Sermon on Sunday, March 21Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.
Today is the fifth Sunday in Lent and that means a few things. It means that next week is Palm Sunday and the following week Easter. Our Lenten vigil is drawing to a close, making way for shouts of “Hosanna,” Holy Week, the empty tomb, and an Easter egg hunt. For the past five weeks, we’ve been leaning toward the cross—toward those moments when Jesus is betrayed, arrested, denied, and crucified.
But first Jesus pays a visit to a family—sisters Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. At first, one might think of this simply as a follow-up visit. Just days earlier, Jesus had performed a miracle at their home. Lazarus was dead, you’ll recall—dead for four long and lonely days—dead and gone long enough for all hope to be lost. By the time Jesus had arrived at their house, Martha had said as much: “Don’t roll away the stone, Jesus—there’s a stench.” But the stone was taken away from the tomb, and Jesus cried out, “Lazarus, come out!” And out walked this man, their brother Lazarus, still bound in bands of burial cloth, undoubtedly a bit dazed, wondering what had just happened to him.
Jesus doesn’t schedule too many follow-up appointments in the gospels, but you could argue that this was a special case. Maybe that’s what Martha and Lazarus were expecting. Maybe they thought Jesus would ask a few questions, run a few tests, and maybe prescribe some physical therapy. Being dead for four days, after all, must have some serious side effects. But not much is said about Lazarus in this story—he’s just sitting there, ready to eat with his sisters and with Jesus. We can well imagine that the world is a pretty fantastic place for Lazarus at this point. Dead for four days and now alive! Air, food, water, conversation—it all tastes like new life to him—like a second life he didn’t know he had coming.
Martha, meanwhile, gets busy preparing a meal. After all, how do you thank a man who raised your brother from the dead? You can’t respond in kind. You can’t return the favor. If you offered money you would only cheapen the gift of that miracle. And so Martha does what a lot of people do when they don’t know what to say or how to say it: she cooks. I imagine her cooking up a storm, having lovingly planned a meal for this man who brought her brother back to her from death. She’s back in the kitchen, pulling out all the stops, making everything just so, getting ready to communicate her loving thanks through food. Martha would have made a good Presbyterian.
And then there’s Mary. When Jesus had seen her weeping at Lazarus’ tomb, it moved him and he wept too. And now here they are again. And unlike Martha and Lazarus, and unlike the disciples, Mary seems to have a sixth sense about what’s going on. Jesus isn’t going to make it. She knows it. She saw what happened after he raised Lazarus from the dead. She knows what a threat Jesus has become to the religious establishment. And she’s heard the word going around: that anyone who knew where Jesus was should report it to the chief priests and Pharisees so that he might be arrested. In Mary’s mind, the clock is ticking. She doesn’t have much time because, in fact, Jesus himself doesn’t have much time.
And so Mary does the only thing that makes sense in her mind. She brings a container of costly perfume into the room. It’s made from nard, a precious ointment imported from the East. And she anoints Jesus’ feet with it. I wonder if at first Martha and Lazarus thought this to be a bizarre gesture—nice, maybe, but a little strange. But then Mary keeps going, she keeps anointing and keeps anointing. Finally she pours more and more than enough—too much, really—on Jesus feet. The aroma must have been suffocating. “Mary, dear, you’re using way too much.” But she won’t be stopped. She tips the jar over entirely, every last drop spilling out onto Jesus’ feet. And still somehow it’s not enough. And so she begins to wipe them with her hair. Weeping, cleaning, anointing. Dumping it all out—every last drop.
At last she finishes cleaning Jesus’ feet with her hair. And I imagine there followed then an awkward silence in the room. How does one break the ice after a woman intentionally tips a year’s salary’s worth of perfume onto Jesus’ feet and onto the floor? What do you say after such an embarrassingly intimate and public display of love and waste? What do you say to Mary, whose hair is now drenched with perfume and covered with dust? Lazarus might have said, “Well, ok! Now who’s hungry?” Martha might have said, “Let’s open some windows and air this place out.” Instead it was Judas who spoke, and he probably said what everyone was really thinking: “What a colossal waste! Why wasn’t this perfume sold?” In other words: “We’re all dirt poor, traveling around the country on a shoestring with resources few and far between. What in God’s name could have possibly gotten into you, Mary?”
