John 12:1-8
Fourth Sunday in Lent: March 17, 2013
[our congregation sang the hymn, "Unsettled World," hence the title.]
What
was Mary doing? Seriously. I know the symbolism…I know that we’re
supposed to understand this as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death on the cross,
and see that Mary understood something others, didn’t. I get all that. But still, I just don’t understand what she
was doing. This action was of such
adoration that it’s outside my comfort zone and realm of understanding.
To
me, Jesus’ life was about the poor, the hurting, the outcast. Jesus was about releasing the captives,
freeing the oppressed, bringing down the powerful and making the last
first. I know Judas had ulterior
motives…I know he wasn’t actually concerned about the poor…but I am. At least I think I am. For me, being Christian has everything to do
with responding to poverty, healing the hurting, finding the lost and lonely,
and making peace. And here’s the
thing: Being Christian, for me, has
little to do with kneeling at Jesus’ feet and anointing them with oil. It doesn’t even have to do with some kind of
modern day, non-literal equivalent of this.
I’m
not devotional – not in the high church sense of the word. This passage seems to say: if you truly understood Jesus, what he was
about, you would love him…spread costly perfume on him and wipe it with your
hair because you love him so much it almost hurts. All for its own sake. Not because it will affect change in the
world; just because. That’s what I get
out of Mary’s action. And if that’s the
message we’re supposed to get, and I think it’s at least possible that it is,
my confession is: I don’t think I can do it.
Mary,
Peter, James, John: These people, I
think, really loved Jesus. Not in the
way I mean when I say I love Jesus. I mean I love his life, what he was
about. I can’t love him the same way
Mary and Peter and John did, right? It
would be like saying I can love Mother Teresa the same way I love my friends. I can respect
Mother Teresa, love her life, be inspired by her, but I don’t love her in any
kind of personal, intimate way. I
can’t. I didn’t know her in a personal
and intimate way.
Not
so with my friends. I love my friends
because they care for me, we have spent intimate time together, I know them
deeply and love who they are, what they believe, what we’ve been through. But this love developed because they are here.
They are tangible and interactive; our relationship is mutual. I hug them, spent time eating with them, see
their faces, hear the pain and joy in their voices, listen to them talk to me. I can’t love Jesus that way. But, I think his friends did. I think Mary and Martha and Lazarus did
because he was their friend.
And
Jesus thought this love mattered…that what Mary did mattered;
significantly. Why?
Well,
maybe because the poor will always be with us.
I don’t know exactly what Jesus meant by this – the poor will always be
with you. I don’t know what it meant in
relationship to Mary anointing his feet.
But, regardless, it’s true, right?
This is an unsettled world. None
of us needs me to go on and talk about what that means and what that looks like,
because we already know. This is an
unsettled world.
We
are all looking for ways to face this world and respond faithfully. And to do this we use Jesus’ life as a
guide. My religion is mostly, if not
entirely, an ethical system. I use the
scriptures to help me form my values – values that then inform, I hope, my
actions. I feel faithful when I act
“right” – in accordance with what I believe.
This is an ethics-based faith.
But
our bible gives us a picture of something different, or at least something
more. It seems like faith is also about
connecting personally with the divine. Love
is all over the place in the gospel of John.
And there is an order between love and action. Love of the divine leads to faithful
action. Not teachings, not commandments,
certainly not fear. Love is what makes
it possible for the people in the bible to follow the teachings of Jesus. For John, the love between the human beings –
the love Jesus has for his friends and vice versa – seems to be the core – the
seed – the basis for everything else.
Jesus
speaks often of the relationship between loving him keeping the
commandments. “If you love me,” he says
later in the gospel, “you will keep my commandments.” And later, “Abide in me as I abide in you,”
he says. Live in me, rest in me.
“Abide
in me;” he says. “This is my commandment.
Abide in me so that you will love one another as I have loved you.” These are not moral commandments. He does not say, follow this list because
that is how you love one another. He
says that in order to know what it’s
like to love others, you must love me and rest in my love for you.
But
how do we do this? Is this available to us without the person Jesus being physically with
us. Those of us steeped in the liberal,
protestant tradition aren’t necessarily great at the love of Jesus. We don’t spend a lot of time abiding in him
in any kind of intimate way just for its own sake. We come to church to see how
the bible applies to our lives, right?
