Why the Feet? Why?

Sermon

Friends, I would like to share with you a word of assurance this morning. I think we have all, at one point or another here at Bethel, felt the blessing of the tremendous quality of sermons being preached from behind this pulpit week after week. In fact, to say that a church our size has no shortage of faithful, theological minds in both clergy and layperson alike would almost be a matter of boasting in our riches, but let’s be good Americans and ignore that for the time being, insert hearty tongue-in-cheek joke here. Having said that, I must say to you that this particular sermon, written at a time that I will choose to not disclose, has been particularly labored over in tremendous sacrifice and pastoral care for you fine people.

Why can I say this, you ask? Let me be quite frank with you, in the form of three little words.

I… hate feet.

I think feet are the scourge of humanity, and am eagerly awaiting the day where I can non-corporeally float above the ground like a wizard. I cannot stress to you enough, I hate feet.

But here, we have Johnny Ole Boy, painting us the picture of faithful servant, with feet. A picture of Mary’s complete disregard of the fiscal and social cost of her actions, with feet. What can and will be argued here as the mark-ed entry of the passion narrative of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, WITH FEET.

FEET.

FEET.

FEET FEETY FOOT FOOT.

FEET.

So, at this point, John has laid the footwork for our text today The chief priests had just decided that the plot to kill Jesus was afoot, and we have here the scene of Jesus and his disciples travelling on foot to Bethany, a city located at the foot of the Mount of Olives. OK, I’ll stop now, I don’t want to stomp on the text.

When they get to Bethany, they hold a dinner for him at Lazarus’s house, and Martha is hosting, and Lazarus is among the guests. And seemingly out of nowhere, Mary takes this decent sized jar of oil and pours it out all over Jesus’s feet, and wipes them dry with her hair. There is enough in just this first half of the text to write a sermon on, and in fact many a sermon has been written on just this first section, but they have come at the cost of losing a much more important message here. Nevertheless, let’s spend some time unpacking this to set this all up.

Picture a large family gathering for the holidays. Everybody milling about, talking about how the past year or so has been, because, if you are like my family at all, only major holidays are a cause to see certain sides of the family. There is always that one suffering servant slaving away in the kitchen, enjoying nothing of the social scene in order to make sure everyone is fed enough to not only keep them happy, but also enough to counter the potentially copious amounts of consumption regarding certain beverages. The family has pulled up the chairs, and the chef has begun to serve the food, and then out of nowhere the little sister comes and smashes a bottle of Chanel No. 5 all over someone’s feet, and then decides, “Hm, I can use my hair for this!”

There are several elements we must consider to be at play here. First, the setting of a dinner such as this would have most often been a gathering of the minds, so to speak, and so the men would be conversing around the table, while the women and children would be doing the serving and preparing. In this social setting, the voice of a woman was really not one to be considered. But Mary has found a way for her voice to be heard without uttering a word. By causing a scene here, she has given her worship to Jesus in a silence that screams in the face of what is expected of her in this setting. While never removing herself from the role of servanthood, she has drastically changed what it means to serve God in this moment.

And part of this change comes in the form of oil. But not just any oil. This oil smells of a strong fragrance that fills the house in an instance. And no small amount of it, either—nearly a pound of this oil now lies on the ground and on Jesus’s feet. We learn from Judas that this oil was worth over 300 denarii. A denarii was the daily wages of a worker in the fields at that time. Mary has literally spilt a year’s salary onto the feet of Jesus. Onto his feet. Imagine spending a year’s salary on something and then doing something like that. The median and average salaries for the US lie somewhere between $35-50 thousand per year. Picture all of that money being suddenly unusable in an instant. That is precisely what Mary has done here.

And she used her hair, too. And the sexuality of the hair is documented in the Scriptures, and it is still common practice in many middle-Eastern countries for a woman to cover her hair, even if the reasons may seem archaic or even sexist in some way. Consider our modern context, and we still see an emphasis being placed on hair in situations of attractiveness—men and women alike will spend time addressing their hair when wanting to make themselves look nice, and most people would agree that healthy-looking hair is an appealing quality in a mate. But for Mary, in her context, to wipe the feet of Jesus with her hair was a deeply intimate act, although not strictly sexual in nature. It shows a deeply rooted desire in Mary to care for Jesus, and this oil would not have come out of her hair easily, making it an absolute mess. So Mary has lowered herself significantly, both in physical posture and in social acceptance, in order to do this with the oil.

And she did it to his feeeeet. Let’s take a step back here and really discuss the implications of this, even though I so do not want to. Jesus and the disciples were not trotting about in Oxford’s or Jordan’s or Chuck Taylor’s or Toms or even the lowly Sketcher. The closest I will allow is that they were using terribly uncomfortable Birkenstocks. And the roads? Not paved. So what does this equal? Gross. Nasty. Dirty. Wounded. Feet. (shiver) But wait, traditional Israelite customs was that all parties entering a home would have their feet washed immediately, and so surely Mary is not touching the kind of feet you describe. Fair point, it was custom and, while we do not have any textual support for or against this, I think it is OK to assume that maybe, they were washed before Mary waltzed on over.

Nevertheless, after travelling for an undisclosed amount of time, Jesus’s feet were sure to be sore or scuffed up, to say the least. But symbolically here, Mary anointing the feet of Jesus speaks beyond this immediate care of hygiene. Whether Mary knew it or not, Jesus was directly on a very difficult path that would not only cause some bumps and bruises, but would also put nails in his feet, as well as his hands. The significance of anointing in Israel was really for two primary events: coronation of a king, or burial of a dead human. Unwittingly, Mary has prepared for both.

