INTRODUCTION TO THE READING: 

In the way that the common lectionary assigns passages, the Gospel readings for Lent, 2010 come mostly from Luke’s Gospel. …Except for today’s! Today’s gospel reading comes from John.   And, I’m thinking part of the reason “why” is timing and setting! Today’s the final Sunday of the Lenten Season. John places today’s story six days before Passover. Next time you’re looking at your calendar, notice that this year’s Jewish Passover holiday begins a few more than 6 days from now.   

An even more likely reason for the choice has to do with the content…It’s  high drama … It captures, draws us in and leads us by the nose, as it were, into being curious about this man, Jesus and wondering what it means to follow him …especially when the stakes are high.

In the previous chapter, John related Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead. That over-the-top miracle, alone, proclaimed Jesus, the Messiah for many and sent others to plot, in earnest, to eliminate him. Why, today’s story the Chief Priests and Pharisees had a decreed in place that if Jesus were to set foot in Jerusalem, he’d be arrested. Lazarus’ house is but two or so miles away from Jerusalem. Jesus is dining in Bethany, and likely as not, he is as aware of the danger awaits him in Jerusalem as any of his followers.

Listen for God’s Word for you in these words from the opening of chapter 12 in John’s Gospel.

 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them † with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

Here ends this reading… may this be God’s Living Word for us this day!

Fifth Sunday in Lent                                                Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church

March 21, 2010                                                         

According to my calendar…not yesterday’s weather….Yesterday was the first day of Spring!  …But, you and I know we smelled Spring …in the air earlier, like on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.. Everyone sensed it!. Why, there were pick-up basketball games in the park, restaurants downtown put out their outdoor furniture and one bicyclist I saw rode by carrying a bouquet of pussy-willows in one arm! Evidence, for sure, of spring’s arrival. But, don’t ask me to describe the smell of spring; I couldn’t. It’s enough for me to be able to recognize it, and look forward to its return.    

Smelling spring in the air, as I mulled over today’s readings this past week, this question came to me: What does God’s love smells like? Is it   …like lilacs on a warm spring day?        …like chocolate brownies nearly ready to come out of the oven? ….like a salty ocean breeze smells or a whiff of wood smoke in winter? What would you say? Could God’s love also smell like a person who hasn’t bathed for days? Certainly for some in today’s gospel reading God’s abundant and gracious love smelled like their brother Lazarus…raised after four days in a tomb. In today’s reading, he sits with friends and loved ones, sharing a dinner of celebration and thanks to Jesus. And Jesus, for his part, has come from hiding to be with his friend Lazarus, to see him enjoying his new life!   So, what is the fragrance of God’s love?   Heaven’s scent, perhaps? When have you smelled it?

During this Lenten season Jim has been preaching on the Psalms. Psalm 126, which we read responsively with Jennifer/Dottie,  is part of a collection of fourteen Songs of Ascent. Scholars’ best guess is these psalms were grouped together to aid the faithful as they made pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As they walked they sang or recited the text. This one particularly proclaims life-giving powerful hope belongs to one who believes in redemption by God.

But scholars agree the meaning of today’s psalm is hard to grasp. It’s elusive, kind of fickle and moody. Its opening three verses recall God’s awesome, surprising restoration of God’s people from a past peril. So amazing was God’s feat that even non-Jews marveled at Israel’s good fortune and powerful God. But in the fourth verse the psalms’ mood switches to become an appeal in the face of a threatening, unnamed crisis. In the verse after that, the mood changes – this time it’s almost a cry for what is clearly impossible. The psalmist writes: May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Sound rather upside down and inside out to me. Then as before, there is another change in the final verse from wishing to declaring their desired outcome to be assured. Did the psalmist catch a whiff of something? Is he or she sniffing something? Possibly,  God’s love doing a surprisingly new, thing? What makes it possible for the psalmist to sing almost triumphantly: Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves???  

Now, here’s an especially interesting thing:  This psalm is regularly used in the weekly Jewish Sabbot liturgy. It’s the grace following the meal (they bless before and after the meal.). This psalm is ancient enough that Mary, Martha, Lazarus, Jesus, the disciples and all those at that dinner, said it, sang, lived and breathed in its intoxicating hope for their whole lives. They knew it like we know the doxology. It gave to their daily life a whiff, it was in their muscle memory this hint of deep intimacy they and God shared.   

