guy! You’ve got to be crazy. Just look at him! Look at that gut! You want $100,00 for that? You’ve got to be kidding. Give me a break. $30,000 is my top offer.”
If I were in a similar situation, I’d like to think there would be people who would spare no expense to get me back. They wouldn’t haggle over the price. There are times when it’s appropriate to be extravagant, and that’s what Jesus is teaching us today in the Gospel. We don’t bargain down or see how little we can get by with or how cheap we can be in our response to God’s extravagant gift to us in Jesus Christ.
Today we are headed to a home in the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany, where Jesus stopped in to see His old friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus before He entered the city for the last time. He loved them, John tells us (John 11:5), although He does not tell us why. Maybe there is no "why" to love. They called Him Lord, so they knew who He was, and yet they were not His disciples, at least not in any formal sense. They were His friends, the three people in whose presence He could be a man as well as a Messiah.
Just days before, Jesus had worked a miracle at their house. He had been across the river when the sisters' urgent message reached Him. "Lord," it read, "he whom You love is ill." So He had come to them, knowing full well it was too late. Lazarus was so dead that he stunk, so dead that Jesus stood in front of his tomb and wept. Then He roared so loud at death that He scared death away (John 11:43). While the sisters tried to decide whether to run away too, their brother Lazarus came stumbling from his tomb, trailing his shroud behind him like a used cocoon.
Now Jesus has come back to Bethany with the temple posse hot on His trail. By raising Lazarus from the dead Jesus has graduated from the category of "manageable nuisance" to "serious threat." News of the incident has sent His followers over the top. There is not a chance Pilate is going to ignore them during the Passover festival which begins in six days. His days are numbered and He knows it. When He arrives at his friends' house in Bethany, they can see it on His face.
So they take Him in and care for Him, shutting the world out for this one night at least. Lazarus is still clumsy from his four days in the tomb. He sits near his friend Jesus, unaware of the trade that has occurred. Jesus was safe across the river, beyond the reach of His enemies. By returning to Bethany, He has traded His life for the life of His friend. Funny, huh? The recently deceased Lazarus of Bethany will outlive the Savior Jesus of Nazareth!
Martha of course is making a “stew.” Mary has slipped away, gone to find something in her room. She is always disappearing, even when she is sitting right there with everyone else. She gets this look on her face, like she's listening to music no one else can hear. Martha, of course is used to this, and knows there is nothing to be done but to work around her sister.
Finally, supper is on the table and they all sit down to eat, saying what they hope and hiding what they fear. Mary comes back holding a clay jar in her hands. Wordless, she kneels at Jesus' feet and breaks the jar's neck. The smell of spikenard fills the room—a sharp scent halfway between mint and ginseng. Then, as everyone in the room watches her, she does four remarkable things in a row.
First she loosens her hair in a room full of men, which an honorable woman never does. Then she pours perfume on Jesus' feet, which is also not done. The head, maybe—people do that to kings—but not the feet. Then she touches him—a single woman rubbing a single man's feet—also not done, not even among friends. Then she wipes the perfume off with her hair--totally inexplicable--the bizarre end to an all around bizarre act.
It is easy to confuse this account with three others in the Bible—one each from Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the first two, an unnamed woman anoints Jesus' head and in the third a notorious sinner slips into the room, stands weeping over His feet, wetting them with her tears, then drops to the ground to dry his feet with her hair, kissing them and pouring perfume on them (Luke 7:36-38).
Only in John's version of the story does the woman have a name—Mary—and a relationship with Jesus—not a stranger, not a notorious sinner, but His long-time friend—which makes her act all the more peculiar. He knows she loves Him. He loves her too. So why this public demonstration, this odd pantomime in front of all their friends? It's extravagant. It's excessive. She's gone overboard, as Judas is quick to note.
"Why wasn't this perfume sold for a whole lot of money and given to the poor?" That's what Judas wants to know, but Jesus brushes him aside.
