17 March 2013

“Making the Sign of the Cross … when the world can’t and won’t”
Philippians 3:4b-14 / John 12:1-8
5th Sunday in Lent C
17 March 2013


And so we have come to the fifth and last Sunday in the season of Lent. Lent officially ends at sundown next Saturday, as we enter Holy Week. Next Sunday we’ll have palms strewing the way through the Sanctuary, and we’ll hear a portion of the Passion of Jesus according to St. Luke read, as we sing, and meditate, and worship our way through the liturgical drama that is the Sunday of the Passion.
But today we are still in Lent … and we conclude it, this year, as every year, with a foreboding text. It is this way during each of the three years of our lectionary cycle … we receive a Word from John’s gospel which is one of the concluding words of Jesus’ earthly ministry … some from before he enters Jerusalem on the donkey, with the palm branches waving, for that last week of his life which we call the Passion of our Lord … and some from immediately after that celebratory scene.
Last year we read the verses following what we have before us today … right after Jesus enters Jerusalem, some Greeks who are in town because of the festival come and want to see Jesus … and Jesus offers a final, stirring prediction of his suffering and death which are soon to come.
Next year, we’ll hear the story of the final miracle Jesus works in John’s gospel … as he raises his friend Lazarus from the dead to this life, once more.
But today … today we have the aftermath of that miracle-scene before us. Immediately before Jesus’ palm-strewn ride into Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the home of Mary, Martha, and the newly raised to this life Lazarus, to have dinner with them.
And there’s a scene at dinner. Oh, here’s a surprise! There was a scene last week too, with Jesus, at dinner with the “sinners and tax collectors.”
Martha is serving … her usual place at such times … and Mary is not … which is her usual place at such times too.
Well, she’s not serving the meal.
But she is serving Jesus. She takes a pound of costly perfume and pours it over Jesus’ feet.
The smell fills the house … a particularly ironic word … since Mary was the one who objected the loudest to Jesus when, in the previous verses, he asked that the stone be rolled away from then-dead-Lazarus’ tomb.

Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.

Now from the stench-protesting one comes a more beautiful smell. The contrast to John’s readers and hearers is obvious … here, this One, this Jesus, has the power to remove even the stench of death itself, and make it into the sweet smells of thankfulness and praise for life!
It is a home-ly and tender scene.
And then Judas has to open his big mouth.

Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?

Well, maybe he has a point. The perfume was valuable ... it had come a long way, from the Himalayan mountains … and it would have been a major expenditure for a family such as this. Three hundred denarii was nearly a year’s wages for a laborer.
Ah, but then there’s John’s next sentence, which shows Judas’ true motivation:

Judas 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.

Judas was bothered by Mary’s extravagant use of the expensive perfume because it meant that he – Judas – was being shorted a large sum of money, which he’d skim off the top of the disciples’ common purse. But he couches it in a catchy moralism, so it looks like he really cares for the poor.
It’s confusing, I know.
And then Jesus adds to the confusion.

Leave her alone … you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

So is Jesus simply being callous and unfeeling here toward the poor … showing fully what Judas is trying to hide so piously? What’s really going on here anyway?
We need some help.
And so we get some.
Our New Testament reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, gives us some much-needed perspective on both Judas’ and Jesus’ words.
It … these words, this reading … here is the bridge and link to our Gospel stories for the past two weeks, and today.
Here, Paul starts out by building himself up, listing off his credentials and heritage, his “valuable perfume” …

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; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Paul’s perfume smelled nicely to the leaders, the religious movers and shakers of his age. It was certainly worth more than a laborer’s yearly wages.
And yet … and yet … Paul counts it all as rubbish.
Well … our nice English is too polite in this case. The Greek word is ssssssssskubala, and yep, it’s same as that “vulgar” English S-word. Paul is a man of his times and doesn’t pretty things up, he uses the vernacular to make a point.
And that point is … that in Jesus, he, Paul … like the younger son, the Prodigal Son in last week’s story … when Paul met the living Christ, he ‘came to himself,’ that wonderful phrase Luke uses in that story to signify what it means to repent … to stop, to pay attention, to turn around … to, in the words of our 12 step program today, to “admit that he is powerless” over his life-situation as he’s worked himself into it … that “his life had become unmanageable.” And things like pedigree and wealth, riches and honor, they don’t mean s*** to him personally anymore.
What a contrast to Judas in the Gospel reading!
And that’s the whole point.
Paul “gets it” and in his “getting it” he “gets” Christ.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul has “come to himself” and in “coming to himself” Christ has come to him and has made his eternal home with him, to bring him to his own … to Christ’s … eternal home.
Mary has “come to herself” too … and extravagantly spreads the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and spreads it around with her hair … this was a demeaning act for a woman … but she has received the living Christ, the Son of God … she received her brother Lazarus back from the dead in a prefiguring of Jesus’ resurrection, so here she anoints Jesus as for burial, in another prefiguring of what is to come.
And Judas? Well, don’t put all the blame on him, don’t set him up as a straw man, “he’s the one that got Jesus killed.” No, he is a prefigure too, a prefigure of all those who never “come to themselves” … those who go through life, day in, day out, clocking in every morning and clocking out at night, simply putting in time until their time is up. Those who wake up on Easter Monday, having slept the weekend away, and wonder what’s the big deal that’s got people so excited.
If Mary’s anointing is prefiguring Jesus’ burial, then, Judas’ attitude is prefiguring Jesus’ death. What, indeed, is the point of God become a man anyway, since this life is pretty much pointless.
But then there’s enough of the prefiguring, the words behind the words, the actions behind the actions.
Jesus gives that Last Word.

Leave Mary alone. 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.

There are those words again … so are they really callous? Unfeeling? Does Jesus really mean what it sounds like he says, that it’s better to spend money on him … to be extravagant for his sake … than to help the poor?
NO WAY. No way.
In using that phrase “you always have the poor with you,” Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 15. And here’s what the Hebrew law has to say about how God’s people are to treat the poor:

If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought ...and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 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."

Jesus is making a point here to Judas … “Judas… and all you who are like Judas, who piously claim you are just being financially prudent in how you deal with the poor … you’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. The Law of Moses undeniably states that you are to open your hand to the poor and needy neighbors in your land … to be generous, liberal and ungrudging in your giving … and in your selfishness and sinfulness, you don’t do this at all.” Indeed, if you were “in me,” if you had “come to yourselves,” you would do even more than that … you would live as Paul … your money wouldn’t mean s*** to you, you would give it all up for the sake of the poor, as I’ve told you, and you would follow me. But you don’t. You just don’t, at all. And soon, you’ll even put me to death."
One of our own local Lutheran professors, Samuel Torvend of Pacific Lutheran University, brings this verse home for Lutherans in particular. He’s found some writings of Martin Luther on the poor and hungry and compiled them in a book titled “Luther and the Hungry Poor: Scattered Fragments.” Now Luther isn’t known for his social justice writings … he didn’t write on this subject like he did many others … but what he did write is quite consistent with his other more well known words.
Namely, Luther says that in this sinful world, the rich need the poor to remain poor, so that they can remain rich and in power, and that the rich will do whatever it takes to keep the poor poor, so that they can feel self-justified in being “kind hearted souls” in giving the poor food, money, clothing, etc. … but just enough … not too much … not giving them the goods or means to be lifted or to lift themselves out of poverty … no, just giving them enough … a handout here, a meal there … to keep them alive, but poor. Always, and forever, poor.
It’s certainly another of Luther’s critiques on the works-righteousness way that made the world go around in the time of our text today … certainly, also during the Reformation … and, dare I say, is still at work today.
And yet … and yet, in contrast, there’s that call of our Lord. With me. With me. Be with me. Come to yourselves, pay attention, turn around … repent … suffer the loss of all things, regard them as rubbish … for the sake of the Gospel … the Good News … which is Good News for rich and poor, man and woman, Jew and Gentile, Mary and Lazarus … and Judas … and you and me.
There’s that call of our Lord. And yet … yet he’s realistic about how seriously we’ll take it, on the “before” side of the Cross … before the Sign of the Cross is made over Jesus in his suffering and death ...

… for the day of my burial.

But for us now … we who live on the “after” side of the Cross and Tomb, there remains this word for us:

I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own … forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead … I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Jesus calls to us today … be with me. Come to yourselves. Confess, be forgiven … come, eat and drink, be formed into my body, my people, in the world … show, live the world another way… The Way …
Come. Be. With. Me.