Sermons

Fifth Sunday in Lent
Sunday 25 March at 10am

Simon Cowling
Readings: John 12. 1-8

The Gospel reading for today provides an element of calm before the storm of the final week of Jesus' life - though as we shall see, the storm is already threatening. To help us reflect on this Gospel passage, I want to concentrate on a place and on two people: on Bethany, where Jesus eats a meal, and on Mary and Judas who are present, in very different ways, at that meal.

Bethany
Passover is six days away. Jesus returns to the village in Judea where he had raised Lazarus from the dead - an incident John has described in the previous chapter. The raising of Lazarus was a miraculous sign, it was confirmation that the Son 'gives life to whom he is pleased to give it' as Jesus had once told the crowd after healing the invalid man at the Pool of Bethesda. Yet after the sign, John tells us, Jesus had been forced to withdraw with his disciples to a place near the desert to escape the plotting of the religious authorities. Now Jesus travels away from that place of comparative safety and back to Bethany. The danger has not gone away. But the hour has come. It had not come at the wedding in Cana, when Jesus rebuked his mother and told her that his hour had not yet come; nor had the hour come when the authorities had tried previously to seize Jesus on previous visits to Jerusalem. But it has come now. So Bethany is the point of departure for Jesus' final journey; the meal there, at which Mary, Martha and Lazarus are present, is eaten against the backdrop of intrigue and murderous planning.

Mary
John is careful to place Martha and Lazarus in his story and to assign them roles: Martha serves, Lazarus reclines with Jesus to eat. Now comes Mary, pouring out a container of expensive perfume on Jesus' feet and wiping those feet with her hair. Through this act Mary demonstrates clearly her recognition, her acknowledgement of Jesus. Martha has already proclaimed her belief that Jesus is Messiah, even before Lazarus is raised. Lazarus himself is living testament to the authority of Jesus to give life to whom he will. Mary's recognition and acknowledgment is different again. She pours out for Jesus the best of what she has - Judas is very specific about the value of the perfume - and she does this because of who she understands Jesus to be. Yet this expensive perfume does not represent extravagance as such, but extravagant love: In his comments on this story William Barclay remarks that 'love is not love if it nicely calculates the cost'. Mary shows by her action that she knows this. She does not calculate the cost as Judas is so quick to. Her love is like the fragrance of the perfume filling the house. It pervades the narrative and overwhelms all objection or protest.

Judas
John begins to prepare us for Judas' betrayal of Jesus as early as the close of chapter 6, where Jesus describes Judas as a 'devil'. Perhaps we are not surprised, then, that it is Judas who attempts to undermine Mary's act of extravagant love. John's recounting of Judas' indignation over Mary's actions reminds me of St. Augustine's remark, often quoted, that 'the real sin of Judas was the sin of despair.' Though usually applied to Judas' action in hanging himself, I think that it also despair that underlies Judas' harsh judgement about Mary's action. It's a despair born out of his inability to see that real concern for the poor must be rooted in a prior recognition of the claim that God has over our lives, a recognition that will lead us, in turn, to offer all that we have to God. Judas cannot, or will not, see what Mary has understood.

What might this passage be saying to us? To reflect on the story of the anointing at Bethany gives us the opportunity to be still with God before the frenzied activity, both spiritual and often physical, of Holy Week. In this stillness we can recognize that, like Jesus returning to Bethany, we need to know when it is time for us to emerge from our comfort-zone. We may not be called to face public humiliation and execution, but we may be called to our own point of departure, to travel a path we are apprehensive about following; and in the stillness we can ask ourselves what it is that we are willing to offer Jesus Christ, what our jar of expensive perfume might be; and in the stillness we can face the feelings of despair that might otherwise overwhelm us when we are confronted by the needs of a world that groans with longing for liberation from bondage, which still awaits the glorious freedom of the children of God.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay