Extravagant, overflowing, abundant love for the poor

Lent 5-C 3/21/2010
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 125
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

A lot of things in the Bible don’t make sense to our ears today. Let’s face it: these stories are at least 2000 years old, and written in a different language in a different part of the world. Of course there are things mentioned in these stories that we won’t understand.

For example, last week’s story “the man with two sons” mentioned the slaves that worked for this man, otherwise described as a model of goodness. George, one of our children, took issue with even with the mention of slavery: that’s wrong, he said. Abraham Lincoln outlawed it! The mention of slavery got in the way of his paying attention to the point of the story, which was the abundance and generosity of God. It was hard to explain to him that something as bad as slavery wasn’t really what they meant to say. This institution from 2000 years ago didn’t make sense, and trying to figure out why it was mentioned prevented him from hearing the rest of the story.

Let’s look at today’s Gospel. Who knows what “nard” is? When I come across words like that that I don’t know, I start wondering what they mean, trying to figure out what difference “nard” makes, and I stop listening to the rest of the story. So it’s important to ask, “What does this word mean? Why is it here in the Bible?” It might mean nothing to the point of the story, but it might take us deeper into the heart of God.

So, what is “nard?” I looked it up, and learned that

Nard is a shortened word coming from spikenard. Some versions actually say spikenard. In Song of Solomon, 1:12, the bride says, ‘while the king sits at his table my spikenard sends forth its fragrance.” It was prepared by steaming the roots of a plant, some sources say a valerian plant from India, others make no mention of which plant. It was probably mixed with olive oil. [Ancient Greek physicians] prescribed it as a sedative and said it was good to help with sleep. Spikenard was prized by Egyptians and imported to the holy land, usually in alabaster jars and was indeed very expensive. The folklore around it was that nard was useful to quell fear and anxiety, improve meditation, and induce restful sleep and pleasant dreams. Jesus could have benefited from all these properties especially at this dinner on this evening.[i]

So when Mary rubs Jesus’ feet with perfume, it’s not just an ordinary act of comfort. It is loaded with symbolism: the extravagant cost of the ointment, its association with healing and rest and meditation, and even, as Jesus mentions, its use in preparing a body for burial.

On top of this, this story happens right after Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. This is, as you can imagine, extraordinarily controversial. It is big news, bigger than anything else Jesus has done – bigger than the feeding of thousands with a little bread, bigger than healing the demon-possessed or restoring sight to the blind. It is so big, if we read the next few verses after the end of today’s gospel, that this is it. This is the trigger, the flash point, that turns the anger and resentment of the religious authorities against Jesus from mere grumbling to action. Right before what we read today, in chapter 11, verse 49, John quotes the high priest, Caiaphas, yelling at the rest of the religious council, “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.” This is it, they are saying. No more. This is too dangerous, the Romans will crush us all if this gets out of hand. Kill Jesus. Kill Lazarus. Get rid of them all.

The focus here is on Jesus and his friends. Mary, a disciple whom Jesus loved and taught, sister of Lazarus, spends a nearly unimaginable amount of money to anoint his feet with perfume. She does this out of love and devotion and gratitude, and she recognizes him as the messiah, and Jesus understands this. He also sees more in her act. Jesus, in the Gospel of John, understands that this growing confrontation with authorities will take him to his death, and in that death, God’s glory will be fully revealed. Jesus understands this, and so sees Mary’s loving devotion as a foreshadowing of his burial. Indeed, he will copy Mary’s act in a few days, when he himself washes the feet of his disciples. There, too, they protest. They don’t understand what he is doing, or saying, about the revealing of the glory of God.

The Gospel of John is all about who gets it and who doesn’t, about who sees the light and who continues to dwell in darkness. Mary gets it. Judas doesn’t. Judas here is portrayed as greedy, as a thief, as someone who hides behind a concern for the poor – something which Jesus then exposes as a false concern. Jesus defends Mary’s actions. “The poor you will always have with you,” he says.

Jesus in his very person identifies with the poor, is among the poor, is one of the poor. We have been reading all these stories this Lent of Jesus turning everything upside down, of the poor exalted and the rich cast down, of welcome without limits and love without exceptions. Many people, including the poor, including Judas, think that what Jesus has been doing is merely righting wrongs, being fair, setting the record straight. They want Jesus to win! But this is more than just feeding bread to the hungry, as important as that is. This is about the reversal of a whole world caught in the thrall of greed and death, caught in cost-accounting and tallying up, caught in fear of power and power over the fearful. Mary, who has been watching carefully and listening intently and who has been stunned to see her brother rise from his tomb and walk, gets it, and that is what the anointing is about: overflowing, extravagant, abundant, profligate, fragrant gratitude and love and devotion. This is not about trading all that money for food for the poor. This is about giving all that extravagant, overflowing, abundant love to the poor, about hope for a world in which the feet of the poor are anointed, just as Jesus will soon wash the feet of his disciples, every one of them as poor as he.

After this story in today’s Gospel, Jesus begins to walk the way of the cross. The events leading up to Palm Sunday, to the Last Supper, to Jesus’ betrayal and death are set in motion. The holy drama begins.

[i] Camille Hegg, in http://feministheology.blogspot.com/2010/03/lent-5c.html