Spirit of Grace

Sunday 9 June 2019
Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-21

Today is the festival of Pentecost. It is named Pentecost because it happens on the fiftieth and final day of the Season of Easter. It was already a festival in the Jewish Calendar, occurring 50 days after the Passover. In the Jewish tradition, it is known as the Festival of Weeks, because it happened seven weeks after Passover, that is, a week of weeks. It is a harvest festival, celebrating the maturing of the first crops, and also a commemoration of Moses receiving the Law from God on Mt. Sinai.

Christians know Pentecost as the birthday of the church. It is one of those stories that we hear every year. Every year, 49 days after Easter, we read the same passage from Acts 2. The city of Jerusalem is filled with Jewish pilgrims from around the known world. The disciples, both men and women, are gathered there, as well. Suddenly, they have a profound experience of the Holy Spirit. They hear a strong wind in the sky, that grows and comes into the house where they are gathered. They see the flicker of flames in the air, until each flame settles and lands on the head of one of the disciples. They feel like they are being filled with this holy wind, this holy breath, this holy spirit. Suddenly, they are outside of the house, and somehow, through the power of this holy wind, they are speaking in all of the languages of the known world, from Iran to Arabia to Libya to Rome. If we were talking about the same area of land today, we might say that they were speaking Italian, Romani, Sardinian, Catalan, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Georgian, Azeri, Turkish, Kurdish, Turkmeni, Assyrian, Persian, Farsi, Tati, Talishi, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Raji, Qaqshqa’i, Berber, Djerbi, Nafusi, Sokna, Awjila, Siwa, Coptic, Hebrew, Nubian,  and at least 30 different dialects of Arabic. Everyone who is there, gathered for the festival, can hear the disciple speaking in their own native language.

Sometimes we say that the miracle of Pentecost is a miracle of speaking, and sometimes we say that it is a miracle of hearing. Is it a miracle that the disciples can speak different languages, or is it a miracle that the crowd can hear them in their own, native languages? Should we be imagining each disciple speaking in a particular language while all of the listeners struggle to find the disciple who is speaking the language they know? Or should we be imagining a sort of cacophonous sound coming from the disciples, but everyone in the crowd miraculously hears their own language being spoken? Our answer to this question will shape how we understand the significance of Pentecost.

I have tended to understand Pentecost as a miracle of hearing. It’s not so important that the disciples are given some kind of linguistic mastery, it’s important that everyone there can hear in their native language. They wouldn’t have needed to hear in their own languages in order to understand. Everyone gathered in Jerusalem would have spoken at least some Greek. That’s why Peter is able to talk to them all after the Pentecost experience; they can all speak the lingua franca of Greek.

The miracle, then, would have something to do with hospitality. People who hear in their own language can hear in the language of their heart. They do not have to strain to understand in a language that is not their own. They do not have to struggle to understand what is being said. They can have the message presented to them as if they were at home. It takes a people who are uncomfortable, far from home, and makes them comfortable.

I’ve preached that sermon to you before. God’s grace greets people with a radical hospitality. God tears down the barriers between people. God invites in those who were previously considered outsiders. And that is a good message.

This year, though, I read an interpretation of this story, from Willie Jennings, that presents quite a different message. Jennings insists that in the Pentecost story speaking is much more important than hearing. According to Jennings, the power of the Holy Spirit forces the disciples into a new action that they did not ask for or want. They prayed for power from the Holy Spirit. They were not asking for a gift of languages, but languages is what they got.