So, feeling as if her fortunes had been restored, without warning, without a word, Mary moves toward Jesus and pours precious oil on his feet, thereby releasing a overpowering musky, spicy aroma.  Imagine upending a pound of cinnamon in a small, closet or knocking a full bottle of perfume onto the floor!  The scent…Ooofff. And it’d get into your hair, your clothing, the books on the table, your skin! There is nothing subtle about nard; it even overpowers the smell of death. Why those dinner guests didn’t leave the room, we’ll never know. Then, using her hair, she wipes Jesus’ feet, a scandalously intimate act. Women didn’t have their hair down when men who were not family were present. The whole scene is just plain abundantly over-the-top! ...and sets us up for Jesus’ equally intimate, over-the-top washing of his disciples’ feet, which comes in John’s next chapter.

We don’t take our eyes off Jesus and Mary until  Judas speaks and what he says is almost a non sequitor. It doesn’t follow the understanding we’ve received from the scene. He wonders aloud why the perfume couldn’t better be sold and the money given to the poor” There’s merit in his logic. That thought sometimes comes into our minds: Is it a good/worthy/a right use of funds to provide a fleeting display of devotion, say in flowers to decorate the sanctuary on Easter? But the evangelist thwarts our pondering by informing his readers that Judas’ motives were not exactly altruistic and we easily dismiss Judas..    (FT Gench, Encounters… p.95)    Nevertheless Contemporary theologian, Fred Craddock helpfully notes that ‘...Mary’s act of gratitude is likely [always] to bless and to plague us.” (Gensch) Mary’s action non-verbally speaks volumes, but Judas, not “hearing” what words-could not-express, speaks from logic.   And, if, for whatever reason, one does not catch the scent (S-C-E-N-T) and sense of Mary’s action, then Judas’ logic makes perfect sense. 

Not that I’m defending or siding with Judas exactly, except to this extent:: Haven’t we all mis-read situations?   Haven’t we too fallen short of the glory of God and stood in need God’s correction? Knowing this to be true, Jesus seems to instruct Judas with his response which, in fact refers directly to Deuteronomy 15: 11, which reads: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” This is the mission of those who love and are beloved by God.   

Jesus isn’t berating Judas. In the details and dialogue of John’s version of this story, Mary’s loyalty and gratitude to Jesus show true discipleship at its best. Her action also foreshadows Jesus’ even more costly and extravagant act on the cross. She will be there, with him,  every step of the way.

But Judas, too, is a disciple. So, what about him? The late German theologian, Karl Barth, explored this question. Church Dogmatics in Feasting C:2) Barth reasoned that if Jesus came to save the lost, surely there is no one in the gospel story who is more lost than the one who betrays Jesus, even if that is what Judas is called by God to do. He asked himself: “If the Good Shepherd can and does go to any length to save a lost sheep, is Judas beyond the saving grasp of the Good Shepherd?” Admittedly, Barth writes, the New Testament does not give us a clear answer. However, Judas shows us who the elect are in the New Testament. ”The rejected as such has no independent existence in the presence of God. He is not determined by God merely to be rejected, [in some compartment out of God’s sight and mind]. He is determined to hear and say that he is a rejected man elected.” Judas is not beyond the saving hand of God.

Maybe, then, in this story in which the threat of doom pervades and in which all logic insists that arrest and worse await Jesus, he and his followers stand in the crux, at the presence of crisis of which the psalmist speaks. Jesus and his followers join those who hope against hope that God will restore their fortunes. And, as events unfold, hope becomes real in the aroma of anointing oil and in those who hope in the One who accomplishes such surprising new thing as to bring those who went out weeping home with a bounteous harvest.

So what if we are challenged to see in this story that Judas plays just as important a role in Jesus’ death as does Mary. And our choice is not whether to identify with one or the other, but to appreciate that Christ’s followers are a paradoxical combination of both. Jesus justifies and sanctifies his disciples and Mary shows us what sanctification – being humble and devout – looks like. In the figure of Mary, discipleship is an act of adoration of and gratitude to the one who alone is truly holy. In her silence she draws our attention not to herself but to the one she anoints.

 In the figure of Judas, Christian discipleship is God’s making righteous - I mean you to hear in this word God’s restoring them to right relationship with God – those who have rejected and betrayed Jesus, which is in part, every human’s experience. In John’s story, Mary is not simply the righteous elect and Judas the unrighteous betrayer. The grace of Jesus Christ includes them both, both the faithful and the unfaithful. That’s a lot to take in on the fifth Sunday of Lent, this close to arriving in Jerusalem. 

…yet that grace, that love, that was in the air at Lazarus’ house then  now fills this whole house, and our whole earth, with the scent of the One who loves us and cares for us,  reclaims and teaches us again and again so that we may go out with joy! To the Glory of God. Amen 

1         When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

2         Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”

 3         The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

4         Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb.

 5         May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

 6         Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.