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Welcome to Hillsboro United Methodist Church! If you are searching for deeper meaning in your life that includes lasting relationships, spiritual growth and service to the world you have come to the right place. We offer a safe place in which to ponder important life questions within an atmosphere of support. Our hearts, our minds and our doors are open. We hope that as you visit with us that you will find a place to call home.
Sermon - March 14th, 2010
The Alabaster Jar
Rev. Gwen Drake
John 12:1-8
Prayer of Preparation: We give thanks, O God of sacred stories, for the witness of your word today. Through Scripture you challenge our assumptions, increase our awareness, nurture our imaginations, and touch our feelings. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
Jesus was in Bethany, again, a suburb of Jerusalem, visiting his good, good friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Friends he loved. The Gospel of John doesn’t say “why.” Is there a “why” to love? They were not counted as one of the 12 disciples. They were friends. Their home was where Jesus could simply be, they knew him as who he was, a man as well as a Messiah.
He came to their home, near Jerusalem, even though there was a warrant out for his arrest. Just days before, Jesus had worked a miracle at their place. Lazarus was dead, so dead Jesus wept with the sisters. Then he yelled so loud at death he scared death away. And Lazarus came stumbling out of his grave, trailing death’s wrappings behind him. There were witnesses. And the word got out, all the way to the Sanhedrin, what we would call the Supreme Court of the Jews. They huddled together and declared Jesus an enemy of the people. He was no longer a “manageable nuisance;” he was a “serious threat.” Jesus’ days were numbered and he knew it.
So, his friends took him in and cared for him, shutting out the threatening world for this one night. Lazarus was still adjusting to life after death. Martha was stirring the stew. Mary slipped away to find something in her room. Martha was used to this. Lazarus was always getting used to life and Mary was always disappearing, even when she was sitting right there with everyone else. She would get this look on her face, like she was listening to music no one else could hear. Martha knew what to do….just keep working, ready to reel Mary in if she was drifting too far.
Supper is ready and Mary reappears with an tiny alabaster jar in her hands. Without saying anything, she kneels at Jesus’ feet and breaks open the jar. The smell filled the room—a sharp scent, something like mint and ginseng. All eyes were on Mary as she did four remarkable things.
First, she loosened her hair in a room full of men. This was not what a respectable woman did in those days. Then she poured the perfume on Jesus’ feet, which was also not done. The head, maybe—people did that to kings—but not the feet. Then she touched him—a single woman rubbing a single man’s feet—not done, even among friends. Then she wiped the perfume off with her hair—totally outrageous—the bizarre end to a very bizarre act!
Most of us don’t really understand or care about the eccentricities of this story. We move right to the point of the story. Mary loved Jesus! Some of us remember the other stories like this one, in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and kind of blend them all together. Matthew and Mark both tell about an unnamed woman at Simon the leper’s house, much earlier in Jesus’ ministry. Luke’s story is about a notorious sinner coming to Simon the Pharisee’s house.
It is only the Gospel of John who names Mary, who is not a stranger or a notorious sinner. Mary was Jesus’ dear friend. This makes it all the more peculiar. Jesus knew Mary loved him. He loved her too. So, why the public display? Why this odd pantomime in front of God and everyone? It’s extravagant. It’s excessive. She’s gone over the top. And Judas was quick to note that, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold for a whole lot of money and given to the poor?” He asked. Jesus brushed him aside saying, “Leave her alone. She bought is 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.” The story just gets more and more odd! Jesus, what is going on here? You are the champion of the poor, always putting their needs first. You are reversing things again? Leave her alone, you said. Leave me alone. Just this once, let her look after me, because my time is running out.
When Jesus was around, nothing seemed to happen as it was suppose to. Martha’s ordinary meal for Jesus became Mary’s extravagant anointing. Mary’s expensive perfume smelled of death as she prophetically prepared Jesus for his burial while he was still alive. And Judas who made a great show of pity for the poor was really covering up his own thieving ways. The scene was full of extremes, in true Gospel of John fashion. Life and death. Loyalty and betrayal. Extravagant love and extreme greed. Tearing down and lifting up. The daily routine and the mysterious eternal. And Judas sitting at the same table as Jesus. The Gospel of John is the gospel where there is the light and the dark, where the earthy, ordinary, mundane is cracked open, exposed, and unfolded into the eternal. The Gospel of John is full of life and full of death.
Mary’s behavior was strange; but no more strange than other prophets who went before her. John the Baptist wore strange clothes and ate weird foods. Ezekiel ate the scroll of the Lord as a sign that he carried the word of God around inside of him. Jeremiah smashed a clay jar to show God’s judgment on Jerusalem. Isaiah walked around without clothes and shoes as an oracle against the nations. Prophets do things like that. They act out. The act out the truth that no one else can see, and those standing around either write them off as nuts or fall silent before the disturbing news they bring from God.
When Mary stood before Jesus with that pound of pure nard, it could have gone either way. She could have anointed his head and everyone there could have seen Jesus being proclaimed as a king. Instead she dropped to her knees and poured the perfume on his feet, which meant Jesus was a dead man, and Jesus knew it. “Leave her alone,” he said to everyone. “Let her finish delivering the message.”
And Mary rubbed his feet with perfume so precious that its sale might have fed a poor family for a year, an act so lavish that it suggested another layer to her prophecy. There will be nothing economical about Jesus’ death, just as there has been nothing economical about his life. In him, the extravagance of God’s love was made flesh and the excessiveness of God’s mercy was made visible.
This bottle of perfume was not held back, kept, admired, or even sold for a worthy cause. This precious substance would not be saved. It was opened, offered, and used, at great price. It was raised up and poured out and emptied to the last drop.
A few days later, Jesus gathered his friends together one last time, around another supper table, with most of the same people. At that supper, it was Jesus who got down on his knees with a towel wrapped around his waist, and started washing his disciples’ feet—something you did yourself or a slave did. Then he gave them a new commandment: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
Peter argued with him. Others probably thought he had lost his mind. A few must have remembered Mary, kneeling at his feet--the prophet Mary of Bethany, who knew how to respond to Jesus without being told, the one who acted out his last, new commandment before he ever said it. Remembering her may have helped them leave him alone while he finished delivering his message.
At home, in Bethany, the storm clouds were piling up against the door as Mary gave her interpretation of the signs. It was going to be bad, very bad. However, it was no reason for Jesus’ friends to lock their hearts and minds in a cellar. What ever they needed to get through this, there was going to be enough to go around. Whatever they spent, there would be plenty left over. There was no reason to fear—just as there is no reason for us to fear. There is plenty of nard and love and forgiveness and mercy and grace and life to go around—where God is concerned. There is always more than we can ask or imagine—gifts from our lavish, lavish Lord. Amen.
Prayer
Gracious and holy God, you are so full of gifts for us—the land is green and spring is bursting forth. You are sketching the lines of spring as it unfolds and we long for our own unfolding. We long for the beauty of the earth to touch us with sudden hope as we watch the sun coaxing life from the dark of winter. The air is sweet and we smell promise.
Stir us, O God. Stir us up so we will peek through our defenses, ride past our fears, and find joy and laughter and life. Open us to the warmth of your grace and light. Be with us as we stretch for new life.
O God, the world has so many needs—for peace, justice, re-building, food, jobs, a stable economy, health care, diplomacy, honesty, truth-telling, compromise, and the honor and respect of others. Be present with us and all the nations and the children and innocents caught in the middle as we struggle to find ways to live together, care for each other, and find lasting peace. We pray in the name of the one who walked his life as one of us, through Jesus, we pray, Our Father…..