“The miracles are not merely in ears. They are also in mouths and in bodies. God, like a lead dancer, is taking hold of her partners, drawing them close and saying, ‘Step this way and now this direction.’ The gesture of speaking another language is born not of the desire of the disciples but of God, and it signifies all that is essential to learning a language. It bears repeating: this is not what the disciples imagined or hoped would manifest the power of the Holy Spirit. To learn a language requires submission to a people. Even if in the person of a single teacher, the learner must submit to that single voice, learning what the words mean as they are bound to events, songs, sayings, jokes, everyday practices, habits of mind and body, all within a land and the journey of a people. Anyone who has learned a language other than their native tongue knows how humbling learning can actually be. An adult in the slow and often arduous efforts of pronunciation maybe reduced to a child, and a child at home in that language may become the teacher of an adult. There comes a crucial moment in the learning of any language, if one wishes to reach fluency, that enunciation requirements and repetition must give way to sheer wanting. Some people learn a language out of gut-wrenching determination born of necessity. Most, however, who enter a lifetime of fluency, do so because at some point in time they learn to love it.

“They fall in love with the sounds. The language sounds beautiful to them. And if that love is complete, they fall in love with its original signifiers. They come to love the people—the food, the faces, the plans, the practices, the songs, the poetry, the happiness, the sadness, the ambiguity, the truth—and they love the place, that is, the circled earth those people call their land, their landscapes, their home. Speak a language, speak a people. God speaks people, fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples of his only begotten Son to speak people fluently too.” (Jennings, Acts, 29-30)

So, in just the way that we can talk about God’s grace making the hearers comfortable, we can also talk about the speakers being made uncomfortable. They have to speak in a language that is not their own. They have to become familiar with the idioms and stories of a foreign culture. They have to learn to submit themselves to forms and ideas that do not come naturally.

And that is also a gift of the holy spirit. It is God’s gift to nudge us away from that which is familiar. It is God’s gift to decenter us from a sense of mastery or privilege. It is God’s gift to break us open to new peoples, new ideas, new experiences.

It is a gift of God to welcome us in on our own terms, to speak to us in the language of our hearts. Each of us is welcomed, through the waters of baptism, just as we are. Each of us is incorporated into the Body of Christ on our own terms.

And yet, it is also a gift of God to push and stretch and change us. Each of us is transformed, through the waters of baptism, into a new creation. Each of us is called to learn and grow. Each of us is challenged to see from the point of view of another, to struggle through the discomfort of trying to speak to another on their own terms.

Jennings writes, “The same Spirit that was there from the beginning, hovering, brooding in the joy of creation of the universe and of each one of us, who knows us together and separately in our most intimate places, has announced the divine intention through the Son to reach into our lives and make each life a site of speaking glory. But this will require bodies that reach across massive and real boundaries, cultural, religious, and ethnic. It will require a commitment born of Israel’s faith, but reaching to depths of relating beyond what any devotion to Israel’s God had heretofore been recognized as requiring: devotion to peoples unknown and undesired. What God had always spoken to Israel now God speaks even more loudly in the voices of the many to the many: join them ! Now love of neighbor will take on pneumatological dimensions. It will be love that builds directly out of the resurrected body of Jesus. It will be love, as Karl Barth says, that goes into the far country. This is love that cannot be tamed, controlled, or planned, and once unleashed it will drive the disciples forward into the world and drive a question into their lives: Where is the Holy Spirit taking us and into whose lives?” (Jennings 32)

The Spirit of God, does not just translate words, it translates lives. Are we willing to be translated, to risk looking silly as we seek to speak in a language not our own, to be changed by the experience of the other? Because this is the gift of the holy spirit: granting us power that we did not ask for, sending us where we did not ask to go, among people we do not know, speaking words through us that we did not plan to speak, changing us in ways that we did not plan. This is gift of Holy Spirit. This is the miracle of Pentecost. It is not only that some are made comfortable as they are welcomed. It is also that some are made uncomfortable as they are called.

May we be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. May our lives be translated through our interactions with neighbors and strangers, that we might learn to love that which seems foreign and those who seem strange. May we be broken open by God that we might learn to speak people with a fluency not our own. May we not be content to remain comfortable among the things and people that we know well and call our own, but may we be encouraged to step outside of our familiar surroundings and be transformed by our experience of the great diversity of God’s people.

Jennings, Willie James. Acts. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Edited by Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2017.