When I was looking for a church 7 ½ years ago, every church profile I
read said that they wanted someone who would preach about how to apply the bible
to our lives today. Every church...this
church included. Many of us don’t really
come just to abide – to love – to pour out our love on Jesus…on the divine, and
I would argue it’s because he’s not here. Because we’re not sure how.
So
how do we get beyond this ethical
religion: How do we love Jesus?
Are
we supposed to sing praise songs that repeat over and over again our adoration
of Jesus? Are we supposed to lift our
hands toward heaven while we sing, sway back and forth? Are we supposed to get down on our knees in
adoration? Maybe. I really don’t know. None of these have exactly “worked” for
me.
The
best I can come up with is that in order to abide, in order to love for the
sake of loving, we need to stop. Just
stop. And connect with
something…something that moves us to love God as the early disciples loved
Jesus. We need to let go of the idea
that worship is always a means to the end of acting “rightly.” The unsettled world will be there when we
leave. But for this time, maybe we are
to just stop, pull away from the world, let ourselves be lost in wonder and
praise.
It’s
true Jesus is not here. I’m not sure I
can do this. But, later in John, when
Jesus says again that he is leaving, he also promises that God will send the
Spirit in his place. God will send the movement and breath of the divine…of
love. Maybe we can connect intimately
with the spirit. I’m not entirely sure
how, but it probably takes time, trust, listening, waiting. It likely means pausing from our lives busy
with trying to settle and unsettled world…at least for a moment.
I
have generally resisted this idea because, in part, it feels escapist to
me. If it’s only about loving God and
loving Jesus – resting in the spirit of love – then isn’t that ignoring the
fact that we do need to respond to
the unsettled world full of hunger and pain.
Isn’t this escape what we see often in churches that focus on loving
Jesus, swaying, lifting hands, and singing adoring songs?
But
I know this congregation, and we are not in danger of using religion as an
escape hatch from understanding and responding to a hurting world. I think we can all assume that when Jesus
said the poor will always be with us, he didn’t mean that therefore we should
just give up trying to help people. I
also think we can assume that the people gathered in this room will continue to
care for the poor and work to address the issues they face regardless of how we
worship.
Recently,
I’ve been acutely aware that the unsettled world is too much to respond to with
just an ethical system. At least for me. An ethical system is supposed to produce
results, but Jesus was right – results are elusive, at least on a macro level. The poor will
always be with us. It’s like that game
where a little monkey head pops up and you bat it down with a mallet, only to
have another pop up somewhere else. No
matter how many problems we solve, another will pop up. The poor will always be with us, the world
will always be unsettled. I hate this,
you hate this, but it’s pretty hard to deny.
I
find this overwhelming, and the only options I think I have when I’m overwhelmed
with the unsettled world are to retreat from the world, which I am not willing
to do, or to just get more and more angry, more and more strident, more and
more pushy, more and more self righteous, work harder and harder because I
think more is necessary to change the unchangeable reality that there will
always be more to do.
But
what if I stopped to abide. What if I
took a breath. Loved as lavishly as Mary
did? What if worship – the scriptures,
our music, our prayers – not only made me want to eradicate poverty, but also
brought me to my knees because the movement of God is so much larger and
powerful than I am. What if…what if the
spirit is so powerful I am connected with the human Jesus in such a way that I
can feel love for him? What if I was
moved to pour out everything I had not because it would solve the world’s
problems, but because love was just pouring out of me.
This
is hard for me. Luckily, I know many of
you are better at this than I am, and I can learn from you. You do come to worship not just because you
are going to find out what you are supposed to do that week, but because it
does something to you that is almost mysterious. You come because you want to sit in the
presence of something larger than yourself – to connect with that. You come not for the sermon, but for the
prayer, the transcendent music, the mystery of communion. It’s not escape; you are the same people that
respond to the unsettled world with love and compassion and action. It’s worship.
It’s resting in the mysterious movement of God…and you love that.
Confession:
Nothing: Sit.
Rest. Breathe. Take your card and put it in the offering
plate blank. Let your confession be that
we confess too much, trust too much in wrong and right, think God demands right
action more than love. Use the silence
to rest and abide. Imagine yourself down
on your knees pouring out perfume on Jesus because your love is so great. Don’t think about all the ways we fail Jesus
and God, think about all the reasons we have to love the divine – the divine
that created this world, us, put stars in the heavens and flowers in the
fields. Love. Abide.
All for its own sake. Amen.