But Mary knows. And Jesus knows. “Leave her alone,” he says. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” Mary’s act was not an act of thanksgiving or even cleansing. She was doing what many of us do for our loved ones when they die—she was treating his body with care and respect and devotion—preparing it for burial.
Mary’s gift is a gift of extreme extravagance. It goes overboard—too far, in fact. Now there are a couple ways to look at that jar of perfume—the one that Mary dumped out at Jesus’ feet. One would be to say that it represents a nest egg—a foundation of wealth to be saved—a precious resource to hang onto, to use, maybe, gradually over the course of a lifetime—to sell in small volume, perhaps, during a rough year.
But Mary looks at that jar and says, “What else am I waiting for?” She may have thought to herself, “How many times in my life will I have a chance to be this crazy? Maybe never again.” I wonder if she said to herself, “If I can’t be generous and extravagant right now, it’s probably true that I’ll never really be generous or extravagant.” And so Mary treats that jar of perfume like she’s got a hundred others sitting in the back closet collecting dust.
Some people have the gift of being able to look at the world that way. Some people are simply blessed with the sense that nothing in this world is truly valuable if you can’t somehow turn it into a gift.
Not long before he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus said, “I have come that all may have life, and have it abundantly.” There’s an invitation there for us to wonder more about what it means to live abundantly—to adopt a world view that flourishes with an abiding sense of abundance.
Have you ever noticed that if you believe and behave like you don’t have enough time, then in reality, you don’t? And have you ever noticed that if you believe that you have plenty of time and behave like you have plenty of time, then most of the time you do?
Some people in this world operate out of a sense of scarcity and some out of a sense of abundance. Some people—some of us—move through this world like there’s never a minute to spare. There’s always “the next thing”—the next phone ringing, the next text message, the next event to plan, the next meal to prepare, the next day to worry about. And so we miss moment after moment after moment because time is a scarce resource.
But there are some people—some of you—who seem gifted with the ability to move through this world with plenty of time. Plenty of time to turn off the phone, to chat, to stop by with a casserole, to plant seeds, to look at the clouds moving in… plenty of time because time is an abundant resource.
Have you ever noticed that if a person believes that love in this world is scarce, then it is? And have you ever noticed that if you believe that love in this world is abundant, then it is?
Some people operate out of a sense of scarcity when it comes to love. And it’s hard for them to trust love because there isn’t enough of it. And so love itself is measured and conserved—received, perhaps, with suspicion and shared tentatively.
But there are some in this world who operate out of a sense of true abundance when it comes to love. They know that love is a renewable resource—strengthened when it is given and received. They never worry about running out of love simply because they never have. They know that there’s no such thing as loving too many people because love itself isn’t something you have to ration. It’s abundant.
We could say this about lots of things. If you believe goodness in this world is scarce, then it is; but if you believe that goodness is everywhere, you’re sure to find it in abundance. If you believe that true friendship is rare, then it can be scarce. But if you believe you’re friends are everywhere, then they often are!
How much of our perspective in this world is shaped either by our sense of scarcity or by our sense of abundance? Another exciting question for us to ask ourselves as a church is this: what does a sense of abundance do in terms of our mission and outreach in this world? What could a family of faith like this one do with an endlessly abundant sense of its resources—its time, its talent, its potential. The possibilities are endless if you think about them abundantly.
In many ways, this reflects a conversation that the leadership of this congregation has been having lately. We’ve been asking ourselves the question, “How are we uniquely gifted by God to serve this church at this time?” Sometimes this is a hard question to answer. Church life is full of to-do lists. We’ve got lots of things to do around here. People to reach out to, light bulbs to change, classes to teach, ministries to keep going… there’s always a lot to do. But the truth is this: we don’t want you here so that we can give you something to do. We want you here because we believe that each person who comes into this place is uniquely gifted by God to be a part of this family of faith.
A quote that I love comes from Howard Thurman, who wrote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
This week, I would invite you ask yourself: What makes me come alive? And how has God gifted me to be a part of the world? And may your response to those questions foster in you a true sense of abundance—that your life might spill over with extravagant love and grace. Amen.
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