5th Sunday in Lent John 12:1-8 March 21, 2010

       5Lent2010                                               John 12:1-8                                           March 21, 2010

We credit the Bible with a lot: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Yet as important as the Bible is, with so many claims on our attention, it has been known to end up in the backseat in our lives without our intending it to. Perhaps this happens because the Bible isn’t magic. We can’t ask something of it and expect an easy answer will always pop up with no effort from us.

What I’ve learned over the years is that we can’t expect predictable responses from something as Living as the Word of God.  The Bible is a relational book.  It’s a gift from a loving God who desires relationship and desires to invest time and patience in these relationships so they can mature. As Howie said so well at Vespers Wednesday night, the Bible isn’t a science book.  Neither is it a magic book.  It is a book of faith. And faith assumes relationship with all its ups and downs.   

This Fifth Sunday of Lent dips us briefly into John’s Gospel. We’ll be back in Luke next Sunday with Passion/Palm Sunday and then again on Easter, but John accompanies us today, on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and through the Easter Season.  With today’s dip into John, we dive into its greatest assurance: “The Word that was with God and was God becomes flesh among us!” 

Believe it or not, we are on the verge of Holy Week. Next Sunday the church begins a week long enactment of the story of our faith.  The beloved Easter Bunny and the always substantial Easter Brunch borrow the name, but they don’t tell that story.  Easter is about relationship with a God who goes to all lengths to love us – forever – all of us – and whose love creates community where we learn together what such love asks of us: that we be on the journey of discovering how we are uniquely called and empowered to be poured out fully for the healing of the world.

That is too big of an agenda for Easter Bunny or even the most intense Brunch! Not that there’s anything wrong with them. I’m a big fan of the Easter Bunny! And who doesn’t like an Easter Brunch!  But they aren’t Easter.  Easter is way too much for children – of all ages – to think it can be explained by the way our culture celebrates it.  Easter is a love story so amazing, so divine, demands our soul, our life, our all, to quote a great old hymn we’re going to sing next Sunday.

Easter is the discovery that the Word that was with God and was God took on human flesh, but this radical love was too much for the world, and it was betrayed and crucified.  Yet, the greatest news if that love wouldn’t give up, and on the third day the crucified was raised to new life. 

This is such a profound story that we enact it over again each Holy Week – not because we don’t know the story in our heads.  We walk through it afresh every year because our hearts need to hear anew what the story has done for us and what it asks of us in this year of our lives. Holy Week invites us to lose our usual agendas and give ourselves to this costly love that, as T.S. Eliot has said, “costs us nothing less than everything.” 

What I’ve learned over almost 30 years of ordained ministry is that delightful as the Easter Bunny is, and as wonderful as Easter Brunch is, human hunger goes deeper than the world’s best egg dish and the biggest basket the Bunny can find.

Human hearts hunger for resurrection. We don’t know this necessarily.  We think we hunger for Eggs Benedict or for Chocolate Bordeaux (my favorite), or for success or for any manner of things, all of which can be wonderful, but at the bottom of our hearts, as St. Augustine says, “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O God.”  This is resurrection – resting finally in the goodness of our Creator who turns sadness into joy, despair into hope, exile into homecoming, exclusion into welcome, barrenness into fruitfulness, death into life.  

The need for resurrection is a very 21st century need!  To be brought to new life by God’s doing is to be woken up to the life God has in mind for us – a life that serves God, ourselves and our neighbor.  If the Christian story tells us anything, it’s that we are delightfully free to give ourselves for others because Christ first gave himself for us.   

Today’s Gospel says it so beautifully. Jesus comes to Bethany to the home of Lazarus, and his sisters Mary and Martha. We’re told that these siblings are giving a dinner party for Jesus.  Lazarus, whom Jesus had just raised from the dead, was at table with him. Imagine yourself at that table. 

Not only is Jesus there, but Lazarus is sitting there, fresh back from the dead.  If this were today there’d be all kinds of questions.  Did you see a white light?  What was it like?  Did you want to come back?  Do you remember anything?  But John tells us nothing.  Lazarus is silent about his death experience. But John wants it to be perfectly clear.  This is the same Lazarus who Jesus raised from the dead. Lazarus was dead and he is alive again and he sits at table with Jesus.

What would it be like to be at dinner with one who has been dead?  Some of us may think we have this experience on a regular basis. My husband for instance has to eat breakfast with me after I’ve walked the dogs in the morning without ever passing by a mirror. The look of death-warmed-over comes to mind. I trust it’s a common breakfast menu, especially among the long married. 

But Lazarus really had been dead.  He was in the tomb four days we’re warned, long enough for there to be a stench.  But now he’s sitting at table with Jesus enjoying the company and probably more alert than ever. If we were aware we had been dead and are alive again, we’d probably savor life more than we do.  

That dinner party should have been a happy one.  Family and friends are united again.  But then Mary does this startling thing. She anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. The really startling thing is that the custom of that time was to anoint dead bodies.  Feet of a corpse were anointed as part of the burial preparation. It was the kind of thing that would have been done to Lazarus’ dead body not long ago. What was Mary doing anointing Jesus’ feet while he was alive? 

The text is clear that Mary wasn’t aware of the significance of her action. That perfume was worth a whole year’s worth of income. What she was doing was giving her all to Jesus. This is a story of extravagance. She emptied every last drop from the jar and her actions transformed the room. The house that not long ago was filled with sorrow is now filled with the fragrance of life.

But listen to the response.  Anger and judgment!  “Why was something so wasteful done?”  And Jesus said, “Leave her alone!”  What a powerful response from Jesus! He not only is willing to receive this costly gift, he also uses Mary’s actions to show what is now asked of us as well. 

The baptismal truth is that we have all died and have been raised to purposeful life in Christ.  That’s what happens in baptism. We die to our old agendas and are risen to new life as disciples of Jesus.  When the baptized people of God gather at this table we gather as those who once were dead but are now made alive together in Christ. We, like Mary, are disciples with the responsibility of emptying our jars fully for the transformation of the world – transforming sadness into joy, despair into hope, exile in homecoming, exclusion into welcome. 

The whole jar of perfume was spent and Jesus’ response to the judgment was “Leave her alone.”  I imagine with a twinkle in his divine/human eye Jesus thought, “Good for you, Mary, for catching that it’s all about extravagance.” God’s extravagance towards us and our extravagant response! 

Mother Theresa said, “We are not called to be successful, but to be faithful.”  If Faith Lutheran will be faithfully extravagant in response to all God has done in raising us to new life, God will say to whatever judgment will come our way, “Leave my faithful community alone. They get the message! The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. What was dead is alive, forever.” 

Such extravagant grace deserves extravagant response.  Thank you, people of God, for all the ways you demonstrate that, like Mary, you get this profound and life-changing message.  I look forward to sharing Holy Week with you.  If you are not able to be with us, or in another community at worship, please hold us in prayer each day.  When we pray, even in our absence, we are amazingly present.  

                                                                                                   Amen

   +Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA