nday of Lent. We just returned from 6 days away in Tucson. As noted earlier, it was a good and very clarifying trip in many ways, but it delayed my prayer and writing schedule by a few days. I am really glad to be back in the Berkshires: the weather has been STUNNING these past few days - temps at about 60 and LOTS of sunshine - and it seems like that will continue through the weekend end. So... if you are in town, please stop by for worship at 10:30 am. This week's biblical texts include: Isaiah 43: 16-21, Psalm 126 and John 12: 1-11.
Oh LORD is this a great story?!? We’ve got women and men together – arguments between those committed to beauty and compassion and their colleagues in the radical social justice camp who are concerned with the poor – we’ve got a dead body brought back to life alongside a living body about to be crucified before it, too, is resurrected by God’s love.
• We’ve got perfume and deception in the air, fear and faith in the h
earts of those gathered around the banquet table of Mary and Martha and Lazarus of Bethany and honor and betrayal in the minds of each person at this peculiar and providential feast.
• What’s more, we have the example of Mary – sweet and humble disciple of Christ – doing something extravagant for the Lord – something that Jesus will share with his disciples just a week later at the Last Supper – we have Mary washes the feet of the one she loves.
Kate Huey puts it like this:
This woman who takes an expensive jar of perfume and lavishes it upon Jesus' feet is making a gesture, a heartfelt gesture, with a broken-hearted sense of what is to come at the end of the journey to Jerusalem. Perhaps her heart is full, and perhaps it is breaking, too. When our hearts are full, when our hearts are breaking, we don't waste time calculating our expenses. When our hearts are full, when our h
earts are breaking, when we're not sure what's coming but we feel deep down that it may mean loss and grief anew, we don't waste time computing the cost of our commitment.
Can you picture Mary, while Martha (as usual) is doing all the kitchen work, and Lazarus (as usual) is sitting in the living room talking with the other men – Mary, in the storeroom, the one with a lock… is looking at that last jar of expensive perfume….looking long and hard…thinking about Jesus, who had risked his life to come back and help her and her sister, to grieve with them for a moment and then to bring life out of death (for Lazarus.)
What amazing and wonderful thing can she do, what can she say not with words but with her whole self – so Mary takes the best she has to give and in an hour of need, as death looms over this little band of disciples, Mary takes the best and breaks it open over the feet of Jesus, the one she loves, the one she is about to lose…
… And shares her best with the world just as Christ had taught.
Oh this is an incredible story, dear people of God, perfect for us as we start to bring Lent to a close – for it invites us to look at how we, too, might share our best with the world by God’s grace. Like the prophet Isaiah says in his poetic challenge:
Behold, I the Lord your God, am about to do something new in the world – not something born of the former things nor that which is past and old – but something new. Radically new – and you will not be able to perceive it if you are looking backwards.
A
nd Mary is the key: the one who is made extravagant by God’s grace, the one who leads with her heart in the face of tragedy and fear, the one who is peripheral and second class to those in power but essential to all who seek the way of the Lord. Because, you see, it is Mary who lets God work within and through her to bring about something new in the world.
• She does not rely upon her own vision alone – nor her own power or inspiration either – she does not act like she is the center of the universe.
• Rather she listens – and waits – and follows the calling or prompting of the Holy Spirit who always empowers us to share ourselves in ways that enrich God’s creation.
Remember how St. Paul spoke of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5: 22? Peterson’s translation is so good:
When we are open to God’s spirit, God leads us into a new way of living… in much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willing
ness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates all things and all people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely (rather than waste ourselves away.)
Mary – extravagant, humble, generous and compassionate – is one of the best teachers we have for what it looks like to trust God. Not only does she give shape and form to the fruits of the Holy Spirit, she shows us how God can take whatever is small and often simple in our lives and transform it into a gift that can be shared with the world like bread at Eucharist. Remember our Lenten theme born of the words of Henri Nouwen? He tells us that our entire life can be a living prayer if we allow ourselves to be…
• Taken – or chosen – by God like the bread at Holy Communion
• And then blessed by God’s love – and broken by the wounds of the world
• So that we might be shared in the world for healing and acts of extravagant hospitality
In his little book, The Life of the Beloved, Nouwen writes: There is a mysterious link between our brokenness and our ability to give to each other and share ourselves with the world… (It seems as if) our brokenness opens us to a deeper way of sharing our lives and offering each other hope. For just as bread needs to be broken in order to be given, so, too, do our lives… (and) don’t you think that our desire to eat and feast with thos
e we love is an expression of an even deeper desire to be food for one another? To nourish one another?
Think of a baby “at its mother’s breast” – clearly one of the most sacred signs of human love – a tender integration of body, spirit, heart and soul, yes? Perhaps it is no coincidence, therefore, that the biblical Hebrew word for compassion – rachamim (רחמים) – and its cousin in the Koran – rahman—are both derived from riham from rehem meaning the mother or the womb. Is it any wonder that St. Paul insists that when the Spirit takes up residence within us, our bodies begin to bear fruit that gives evidence of God’s grace?
