Mary Anoints Jesus

John 12:1-8

John 12:1–8 (NRSV)

Mary Anoints Jesus

(Mt 26:6–13; Mk 14:3–9)

12 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.”

<<Lord, hide me behind your cross. Let the meditation of my heart and the words of my mouth be pleasing to you>>

Earlier this week, my husband and I were in Nashville because for his birthday last year, I bought tickets for a comedian and the shows that were going to be local (Chicago, Indy) were not going to work with our schedules, so I booked us a little get away for end of September, beginning of October to Nashville. Only it got rescheduled to March, because of course it did, because COVID. In any case, we had a lovely time, enjoyed some good food, some good friends, and the comedian - Jim Gaffigan.

Gaffigan is known for being the clean comedian - he doesn’t use swears in his comedy, and his show was pretty good. I didn’t like all of his material (my husband thinks its hysterical that I might be offended by the one comedian who is basically intentionally not offensive) but overall it was funny and we had a good time. The set of jokes that I struggled with were about death - specifically COVID deaths, particularly those of anti-vaxers. It isn’t ever funny to me to think about people dying from the pandemic, not even when they did so out of ignorance and worse, some measure of faith-based ignorance. In any case, he moved on from that conversation specifically to a talk about death generally, particularly what we do culturally around death - “hmmm, my mom just died, let me plan and throw a party. Hey, johnny do you want to come over and stare at my mom’s dead body while we eat snacks and talk?” Actually, for the invitations, let me put an ad in the paper and on the internet, and maybe the people who knew her will see it and show up…It is kind of odd/funny/weird when you think about it that way, but it also isn’t new and it certainly isn’t the strangest way to honor the dead.

We read in our text this morning of a party that was held as sort of an anti-funeral repast - it was being held in Jesus’s honor, as a thanksgiving moment for the raising of Lazarus from the dead. I doubt we should be surprised that Martha was serving food, but if we read previous verses, just a few up, we should be surprised that Jesus is even there. In fact, let’s go back to John 11:45-57, which is immediately after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead.

John 11:45–57 NRSV

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?” Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should let them know, so that they might arrest him.

Jesus had withdrawn to Ephraim, keeping his disciples around him, and when Passover approached - less than a week away - he headed toward Jerusalem. He would stay with his friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus for the next few days, going back and forth to Jerusalem until the passover, when he would ultimately be handed over for death. Jesus leaves the retreat, comes to the place where everyone (and by everyone I mean the religious leaders who were very worried about his message and his miracles and the ways he kept NOT doing what they wanted him to) is looking for him and instead of strategizing a plot to overthrow the Roman occupiers, he goes to a banquet. It is dangerous times for Jesus and he is not ducking out, not hiding in a corner - he’s performing the most high profile miracle and then letting the recipients hold a banquet in his honor. Quite honestly, as rebellions go, this one is not off to a great start. It is no wonder that Judas is getting fed up - this is not what he thinks following Jesus should lead to, and quite honestly, I imagine him to be at least a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. And when the woman, who by the way has been behaving as a flipping equal with the boys, sitting at Jesus feet and asking questions, Mary, brings in perfume and dumps it on Jesus and unclasps her hair and wipes the scent away with it and the whole room smells like death. Judas is so overcome he can barely stand it! Things have gotten a little ridiculous around here now - and he blurts out the first condemning thing he can think of. “Why didn’t she sell this and give the money to the poor?” and while John ascribes the motivation to him being greedy, it almost feels to me as though he’s shocked into blurting out the only thing he can think of as a criticism in the moment, even though there are so many things happening wrong here that he must be absolutely aghast. Picture the scene in your mind: dinner is over, there has been conversation, there are lots of people milling about, and suddenly this woman, one of the hosts, really, lets her hair out and pours A POUND of perfume on Jesus. I brought a pound of butter with me this morning so we could visualize it together: THIS, this, this was broken open from a jar and slathered all over Jesus’s feet with HER HAIR. And the whole room stank of it. I remember an incident when my brother was about 2. He dumped flour and eggs and water on the floor in our kitchen. And I remember my mom being SO upset with him, but in her frustration she picked one item and she just said “well I guess we can’t have eggs for breakfast now” and it was both the summation of the mess and kind of missing the whole of the mess, because it was a mess. She couldn’t, in that moment put words to all of it, but the one thing she popped off with made sense and was wrong all at the same time.

