Lent 4, 2022

 This week ties so well with last week and the story of the prodigal son, because both stories are about what we value and what or who is worthy.  Thank you to Rachel, who preached eloquently last week, lifting up the fact that both sons were lost, how undignified the father was, and that as humans we think of it as a zero-sum situation so that when one receives, that means someone else does without or when someone else receives, we miss out.  These are all human perspectives, but God has another viewpoint that God is trying to share with us so we can celebrate instead of complain.

In the story of the prodigal son, or the two sons, as Rachel pointed out as a perfectly apt title, both sons are lost.  One takes the inheritance and runs and wastes it all.  The other stays home, grumbling about his brother and resenting the work he does around the farm.  In today’s Gospel, we also have two lost characters.  We have Judas grumbling, who is like the older son, doing the work day in and day out, albeit maybe mostly to line his own pockets, who tows the line, sticks to the rules that benefits him, sticks close to home, and grumbles. 

The other lost character today, I think is Jesus.  He’s like the younger son in the prodigal story, in that he wanders far from where he’s expected to be and throws love and grace around everywhere he goes.  He wanders to the land of the Gerasenes and lavishes his healing on a naked, possessed foreigner.  He wanders to the Samaritans, praises them, and lavishes an outcast woman with conversation and living water.  He wanders to the lepers and lavishes healing and grace upon them.  Time after time, Jesus goes to foreign lands and wastes, in some people’s eyes, the healing, food, and attention on undeserving people on the fringes.  And finally we can see Jesus as the lost son, because he is about to be arrested, and go to the cross, where he will die, like the prodigal son wasting away in hunger with nothing left to eat. 

This foot washing is the equivalent of the prodigal son coming home.  Mary plays the role of the father.  She pulls out all the stops.  She lavishes him with costly perfume oil, gives him the best treatment, embraces him, and treats him like a king.

Judas complains just like the older son because he believes there is a more worthy cause—the feeding of the poor, or so he says.

Both stories are about what has value.  In the prodigal son, the relationship has so much more meaning and value to the father than any land, money, or inheritance.  For the older son, he values his own work and following the rules and staying put.  For the younger son, he values travel and adventure and new experiences, and later in the story he values servanthood and making amends and humility and being with his father.

The question of the costly perfume is one that challenges us and what we, humans, value.  The nard has value because people want it.  It’s supply and demand.  That nard was taken from a plant that grew by light and water and soil by the grace of God.  It was likely extracted through a fairly complicated process, that someone was willing to take because they knew they could make money from it.  To spend a year’s salary on a dead or dying person seems ridiculous until you consider our own costly death rituals.  Some say that nard was meant for Lazarus, but he didn’t stay dead.  Some say maybe it was what the wise ones brought as a gift for the baby Jesus.  Whether it was used on Jesus or someone else, it would have been used/wasted on someone dead or dying.  Someone was going to pay for it and that money could, from a certain point of view, have been used for a better reason. 

It is of value to feed the poor, but nard is not food.  Nard is not shelter or clothing or clean water or a job or a skill or a livelihood.  Just because the nard was used does not mean the poor could not be cared for.  Using it on Jesus doesn’t give us, Mary, or the Disciples an excuse not to care for the poor.

But Mary used it on a live person.  And not any live person, but Jesus.  When I first read this story, I wondered if this story was really likely to have happened.  It seems such a strange thing to do—to use what was meant for the dead on a living person.  But when you read the Gospels, this story happens in all 4 Gospels, which is really rare for any Gospel story.  This makes me think this really did happen.  The Gospels all differ in their details.  The things they have the same is it was a woman who anointed Jesus, this was oil or nard for the dead, it was Jesus who gets anointed, and people grumbled about it. 

A woman anoints Jesus.  The Gospels differ about which woman it was, but it was a woman.  Here it is Mary.  She’s the same one that sat at his feet as a disciple which, remember, ticked off her sister Martha who was serving and guess what, today Martha is still serving.  Mary is anticipating this loss she knows is coming and she is honoring this moment by lavishing him with perfume, with her love and thanks, and with attention and focus.  Mary is here like the father, making a spectacle, not caring who sees, completely undignified.