Jesus’s passion narrative to the cross would lead him into the fullness of being the King of Kings, the so-called King of the Jews with a crown of thorns. And with this event, the veil would be cleaved in twain, and not only would we be allowed entry into the holy of holies, but the Lord and the Kingdom would come bursting through into creation, on the day of Calvary. And equally, this anointing would signify the death of the incarnate God, who authored Godself into the creation God designed and said was good, slain on a cross so that anyone who should confess to believe would not perish for eternity but be ushered into life-everlasting.

Nevertheless, even with all of these fascinating insights, John doesn’t stop here. John’s focus is not on Mary here—although significant time can and should be spent to appreciate the depths of her sacrifice—but rather, John’s focus is on Judas. Judas rebukes Mary’s actions here, saying that this oil could have been better used to provide for the poor. Then John inserts his own editorial remarks about Judas’s false pretenses here. In some fashion or another, three out of the four Gospel accounts of this story include this kind of rebuking remark on helping the poor, but only John has decided to identify the source as being Judas, calling him a thief. And so what John has done here is created a bit of a propaganda-esque feel to this contrast, for rhetorical effect. Whether or not Judas is the source of this is actually rather irrelevant, to me and to other scholars. What this is designed to do is to put this thinking in direct juxtaposition with the thinking and actions of Mary in her sacrifice.

In doing so, John has begun to set up a warning for his audience that will completed in the closing verses. Judas’s personal greed has masqueraded as altruism for the poor. He hoped, according to John, to turn this oil in to the money bag they carried, so that he could steal it later, a line of thinking that is not too hard to understand once we reach the account of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver as the reward for his betrayal.

So Jesus begins to calmly admonish Judas here, telling him to leave her alone, for she kept the oil for the day of Jesus’s burial. Now, the Greek can be taken in a host of ways here, and different English translations render these out accordingly, but what seems to be the most likely scenario is as such: We have no clear evidence that Mary was thoroughly aware of what was coming for Jesus, so this act can only be taken for the intent of humble and costly devotion. In a way, just like Caiaphas did with the high priests in the section before this one, she has signalled something far greater than she is aware. It was common to spend much on funerals, but here was Mary costing herself so much money while Jesus was still alive, and so Jesus draws the line for her.

And then he says one of the most misquoted verses alive today: You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

-3 out of four gospels have this excuse of the poor, but only John says it was Judas, and so John paints Jesus as this propagandist, of sorts

This has been frequently seen as a dismissal of the poor in light of something more spiritually important in this context. This interpretation, however, fails to hold up to even a brief critical thought. This seems to be yet another instance where Jesus alludes to the Torah in order to make a point; in this case, the reference is to , which reads as such: “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 not a dismissal, but a direct order. We are too far removed to immediately see the connection, but the disciples would have understand relatively easily the reference here to the year of Jubilee in Jewish tradition. It is important to not take this too far, however—there is a small amount of scholarship that will argue that the Greek text calls for an imperative instead of a simpler form of the verb, but for reasons far too technical to discuss here, going this far would distort the text beyond what is necessary; for the allusion to the command of the Law is clear enough, and it fits in well with John’s style and voice when he writes.

According to statistics from the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, nearly 49% of the American population—aged 15 or up—qualifies as either poor or low income. Much of this neglect has been under the misinterpretation by evangelicals of this very passage. Since there will “always be poor among us,” what is the point of fighting the losing battle? I would urge us to consider the Acts account as a reason why we fight this battle. reads : “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common…There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” This was Luke’s commentary on the church in Acts being a perfect model of the kind of care for the poor that Jesus and the Law both refer to, and while it might seem idyllic in today’s context, I’m not convinced that there is reason enough to give up trying just because it seems “too hard” to accomplish today.

Kurt Vonnegut had a strangely intriguing thought on this verse in his autobiographical work “Palm Sunday”. He was reflecting on an occasion where he was asked to preach on this very verse, and his comments on the uncertainty behind the meaning of “you always have the poor among you” read as follows: Whatever it was that Jesus really said to Judas was said in Aramaic, of course-and has come to us through Hebrew and Greek and Latin and archaic English. Maybe He only said something a lot like, "The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have Me." Perhaps a little something has been lost in translation....I would like to recapture what has been lost. Why? Because I, as a Christ-worshipping agnostic, have seen so much un-Christian impatience with the poor encouraged by the quotation "For the poor always ye have with you."...If Jesus did in fact say that, it is a divine joke, well suited to the occasion. It says everything about hypocrisy and nothing about the poor. It is a Christian joke, which allows Jesus to remain civil to Judas, but to chide him for his hypocrisy all the same. 'Judas, don't worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone.'....My own translation does no violence to the words in the Bible. I have changed their order some, not merely to make them into the joke the situation calls for but to harmonize them, too, with the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade.

Taking seriously Vonnegut’s admitted alterations and harmonizations, the sentiment cannot be lost. Have we as a church become hypocritical beyond repair? We always either shy away from the word “hypocrite” or heavily embrace it as our identity—just a group of people, trying to follow Jesus, as a bunch of little imperfect sinners, and we just really need God’s forgiveness for our hypocrisy, and we will figure it out eventually. Bunk, church, this rhetoric is bunk. If we are honest with ourselves, we are hypocritical. Beyond the problem of poverty, we are hypocritical. And yes, the Scriptures paint a model of faithfulness that is really hard to imagine being remotely practical in the world of the 21st century. But maybe, if we do some soul-searching and consider the implications, we too might be inclined to smash a bottle of our really expensive sacrifice onto the feet of Jesus. At least the church will smell nice for those who might smell it from outside and stumble in for answers.