Lent 5

Preparation

    Please begin by reading John 12:1-8 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--A Gift from the Heart
  
   There is now tension in the air as we move forward on our Lenten journey.  Events are moving rapidly toward the end of Jesus’ life in human form. He is on his way to Jerusalem where the events of Holy Week will take place. He stops along the way to spend a last evening with old and dear friends.

     Jesus once said of himself that “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." (Luke 9:58)  But he had something perhaps more valuable than a permanent home; friends he cared about deeply who also cared about him.

    The sisters Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus were true friends who cared for Jesus personally; not as a public figure or, as so many did, only as someone who might grant them healing or some other miracle in their lives. We don’t know the complete story of the friendship, but again and again we find Jesus in the home of these friends.  While Jesus undoubtedly cared for everyone, he and these three people were close. The gospel of John tells us expressly that Jesus loved them. (John 11:5) The shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept,” describes Jesus' emotion at the death of Lazarus.

    The setting for the story is Bethany, where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived.  Bethany was, and is, a small village on the slope of the Mount of Olives facing away from Jerusalem. Not far from Bethany, as Jesus would have traveled when he left there, you arrive at the crest of the Mount of Olives and see Jerusalem spread out before you on top of a hill on the other side of a steep valley that runs between the Mount and the city. Just below you, on your side of the mountain (a good sized hill, really) is the Garden of Gethsemane. By far the most prominent object in Jerusalem Jesus would have seen as he looked across the valley was the great temple, the most holy site for the people of Israel.  It had been recently restored to great splendor by Herod, rising above the city wall with its white marble and gold shining in the sun.

   The time is Saturday evening, six days before the Passover. In the next few days the bitter final events that proceed the redeeming wonder of Easter morning will play out in Jerusalem. Jesus is on his way toward the cross. The following Saturday evening, his body will lie in a tomb.

    During dinner that night in Bethany, Mary does an extraordinary thing. She takes perfume, whose cost was equal to about a year’s wages, anoints Jesus’ feet with it, and then wipes his feet with her own hair. The whole house became filed with the fragrance.

    Why such extravagance? Why not take the money instead and have given it to the poor, as Judas suggested (although he suggested it from devious motives)? Why did Mary anoint Jesus’ feet, and not his face or head as was the more common practice? Why would she have let down her hair, something considered scandalous in that time and culture?

    At that time and place, you might have anointed someone’s head with oil or perfume on some special occasion. But Mary anointed Jesus feet and, as a gesture of extraordinary love, wiped away the excess perfume with her long hair. Anointing the feet was a service you performed as you prepared the corpse of a loved one for burial. Mary’s action is prophetic. Mary knows, as Jesus does, that the stage is now set for the final drama.

    There are times when our more practical side wins out over our impulses. Sometimes that is a good thing, but at other times, it leaves us with bitter “if only I had” memories. Mary yielded here to an extraordinary impulse of love and performed a prophetic action. Mary is saying her good-byes, honoring the extravagant love of Jesus the best way that she knew how—with her most precious possession.

    When Mark recounts this story, he adds that Jesus also said this: “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

    And so it is.

revclay

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John 12:1-8

    Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

    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.

    But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (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.)

    Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." [NRSV]