Sunday 26 May 2019
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Graduation Recognition Sunday

Acts 16:6-15

It has been a hard time for Paul. Things had been going fairly well in his mission to the Gentiles. But then other missionaries started showing up, interfering with his methods, and telling him that he should stop. He’s been called before the apostles in Jerusalem to answer for his unorthodox methods. After a long debate, they reach a compromise, and Paul is allowed to continue his mission, but under supervision. Once he gets back out in the field, though, he has a major argument with his partner, Barnabas. They aren’t able to work out their differences, and eventually they go their separate ways. Accompanied by a couple of new helpers, Silas and Timothy, Paul goes back out on the trail. That’s where we pick up with today’s scripture from the Book of Acts.

And as if he hasn’t been through enough already, as if he hasn’t run into enough roadblocks on his own, now even God is going to stand in Paul’s way. He and his companions have been wandering all over the area that we now know as Turkey, hundreds of miles, trying to share the liberating message of Jesus Christ. They’ve been making huge sacrifices for their mission, but now even God is standing in their way. We are told that the Spirit forbid them from preaching in the province of Asia. Then they try to go to Bithynia, hoping for better luck there. But the Spirit won’t even allow them to go there, much less preach.

It must have been terribly discouraging. This hadn’t been Paul’s choice of a career, after all. God had interrupted his comfortable life to call him to this work, to go out to a new people who hadn’t heard about the liberating message of Jesus. And now Paul is out on the road, abandoned by his friends, in trouble with the authorities, struggling to do anything right. Then even God turns against him, stands in his way. It seems like he can’t do anything right. Nothing he tries is working. He is frustrated, depressed, and ready to give up. He wonders if he is even supposed to be out on this mission at all.

Have you ever felt like that? Have you been lost in the mundane, struggling for meaning in your life, feeling as if nothing that you do is the right thing, like everything that you try ends up wrong? Have you ever felt as if God is working against you somehow? As if God won’t answer your questions? As if God isn’t acting the way that you expected or anticipated?

When I was in high school, I had a deep sense that God was calling me, that God had a plan for me. I had felt that way for about as long as I could remember. But I really didn’t have a very good idea about what God’s plan was, just that there was one. I was pretty sure that it had something to do with music or with academics. I’d always been good at music, and a lot of my mentors were musicians and music teachers.

So I did what any good high school jazz musician does if they don’t want to end up spending the rest of their life in bars: I went to college to study music education.

And it went pretty well at first. My grades were fine. I was keeping up. But I wasn’t feeling very fulfilled. I didn’t feel like my life was headed in the right direction. I asked God about it, but God didn’t answer.

So I decided to get more heavily into the music. Maybe that was the problem. I needed to focus less on the education and more on the music. So I added a music composition major.

And it went pretty well at first. I did just fine with the new classes. I wrote some decent music. But again, I didn’t feel very fulfilled. Something just didn’t seem right. But I didn’t know what it was, or what to do about it. And I asked God about it again, but God didn’t answer.

So I decided to go to a different college, to find a school where I could really just focus on composition. I figured that would be the answer to my problems. I researched schools, and because deadlines were fast approaching, I hurriedly submitted my application.

But after all of those struggles, as if to add insult to injury, for the first time in my school career, I was rejected. I was an honor student, a valedictorian, and yet I didn’t make it into the composition school I applied to.

I was really upset. I was knocked completely off stride. I was questioning everything about my life. So, I asked God about it. And although there wasn’t an immediate and clear answer, there was a new sense of leading and prompting. From that moment of failure, I was led to reevaluate everything. And through that failure, God set me on a path that led me to seminary, and then to pastoral ministry, and then back to school again, and then here, in this sanctuary, among this community of faith.

It would be really nice, wouldn’t it, if God would just be a bit more clear with us. In the Bible, God always seems to be so much easier to understand than God is nowadays. In the Bible, people get things like a burning bush, a visit from an angel, even a voice from heaven. So why can’t we get something like that? Why does God have to be so coy with us? Or has God just lost interest?