That is what Judas does here. Mary is doing so many things wrong, he just pops off with the one thing he can think to say. And Jesus…Jesus just doesn’t let him.

Scholars talk a lot about what Jesus says here, or what it is John records Jesus as saying here, and it is very interesting to me, because I think this is what she was going to use to bury her brother, to finish his wrappings with which was something done about a week after death and she never got to that point because Jesus raised her brother from the dead.

I think Mary knew very well what she was doing - she was expressing every bit of gratitude she could into a moment of complete and utter humility in the presence of her Master. She had paid attention, you see, to the lessons of Jesus. She had heard him loud and clear when he talked about faith and blessings and righteousness. But she had seen with her own eyes a moment of power and love and life in the return of her brother. She had stood next to the bed of her dying sibling and wondered where Jesus was. She had held his hand as life ebbed from his eyes. She had washed his body with her sister, wrapping him in burial linens and preparing him for the tomb. She had sat in mourning after walking his body to the grave, with the weeping friends who offered stories and condolences. She had waited while her brother was sick for the One who could heal him and then wondered what she would say if he ever did show up, while she waited some more for him to be with them. She had called him on it, in the end, when he finally did arrive and then she had watched as Jesus, the healer, the giver of life, the truth enfleshed, had wept with her and then raised her brother from the dead.

And she was awed. So today, at this banquet where the celebration was continuing for the miracle, where many more were still coming by to see the reality of her brother who had died and now lived, where the joy of resurrection had supplanted the grief of death, she committed herself one more again to the savior whom she loved.

There is no other way to describe her act. She scandalized herself, letting others see the woman she is publicly - distancing herself from the modesty that is the rule of the day, and throwing herself at the Christ who has already proved all he needs to prove to her, who has stood up for her, who has set her free from those expectations of cultural norms, who has given her the power to be courageous enough to tell him the truth about her feelings and encouraged her to be true to who she is and what she needs. She intends to thank him in the same bold way she has done everything else - not by cooking him a lavish banquet herself, because that’s not her - but by pulling her hair out from under its covering and dumping perfume on Jesus in the middle of the feast. It’s so on brand for her! She’s bold in every circumstance we see her in, in scripture…when learning in the wrong place, when confronting a wrong she doesn’t understand, and when showing gratitude in completely the wrong way. And Judas is stunned into denouncing it the only way that is on brand for him: in the checkbook balance.

John tells us that Judas’s greed drove his pronouncement, and certainly that was part of it, but it takes only a little holy imagination to feel a little bit for Judas in this moment, too. He’s trying so hard to be the good guy, to fit in, to be part of what’s happening. He thinks he gets it, but he’s struggling. He’s overwhelmed in that moment by all the things he sees and smells and he blurts out the first thing he thinks of: hey she should have given that away.

And of course, Jesus doesn’t let him get away with that: you’ll always have the poor, he says, but this is how I am to be prepped for burial. And I’m pretty sure if Judas’s words didn’t kill the party, Jesus’s did because announcing your pending death is pretty much always a downer. But Jesus also makes an on-brand admonishment and in other gospel accounts he includes the note that what has been done will be told as part of the good news ever after.

In our times, we who’ve been in church any number of years and have heard this story before, tend look at this series of events like we do an old re-run on TV - blah, blah, Mary, Judas, Jesus…we’ve seen it and heard it, and we get it, Mary is grateful, Judas is a jerk betrayer, Jesus scolds. After a time, this tends to be the way we hear the stories of advent and lent and holy week and Easter, because they are so familiar and familiarity breeds contempt - we already know Judas is the bad guy and Mary’s selflessness is important and it’s easy to miss how very, very big this moment is.

Mary has done something extravagant and magnificent. She has abandoned the idea of cost in this moment and in a prophetic act, has given herself completely to Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t let anyone stop her, doesn’t let anyone criticize her, doesn’t say “too bad the men didn’t step up here” doesn’t say “oof, Mary put your hair back up” or even “men, bounce your eyes”. He doesn’t talk about modesty or women in ministry. He answers Judas to suggest that her act is generous and thoughtful and prophetic and timely. Jesus intends people to hear this story, to see this moment as a big deal, to recognize in retrospect that Jesus didn’t just encourage and include women after the resurrection - but saw them as critical to his mission throughout. If you are here this morning, or if you are hearing this on livestream, you aren’t afraid to hear women preach or let women lead, so for you - you get this part. But Jesus also doesn’t call Judas out for who he is becoming. John tells us that Judas was already stealing, and Jesus had to know that. We can’t know why Judas, who was following Jesus and hearing and seeing exactly the same things as everyone else was, wasn’t getting it. And we, like John telling this story, have the gift of hindsight to tell us that Judas was a betrayer, was a thief, was a bad guy hanging around the good guys. But notice Jesus doesn’t call him out for that. Jesus focuses much more on her act than his statement, lifting her up while deflecting him. It’s almost as though Jesus still holds out hope for Judas, still wants him to do differently, still wants to reach him.