• Are you still with me? Do you see where I’m going with this insight?
• To live prayerfully – like Mary in today’s gospel lesson – means following the call of the Spirit so that we can be shared with creation like bread – or perfume – for the world.
And I think that there are two key truths about this sharing that I want to call to your attention so that you won’t be confused. The first has to do with recognizing the devastating hunger and emptiness of the human condition. It is my hunch that this has always been the case – we human beings like to think that we’ve changed a great deal over the years – but the facts tell us that we are not really all that different from our heirs in eit
her the Old or New Testaments. We lust like King David, we betray like Judas, we serve one another like Mary, we wound one another like Cain and Abel and sometimes we even make it through our worst selves to become a person of depth and integrity like Peter or Mary Magdalene. The wise old preacher got it right in Ecclesiastes:
Vanity of vanity, all is vanity… one generation passes and another arrives but the earth abides forever. The sun comes up and the sun goes down… the river runs into the sea but the sea is never full… for there is nothing new under the sun.
And yet I have to confess that I was startled – and not a little shocked and saddened – by a story I read earlier this week in The New York Times about the so-called “mall girls” of modern Poland 20 years after the fall of communism. Perhaps you saw it, too? It describes an ominous phenomenon in a society hell bent on filling it’s emptiness after the horrors of totalitarianism and the apparent irrelevance of the church: young girls and boys – from the age of 14 to 20 and mostly from middle-class Roman Catholic families – are now prostituting themselves not for money but Channel scarves or expensive sushi dinners and gold trinkets.
Film-maker, Katarzyna Roslaniec, says these mall girls – who gather in the upscale shopping centers of Krakow an
d Warsaw – are “the daughters of contemporary capitalism. Their parents have lost themselves in the race after a new washing machine or car and are rarely home… and a 14 year old girl needs a system of values” shaped by something bigger than the market place. “Instead, these girls live in a world where there are no feelings, just cold calculations,” empty homes and random sex acts performed in restrooms for designer clothes, fancy gadgets or concert tickets. It would appear, she concludes, “that the shopping mall has become the new cathedral of Poland.”
Isn’t that heart-breaking? But probably not all that different from our reality, too: I think St. Bob Dylan was right when he said that money doesn’t talk – it swears. But it is this precisely this emptiness – this brokenness – this sadness that can be our clue for offering a healing and redemptive alternative. Henri Nouwen writes: “…in our highly competitive and greedy world, we have lost touch with the joy of giving… and yet our lives only find their deepest fulfillment in giving ourselves to others.” So why not nourish and cultivate the way of Mary in the world?
• Why not live as an extravagant parable of God’s grace and love in the midst of selfishness?
• Why not pour out perfume – share beauty – practice hospitality in all the little venues of our daily lives?
• If our children see no alternative to greed… if our enemies see no alternative to vio
lence… if our loved ones and neighbors see no alternative to emptiness and fear… where is the Word made flesh?
The way of Mary is a quiet sharing – bold and wild, too – but mostly tender and compassionate: insight number one. And insight number two is equally simple: we cannot sustain a life of compassionate sharing all by ourselves. There are forces at work in our hearts and world that want to grind us down – shut us up – force us into hiding.
• They were there in Christ’s time – they were active when Isaiah shared his poetic challenge not to look backwards – and they will always be just over the horizon.
• That’s why over the generations people of faith have come up with a prompt to share whenever it looks the darkest. Maybe you know it: Illegetimi non carborundum? Anyone know the translation? Don’t let the bastards get you down – it is a simple reminder that we need one another if we’re going to be an alternative to the emptiness.
And the key here is one another – not one person – not the pastor or the moderator or the music director or your spouse of best friend but one another. The body of Christ. The community of faith. One another.
That’s what today’s psalm tries to underscore: we’re in this together – we need all of us to do our share – everyone is essential. Did you get that when we sang the psalm earlier?
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion – that is the community of faith – we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts o
f joy; then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” And the LORD has done great things for us so we rejoiced. And now we pray: Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.
Now I don’t know exactly what you need to do this week to reinforce your calling to share yourself with the world like Mary, but I suspect it has NOTHING to do with consumption. What’s more, it is my hunch that the greatest blessing you might share with the world has something to do with simply being present with another who needs you.
• Most of the time, we can’t fix what hurts – we can’t take away the pain nor change the consequences of sin – but we can be present.
• And by the grace of God – and God’s love – that can make all the difference in the world.
My friends, you and I have been chosen, blessed, broken and given to the world by God. “We may be little, insignificant servants in the eyes of a world motivated by efficiency, control, greed and success. But when we also affirm that God has chosen us from all eternity, sent us into the world as the blessed ones, handed us over to suffering so that we might share solidarity and compassion… then can’t we also trust that our little lives will multiply God’s blessings and fill the emptiness of countless empty hearts?” (Nouwen)
• I invite you – encourage you – challenge and bid you – to find a way to share just yourself with someone this week.
• For then you will be the good news… and Christ’s love will blossom.
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