Lent 5, Year C

This week, what jumped out at me was the sentence, “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”  I’ve read this passage plenty of times before, and my attention has been on the actions, the events, the words spoken.  But this time, there was something about the beauty of that, that I didn’t want to miss.  I wanted to pause to enjoy and to savour the experience, not just of Mary pouring this perfume on Jesus, but of the way the fragrance spreads and expands, filling the whole house with its beautiful scent, a pleasure so abundant that everyone at the dinner party can delight in it.  

Or not.  Judas has no interest in delighting in it.  He just wants to criticize.  “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”  John adds that Judas is not interested in giving; he’s interested in taking, stealing money from the common purse for himself.    

This passage in John 12 comes very soon after the description in John 11 of Jesus’s friendship with and love for the family of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, and his weeping with them at the death of Lazarus.  It includes Jesus’ statement, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Martha responds, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”  And when Jesus tells people to take away the stone at the entrance to the tomb of Lazarus, Martha responds, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”  Mary and Martha know the stench of death.  They know the pain of grief.  And yet, they do what Jesus says, and Jesus cries with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus does come out.  Jesus returns Lazarus to his sisters who love him. To not only witness a miracle, but to have your dead loved one given back to you: the gratitude and love would be overflowing, overwhelming.  

Or not.  John tells us that the people and the leaders respond to Jesus raising Lazarus by saying, “if we let [Jesus] go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation….So from that day on they planned to put [Jesus] to death.” [Luke 11:48, 53].

It is a recurring theme in the gospels: one person acts with love, or generosity, or confession of sin, or faith.  The second person acts with criticism and judgment.  Jesus tells the critic, “You’re the one who’s wrong.”  Jesus tells the critic to stop criticizing, because Jesus sees the beauty of the one who’s acting from love or generosity or contrition or faith.  

Jesus does that here.  He quotes from Deuteronomy 15:11 which says, “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 neighbour in your land’”.  Jesus points out that you can always give to the poor if you want to, and maybe the reason you haven’t been doing that already is that you don’t truly care about the poor, you just want to criticize this woman.  

The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor points out the ways this passage is unusual.  “As everyone in the room watches her, [Mary] does four remarkable things in a row.

First she loosens her hair in a room full of men, which an honorable woman never does.   Then she pours perfume on Jesus' feet, which is also not done.  The head, maybe--people do that to kings--but not the feet.  Then she touches him--a single woman rubbing a single man's feet--also not done, not even among friends.  Then she wipes the perfume off with her hair--totally inexplicable--the bizarre end to an all around bizarre act.

“Most of us are so moved by the scene that we overlook its eccentricities, or else we don't care. The point is that she loved him, right?  Right.  But we also confuse this account with three others in the Bible--one each from Matthew, Mark and Luke.  In the first two, an unnamed woman anoints Jesus' head at the house of Simon the Leper during the last week of his life.  In the third story, the scene happens at Simon the Pharisee's house, much earlier in Jesus' ministry.  There Jesus is eating supper when a notorious sinner slips into the room and stands weeping over his feet, then drops to the ground to cover them with kisses before rubbing them with oil of myrrh. 

“Only in John's version of the story does the woman have a name--Mary--and a relationship with Jesus--not a stranger, not a notorious sinner, but his long-time friend--which makes her act all the more peculiar.  He knows she loves him.  He loves her too.  So why this public demonstration, this odd pantomime in front of all their friends?  It's extravagant.  It's excessive.  She's gone overboard, as Judas is quick to note.

“Whatever Mary thought about what she did, and whatever anyone else in the room thought about it, Jesus took it as a message from God--not the hysteric ministrations of an old maid gone sweetly mad but the carefully performed act of a prophet. …Mary's prophetic act revealed the truth.

“She was anointing Jesus for his burial, and while her behavior may have seemed strange to those standing around, it was no more strange than that of the prophets who went before her--Ezekiel eating the scroll of the Lord as a sign that he carried the word of God around inside of him (Ezekiel 2), or Jeremiah smashing the clay jar to show God's judgment on Judah and Jerusalem (Jeremiah 19), or Isaiah walking around naked and barefoot as an oracle against the nations (Isaiah 20).  Prophets do things like that.  They act out.  They act out the truth that no one else can see, and those standing around either write them off as nuts or fall silent before the disturbing news they bring from God.

“When Mary stood before Jesus with that pound of pure nard in her hand, it could have gone either way.  She could have anointed his head and everyone there could have proclaimed him a king.  But she did not do that.  When she moved toward him, she dropped to her knees instead and poured the perfume on his feet, which could only mean one thing.  The only man who got his feet anointed was a dead man, and Jesus knew it.  "Leave her alone," he said to those who would have prevented her.  Let her finish delivering the message. 

“So Mary rubbed his feet with perfume so precious that its sale might have fed a poor family for a year, an act so lavish that it suggests another layer to her prophecy.  There will be nothing economical about this man's death, just as there has been nothing economical about his life.  In him, the extravagance of God's love is made flesh.  In him, the excessiveness of God's mercy is made manifest. 

“This bottle will not be held back to be kept and admired.  This precious substance will not be saved.  It will be opened, offered and used, at great price.  It will be raised up and poured out for the life of the world, emptied to the last drop.  Before that happens, Jesus will gather his friends together one last time.  At another banquet, around another supper table, with most of the same people present, Jesus will strip, tie a towel around his waist, and wash his disciples' feet.  Then he will give them a new commandment: Love one another, as I have loved you. 

“At least one of the disciples will argue with him, while others will wonder if he has lost his mind.  But a few will watch him working on their feet and remember Mary bending over his feet like that--the prophet Mary--who knew how to respond to Jesus without being told, the one who acted out his last, new commandment before he ever said it.  Remembering her may help them leave him alone while he finishes delivering his message.”

I think Taylor is right about Mary of Bethany acting as a prophet here, her realizing that Jesus’ death is coming soon, and seizing the opportunity to anoint him for burial in such a dramatic way.  And I think something else is happening as well.  

When we are in situations of anxiety, where injustice and adversity and loss are looming, and the future looks worse than the present, that often brings out the worst in us.  We sometimes revert to denial, and we often become short-tempered, or stingier than usual, or more critical of others.  All of these are understandable responses.  And yet, they end up making things worse.  The impulse is to be critical of others, as Judas is here.  

Mary sees unflinchingly the injustice and adversity and loss ahead.  She does not resort to denial.  She knows that she does not have the power to do some heroic act that will avert disaster as the forces around her move toward crucifixion.  Still, in circumstances of anxiety, she does not become short-tempered, critical, or stingy.  Instead, she responds to Jesus’ extravagant love with her own extravagant gesture of love and generosity.  She does not wait.  She knows the stench of death.  So right now she seizes her opportunity when Jesus is with her and she pours out her costly perfume with love and generosity, and the whole house is filled with its fragrance.  

Does it change Judas?  No.  Does it change Pilate? Herod? the crowds?  No.  Does it avert disaster?  No.  She doesn’t have that kind of earthly power.  What she does have is the power to love, the power to give generously, the power to fill the house in that moment with a beautiful fragrance.  And Jesus sees it.  Jesus praises it.  In the eyes of Judas, it is a waste.  In the eyes of God, it is love, the most valuable thing of all.