March 25, 2007: Fifth Sunday in Lent

Right after this sermon I'm heading down to children's church to talk with the children about the statement of faith they must write before receiving Holy Communion, so Peter Meyers will come up after the silent reflection time and lead the remainder of this worship service.

I also want to give a word of explanation about today's sermon. It is not often that the lectionary chooses scripture passages where a woman is the main character. In fact you may have notices that last week's gospel lesson skipped right over Jesus talking about how God is like a woman searching for a lost coin, Instead the passage went right to how God is like a father. And some of you may be like me and have heard today's gospel lesson preached as if this Mary is the same sinful demon possessed woman who anoints Jesus in Luke's gospel. So today I want to introduce you to the real Mary of Bethany. Mary-- the model disciple.

The date was April 16 th 1965 , my 12 th birthday and my mother's 50 th birthday. As was my family's usual custom, we gathered at the home of my two childless aunts, Aunt Margaret and Aunt Annie. These ladies would fix a birthday celebration feast that was a mixture of mine and my mother's favorite foods--Fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, southern style green beans, deviled eggs, chow chow, carrot strips and devils food cake with Neapolitan ice cream. Making us all hungry right??

Birthday presents were piled on the piano in the living room, and were to be opened after supper but before birthday cake and coffee. Now I always had more birthday presents than my mother—usually clothes and other practical things from my parents and siblings, but always, always a really cool present from Aunt Margaret, since I was her favorite niece of course--being her namesake and all.

However, this birthday, one present stood out from all the rest. For one thing it was three times bigger than all the others. But more telling, the gift was clearly “professionally” wrapped in shiny white paper with wide gold and silver ribbons flowing up into a perfectly crafted bow that must have used another yard of ribbon. It was without a doubt the most impressive looking gift on the piano. I eagerly scoped it out wondering, “Wow! Aunt Margaret must have really gone all out this birthday!! I wonder what she got me!! I don't remember asking for anything this big! Boy, it's really going to be a surprise!”

But when I read the tag on the present, I grew even more perplexed. The tag read: “To Peggy, with all my love, Ernest.”

Now my parents rarely gave each other gifts, at least gifts that we children knew about. While daddy had a good paying job, money was scarce in my family until the last of us graduated from college. There were eight mouths to feed, eight bodies to clothe, six kids to put through 12 years of parochial schools and then college. If my parents ever bought anything for one another, it was usually something for the house or a tool.

Mom had also scoped out the gifts on the piano. Through dinner her demeanor was thoughtful yet quizzical. Yes, having reached the half century mark myself, I know now that turning fifty is one of those milestone birthdays, whether we want it to be or not, some how marking we are irreversibly on the downhill side of life, whether we feel old or not.

The birthday dinner atmosphere was decidedly changed by the presence of this impressively wrapped gift, so out of character from my family's normal birthday gatherings. My uncles joked and teased my dad during dinner. One brother hoped it

was a color TV—an odd shape for sure for a color TV —but wouldn't it be nice to watch the wonderful world of Disney in real color?

The meal whizzed by, and I opened all my gifts, none of which I remember now. Finally, the moment we were all waiting for. My mother carefully untied the bow, lifted the scotch tape gingerly off the shiny white paper hoping of course to reuse it for a future present. Aunt Margaret and Aunt Annie gasped as they saw the label on the box: Furs by Julius Lewis. Then my mother incredulously pulled a mink stole from the box.

I don't ever recall my mother looking more surprised, gleeful and disbelieving all at the same time. My father had clearly surprised her as well as everyone else in the room. An extravagant gift! Totally impractical, particularly given the weather in Memphis , Tennessee . And totally out of character from what I knew about my mother and father.

That birthday remains for me an endearing reminder that sometimes you do some impractical, grossly extravagant things, way beyond your usual sensible, common sense understanding of what the right and proper thing to do is, in order to please, in order to show just how much you love some one.

