Courageous Love

Spikenard plant

This was some week in the United States of America. 

New Jersey U.S. Senator Cory Booker took to the floor of the Senate Monday night at 7pm and didn't stop speaking until after 8pm on Tuesday. He spoke with passion and pleading. And with an enormous amount of heart. 

And he spoke for many of us out here in the wilderness wondering, "How long, O Lord? How long must we suffer and endure this moment of fascism?"

A fascism that has resulted in the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers in Washington, DC, and across the country. 

People who keep up our national parks, test medicines, research cures to diseases, handle the phone calls from military veterans on suicide hotlines, staff the VA hospitals, map weather systems and warn of potentially dangeous storms, guide our airlines to safely land and take off from airports, administers Head Start programs....the list goes on and on. 

 In response to that...and the yo-yoing of the tariff wars...millions...including more than 1000 people in Tallahassee... poured into the streets on Saturday to join our voices to Cory Booker in crying out to God and all that is good...to please stop the madness.

What does this have to do with courageous love?

Everything!

Because the act of Mary using an abundance of nard oil to wash Jesus's feet was an act of courage given the criticism she received. 

And even more courageous if we think about her act being an embodiment of the type of love all of us are supposed to be practicing every day. 

At least that's my take. 

See what you think. 

Text: John 12: 1-8 

 

“Do you love me?”

That’s the question the milkman Tevye poses to his wife Golde in the musical, “Fiddler on the Roof.”

And if you’re familiar with that particular song, Golde’s answer to “Do you love me?” is listing out all the things she’s done: bore him three daughters…milked his cow…cooked…cleaned.

That’s all fine and good.

But what Tevye wanted to know is not all the things Golde does for him…but what does she feel for him after twenty-five years in an arranged marriage.

And by the end of the song…we understand that for Golde…what she does for him is her own way of saying, “Yes, I suppose I do love you.”

In our Gospel…we have Mary doing something that signifies her love for Jesus. He’s come to Bethany…to the home of Martha…Mary…and Lazarus.

In the chapter before this one…we have the story of Jesus’ sixth miracle in the Gospel of John when he raises Lazarus from the dead.

Martha is serving.

Lazarus is at the table.

And Mary enters with a pound of nard oil…which in today’s measurements comes to about twelve ounces.

Then…as is the case now…nard oil is not cheap.

It’s from a plant grown in remote parts of the Himalayas…so just a small amount of it is almost 30 dollars.

So…if you’re doing the math…yeah…in today’s money…that’s a really expensive footbath!

She’s using all of this oil…filling the whole house with the aroma…one that is a little woodsy…and earthy.

Not quite like being around someone who has washed themselves in patchouli…but the same idea of an aroma that is both sweet and strong.

Besides having a healing calming property…this is the same oil that was used to prepare a body for burial.

Is it any wonder then that Judas is angry.

Maybe he’s one of those people with a sensitivity to odors. He’s calculating the expense of this oil being poured freely on Jesus’ feet and this is just too much for him.

I’m going to sidestep the comment in John’s Gospel about Judas being a thief…and I have a good reason to be skeptical of that accusation.

Our evangelist John…and his community that he was writing for back in the 100 CE period…were in a fierce and bitter internal struggle.

You’re going to hear this from me a lot in these next couple of weeks…but I want us to always remember that all the characters…unless otherwise identified in the Gospels…are Jews.

And the Evangelist John was the leader of a community of Jews…as well as Gentiles…and even Samaritans… who had come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

This put them in tension with their fellow Jews who did not believe the Messiah had come…and were getting angry and fearful that John’s faction was going to draw unwanted attention to them from the Roman Empire which had just destroyed the Jerusalem Temple for a second time.

This is an intra-family struggle.

A battle between parent and child.

And so John is making the claim that Judas is a crook.

For John…Judas becomes a stand in for this group of non-believers.

Judas is one of “those people.”  