Here’s Mary, the disciple, anointing Jesus’ feet.  She’s anointing the Christ, which means anointed one, set apart.  Mary is taking the role of the priest and she is anointing the anointed one, setting him aside, crowning him as king, Messiah, and Lord.  She is revealing who he really is.  And you don’t use Johnson’s baby oil for that.  This is the real deal, pure nard worth a heck of a lot because Jesus is worth a heck of a lot—more than we can ever repay, in fact.  Mary is Jesus’ priest, anointing him, but also here she is his teacher because this week he will take her act to the feet of the disciples and wash them and send them out to wash the feet and be the servants of the lowly and forgotten and despised.

Mary does this undignified act of anointing Jesus’ feet with this costly perfume, because of the extravagant love and grace poured out on her and all of us by God through Jesus Christ.  A tub of nard is nothing compared to all the gifts God pours out for us every day—this amazing world, all our friends and family, all our opportunities to give and serve, the healing, food, shelter, and recreation we all enjoy.  All these gifts from God, whether we deserve them or not, despite our unworthiness.  Mary does this act because of what she’s received from Jesus.  As his disciple, she’s learned to pour out the gifts without fear of whether there will be enough. 

People grumbled.  Big surprise, right?!  We often grumble and second-guess ourselves or others.  Here it is especially amusing because it is only after the fact that Judas grumbles.  You can’t put the nard back in the bottle.  You can’t contain what has been poured out.  Nard is not meant to stay in the bottle or jar.  It is meant to be used.  There are many parallels to this.  God’s love for creation cannot be put back in the bottle—what God started, a creation based on love and blessing cannot be contained—it’s poured out everywhere in a big, undignified mess and God is not embarrassed.  Jesus is past the point of no return in his journey to the cross.  He raised Lazarus and it was the last straw, the pouring out of the bottle that cannot be put back. 

Think of Mary in this moment.  She could have used this perfume on Lazarus.  She could wait and use it on Jesus after he dies.  But here she is in this moment and she takes this time, despite all opposition and scowls, to really be with Jesus and to let him know what she means to him.  We too might be tempted to save for a rainy day.  But what better time than now to tell someone we love them, to go make that visit you’ve been putting off and dreading, to use that gift that you’ve tucked away in the back of the drawer for another day.  Today is what we have, a gift from God, and there is no better day to praise God, no better day to lavish someone with care and hold them close and appreciate them.

Some people might say, like Judas, we could use our time better.  We’re here at church.  We could be with family.  We could be out doing service projects or cleaning up litter.  But we come here to worship.  We come here either in person or online because we need to worship.  We need to stop and give thanks.  We need to remember where all good gifts come from.  We need to put Jesus in the center and to anoint him again as our king and savior.  That doesn’t mean that’s all we do.  We come here and listen to his words, his encouragement, his lavish forgiveness and all the gifts maybe some would say he’s wasted on us.  And we go out with that fragrance still overwhelming our senses and put Jesus front and center as we serve the poor and care for the earth and do our work and play.

So many of our readings today are about God doing a new thing.  So often, we humans suffer from a lack of imagination.  All we can see is what came before and we have a really hard time accepting that there is anything new under the sun.  However, our shortcomings are not going to limit God who casts a vision of what will be, that the poor will be fed, there will be no reason to be afraid there isn’t enough to go around, the weeping will be comforted, and the rich put in their place.

May we appreciate the gift Jesus is to us, today, and place him at the center.  May we not be afraid to look undignified when we feel love and gratefulness.  May we welcome and allow ourselves to be forgiven and welcomed.  May we value what God values.  May we serve Jesus in the poor and hungry.  May we go with him to Jerusalem to face all the grumblers.  And may we rise to new, abundant life in which we know the true joy of servanthood and humility.