Messages from God, though, don’t always come in plain words. And God’s plan for us doesn’t always present itself fully formed. Sometimes God’s plan is revealed, of all things, in failure. Sometimes the best we get is that feeling that things just aren’t quite right. And sometimes it takes a horrible fall before we realize that God wants us to go down a different path.

Isn’t that what happens to Paul in our lesson today? He tries one thing and runs into resistance. He tries something else, and they drag in front of the council to explain himself. Then his most loyal partner and friend leaves him, refusing to work with him any longer. He goes out again, and of all things, the Spirit of God prevents him for continuing.

It is in that moment, when Paul has been softened up a bit by failure, that a tiny speck of God’s plan is revealed. Paul goes to sleep and he has a dream. It isn’t a particularly magnificent dream.  There aren’t any angels. There is no voice from heaven. There is just a Macedonian man saying, “Come over and help us.” Paul now has a vision of where God is calling him. It isn’t a very clear vision, but it is enough to set him off in the right direction.

And what’s interesting is that God uses Paul’s failures to lead him not to a more humble path, but to something far more magnificent than he would have imagined. Paul’s failures and frustrations in Asia lead him to be the very first Christian missionary to cross the border and enter Europe. If not for his failure, and his determination to carry on and keep listening for God, Paul would never have come to Philippi, would never have come to Thessalonica, would never have come to Corinth. And we would be left without the letters he wrote back to the churches he had founded among the Philippians, the Thessalonians, and the Corinthians.

Failure isn’t always just failure. Sometimes failure is the very best way that God has of communicating with us, of urging us into a different direction. And for Paul, failure doesn’t mean that his life and work are being downgraded, that he is being assigned something easier or less interesting. No, failure leads him to do something much more glorious, much more interesting, much more important than he would ever have imagined otherwise.

Those of you who are graduating this year, whether it is from kindergarten, elementary, middle, high school, or college, are being sent off in a new direction. Chances are, you have experienced both successes and failures in your schooling so far. Chances are that in whatever is coming next for you, there will be both successes and failures. Chances are there will be times when you are not sure where you are or where you are headed. Chances are there will be a time when you feel like such a failure that you don’t know how you could possibly go on. But that might just the moment when you are open enough to God’s prompting to hear a new call, to take a new risk, to go in a new direction. And you might just find that where you thought you were going is not nearly as interesting as the new thing that God has in store for you.

So when we are faced with failure, and we are tempted to get discouraged or to give up, may God grant us the grace to come face to face with our failure, and to see it not as a defeat, but as an opportunity. When we are struggling along with no sense of direction, may God grant us the perseverance to carry on, even when we can’t see the end goal clearly. And when we are floundering without hope, may God grant us the clarity of Spirit to catch God’s vision for our lives, and once being convinced that God has called us, may God grant us the courage to carry our calling through to the end.

Sunday 5 May 2019
The Third Sunday of Easter

John 21:1-19

Last week we talked a bit about the passage in John that comes right before this one. Perhaps you remember it. It’s the evening of the first Easter, and the disciples are locked away in the house in Jerusalem because they are afraid. Jesus appears and tells them that it is time to let their fear go and get out there and do what they have been called to do: be apostles. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. Get out there and be apostles!” A week passes, and the disciples are still locked up in that same house in Jerusalem, still too afraid to go out. And Jesus appears to them again, saying again that it is time for them to get out of the locked room and do what they were meant to do. They have been sent out, and they need to get going. That’s what it means to be an apostle, to be sent out. So why are they still locked away?

As we come to the lesson today, more time has passed. We don’t know how much time, the narrator simply says “after these things.” The disciples have moved. They’re not in Jerusalem any more.  They have left the holy city and have returned home to more familiar surroundings, the Sea of Galilee, or as the Romans called it, the Sea of Tiberius. Remember, that’s where most of the disciples had come from. Many of them were Galilean fishermen. So now, in the wake of Jesus’ death and appearances, they have gone back home.

