April 6, 2025
Six days before the Passover 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 reclining with him.
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made
of pure nard, anointed Jesus's feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house
was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples
(the one who was about to betray him), said,
"Why was this perfume not sold for
three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"
(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.)
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.”
The
argument between Mary and Judas that we hear about in John 12 is one that has
never been settled, and never will be.
In fact, I found myself caught up in it last week, and found myself
expressing Judas’s position. (Talk about
an uncomfortable thing to realize!)
Someone
was clearing things up a bit and found some toys that had never been taken out
of their boxes, and asked if I knew anyone who could get them into the hands of
a child who would play with them. I
suggested that if they were still in unopened boxes, there might be collectors
who would buy them, and the money could be given to provide essentials for a
family. The response was that the giver
would rather see them go directly to a child to make them happy as a little
surprise present – something special.
That was basically the position that Mary took.
It’s
a quandary that comes around at Christmastime every year. Do you really want to be the person who gives
an eight-year-old a warm sweater and three pair of thick socks for
Christmas? Even if that is exactly what
they need, it is a good way to disappoint a child. So most people find a way to sneak a couple
of candy bars or a package of Silly Putty into the box – again, something that
may not be purely practical, but that attends to genuine needs that are not
physical.
There’s
more to human need that things that can be touched and seen, because human
beings are more than robots or machines.
Yes, we need food and clothing and without them we die. We need more, however. We need things that connected us to the joy
of life and to all the extras that can
be as simple as the occasional stupid joke or as elaborate as a musical. It might be a chance to sit down and watch a
sunset or to see a first-down from the thirty-yard line.
The
gifts that build up the spirit are ones that recognize, even if only by
implication, that there is more to a human being than meets the eye. The very first temptation that the devil laid
out in front of Jesus as he fasted in the wilderness was to change stones into
bread because he was hungry.
“But he answered, ‘It is written,
“One
does not live by bread alone,
But
by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” [Matthew
11:4]
The extreme, extravagant kindness that Mary held out
to Jesus was a recognition of Jesus’ very real, full humanity – both a preparation
for his burial, Jesus noting,
“She bought it so that she might keep it
for the day of my burial”, [John 12:7]
and maybe a special way to say, “Thank you,” to the
one who had recently raised her brother Lazarus from the dead or maybe (mind
you, this is me speculating from a distance of 2100 years), maybe she did it
with a hope that the divinity whose embodied Word, Jesus, had called Lazarus out
of his tomb would not leave Jesus’ body in the grave, either.
Instead
of maybe reading things into Mary’s over-the-top gesture, though, let me get
back on track where I think I wandered off.
To
serve people as Jesus served is to see them as people with both body and
soul. People are always both/and, not
either/or. That’s why Judas’s outlook
falls short. Our outlooks, too, fall
short when we swing too far in one direction or the other, as does happen, and
we have to be called back into balance. Then
we need to hear the voice of James telling us how
“Someone will say, ‘You have faith and I
have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will
show you my faith.’” [James 2:18]
At times the church can become, in the old phrasing,
“too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly use”.
At other times the church can be so focused on what is going on in front
of us that we become more or less a social club or a political organization. It is when we stay centered on the love of
God and love for God that we are most true, and it can be done.
The
very first campus-based chapter of Habitat for Humanity was started in 1988 at
Duke University by an undergraduate named Ted Smith, who was a junior at the
time. Ted was great at involving people
and things were booming every Saturday morning, where the work groups would
gather, share in a brief prayer time, then get their assignments and start
hammering. About two months into the
first project, some of the undergrads noticed that the group’s charter was
written from a very specifically Christian perspective that they didn’t share. They asked whether the campus chapter could
remove the language. Nowadays, the
Habitat website says,
“Habitat is a global nonprofit, ecumenical Christian
housing organization. While our mission is inspired by Christian
teachings, all who desire to be a part of our work are welcome —
without regard to religious preference or background.”[1]
We are talking about an ancient time predating the
interwebs, however, and it fell on the local group to work it through. One suggestion was to form a separate group
to be called “Habitat for Humanists”. As
it rolled out, instead of that the organizing committee simply said, “We have
to be honest; we’re doing this just to be helpful, but because it’s part of our
Christian spirituality. We’ll come five
minutes early to pray, and nobody who doesn’t want to will have to take
part. We cannot change the
faith-language in the charter, but wouldn’t do that even if we could.” Everyone was respectful on both sides and people
who had stood off to the side in September were joining the prayer circle
before the semester was over.
Some
gave more than they had planned. Others
received more than they had looked for.
When people honor one another as children of God, such things happen. God’s grace brings its own healing and its
own strength and its own blessing to body and soul. Psalm 133 says,
“How very good and
pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life for evermore.”
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