"Leave her alone," He says. "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me"—which seems about as odd a thing for Him to say as what Mary did. Here is the champion of the poor, always putting their needs ahead of His, suddenly reversing course. But Jesus is merely reflecting the Hebrew teaching in Deuteronomy 15:7-11 and is not giving a callous dismissal of those in poverty. Instead it is a call to make sure that the poor are with you, not just as the objects of charity, but they are to be welcomed and valued as participants in the church's ministry. Jesus is blessing us and saying, "Now you can see what really matters. Eternal things matter. Petty criticism like Judas offers will come and go, but your relationship with me and those I love will last forever. Leave her alone. Let her finish delivering her message."
Mary's prophetic act revealed the truth. She was anointing Jesus for His burial, and while her behavior may have seemed strange to those standing around, it was no more strange than that of the prophets who went before her--Ezekiel eating the scroll of the Lord as a sign that he carried the Word of God around inside of him (Ezekiel 2), or Jeremiah smashing the clay jar to show God's judgment on Judah and Jerusalem (Jeremiah 19), or Isaiah walking around naked and barefoot as an oracle against the nations (Isaiah 20). Prophets do things like that. They act out. They act out the truth that no one else can see, and those standing around either write them off as nuts or fall silent before the disturbing news they bring from God.
When Mary moved toward Jesus with that pound of pure nard in her hand, she dropped to her knees and poured the perfume on His feet, it could only mean one thing. The only man who got his feet anointed was a dead man, and Jesus knew it. So Mary rubbed His feet with perfume so precious that its sale could have fed, housed, and clothed a poor family for a year, an act so lavish that it suggests another layer to her prophecy. There will be nothing economical—cheap—about this Man's death, just as there has been nothing economical about His life. In Him, the extravagance of God's love is made flesh! In Him, the excessiveness of God's mercy is made manifest!
This bottle will not be held back to be kept and admired. This precious substance will not be saved. It will be opened, offered and used, at great price. It will be raised up and poured out for the life of the world, emptied to the last drop. Before that happens, Jesus will gather His friends together one last time. At another banquet, around another supper table, with most of the same people present, Jesus will strip, tie a towel around His waist, and wash His disciples' feet. Then He will give them a new commandment: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
The conflict and tension within this account is the primary one in our life: will we trust our control or God's provision? It is a conflict between self and service, between greed and gratitude. Judas would trust in his own control of the purse, and it would eventually cost him his life. Mary trusted that God's provision which gave life back to her brother would not end there but continue in the generosity of all eternity. In short, Mary's extravagant gift was her response to the incredible generosity of God's love visible in Her Lord who brought her brother to life out of death, while at the same time exposing Judas' greed and selfishness.
Ultimately, what we are talking about is an issue of trust. Do we trust God and allow God to direct our lives, individually, as a family, as a congrega-tion? Or do we seek to maintain control ourselves? That's why the words of the Lord through the Prophet Isaiah and St. Paul are so important for the church: "Behold, I am about to do a new thing!" "...forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on!..."
It is time for us at King of Glory to PRESS ON! It is time for extravagant acts—the doing and becoming that which God has called us to be, assured that He will provide, certain that we are gifted and not left alone! Our God is with us. He will not forsake nor forget us if we but trust in God to work through us like Mary exhibited. She discovered the freedom to be extravagant when she recognized how much Jesus had given to her.
What value would you place on getting the life of a loved one back? What value do you suppose the parents would place upon the return of their child who was tragically killed? How would you express your gratitude to someone who has saved your life? Brothers and sisters, that is exactly what Jesus Christ has done! The value of the perfume Mary pours on Jesus' feet was not an extravagance at all but a mere pittance when compared to the value of what Jesus had given her. When we come to the cross of Christ and consider the infinite and eternal significance of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, then we have come face to face with extravagance! Moderation, respectability, and caution are thrown to the wind! Listen to the words of the hymn we will soon be singing:
"Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all."
(When I Survey The Wondrous Cross, ELW 803)
How shall we respond to God's life giving presence among us and the invitation to embrace the new thing He is doing among us if not extravagantly? Is Jesus as obviously pleased at receiving your financial gifts, your time and service as He was with Mary’s lavish and sacrificial giving? Jesus is always taking note of one’s generosity.