Are they out continuing Jesus’ mission? Are they preaching to the masses like Jesus did? Are they healing the sick? Are they feeding the poor? No, they aren’t.

So, what do they do? Peter has an idea. He says, “I’m going fishing,” and the others agree to join him. Why does he decide to go fishing? Has he decided to leave his life as a follower of Jesus behind? Has he decided to get back to normalcy, to go back to the ways things were before Jesus stirred everything up? Has he decided to go back to being a professional fisher? Or perhaps he’s just not sure what to do, so in the mean time he decides to do the one thing that comes naturally: catching fish.

For whatever reason, there they are out in the boat. They spend all night fishing. Night was the best time for fishing. But despite all their long efforts, they don’t catch anything.

Maybe this story sounds familiar to you. There is a very similar story in another gospel, in Luke, when the disciples first encounter Jesus. Simon and his buddies had been fishing all night and caught nothing, but Jesus comes along and tells them to go out into the deep water, and they catch so many fish that the nets are about to break. And then he says, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people. And they left everything and followed him.

And here they are now at the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry. And they are out in the boat, catching nothing. And Jesus appears and says, “Cast your net on the other side.” And they catch a tremendous number of fish, just as Luke at described at the beginning of their story.

Jesus feeds them. Loaves and fishes, just like he had fed the multitudes along that same lake. They are all too afraid to say anything to him. It’s silent except for the sounds of waves lapping up on the shore.

Until Jesus speaks to Peter. Do you love me? You know I love you, Lord. Feed my lambs. Do you love me? You know that I love you. Tend my sheep. Do you love me? Yes, Lord. You know everything. You know that I love you. Feed my lambs.

Feed my lambs. If you love me, tend my sheep. If you love me, feed my lambs. He had already appeared to them twice. He had already shown them his scars, the wounds in his hands and in his side. He had already commissioned them as apostles, sent them out in ministry to the world. But they still didn’t get it. If you love me, feed my sheep.

Being a follower of Jesus is not about getting things for ourselves, whether they be spiritual assurance or physical rewards or even eternal salvation. Being a Christian is not about making sure that we get fed. Yes, Jesus does offer us miraculous food, miraculous sustenance through life in him. God does offer us forgiveness. God does offer us grace and assurance and even eternal life.

But that is not the end. It does not end when we are fed, just as it did not end when those first disciples were fed on that morning on the Galilean shore. Once they are fed, they are called to feed others. Once they are loved, they are called to love others. Being a Christian is about service.

It’s easy for us to get off track. Sometimes we become paralyzed by fear. Sometimes we become apathetic. Sometimes we simply forget who we are and who we are called to be. We are disciples of Christ. A disciple is one who follows. Christ asks us to follow him. Christ asks us to continue the ministry that he started. Christ calls us to bring healing to those who are sick, to feed those who are hungry, to visit those who are in prison, to fight for justice for those who are oppressed. And Christ calls us to spread the good news of new life in him. Christ calls us to share the gift that we have been given. Because we have received, we must also give.

It’s not surprising that we have a hard time being faithful to God’s call. Those early disciples were with Jesus during his earthly ministry. They were eye-witnesses to his miracles. They heard him preaching first-hand. They were witnesses to the resurrection. And yet, they were still slow to answer the call to go out into the world, to feed his sheep.

Jesus says to us, “Follow me.” And where shall we follow? To care for the poor and the oppressed? To feed the hungry? To confront the corrupt authorities of our time? To share the good news of new life in Christ? To humble ourselves to wash the feet of friend and stranger? To risk our lives for the good of God’s Kingdom? Or will we just say “Yes, Lord,” and then go on about our everyday lives as if nothing has changed, as if we had never experienced the grace of God’s saving love? Jesus says, “Follow me. Feed my sheep.” Where shall we follow?

