Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Fifth Sunday Of Lent Year C
March 25, 2007
Deacon Richard Buhrer

While I was sick the last couple of weeks, I watched a lot of television. I saw a kind of documentary called “Ancient Evidence” which was exploring the question: “Who really killed Jesus?”

The suspects named included Caiaphas, the high priest, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, and surprisingly enough, Jesus himself. Caiaphas, the program went on to say, was a wily politician, who saw Jesus as a threat to the fragile status quo of the Roman occupation and thought it expedient to execute him for the good of the nation. But he had no power to take Jesus’ life legally. Pilate, it went on, was a brutal Roman overlord who openly hated the Jews. He was recalled to Rome a few years after Jesus’ death because of his violence and hatred for the Jews. Although he is portrayed in the gospels as reluctantly consenting to the execution, that may not have been a really accurate picture of the man and his motives. The program went on to say that Jesus contributed to his own death, walking knowingly into this cauldron of hatred and violence, knowing that his death was virtually certain if he were to continue in fidelity to the vision of the Kingdom of God. Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”[1]

This is what I have long found most amazing about Jesus: his courage to walk knowingly into this conflict, not shaping his behavior to protect himself but shaping it to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Such bleak courage! I don’t know if I would be capable of such a profound and selfless obedience. “What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!” as the hymn goes.

This is why I am so grateful to Mary of Bethany for her great love for Jesus that she poured out on him at such a painful, fearful moment in his life. “Six days before the Passover (which was five days before his death) Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. And the fragrance filled the whole house.”[2]

Mary of Bethany was a really remarkable person, so utterly unrestrained by social convention, so openly and utterly constrained only by her love of Jesus. Remember how Martha complained about her to Jesus: she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to do, helping in the kitchen; she was seated at feet of Jesus. Sitting at a person’s feet had a particular meaning in Judaism: It meant enrolling in that teacher’s school, becoming a rabbinical student. Jesus allows, even encourages Mary to take her place among his disciples. This is one of the strongest references to Jesus’ radical feminism in the Gospels. But almost more importantly, Mary does not allow the expectations of her culture to shape her love for Jesus; she lets her love for Jesus shape her life without regard for the expectations of others.

“But Judas Iscariot… said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’”[3] It’s really easy for us, from our perspective, knowing the end of the story as we do, to scoff at Judas. But three hundred denarii was the equivalent of a whole years wages at the time. Imagine pouring out twenty or thirty or forty thousand dollars in a single fleeting gesture of love? “And the fragrance filled the whole house.” We might very likely agree with Judas (in our heart of hearts). Fifty grand for a foot massage, get real!. After all, Jesus was just one man? Right? Such extravagant love.

And such an overtly erotic act of love! If we really stop to think about it, we might blush and turn our heads away. “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.”[4] One can almost frame the scene, Jesus reaching down and touching her face, their eyes meeting and holding in a communication of love and caring. How unselfconscious, how utterly selfless in her love for Jesus, what blatant disregard for convention and mores, how focused and committed in her effort to comfort for the Christ? Mary set aside her need to remain a respectable member of her society, and allowed the love of Jesus to overtake her fears; she set her self aside to offer comfort to Jesus at a most painful moment in his short life. In the face of his disciples’ almost willful misunderstanding of his mission, on some level, Mary of Bethany understood Jesus and responded to him in kind with extravagant love. “And the fragrance filled the whole house.” “What wondrous love is this? O my soul, o my soul!”

So, then we are called to imitate this wondrous, profligate, costly love of Jesus and Mary of Bethany. At the Last Supper, Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. This not the commandment from the summary of the Law: Love your neighbors as yourselves. That is daunting enough. But the new commandment makes Jesus himself and by extension Mary of Bethany the measure of the love we are called to express for one another. We don’t necessarily have the opportunity to pour our love out in one fell swoop, like a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard. Rather, we do it, as it were, one drop at a time, one step at time, one encounter at a time, one relationship at a time.

So what restrains us from imitating this wondrous, extravagant love demonstrated by the Lord Jesus and Mary of Bethany? It could be fear of rejection, of inadequacy, of being scoffed at and despised as a fool, fear of being known for who and what we are, woeful, painful and shameful. The common thread, for all of us, I believe, is fear. If, as the Bible says, perfect love casts out fear, fear restrains great love. How often have I, have we chosen safety, shut down in the face of our fears, rather than reach out in joy and love to the Lord and to each other?

And how do we overcome our fear? I wish with all my heart that there were an easy answer to that question. The only way I have found is to acknowledge my fears and disregard them, not allow them to have a voice in my choices to love: to move forward a step at a time, listening carefully for the voice of God and ignoring the loud yammering of my fear, telling myself it will be all right. In this I find Mary of Bethany to be a wonderful challenging example: She let her love of the Lord shape her behavior without regard for her own or other people’s expectations about the right and proper thing to do.

So let us take her as our model of love, wondrous love, extravagant love, love like Jesus showed us, the love we are called to, the love that Mary poured out on Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair. And the fragrance filled the whole house. What wondrous love is this? O my soul!