As we move forward in the narrative of Jesus, next week we’ll get to the triumphal entry and then we’ll see Jesus washing the feet of his disciples - including Judas. We’ll see Jesus breaking the bread and sharing the wine at the last supper, giving us the remembrance of his death and resurrection we celebrate every week when we worship - and he includes Judas. You see, Jesus never stops loving Judas. Jesus never stops giving Judas opportunity to readjust. Jesus sits in the presence of the person who he knows will turn against him, and he continues to offer himself.

There is a certain beauty in that truth, definitely an incredible picture of the love and mercy of God: there is grace even for the betrayer, there is love even for the thief, there is room for the one with the biggest stain. Sometimes that person is not ‘out there’ in the world, but is the one sitting right here, in the middle of worship; sometimes it is US - trying to understand what is happening while everyone gives themselves to Jesus. We hold onto the hurts we have, the beliefs we can’t get rid of, the investments we’ve made in what church and christ and christianity HAVE to look like, we hold out judgements and pronouncements on others who don’t think like us or vote like us or work like us or…whatever the hang up is that separates the insiders from the outsiders and meanwhile Jesus sits next to us and says “I’m right here. See me, know me, look at me and follow me” and we, too, have a choice.

We can choose to see the grace and the love and the beauty of the Christ. We can choose to spend ourselves, sacrificing whatever we have held onto, whatever expensive bauble we have not surrendered to him - sometimes its the flag of our country, sometimes its the movement we’ve committed to, sometimes its just the people we’ve surrounded ourselves with - we can surrender them all OR we can continue to hang on to them, we can demand others hold these treasures dear, too. We can be so outraged in the instant over the insignificant that we ignore the magnificence of the moment of grace we have the opportunity to be part of.

Because the good news of the gospel is that the grace is for everyone, the love of God is poured out for all of us, the mercies that are new every morning, that the author of Lamentations reminds us of? Those are for everyone. And if we neglect the reality of that grace in exchange for our position - we are no better than Judas who couldn’t see Jesus in front of him for who he was.

What do we do? How can we see Jesus more clearly? We cast off the expectations of those around us, we study Jesus, and we lean into the gratitude that should overwhelm us when we see what Jesus has done in us. This is how Mary’s story of extravagant generosity and gratitude became a story that companions the Gospel - her love for Jesus made her unable to do anything other than give herself to him completely and thoroughly. Our own love for him should challenge us to forget the status quo and to do whatever it takes to get as close to Jesus as we can, to do the most unexpected and most overwhelming thing, to stink up the house with our gratitude for the one who brings us life.

Let us pray.

Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us

for yourself, and, when we had fallen into sin and become

subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus

Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human

nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the

God and Father of all.

He stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself,

in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole

world.

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our

Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks

to you, he broke it (break bread), and gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take,

eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the

remembrance of me."

After supper he took the cup of wine (raise cup); and when he had given

thanks, he gave it to them, and said, "Drink this, all of you:

This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you

and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink

it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith together:

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in

this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Recalling his death,

resurrection, and ascension, we offer you these gifts.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the

Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new

and unending life in him. Sanctify us also that we may faithfully

receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy,

and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints

into the joy of your eternal kingdom.

All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ: By him, and

with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor

and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever. AMEN.

And now, as our Savior

Christ has taught us,

we are bold to say together,

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those

who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever. Amen.

(Facing the people, the Celebrant says the following Invitation)

The Gifts of God for the People of God.

(Everyone comes up to receive)

Let us pray.

Celebrant and People

Eternal God, heavenly Father,

you have graciously accepted us as living members

of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ,

and you have fed us with spiritual food

in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.

Send us now into the world in peace,

and grant us strength and courage

to love and serve you

with gladness and singleness of heart;

through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Benediction that applies to sermon)