Sunday 21 April 2019
Easter Day

John 20:1-18

With his 2003 best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown stirred up a fury of controversy around the figure of Mary Magdalene. He portrays Mary as the wife of Jesus, the mother of his secret child, the holy grail because she was the vessel for his holy bloodline, a secret that has been guarded through the centuries by a series of secret societies. This novel captivated the world and spurred all kinds of conversations about Mary, her role among the early disciples, and the sacred feminine. Of course, we have since learned that Dan Brown was rather loose with the things he portrayed as fact, preferring to tell a good story. That is, after all, what any good novelist would do.

Dan Brown was wrong about a lot of things, but one thing he was right about is that as the early church became more and more male-dominated, it became more and more afraid of Mary Magdalene. They didn’t like the idea of any woman being that close to Jesus, and so they portrayed her as a prostitute, a crazy person, an unstable woman who was just lucky to be a hanger-on of Jesus. None of that is supported by the witness we have in the bible.

The bible itself is aggravatingly quiet about Mary and her role in the Jesus group. This is what we do know: Mary was one of the many women who traveled with Jesus throughout his ministry, from the very beginning to the very end. She supported him and his mission financially. She was there at the crucifixion, after the male disciples had run away and hidden. She was the first to go to the tomb and find it empty. She was the first to see the resurrected Jesus. In other words, she is one of the most important people in the Jesus story.

The Gospel of John tells the story this way. On that Sunday morning, two days after Jesus was crucified, Mary of Magdala goes to the tomb and finds it empty. She runs back to find the other disciples, Peter and the beloved disciple, and they hurry to the tomb. Now, these are the guys you would expect to see the risen Christ. This is the inner circle of Jesus’s disciples—the unnamed disciple Jesus loved, and Peter, the leader of the twelve. These figures are the foundation of the church.

But Jesus doesn’t appear to them. They don’t see any angels. They don’t get any divine messages. All they see is an empty tomb, with the grave clothes left behind. And they believe what Mary had first told them, that Jesus’s body had been taken away to some undisclosed location.

But then we find Mary there at the tomb again, weeping, unconsolable. And for some reason, she decides to take another look inside. Peter and the beloved disciple had already gone in and looked inside—nothing there but some linen rags. But when Mary looks in, she finds two angels dressed in white. And then, there is Jesus himself, standing behind her. She doesn’t recognize him at first, but soon she does.

It would have made more sense for Jesus to appear to the men. In that culture, at that time, Peter and the other disciple would have been more credible as witnesses. They would have been believed where a woman would not. But Jesus doesn’t appear to them. Instead, he chooses Mary Magdalene as the first person to see him risen from the dead. He chooses her, and he gives her a sacred calling: to go and tell the others. When Jesus sends her, she actually becomes the first apostle. “Apostle” literally means someone who is sent out. That’s what Mary is. Jesus sends her out to tell the other disciples that he is risen and he is ascending to God. She is the apostola apostolorum—the apostle to the apostles, the very first witness to the glory of the resurrection.

Mary was not the most likely choice to be the first witness, and yet, Jesus chose to appear to her.  And through her, others came to believe and to know the amazing grace offered in Jesus Christ.

When we look at ourselves, we might think that we aren’t the most likely witnesses either. We might think there are others who would be better suited, who would be more qualified. We might think there are others who would be better at sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, who would be more suited to proclaiming the Gospel. Other people have better stories than we do. Other people are more eloquent than we are. And yet, Jesus calls us, whether we think we are qualified or not.

We have a story of resurrection to tell. We have a story of Jesus’s victory over death. We have a story of everlasting life in Christ. We have a story of life beyond death, offered as a free gift to all.

But not only that, we have a story of life transformed in Christ. We have a story of addiction overcome. We have a story of grief made bearable. We have a story of hungry people who are fed. We have a story of life that finds its meaning in connection to God, of life that finds purpose in service to the world. We have a story of resurrection, and it doesn’t happen only after we die. Resurrection happens every day, wherever we find new life in Christ. We have a story to tell.

