March 13, 2016
John 12:1-8
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14

It strikes me as the perfect scene for a savior who simply won’t stand to be boxed in by human expectations, controlled by convention, or colored by predictability.
What happens next in the Gospel of John is Palm Sunday; in other words, this dinner party is his final gospel moment before walking into town for the very last time. This is IT before his journey to death begins, and ours to the pain of knowing that it was somehow offered for us. And, here in this moment, there’s Martha serving the meal, even though she’s the one we remember from elsewhere complaining that Mary never did her part. And then there’s Lazarus, a man who only a few days ago was dead. We recall, of course, that Christ raised him in a strange mix of grief and glory. And, here, in our little story for today he says nothing at all, yet his presence is clear and his witness to God’s power over death speaks despite his silence because we all know the death that is to come.
There at the table there’s Judas as well, the friend who gave him away, the friend who betrayed him, though we also know that in the end the other friends do too. Still, John wants us to know that Judas is there and his heart’s in the wrong place. “Look at all that nard,” he says. “How could you spend it all here? Do you know what that’s worth, how many mouths it could feed?” Christ, whom we know to love the poor, gives an unexpected response. “The poor will always be here, but soon I will not.” Mary, it seems, won’t be distracted or dissuaded. All this talk means nothing to her. She knows the only thing to do, and oh how odd it is! She takes what amounts to a year’s worth of wages in perfume – perfume meant for the dead – and she pours it on his feat. What is meant for dead bodies she pours on living feat, not for a burial but for a walk into death.
It all seems so disorienting, this scene at the table. What an odd cast of characters. But, that, I believe, is how it should be. What is about to happen makes such odd sense, which becomes all the more pronounced next week as we observe this apparently lucid moment of great celebration as Christ enters Jerusalem and all the Passover pilgrims wave palm branches and sing “hosanna.” We celebrate too, until we recall that their celebrations are short lived. Those pilgrims were right and wrong at the same time; he was the Messiah, but he wasn’t what they wanted. Their cries of “hosanna” turn into much darker cries, and we’re left asking ourselves if we too are inclined to seek the wrong kind of God, the wrong kind of messiah. Are we as dangerously fickle in our faith as they are?
So, the stage is set for us to be asking questions – questions like: what exactly is going on? What is God doing here? Are we in step with it? How do we get in step with it?
My sense is that that is what the lectionary is getting at as well. Isaiah says, “Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness.” The psalm echoes our Old Testament passage, as it often does, “Restore our fortunes, O Lord. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.” Paul gets in on the action too in his letter to the Philippians, “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.”
There’s something happening here, something imminently important, something worth our attention and devotion, something that calls for a bit of disorientation and self-examination. Are we ready to receive what Christ is offering? Are we capable?
So many in the gospel narrative weren’t. Certainly, the very religious weren’t. We see that again and again with the Pharisees and others who had a stronghold on the faith. We see it, more surprisingly, with Jesus’ disciples, his closest friends and followers consistently miss the point or only partially get it. Jesus talks again and again of his death, but the messiah they want doesn’t do that. They just can’t conceive of a messiah in terms beyond their own assumptions. But, then, occasionally we get glimpses of those who do understand. And, we get that this morning with Mary.
Mary knows that his death is coming, and yet she also knows that he is her savior. She knows that that death is an utter and complete loss, yet she anoints him alive because she knows that he is the way through the darkness. There’s an urgency to what she does, an unregretted extravagance. The perfume she uses costs a year’s wages; its scent fills the whole house, and if that’s not enough she wipes it up with her hair. It will stay with her when he’s gone, but for now he’s here and the only thing to do is to pour herself out to him, to give herself over to him.
God is on the move. Something horrible and amazing is happening, and nothing is more important or more called for than our doing the same as Mary.
I was recently reminded of an article I once read in the Atlantic Monthly. It summarized a Harvard study that chronicled the lives of a number of men in search for an understanding of happiness. One of the subjects was doctor, a successful and highly beloved man who devoted his long career to the attentive care of his patients. At his 70th birthday his wife collected over a 100 letters of appreciation from those whom he cared for and colleagues and presented them to him as a gift. When the researcher asked the man what was in the letters, he teared up and said, “I’ve never been able to bring myself to read them.”
Too much love is a scary thing. But, why is that?
The very disorienting message of this season is that we have been given too much love. It is too much love to go on taking lightly. It is too much love to relegate to once a week on Sunday mornings. Too much love to be a tangent to our lives. Too much love not to jolt us out of ourselves and into that which we cannot control and predict. We have been given so much love; we are so graced and claimed by love; that our lives will never be full if they remain our own.
I wonder, are we ready for this kind of an interruption? What will we do with this love?