Sermon Tone Analysis

April 3, 2022

5 Lent, Year C

The Rev. Mark Pendleton

Finding that One Thing That Needs Our Attention

34 even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

7Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

12Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

13Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:4b-14

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

2There they gave a dinner for him.

Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

3Mary 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.

4But 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.)

7Jesus said, "Leave her alone.

She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

John 12:1-8

There are moments in today's readings where I feel as if we are continuing a conversation that began last Sunday when we listened again to the beloved parable of a father who was overjoyed to see his son again - a son who he had thought was lost and then was found.

I pointed out the word 'prodigal' as not meaning 'lost' but someone who spends wastefully or recklessly.

As in a son who asked for an early share of an inheritance and then lost it all.

Another meaning to the word: lavish or extravagant -- as in 'the ice cream sundae was topped with a cherry and prodigal quantity of chocolate syrup.'

Today we hear in our Gospel reading of another extravagant act - whether or not it was wasteful is clearly in the eye of the beholder.

Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, in the middle of dinner took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair.

Judas thought the act wastefully prodigal.

Jesus saw it an expression of love and preparation for what would come.

Mary used of the same kind of perfume that the women carried with them as they arrived at the empty tomb Easter morning, expecting to anoint Jesus for his final burial.

So much of what we see and experience in life hinges on our perspective and point of view: context always matters.

When Jesus said: "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me" (John 12:8) we have to read the room and the moment to fully understand what he might have meant.

There are simply too many verses in the Bible that call on the care of the poor for us to conclude that Jesus was being insensitive here.

So, what did he mean?

On my pandemic-shortened trip to the Holy Land two years ago, the 3 days I had on the ground were spent in Jerusalem.

One site I was able to see and where I was able to stand for a brief moment was on the Mount of Olives looking down over the Kidron Valley and the Garden of Gethsemane to the Temple Mount.

And looking to the east over the hill was Bethany, known today by its Arabic name, Al-ʿAyzariyyah.

What impacts pilgrims and visitors is how close Bethany was to the city walls, just a short walk.

The guide told our group: "That is where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived."

Seeing a holy site can allow one to go back through time, yet sometimes I think a more powerful sense to kindle imagination is smell, and one does have to travel great distances.

We often remember through smell and taste, and the detail I love from John's telling what how so much nard was poured out on the feet of Jesus that "the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume."

I wonder: why even mention it?

What are the smells that allow you to remember places and people?

I remember vividly my great grandmother's house in Michigan.

Her father was born in Poland, and she was always cooking in her house -- I am convinced the entire block - smelled of sauerkraut.

She would hug and squeeze me, and she would smell of - sauerkraut.

To this day, my wife says to me: "go, order the Rueben sandwich, it's good here."

I say: I can't.

My beloved hugging Polish American great grandmother ruined it for me.

I can still remember the perfume popular in the 1960's and 70's that seemed to fill our house especially at Christmas: Charlie for my mother and anything the Avon lady sold at the front door, and it was Aramis for my father and grandfather.

The power those smells to evoke memory and place are so powerful I will occasionally apply a few drops and dabs of Aramis - not Charlie -- and, in an instant, I'm back to those days with the people - flawed, loving and very human -- who shaped and formed me.

I invite you to try to remember the tastes and smells of your yesterdays.

What filled your houses and homes and the streets you knew?

Because so much of what we do as we hear stories from the gospels is to try to put ourselves in the setting and make room to see and learn.

That is especially true of the event of Holy Week just one week away.

Evoking our imaginations and memory is much more than wistful nostalgia.

It can make us attentive to what is before us.

That is for me what today's gospel is pointing to.

I've learned many things from these weeks living with the art and life of Vincent Van Gogh.

I saw how he moved from failing to become the pastor he thought he was called to be, to becoming an artist.

He never ceased preaching the gospel and viewed Christ as the greatest artist and gardener.

His brokenness and sadness were real and painful, and there were moments of pure glory as he painted his most famous work Starry Night by staring out the barred windows of his room in the asylum where he stayed in for a year.

Van Gogh reminds the world today that there are ordinary wonders all around us.

In his day it was a simple peasant family eating steaming potatoes around a table in a darked room.

A bunch of Sunflowers.

A pair a mud encrusted shoes.

An elderly woman rocking a cradle as a lullaby.

A tree blossoming in Spring.

Looking up and into a night sky.

In our world full of pain and confusion and fear and uncertainty, there is beaty for the eye to see.

Back in the house in Bethany, full of people, food and smells, Mary's act of perfuming the feet of Jesus and using her own hair to wipe them, had to make heads spin.

Outrageous.

Embarrassing.

Inappropriate.

Yet rebutting Judas who criticized Mary, Jesus said, "Leave her alone.

She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial."

We are remined us of another visit to that home (Luke 10) when again Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus, he turned to the dutiful sister and said, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.

Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." To be fully present in this moment is perhaps our greatest challenge -- I know it is for me -- and God's greatest gift.

Of course, one person's wasteful spending can be seen as another's extravagant gesture.

Some would say - some do say - why do Christians spend so much to care for lavish buildings and to purchase grand musical instruments?

Or pay for clergy?

Twisting Jesus's own words against Judas about the poor always being with us.

One answer might be: we are because we gather.

Each week on Sunday - the Christian sabbath - we gather in a place.

And these past two years we've all had to learn to do this in new ways, but no technology can take the place of human bodies around an altar.

Like Biblical Israel, the church is a community, not a collection of soloists and hermits.

There is no real DYI (Do it yourself) Christianity.

We are stronger gathered than separated.

This morning we read another case of loss and gain.

Before he became Paul, the greatest apostle, he was Saul of Tarsus.

The old Saul had deep religious bona fides that his lists in Philippians without shame or apology: v. 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Paul had a spotless resume for a believer of his day; he was LinkedIn and perfectly networked.

And still there was a hole inside too wide and deep for all of that to fill.

Paul did not so much reject the faith that formed him, but he found in Jesus Christ the only way to make sense of it all.

He was willing to lose what he thought defined him, in order in his words: v. 8 in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

I hope that is what we are hearing.

Being found, being known, and being loved in place of searching the world over to find, to know and to love.

Two years after dislocation, isolation, distancing, and a whole lot of fear of the known and unknown, we long more than ever for meaning, community, hope, rest, and peace.