The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church puts it bluntly. “The people of God, who are the church made visible in the world, must convince the world of the reality of the Gospel or leave it unconvinced. There can be no evasion or delegation of this responsibility; the church is either faithful as a witnessing and serving community, or it loses its vitality and impact on an unbelieving world”.

We have a story to tell. We have new life in Jesus Christ. We have a God who loves us more than we can imagine and is just waiting for us to turn and accept that love and be made new. We have a reality that has been transformed by God’s grace. Isn’t that a story worth telling? Isn’t that a gift worth sharing?

We are called, like Mary Magdalene, to be apostles, to be those who are sent out into the world, to proclaim the grace of God that we have witnessed. Not just the grace that we have read about in the bible, but the grace that we have experienced in our own lives. So let us answer that call. Let us proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ through our lives. Let us proclaim the Gospel in our thoughts, in our words, and in our actions, so that all the world may know the saving grace of Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Sunday 7 April 2019
The Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 12:1-8

Jesus is anointed with expensive perfume by a woman. Some version of this story happens in all four of the gospels, but the details are different in each gospel. Three gospel have the anointing happening at Bethany, but Luke says it happens somewhere else. Two have it at the house of Simon the leper, one at the house of Simon the Pharisee, and one at the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Three have an unnamed woman who anoints Jesus, one has Mary of Bethany. Two have Jesus’s head being anointed and two have his feet being anointed. Each of the stories is a little different.

Here’s how it happens in the gospel of John, the last of the four gospels. Jesus is within a week of his death. He is on his way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, but before he is able to, he will be killed. On his way, he is told of the death of his friend, Lazarus. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Now, everyone is talking about him. This is unlike anything anyone has ever seen or heard of before. The authorities are up in arms. They are convinced that Jesus must die because everyone is flocking to him. And they are also determined to kill Lazarus, because his resurrection is the reason that Jesus has become so popular.

It is in this context of heightened danger that Jesus finds himself at the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, in Bethany, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He will soon enter the ancient city to the riotous acclaim of the crowds. But before that, he sits down for dinner.

Martha is serving. If you know anything about Mary and Martha you’ll know that that isn’t a surprise. Martha is the sister of action, the sister of service. But the language that is used in this story has eucharistic connotations. The word for service is the word we have in English as deacon. Martha is serving as the deacon at the table of the Lord. Jesus the savior stands as the high priest, and Lazarus, the one who was saved, raised from the dead, is there at table with him.

Their sister, Mary, is the one who anoints Jesus. Anointing was a well known ritual in the ancient world. Kings and priests were anointed in preparation for their service. The dead were also anointed before burial.

But this anointing is unusual. Priests and kings were anointed on the head. Corpses were anointed on their whole bodies. But Jesus is anointed on his feet. No one really knows what this means. It wasn’t usual for anyone to be anointed on the feet. One guess is that the feet were associated with action, and so Jesus is being ordained for action.

It was, however, a custom to wash people’s feet. People mostly wore sandals, and the roads were very dirty and unsanitary. When guests came into your house, it was customary to have a slave wash their feet. It would be quite unusual for a host like Mary to wash a guest’s feet. But that is what Mary does, even wiping them with her hair, which would also have been very, very unusual. Less than a week before Jesus humbles himself to wash the feet of his disciples, Mary washes Jesus’s feet.

Mary uses a very expensive perfume to anoint Jesus. In Greek it’s called myrrh. You’ll remember myrrh as being one of the gifts Jesus received from the magi. It’s made of pure nard. It’s related to the word “faithful”. It’s myrrh made of faithful nard. And it’s worth nearly a year’s wages. Think about that. Can you imagine washing someone’s feet with a $50,000 bottle of perfume?

