Sermon  given April 6th. Revd Sue McCoan

Isaiah 43:16-21; John 12:1-8

Today is the 5th Sunday in Lent. Next week is Palm Sunday when we remember Jesus making a very public entrance into Jerusalem, cheered by the crowd, but ready to confront the authorities. And from then on we follow Jesus, almost day by day, as the tension builds, through Maundy Thursday, to Good Friday itself.

So today, Passion Sunday, is a day to reflect on what is to come; to pause, with Jesus, while we can, before the pace of events overtakes us and we are caught up in all that is going on.

We pause in the village of Bethany, two miles outside Jerusalem. And we pause in the home of Mary and Martha, the two sisters who have known Jesus for some time. Old friends, with whom he can feel safe and relaxed. And they’ve invited him to dinner – what better way to spend an evening. 

Mary and Martha have a particular reason for wanting to spend time with Jesus. They are here with their brother Lazarus – and just a week ago, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. Ten days ago, this had been a house of mourning – and perhaps also some bitterness and resentment, because Martha and Mary had specifically asked Jesus to come when Lazarus was ill and he hadn’t turned up. He hadn’t even made it to the funeral. But then, when Jesus did arrive, he did the most amazing thing. He brought Lazarus back to life. 

In a short time, this family have moved from grief and loss to astonishment, and then to celebration and immense gratitude. So no wonder they have invited Jesus to dinner. They owe him so much. 

There they are in the house, the one who was raised and the one who raised him, and the two women who can hardly believe that all this is real. And for Mary, giving a dinner is not enough. She is looking for some other way to express the overwhelming love and gratitude in her heart. And so she anoints the feet of Jesus with this costly perfumed oil – a gesture of extravagant grace toward someone she could never repay.

Judas, missing the moment, points out the colossal waste of money. And he’s right – in many ways it is a waste. It’s the same waste of money that we see in elaborate flowers for a funeral; in racing drivers who pour champagne over one another; in the poppy petals that fall from the roof of the Albert Hall on Remembrance Sunday. A waste, in that there is no practical purpose served; but never a waste, never a waste for those who care, because the very extravagance is a measure of the feeling involved. Mary wastes her money to show her gratitude to Jesus. She does a beautiful thing. 

It is maybe more beautiful than Mary realises. Because what Jesus might have known, and what we do know in hindsight, is that he never did get properly anointed for his burial. He had to be buried in an undignified hurry in order to get the job done by sunset and the beginning of the Sabbath. The anointing was set to happen on that first morning after the Sabbath – only when the women got to the tomb, at sunrise, with their spices, the tomb was empty. 

Mary has not waited for this brutal death and callous burial. She has anointed Jesus while he is still alive, while he can still share the moment, while they can all share the fragrance. 

She did a beautiful thing for Jesus, and she has done a beautiful thing for us too. She has anointed the feet of Jesus; and very soon in John’s gospel we read of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Again, a gesture of humility, and love, and grace. 

Mary has poured out her perfumed oil, the most precious thing she had, for her Lord and master. And a little further on in John’s gospel we see Jesus on the cross, and his blood is poured out, the most precious blood, the blood of life itself, poured out for us and for the whole world. A gesture – more than a gesture, a total commitment of love.

The brutality of the cross is hard to face. For us; for Jesus.

Mary has given us, in this wasteful outpouring, a fragrant and beautiful image of the love of Jesus, that doesn’t airbrush out the harshness but allows us to hold it as something sacred and deep; that allows us to see the grace within the cruelty; that allows us to look beyond the pain to hope.

In her book, ‘Sharing the darkness’, Dr Sheila Cassidy reflects on this bible story in the L’Arche community – L’Arche, from the French for Noah’s ark, a place of refuge, where people with learning disabilities live in community with people without. 

‘The next day was Good Friday and as I sat at the breakfast table at L’Arche there was the usual kaleidoscope of people from all over the world. … I thought to myself, here it is again, that razor-edged sign of God in our times, the young pouring their lives out in lavish abandon on the useless members of society. What on earth, I thought, is this twenty-two year old Irish girl I know doing in the latest L’Arche foundation in Bethany, near Jerusalem? She wrote to me the other day, sitting on the bathroom floor, waiting for a handicapped Arab woman to move her bowels. What,in God’s name, is Gaby doing there?

That’s it, of course. She’s there in God’s name. It is a particular form of Christian madness that seeks out the broken ones, the insane, the handicapped and the dying and places before their astonished eyes a banquet normally reserved for the whole and the productive. […] 

It is an expression of our need to serve, to love, however flawed our motives. But the most important message is the unspoken one to the world at large: that this ‘dead loss to society’ is infinitely precious. […] 

There will always be those who find themselves called, like Mary of Bethany, to disturb the peace by pouring out over some dead loss to society that which could have been sold for three hundred denarii.’

Sheila Cassidy, ‘Sharing the darkness’, p52-57.

And so we pause, with Jesus, in this safe house, in this heady perfume, in this sweet moment. 

Let’s spend a few moments in silence, then I’ll end with a prayer.

Lord of overflowing grace,

Mary poured out her love for you;

You poured out your love for us.

We give thanks for people who pour out their lives to serve others.

Lord,

Help us to be ready to do something beautiful;

If the time comes for us to be poured out, give us the grace to give freely;

And if this is not our calling, and we simply receive the gift and grace that others give to us,

Help us to be truly grateful.     Amen.