Scandal at Bethany

I usually leave it to Peter to cover the Catholic beat, but since he's not preaching today, I think I'd like to spend a minute or two at the beginning of the sermon today going over the news from Rome since I'm assuming you probably know what happened there.  We got a new pope.

Now I say, "We got a new pope," but let me be clear.  We don't have popes in the United Methodist Church.  We have bishops, but we don't even have a bishop above all other bishops.  We're pretty egalitarian.  It's part of our Protestant heritage.  One of the reasons there was a Reformation in the 1500s was that many European Christians had come to suspect that something rotten was corrupting the church and part of the corruption was the extravagance of the popes.  Even as St. Peter's, that great cathedral that we saw in the news in the Vatican...even as it was being built there were many ordinary Christians grumbling about how all their tithes were going to fund that kind of opulence, even as so many were suffering.  "Couldn't that money have been given to the poor?" you can just hear them saying with Judas.

But we live in a new day.  Catholics and Protestants don't regard each other with the same sort of suspicion that we used to.  Especially after Vatican 2, that great council in the 1960s, Catholics have been more open to talks with Protestant churches, including Methodists.  We have come to see that the things that divided us in the 16th century no longer need to divide us and, in fact, we share a lot of basic beliefs.  So when we hear that the Catholic Church is suffering, as it has, because of clergy sexual abuse scandals, we grieve with Catholics.  And when they celebrate the installation of a new bishop of Rome, a new Pope, we celebrate with them.

Pope Francis is already proving to be a very different kind of pope.  First, because of who he is.  Of Italian origin, but an Argentinian - the first Latin American to be elected pope.  He represents a region in which there are far more Catholics than there are in Europe.  A shy man who does not like to speak in public.  And he comes from the Jesuit order which is known for its missionary history and disciplined spirituality, but he takes the name of Francis.

You've heard Peter talk about Francis of Assisi many times.  Francis was a medieval reformer in the church who reformed through the example of his life.  He, too, thought that the church had become too comfortable and so he sought to live a life of poverty and charity.  Legend has it that, as a child, he was selling cloth and velvet for his father one day when a beggar came by.  He abandoned his wares and chased the beggar down, giving him all that he had in his pockets, much to the dismay of his friends and his father.

This new Pope Francis has a history of seeking a path of humility, too.  When he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he refused to move into the Archbishop's apartment with its luxuries, but instead moved into a plain room with a desk, a bed, a chair, and a radio.  He cooked his own meals, which usually ran to things like skinless chicken and salads.  He rode public buses around the city.  And he stopped to talk to street vendors and beggars.  He washed the feet of AIDS patients and the poor.

We won't make a saint out of him yet.  There's a lot to do in the Catholic Church.  Even he, when he heard that he was elected, said, "I am a sinner, but since this has been given to me, I will accept."  But I talked to so many people this week who felt inspired by this new pope.  Even people who who were not religious felt that there was something Jesus-like about a pope who paid his own hotel bill.

Humility and extravagance.  These are important words for us in today's gospel reading, too.  We often think of extravagance as meaning squandering or wasting, but in creation it is a sign of God's overflowing love.  All you have to do is to look at the daffodils and camellia to know that spring is an extravagant season.  All you have to do is look at the cross to understand how extravagantly God poured out love on creation.

So we have an extravagant Lover in God and God calls us to be children.  How do we respond to that?  Our gospel lesson today gives us a hint in the story of Mary's anointing of Jesus at Bethany and in Jesus' defense of her.

Judas often gets all of the attention in this story.  He is the disciple who asks the question, "Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?"  But Judas is a hidden character in this story.  The narrator, John, must tell us who he really is, and we are told that he is a thief, a hypocrite and a betrayer.  So his question is really a reflection of his own sin and he points ahead in the story to the time when he will show himself by betraying Jesus.

We could also make a lot out of Jesus in this story, particularly in his final statement where he tells Judas, "You will always have the poor with you, but you won't always have me."  Some people have tried to distort that saying to make Jesus say, "You're wasting your time with the poor," but everything in Jesus' life suggests that he calls to be in service with the poor as a way of following him, so he was definitely NOT saying that serving the poor was useless.  He was himself materially poor.

It's Mary who seems really central to this story.  Now you may remember Mary and her sister, Martha, from other stories in the Bible.  Luke tells about a time when Jesus comes to their house and Martha busies herself in the kitchen while Mary sits as Jesus' feet listening to him.  In that story Martha gets bent out of shape because Mary doesn't help her and doesn't do the things she was expected to do and in that case Jesus defends Mary saying she had chosen the better part.  Already in that story you can see the difference between proper and correct Martha and spontaneous and independent Mary.