In fact…this same story of a woman anointing Jesus happens in the other three Gospels.

But none of them place this woman at the house of Lazarus.

And in none of those accounts did the evangelists name Judas as the lone naysayer.

So, John has an agenda with his particular depiction of Judas.

Still…I think we can look at what’s happening here…and see both a glimpse of ourselves…as well as the amazing extravagant and irrepressible love of God.

We know Judas gets angry about what Mary is doing.

Why?

Was it simply because…as John has stated…that this was really expensive perfume and she was slathering it everywhere and it could have been sold to collect a handsome sum for the poor?

Was it because she was a woman who was doing something scandalous and out of line?

I mean, washing feet was one thing…but with nard oil?

And a woman washing and touching the feet of a man?!

Especially with her hair.

Or was it that Judas felt convicted because this Mary of Bethany… saw something in Jesus…knew something intuitively about his fate…even if she didn’t know exactly what was going to happen to him…and was so moved by her love and appreciation that she did something courageous and so over the top to demonstrate her love and devotion to him?

Did her unfettered love for Jesus make Judas uncomfortable about his own reservations about this rabbi he was following?

Throughout our various Gospels we have a picture that emerges of Judas.

He’s a revolutionary.

He was a zealot who wanted to overthrow the Roman Empire.

And he was ready for Jesus to be the Messiah of his own making.

The same way we can be guilty of wanting a God made in our own image.

Judas was looking for the guy to lead an insurrection…just like so many others had been doing in those days.

But Jesus was not that sort of warrior.

He’s not one who believed that using brute force and weapons to fight would make the lives of those oppressed by the tyrannical leadership of the Empire any better.

Jesus was leading a movement…the Jesus movement…to get everyone back on board the Love train to God.

And this is what Mary has figured out.

Her act of taking this expensive and highly aromatic oil and using it like water to wash Jesus’s feet is her way of demonstrating her love.

Think about this for a moment:

Our feet take a real beating having to support our whole body.

And in the First Century…where one had to walk for miles and miles in sandals…the feet were definitely in need of some tenderness and love.

What an incredible act of generosity and kindness for Mary to care for Jesus’s feet in this way.

What insight she must have had…living under the thumb of the Empire…and knowing that Jesus was taking a huge risk in challenging people to refuse to give in to despair and to lean into that source of Love…and resist the power structure in a non-violent way.

She must have sensed the danger and the very real possibility that violence was on the horizon. Especially since Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead on the Sabbath…in that way that Jesus kept always doing miraculous things on the Sabbath…and offending the status quo.

Mary’s act of taking something of such high monetary value…and so much of it…and simply spilling it all over Jesus’s feet is the same wreckless and wasteful behavior of a Father who throws a massive party for his ne’er do well son.

Or that sower who throws seeds everywhere…no matter where they land…instead of carefully tilling the ground and planting them.

Mary is showing us how to love as God would have us love: with extravagance.

Unbounded.

And without checking for credentials…straight A’s in school…or how much money is in the bank account.

God doesn’t care whether we check every box that we have going in our own heads that we think would make us worthy.

God’s love is freely offered to everyone.

Which is the sad state of Judas….and why the poor will always be with us.

Because too many who have abundance to give…refuse to let go…share their wealth.

Or they’ll give a small amount…while those with next to nothing contribute what they have…sometimes to their own detriment.

The poor will always be with us because greed is an ever-present reality…whether it’s financial greed…or the greed that makes us turn against one another in a manufactured culture war designed to dehumanize certain segments of the population…and divide up the Body of Christ.

As we approach this final week of Lent…I think there’s a question that’s laid before us:

If we say we love God…and if we call ourselves “followers of Jesus”…do we do it with a love that is joyous and without reservation…courageous like Mary…or is there a piece of ourselves that we hold back out of fear or out of greed…or out of a sense that we can’t or shouldn’t let go of too much?

In the Name of Our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.