This is a challenging time for us as a congregation, and it is a time for unusual and extravagant acts. If we’re honest with God, haven’t we really been negotiating with Him, trying to get Him to accept a discounted response, a bargain basement price, all the while justifying the smallness of our commitment to Him. Is our worship that which honors and praises Jesus who alone gives life a real priority or do we settle for worshipping that which gives only momentary pleasures? Is our service as generous and sacrificial as Mary’s? This 50th anniversary year, we intend to challenge all of our disciples to boldly express their love for our Lord who desires to do a new thing within and through us. Mary in her generosity and her love shows us how to proclaim our faith. She demonstrates the selflessness we long for in our own response to the Lord. Mary honors Jesus with her special and extravagant gift. This is a time for us to enter into our own extravagant acts that show our own selflessness in honor of the self-giving Christ who has been extravagant toward us.
Let me close by telling you about Tess, a precocious eight-year-old little girl who was just as extravagant as Mary. One day Tess heard her mom and dad talking in a serious and somber tone about her little brother, Andrew. Tess didn't understand everything that they were saying, but she got the gist: Her little brother, Andrew, was very, very sick, and they were completely out of money. They would have to move out of their house and move into a small apartment because Mom and Dad didn't have enough money for the doctor bills and the house payment. On top of that, only a very expensive surgery could save Andrew now and they could not find anyone to lend them the money. Just then, Tess heard her dad say to her tearful mother in whispered desperation, "Only a miracle can save Andrew now."
Tess ran to her room, pulled out a glass jelly jar from its hiding place in her closet. She poured out all the change on the floor and counted it carefully. She then put the change back in the jar, put the jar under her arm, slipped out the back door and ran down to the Rexall Drug Store six blocks away. The pharmacist was talking to a man intently and at first he didn't notice Tess standing there. She waited patiently for a while and then dramatically cleared her throat, but still, no luck—the pharmacist did not see her. Finally, Tess got his attention by taking a quarter out of her jelly jar and tapping it on the glass counter. That did it. The pharmacist noticed her and said, "Just a minute. I'm talking to my brother from Chicago whom I haven't seen for ages."
"Well," said Tess, "I want to talk to you about my brother. He's really, really sick, and I want to buy a miracle. His name is Andrew and he has something growing inside his head and my daddy says only a miracle can save him now. So how much does a miracle cost? I have the money here to pay for it. It's all that I have saved. If it isn't enough, I will get the rest. Just tell me how much a miracle costs."
The pharmacist's brother was a well-dressed man. He stooped down and asked Tess, "What kind of miracle does your brother need?"
"I don't know," Tess replied, with her eyes welling up. "I just know he's really sick and Mommy says he needs an operation. But my parents can't pay for it, so I want to use my money."
"How much do you have?" asked the man from Chicago.
"One dollar and eleven cents!" Tess said proudly. "It's all the money I have in the world, but I can get some more if I need to."
"Well, you are in luck," the man said with a smile. "One dollar and eleven cents is the exact price of a miracle for little brothers."
He took the money in one hand and with the other he took hold of her mitten and said, "Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let's see if I have the kind of miracle you need."
That well-dressed man from Chicago was Dr. Carlton Armstrong who just happened to be a noted neurosurgeon. The operation was successfully completed without charge and it wasn't long until Andrew was home again and doing well. Tess' mom and dad were so grateful. They were talking one night about the chain of events that had saved Andrew's life. "That surgery," her mom said, "was a real miracle." And then she said, "I just wonder how much it would have cost."
Tess smiled. She knew exactly how much the miracle cost: $1.11 plus, the skill and graciousness of a great doctor, and of course, we can’t dismiss the gracious, sacrificial love of an eight-year-old big sister! Someone might say, "Well, it was only one dollar and eleven cents"? but, it was all she had! She gave all she had to save her little brother? And that's an extravagant gift, just like the one Jesus has given to us!
God can do a new thing in our lives and within this congregation. We have the Biblical witness and the record is clear. For Israel and for the early church, for Mary and Tess God provided in dramatic and surprising fashion. When God is truly our Life Source, our Priority One, we, too, can experience the "new" thing God has ordained for us and be “the aroma of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15). AMEN!