You might also remember the story that comes one chapter before this story we read today when Jesus meets Martha and Mary on the road just before he raises their brother, Lazarus, from the dead.  Martha went out first and never really believed that Jesus could raise her brother from the dead.  She's the one who said, when Jesus gave the order to roll away the stone from the tomb, "Lord, think of the smell - he's been dead four days!"

Mary, on the other hand, came late to see Jesus, fell at his feet in an act of spontaneous emotion, and wept, moving Jesus so deeply that he shared in her tears.  And so here we are again in this story, in the week before the Passover celebration, and Jesus again comes to Bethany to be with Mary, Martha and Lazarus.

In this story we are told very little about Lazarus.  He sits at the table with Jesus to eat and then he disappears from the scene.  And we're not told much about Martha either, though she appears in a very familiar role - she's serving the dinner.  Proper, rational Martha is playing the perfect hostess as we would expect.

Then Mary makes a dramatic appearance into the story.  As in every other story we find her at the feet of Jesus and this time she is anointing his feet - as one might anoint a king - or someone about to be buried.

The ointment she uses is a pound of costly perfume of pure nard.  Judas values it at about 300 denarii, or very near the yearly wage of a laborer.  The smell of this wonderful ointment rises and fills the whole house with the fragrance of perfume.  Mary remains at the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair - a symbol of the servanthood Jesus came to proclaim and a foreshadowing of what Jesus would later do as he washed the feet of his disciples.

Now think how extravagant this is!  This is a costly, loving gift given in an act of spontaneous emotion, which is just what we've come to expect of Mary.  Mary is not trapped by expectations and social graces.  She's not trying to trap Jesus in her own plans and expectations the way Judas certainly is.  Mary takes the unexpected route, giving extravagantly and humbly to the one who lived his life in fellowship and solidarity with the humble of the world - the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the outcast.

John slows the story down at this point to give us rich detail about the costliness and the preciousness of her gift.  John tells of the way she gave of herself in offering it, holding nothing back.  John talks about the wonderful aroma which touches everyone in the house as a result.

What would it mean for us to give extravagantly to God?  As Jesus lived in community with those on the underside of society - those who are truly humble - what would it mean for us to give our best to those in need?  We're so aware of what we don't have, but what if we gave extravagantly from what what we do have?  What would we look like if we gave ourselves completely to God, holding nothing back as we fall before Christ's feet, and living our lives as he did in solidarity with the humble?

There's so much in a vital life that doesn't make much economic sense.  Looked at from a pragmatic view, what is the value of a Little League baseball game?  What is the value of the hours spent preparing for a performance of a Beethoven concert?  What is the value of an artist's canvas slathered with paint?

Extravagance is the stuff of life.  And there is an exchange of extravagance going on here that Judas, and perhaps the others in the room, fail to understand.  Extravagance is what God is and it is what God asks of us.

The Japanese artist MF connects Jesus' tears to Mary's anointing.  He says, "Jesus’ tears led to Mary’s act of sacrifice, of nard being spread in a closed room in Bethany, where a transgression by a woman opened up a new paradigm of the aroma of Christ, of the reality of the gospel breathing into our broken world, filling the cracks of suffering. When Jesus hung on the cross, the only earthly possession Jesus wore was Mary’s nard."*

It's not an easy thing to abandon ourselves to God with the spontaneity and independence of Mary.  Maybe you think its too much a burden to simply sustain life without thinking extravagantly.  But Mary calls us to a newness of life that doesn't merely sustain us but invites us to live abundantly as Jesus promised, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly."  That involves freedom and risk and trust that the best way to understand who God is and who we are is through the one who gave his life in service and solidarity with the sufferer - Jesus Christ.  At the feet of the Christ who lives among us, offering everything we have in service, there is the sweet fragrance of the coming Kingdom.

Most of us are where we are because of someone's extravagant gift.  It began at your birth when a mother gave space within herself for life to begin.  People nurtured us, cared for us, told us who we could be.  And behind it all is the gift Christ offered on the cross.

My favorite part of this story is the detail that John includes that says "the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment."  Mary's gift became a blessing to the whole household.  What do you have to give that will be a blessing?  What do you have to give?  Thanks be to God.

*Makato Fujimura, "The BeautifulTears," Tabletalk magazine, 11 Oct 2010, http://www.makotofujimura.com/writings/the-beautiful-tears/