Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

As happens sometimes, I’ve changed the title of our sermon this morning.

If you take notes, our sermon this morning is…

This Sunday is Pentecost.

It is the 50th day after Easter.

It coincides with the feast of Weeks on the Jewish calendar.

It is the day that the followers of Jesus were in the upper room praying and the Holy Spirit fell upon them.

In this, Acts 1:8 was fulfilled and God has given us the mandate to GO… and as we GO, to give witness to the good news of Jesus Christ to those we come across.

The world is full of great tension.

I suspect in all times but in various places and in various ways tension has existed.

Even at Pentecost, God saved 3000 souls and continued to save souls daily as He added to the church.

But the church did not GO.

By and large they stayed… it wasn’t until the church became persecuted that they went away from Jerusalem into Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the world.

We need tension, stress, and pressure to grow.

It is through trial that we are formed.

When our proverbial cup is shook, it is then that we see what comes out.

Our text this morning has a great tension in it.

Jesus is on His way to the cross.

We are within the last week of His life now.

He knows what lies before Him.

Most others seem pretty oblivious as to what is coming.

The religious leaders of the day are hatching a plot to capture and kill Jesus.

The disciples and those closest to Him do not seem to be understanding the gravity of the moment.

Yet in the midst of the weight of the coming suffering, there is this beautiful act of worship that takes place.

If you have your Bibles or on your devices, would you turn to John 11:55-12:8.

If you are able and/or willing, would you stand with me as I read God’s word this morning.

This is the word of the Lord.

PRAY.

You may be seated

Worship

I’ve been thinking about Mary’s beautiful, extravagant, costly act of worship all week.

CHURCH, I WANT THIS SO BADLY FOR YOU AND FOR ME.

I want to hold it up and just look at it, be in awe of it, and aspire to it.

As I LOOK at it:

Jesus is back in the town of Bethany.

Bethany meaning “the house of the poor/afflicted”.

It is assumed that because Lazarus, Martha, and Mary live here that they are not rich or well to do.

It’s quite possibly a city for the poor and those in need.

Jesus is known to Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

Lazarus is there with Jesus, Martha is hosting, serving, waiting on the party, and Mary is serving, honoring, worshiping Jesus.

No doubt, Mary’s act of worship, Martha’s service as seen here is an outpouring of love and gratitude towards Jesus for what He has done.

When she cracked open the vessel to take out a pound of this oil, it filled the whole house with a delightful fragrance.

What Mary is doing here is culturally scandalous and inappropriate.

Anointing his feet was a gracious, honoring, and loving thing to do.

But Mary let her hair down, which you did not do in public… for a woman it should be covered, and she proceeded to wipe His feet with her hair.

The ointment that Mary put on Jesus feet, was priced at least a years wages.

Let us take a moment and think about the very few things in our lives that we spend a years worth of wages on.

It was so expensive that Judas was aghast.

He said out loud, “What a waste!

Do you know how many poor people could have been helped!”

(Pete’s translation)

John (the gospel writer) then does not have nice words to say about Judas.

How heartbreaking is it that Judas knows the cost of everything, being that he was the one with the money bag, but yet the value of nothing.

His comment on the surface would seem to align with what Jesus was about.

Helping the poor, the oppressed, those in need.

How dangerous and toxic it is when we look for ministry, position, title, authority, and the things of God for our personal gain.

It is a dangerous place to be in when we start to look at those in whom God loves and has compassion for and think, how can I personally gain/benefit from them.

Jesus, as I see it, steps in to take the shame being heaped upon Mary by Judas.

Jesus makes the comment that she did this anointing in line with his death and burial.

People used perfumes to suppress a stench, including for corpses, and often anointed corpses.

When executed criminals were buried, they usually would have been denied anointing; thus the anointing takes place in advance, by anticipation, in Matthew and Mark (Matt 26:12; Mark 14:8); The mention of Jesus’ impending burial fits the suspense suggested by the hostility of the chief priests in the immediate context.

After explicitly noting that Judas’s own concern was nothing so pious as care for the poor (12:6), John cites they will always have opportunity to serve the poor, but not always to serve Jesus while he is with them in the flesh (12:8).

Jewish society did not imagine that it could eliminate poverty, but did stress its relief; Jesus here alludes to Deut 15:11, which in context promises that God will supply the needs of all the people if they cared for the poor; but the poor would never depart from the land.

The context does not permit neglect of the poor, either in Deuteronomy or in John (13:29; cf. 1 John 3:17); but in the gospels where this is told, the emphasis is on the priority of Jesus and/or the urgency of serving him while he remains with them, since he was soon to depart.

(Keener, C. S. (2012).

The Gospel of John: A Commentary & 2 (Vol. 1, p. 865-6).

Baker Academic.)

More on this later.

As I am IN AWE of it:

Arguably this is probably the most expensive thing that is in the house of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.

Mary wasn’t asked to do this, but was compelled to anoint Jesus’ feet

Mary loved Jesus.

Jesus brought her brother back from the dead.

Jesus was in her home.

Jesus was wanting to be near.

She loved that.

She loved him out of a response of who he is and what he has done.

Who is he to you?

Take a moment to think of who he is to you, what he has done, what he is doing.

She used her hair.

Why would she use her hair?

A woman’s hair in ancient near eastern times was a woman’s glory.

There were components about a man or a woman that were revered and made special.

In this context Mary’s hair was her glory, her honor, and to use it on Jesus’ feet was the picture of service, love, and devotion.

In use of her hair because long after Jesus would leave, she would be able to smell the fragrance that would remind her of the extravagant love that Jesus had poured out on her and her family?

This image should hyperlink us back to the story of Ruth and Boaz.

Ruth is the title of a book in the Old Testament named after three women are widowed.

Two of them (Ruth and Naomi) go back to Judah where Naomi is from.

Ruth is from Moab, not a Jew, and yet adopts the people of her husband and mother-in-law.

It is a story that speaks to the insignificant being significant in God’s economy.

She is the inconsequential outsider whose life turns out to be essential for telling the complete story of God’s ways among us.

The unassuming ending carries the punch line: “Boaz married Ruth, she had a son Obed, Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.”

David!

In its artful telling of this “outsider” widow, uprooted and obscure, who turns out to be the great-grandmother of David and the ancestor of Jesus, the book of Ruth makes it possible for each of us to understand ourselves, however ordinary or “out of it,” as irreplaceable in the full telling of God’s story.

We count—every last one of us—and what we do counts.

In the story of Ruth, we see she lays herself at the feet of Boaz… her redeemer… the one that would make everything ok.

Mary is coming to Jesus, insignificant Mary who finds her significance and value loving and worshiping Jesus, placing herself at his feet.

It would be honoring in that culture to place oil upon the head of a dignitary or honored guest… but the feet is of highest honor and for her to use her hair, her glory, speaks to the depth and intimacy of worship taking place.

That what we are reading right here today, 2000yrs later, is a testimony to that beautiful act of worship we are being encouraged in today.