Sun, Apr 7, 2019 Our Saviour
Lent 5 04/08/2019
The Fifth Sunday in Lent Color: Purple Assigned Readings Lesson 1: Isaiah 43:16-21 Psalm: 126 Lesson 2: Philippians 3:4b-14 Gospel: John 12:1-8
what is Mary doing here?
She is annointing Jesus’ feet, 6 days before the Passover.
Look at the setting as we encounter Mary and Martha. It says plainly six days before the Passover Jesus was in Bethany, the home of Lazarus.
Now, the great turning point in John’s Gospel is the raising of Lazarus.
It is helpful to recognize the basic form of the story that structures the Gospels. Matthew Mark and Luke tell a story that basically hinges on the point where Jesus turns his face to Jerusalem. He moves his base of ministry from the north of Israel to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem of course is where he must go to meet his death. His death which is a saving death. A death which he is destined to overcome. A death where the full story ends with resurrection not with death.
John’s Gospel is structured around a different kind of journey. We know why John writes his gospel because he tells us plainly why he’s writing it, twice he tells it, in the last two chapters. John relates his gospel so that we who come after may come to believe and know that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth. The turning point of his gospel is the final and greatest sign intended to convince us that Jesus is Lord. Namely the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. That’s the halfway point of the story.
Here we are in chapter 12, just one chapter after the raising of Lazarus. We now have heard that there is a plot to kill Jesus. Jesus had gone to the town of Ephraim and was laying low with his disciples. Passover was approaching. It was time to move. So he returned to Bethany.
Mary, using oil that had been intended for his burial, anoints Jesus’s feet with perfumed oil. She recognizes the terrible events that are about to take place. And she blesses them, what is about to take place, she makes it clear that these events are God’s doing even as they seem as terrible as they could possibly be.
So here we are. Next Sunday is the Sunday of the Passion. The Sunday of the Palms. The beginning of what we call Holy Week.
How do we mark this time? I suggest to you that a reconsecrating – an anointing, is in order.
Notre Dame Story
When I was in graduate school at Notre Dame in the 1980s, there was a group of nuns living in South Bend who had made it a part of their ministry to consecrate the passage of death. They sought to recover an ancient approach to death that has been lost in our current society’s unholy pact with the burial industry.
When someone in the community died they would go to sit with the body. In prayer. They would wash it and rub perfumed oil. They would consecrate the event. As a sign that what in appearance looks like an end and a catastrophe is in reality a culmination and a victory for our God.
They would that wrap the body in a clean white cloth.
At that point the State would be required to be brought in.
Re-consecrating my trail up KoKo crater.
I had an experience of reconsecrating what had appeared to be desecrated when I was in Hawai’i. It was a sacred time for me.
I had developed a habit over the course of several years. It all started when my son Julian came to visit me and one of the things he wanted to do was to climb a volcano that was near by where we lived at the time. KoKo crater.
Cutting out some of the comedic elements of his adventures in climbing it, after he left I decided that if he could do it I could do it. Now that was a little rash. There were some 12 or 13 hundred steps up the crater, a rise of about 1,200 feet elevation rise. But after several attempts I made it to the top of koko crater. After doing it once I said to myself well, I think I could do it again. So the next week I went and made it to the top. After a while I decided that I would try to do it twice a week. Eventually it moved to between three and four times a week.
But by then it was no longer a physical exercise. Over time it became an extended meditation, really a prayer time. It was a contemplative 40 minutes or so that I exercised three or four times a week.
One day I arrived at the bottom of the mountain and there were police vehicles everywhere. There was not just one helicopter but two flying around the crater. No I wasn’t immediately overly alarmed because I myself have been involved in at least two modest rescue efforts, people who fell, didn’t have the stamina, and what not.
I just decided that I wasn’t going to climb that day and went home. In the news I learned that what was going on was that a young man who was in a crazed state, probably due to methamphetamine, had stabbed people towards the top of the crater. None of them died amazingly, but as of the evening news, the perpetrator had not been found. He was found the next day, naked and hiding in a tree in somebody’s backyard.
I was determined that I wasn’t going to let the evil get the last word. Early the next morning when the dew was still wet on the leaves of the scrubby bushes along the trail up KoKo crater, I prayed my way up to the top. It was my way of re-consecrating the holy mountain. I guess it was a form of making lemonade from my lemons.
But I am convinced it was more than that. It was my part in helping God to win the day. What had the appearance of desecration would become the means of a greater blessing.
Mary I believe is doing something similar to that here in Bethany, six days before Passover. She has a part to play in ushering in the new era of life – the Resurrection of the Lord – that could only be brought forth through catastrophe. God is at work, but we have our part to play.
A Rumi poem
I read in my evening prayer 2 weeks ago. It made me thing of Mary and her part in ushering in, announcing, preparing the way, for the Resurrection to come.
[Joseph has come,
the handsome one of this age,
a victory banner floating over spring flowers.]
Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead,
get up.
The poet says.
This is a work day.
The lion that hunts lions charges into the meadow.
Yesterday and the day before are gone.
The beautiful coin of now slaps down in your hand.
Start the drumbeat.
Everything we have said about the Friend is true.
The beauty of that peacefulness makes the whole world restless.
Spread your love-robe out to catch
what sifts down from the ninth level.
You heart closed up in a chest,
open, for the Friend is entering you.
You feet, it is time to dance.
Don’t talk about the old man.
He is young again.
And don’t mention the past.
Do you understand?
The beloved is here.
There are those who argued then about Mary that it was inappropriate to “celebrate” at such a serious and dark time. Mary knew that that was exactly the time. It was time because the beloved is here.
We have our part to play in bringing about this great event which is God’s show. It’s something Desmond Tutu’s line: “God has made us responsible for his reputation.”
What are we doing here?
Our time of preparation for Passover and Easter is near an end. If God is with us, we have uncovered this Lent empty places where we have lost our way. If God is with us, we will have discovered ways in which we have betrayed what God has entrusted us with. If God is with us, we may have experienced loss.
We are Mary. We are here to anoint those places, to reconsecrate those times, to make sure that all the world knows that Jesus is Lord!
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