John 12.1-8
Six days before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Lazarus and his sisters hosted a dinner for him. Martha served and Lazarus was among those who joined him at the table. 3 Then Mary took an extraordinary amount, almost three-quarters of a pound,h of very expensive perfume made of pure nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet with it, then wiped his feet dry with her hair. The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume. 4 Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), complained, 5 “ This perfume was worth a year’s wages!i Why wasn’t it sold 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 carried the money bag and would take what was in it.)
7 Then Jesus said, “ Leave her alone. This perfume was to be used in preparation for my burial, and this is how she has used it. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you won’t always have me. ”
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
LORD , my rock and my redeemer.
Sometimes nard is referred to as a perfume used in preparing a body for burial. That makes for a nice bit of foreshadowing by John, and it would have been an odd example of foresight by Mary, but that’s not the only use of nard. In fact, the mentions of it in the Song of Songs is in a quite - let’s say, “enlivening” - context. There’s nothing particularly morbid happening there.
So I would hesitate to talk about Mary’s anointing Jesus’ feet as foreshadowing.
I should probably also hesitate to make any correlation to Mary uncovering Jesus’ feet like Ruth did for Boaz, too. It’s sure too bad I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut.
What I think we can safely point out is that Mary is investing a fortune in Jesus’ feet.
A year’s wages.
Let’s pretend that minimum wage is going to bump up to $9.00/hour. That’s $360/week. Assuming somebody takes two weeks of vacation in a year, that’s $18,000/year.
An $18,000 pound or so of perfume.
Yeah. Let that sink in.
I have to think really hard about luxuries that range in the tens of dollars, not the tens of thousands of dollars.
In fact, it’s often what Jesus mentions last in this passage that gives me pause to spend on things that aren’t absolutely necessary:
You will always have the poor among you
I’ve heard that argument used in regard to budgets of all sizes, in fact.
Well, I could buy a six-pack, or I could buy a day or two’s worth of healthy meals for my family.
Well, we could build one more fighter jet, or we could create 7,000 of those aforementioned minimum-wage jobs.
Not saying the federal government should be a job creator. I’m just pointing to a difference in priorities.
I think our priorities have to be contexualized.
I think that’s Jesus’ point.
The poor are always here, but you have a unique opportunity right now. Martha, maybe you ought to shift your priorities a bit, too.
I keep reminding myself of that at home, by the way.
I could stress about keeping a house up to my mother’s standards, and probably some of yours, or I could just make sure it’s safe and healthy and spend that time with my family.
What’s the right thing to do in a certain context?
Let me pull out an example for which I have personal interest.
In a public school, the right thing to do is going to differ if I am a teacher, if I am a student, if I am a volunteer, or if I am a staff member. Each has different expectations. Each represents different interests.
For example, if I am a teacher, I represent the state. That is the essential body that has hired me. Certain things are appropriate to teach, to say, to do. Certain things aren’t.
Should I pray in public? No. Should I evangelize? No. Why not? Because I could lose my job. My best evangelism, just like anybody’s best evangelism, is to live a life that shows Christ is in me.
I hope you hear me saying this, because I’m not just giving us an excuse to avoid following Christ in our public lives.
In fact, what I have observed in a quarter of a century of following Christ myself is that this “evangelism” thing we claim to do isn’t much more than an excuse.
Words are easy. Actions are hard.
It’s easy to shout at other people, to threaten or condemn or whatever.
It’s much harder to show people how to live, to live a life that shows Christ is in us. It’s much harder to make those choices that aren’t what we want to do, but what we think Christ would do in our situation, in our context.
More toward the example of the Gospel lesson, how do our choices differ from our lives at work or in the marketplace as opposed to our lives here in worship?
That’s much closer to the difference between Mary and Martha.
How do we recognize those times when Jesus is right there in our midst?
Well, let’s begin by recognizing that Jesus is always right there in our midst.
37 “Then those who are righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
40 “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’
Jesus is always right there.
So I suppose the question isn’t, How do we recognize those times when jesus is right there in our midst? The question is, How do we recognize where Jesus is in this moment, in this place, in this interaction?
And if we can learn to recognize that, we will start to really re-sort our lives. We will find that all our priorities get reset. All our stuff gets in order. Even the stuff we didn’t realize was out of order.
Like Paul, who
was circumcised on the eighth day,
[was] from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin,
[was] a Hebrew of the Hebrews,
With respect to observing the Law, [was] a Pharisee,
With respect to devotion to the faith, harassed the church,
With respect to righteousness under the Law, [was] blameless.
But Paul considered all that loss compared to knowing Jesus.
Instead, Paul considers himself in pursuit of the resurrection. In pursuit of perfection.
That’s where we are. In pursuit of perfection. In pursuit of knowing Jesus right where we are, in each moment that we spend.
And in each moment, we have to decide how to be Mary and how to be Martha.
Sometimes the important part of that is determining when to do each.
Sometimes we know exactly what to do, though, and we need to decide that we are actually going to do it. We have to decide to give everything we have when we recognize that the time with Jesus is at hand. We have to decide that nothing is too luxurious, nothing is too hard to hold on to. We have to decide to blow the budget for the sake of Jesus. To give everything.
That’s the choice.
The choice is to give up everything.
Then it will have been
like we had been dreaming.
2 Our mouths were suddenly filled with laughter;
our tongues were filled with joyful shouts.
The joy of a life in God is ours to claim today, and it’s the most precious, priceless, amazing thing we can claim. And it’ll completely blow the budget. So the choice is ours to make.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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