In today's gospel lesson, we have a similar show of extravagance and impracticality by Mary in her gift to Jesus. Just six days before Jesus' death, Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus host a dinner party for Jesus. In first century Palestine , men and women did not eat in the same place at the same time. However, serving the meal to her brother Lazarus, Jesus, and the other male guests was a socially correct role for Martha. Also in first century Palestine , it was a sign of good social breeding and hospitality for slaves and servants to wash the feet of guests before dinner, because people ate in a reclining position and who wants to smell the feet of the man lying next to you while you're eating?

What was not socially correct was for Mary to perform this task herself and to use a pound of expensive perfumed oil—costing as much money as a day laborer would earn working a full year. Yet the fact Mary did use an extravagant amount of this perfumed oil enabled the whole house to be filled with its fragrance, allowing all present to participate through their sense of smell in this act of extravagance.

What is equally shocking and socially incorrect was Mary unbinding her hair and using it to dry Jesus' feet! Respectable Israelite women did not unbind their hair in public, and rarely did so even in private. In many respects Mary's actions are indeed curious to us twenty centuries later. If we talk in terms of today's dollars Mary took $25,000 worth of perfumed oil, rubbed it into one man's dirty feet, and wiped away the excess with her hair.

Yet in another sense, we understand Mary's actions entirely. Mary is a woman who is where she is not supposed to be, doing something she is not suppose to do, and some one criticizes her for it! While the criticism comes from a man, Judas, based on what John tells us about Mary's relationship with her sister Martha, and having a sister myself, I can just imagine Martha's heated response to Mary's act of extravagance.

Yet another man, God made man, affirms not only Mary's presence, but also her extravagant scandalous actions to him. Later in chapter 19 of John's gospel, men in secret will anoint Jesus' lifeless body. But Mary anoints Jesus in front of all who dined with him. Her act of love is public.

To understand Mary's actions we have to look carefully at John's gospel, because in this gospel HOW something is written gives us major clues to WHAT it means. Or as one of my bible professors drilled into my head in seminary: “Proper articulation of content and form yields proper articulation of meaning.” Or put in everyday language, how you say something is as important as what you say. So what is crucial here is John's gospel places this story as a bridge between the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, AND the beginning of his passion and death. This story takes place on the night before Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem . It's a prelude to the final hours in the upper room Thursday night, and foreshadows, anticipates, Jesus' own act of extravagant love in his passion and death on the cross.

One of my favorite commentators on the Gospel of John, Gail O Day, points out John uses the Greek word deipon to describe only this meal and the Last Supper. Similarly, Mary's actions towards Jesus duplicate Jesus' later actions at the last supper. What Jesus later commands the disciples to do, Mary does without needing to be told. First, she unashamedly washes his feet, the model for discipleship that Jesus later shows and commands his disciples to do. Second, her anointing Jesus anticipates the love commandment Jesus gives his disciples that night, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Mary of Bethany is the first person in John's gospel to live out the love this commandment in her extravagant act of love towards Jesus.

O'Day sums up this passage with: “Mary models what it means to be a disciple: to serve, to love one another, and to share in Jesus' death.” She fulfills his love command even before he teaches it. In her anointing she shows what it means to be one of Jesus' followers. Jesus' words in today's gospel remind the disciples of the limited time he has left among them and the necessity to respond to him while he is still with them. Mary, on the other hand, recognizes this reality on her own and responds. She alone in John's gospel knows how to respond to Jesus without being told. She gives boldly and extravagantly of herself in love to Jesus at this hour, just as Jesus will give boldly of himself in love at his hour. This extravagant act of a woman who went where she wasn't suppose to go, and did what she wasn't suppose to do, becomes the explicit teaching of Jesus in his final hours.

To serve one another, to love one another, and to share in Jesus' death. This is what disciples of Jesus do. How were you baptized? Into his death we proclaim in our baptismal liturgy. In following the command to love and serve one another we, men and women, are likely to find ourselves in places we do not want to be, saying truths that people do not want to hear, and doing things other folks will be critical of.

Remember Mary of Bethany as we move towards Palm Sunday and the events of Holy Week. Her story will be there with us, reminding us that extravagant love is costly, risky, and often involves sacrifices. But we have this promise: God is always ready to do a new thing among us, when we risk loving extravagantly forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.