So why does Mary anoint Jesus? Is it to proclaim him as king? Is it to make him a priest? Is it to prepare him for burial? Yes. Christ is the King, the ruler of the universe, and his identity will soon be revealed to all. He is also the great high priest, and he is about to preside over the greatest sacrifice of all time, the sacrifice of himself in which Jesus is both priest and offering. And Jesus is being prepared for death. No one will ever get a chance to prepare his body after he is dead. He will have risen before they are able to get to him. But what Mary does prepares him beforehand. Through these ritual acts, Mary proclaims who Jesus is. She anticipates his own act of humble service.  She marks the incredible, history-changing event of his death and resurrection.

It’s important to note that what Mary does is incredibly generous. Again, based on average incomes in Oregon right now, we’re talking about a $50,000 bottle of perfume here. I feel like you could buy the entire contents of a Bath and Bodyworks for less than that. She gives it for Jesus asking absolutely nothing in return. She gives an extravagant gift to Jesus. Are we as generous with our resources when it comes to Jesus and God’s Kingdom? Or are we more likely to keep the best for ourselves. Mary’s incredibly generous act is a model to us for how to use our resources for Jesus.

Judas, though, is not impressed. John makes it clear that Judos objection is motivated by greed, greed that contrasts with Mary’s generosity. But if we set aside Judas’s motives for a moment, he still asks a good question. Why should Mary have spent so much money on something as frivolous as perfume? Why so much expense for something that won’t last and makes no different to anyone? Why shouldn’t the perfume be sold and the money given to the poor? Wouldn’t that be a better use of the resources? Wouldn’t that be more in line with Jesus’s teachings, Jesus who never sought wealth or power but who always advocated for the poor and lowly?

Wouldn’t we expect Jesus to object to this kind of opulence? But he doesn’t. He does quite the opposite. And he says something that we would never expect Jesus to say. He says, “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”

Is Jesus really saying that there will always be poor people around, so it’s no use doing anything to help them? That’s how this verse has often been used. It’s been used to say that things will never change, the poor will always be poor, so there’s no sense in trying to change it. Just let the rich be rich and the poor be poor. It’s the way of things.

But that isn’t what Jesus is really saying. Jesus is saying that the poor will always be around and that we can help the poor anytime we feel like it. That ministry will always be available to us. But this moment, as Jesus prepares for death, this moment was something different. It was a special occasion, an occasion that merited some extra expense.

There aren’t many times when Jesus approves of extravagance. This is one. Mary does a beautifully generous thing for him. She prepares him for what is about to happen to him. She prepares him through ritual. An action that on the surface seems completely meaningless. How could perfume possibly help Jesus? But on the level of ritual and symbol this act has incredible meaning. It declares who Jesus is. It proclaims the sum of the gospel in one simple act. Humble service, saving sacrifice, glory born of suffering—it is all there. Not on the surface, but at the deeper level of the ritual.

Sometimes people complain that what we do in church is just a bunch of empty ritual. We have some bread and wine, we dump water on someone’s head, we march around with palms, we light candles. What is the point? It doesn’t actually change anything. Wouldn’t it be better to sell the communion chalice and give the money to the food bank? It’s all just empty ritual anyway.

My friends, a ritual is only as empty as we make it. Is it just water, or is it the gift of the Holy Spirit, new birth into a living hope? Is it just bread and wine, or is it the body and blood of Jesus, spiritual food to sustain us, pure grace offered from God in heaven. Is it just a candle, or is it the light of Christ, the spark of wisdom, the life that cannot be snuffed out, the light that no darkness can overcome? Is it just empty ritual? Or is it the Gospel of Jesus Christ, proclaimed in ways more profound than words?

For Jesus, even for the Son of God, on that night when Mary anointed his feet, as he sat at table with the one who had been raised from the dead, as Martha served, it was a ritual. But it was far from empty. It was full to overflowing with the grace and the power and the generosity of the love of God. May our eyes be opened to the grace and power and generosity of God’s love that is revealed in our worship, may we glimpse in our ritual the gift of the divine.