Fifth Sunday in Lent Year C 2010

05 Lent C 10
March 21, 2010

Isaiah 43:16-21

16 Thus says the LORD,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
19 I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Psalm 126

1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
"The LORD has done great things for them."
3 The LORD has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.

Philippians 3:4b-14

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

John 12:1-9

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary 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. 4 But 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.) 7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
9 When 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.


Say Goodbye

Resurrection is in the air. Can you smell it?

There’s a plant called spikenard that grew only in the Himalayan mountains. The flower could be crushed to infuse oil to make a very special perfume, called nard. Nard is an intense aroma, what they now call an essential oil, very sweet, earthy and musky. In Jesus’ day, this oil would be stored in impermeable alabaster jars, which were themselves extremely expensive, then carted by camel or whatever other conveyance over 3,000 miles to Israel.

The cost of the jar of oil Mary poured out on Jesus’ feet, in modern terms, was about fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars. Can you imagine what amazing aroma such an expensive oil might have made?

That’s the smell of resurrection.

Resurrection was in the air at that dinner table already. Lazarus, Mary’s brother, had just emerged from the tomb several days before. John doesn’t really comment on that, but doesn’t it raise some questions? What must it be like to wake up from death and walk out of one’s grave? What must the days following be like?

For one thing, Lazarus may have had his own perfume. Nard and other ointments and herbs were used to cover the smell of decomposition. Once Lazarus was raised, presumably the bad smell would have been gone, leaving only the heavy perfumes used for his burial. Some have even wondered if the jar of nard was left over from Lazarus’ funeral. So there might have been a sweet and musky smell at the table already.

But the question is, what must it be like? We’re not talking here about going to heaven. We’re talking about coming back into this beautiful world, this magnificent creation, to be with the people we love, to breathe again, to see again, to eat and drink again. What must such a life feel like?

Actually, for some of us, the answer to that question is not difficult at all. We know just what it feels like.

Mary is doing a prophet thing. It’s a really peculiar thing, and it’s reported in all four gospels, though only in John is the woman identified as Mary and the critic as Judas. Luke thinks of the event very differently than does Mark, Matthew and John, who all report this strange action and the conversation that follows it.

Prophets don’t always speak. Sometimes they simply demonstrate. Isaiah went traipsing through Jerusalem naked. Jeremiah smashed a big clay jar. Ezekiel ate a book of the bible. Hosea married a prostitute. Jesus whipped the moneylenders out of the temple, and he will do a very similar thing to Mary just a few days after this event.

Mary is doing a prophet thing. She brings this $50,000 jar of ointment and cracks it open. She loosens her hair, which no decent woman would have done in public. She pours the ointment on Jesus’ feet, which in any time, then or now, was an intensely intimate thing to do. She then rubs the oil into his feet; simply touching a man you weren’t married to was in those days strictly forbidden. And finally, the weirdest gesture of all; she wipes away the excess oil with her own hair.

And then we have the conversation. Judas, criticizing the gesture as ridiculously extravagant, considering how much fifty thousand dollars could do for the poor. John points out that Judas is being disingenuous. He is a thief; he’s thinking how he might have used the fifty grand. (I suspect this is true even today. Those who speak loudest against spending in the church, who claim they are protecting the poor old widows from being taken advantage of, might actually just be protecting their own significant wealth.)

But this is not the important part of the conversation. Jesus tells him to leave her alone, to let her deliver her prophecy. Jesus is not discounting or discrediting the importance of caring for the poor; it was and is essential to his message. He interprets Mary’s message for us; he gives us the soundtrack.

In the scene just prior to this one, the chief priests meet in Jerusalem upon hearing the Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead. They are worried that such a gesture will arouse the people against the Romans, who will then come and destroy them all. And Caiaphas says, “it is better that one man die than that all the people be destroyed,” and they decide to have Jesus executed.
Mary is doing a prophetic thing: she is anointing Jesus for the grave, and at the same time, she is announcing his resurrection.

How can we say hello to paradise, if we don't also say goodbye to hell?

And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Resurrection is in the air. Can you smell it?

Amen.