March 21, 2010 | 8:00 a.m.

A Still More Excellent Way

Joann H. Lee
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 32
1 Corinthians 12:31–13:7
John 12:1–8

“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

John 12:5 (NRSV)

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality—not as we expect it to be but as it is—is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

Frederick Buechner
The Magnificent Defeat

This morning, we are in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Most of us know these siblings quite well. They are Jesus’ friends, intimate companions. And their home is a familiar one. We’ve been there quite often: we know where the bathrooms are, where the kitchen is, whether or not the pets are allowed on the couch (shoes on or off). Many meals have been had here, and in Jesus’ most recent visit to this home, he raised Lazarus from the dead.

Today, we gather for a dinner of gratitude and celebration in light of that great miracle.

But then in comes Mary with a pound of perfume worth 300 denarii, an entire year’s wages. And she just pours it out, anointing the feet of Jesus.

Can you smell it? The fragrance fills the room as she wipes his feet with her hair. The room must have gone silent. All activity must have stopped as all heads turned toward Jesus and Mary.

In every Gospel account, Jesus is anointed by a woman. And in every one, the onlookers, the disciples, are shocked, indignant. And they wonder, why is he letting her do this?

Both Matthew and Mark report that the other disciples shared Judas’s complaint from today’s reading. Let’s just leave Judas’s motives out of it for now, because whether they are true or not, he brings up an excellent point. The disciples are indignant with good reason.

Any one with a sense of justice would feel similarly: “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Or maybe for us at Fourth Church, we’d wonder, “Why wasn’t this perfume donated to the Mission Benefit and auctioned off in a ‘Mystery Perfume Sale’?”

It seems like such a waste.

Especially when we know the heart of Christ. These people know Jesus; they know that he loves and cares for people who are poor; they were there when he said, “Blessed are the poor, the meek, the hungry and thirsty.” So why? Good question, why indeed?

We are what people call a programmatic church. We have programs for everyone and for nearly every need. From 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., something is going on at this church: watercolor classes, Tutoring, free lunches, Sunday Night Suppers, committee meetings, lock-ins—the list goes on and on. And it’s great; it is so great that we are impacting our community and that young people, older people, people without homes or resources, all can take refuge in this building. And there are so many opportunities to serve, to do, to get involved. It’s good to be busy. If you’re bored at Fourth Church, it’s not for a lack of things to do.

And in today’s culture, who we are is often defined by what we do.

But sometimes in our desire to do good we lose sight of howto be.

Today’s passage reminds me of another story about this same biblical family, a story found in the tenth chapter of Luke. Martha has welcomed Jesus into their home. And while she works to prepare a meal and to fix up their home, Mary just sits at Jesus’ feet and listens. Martha is “distracted by her many tasks.”

In our busyness to do, sometimes we forget to just be—to just be amazed by God; to just be in love with our Creator; and to just be loved.

These two stories remind us that while it is good to do, while it is good to give—even necessary to give of ourselves, our time, our treasure—that alone is not enough. There is a still more excellent way.

Our first lesson for today begins with this:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is the more excellent way.

Love isn’t just a mushy, gushy feeling, nor is it merely a motivation for what we do. It’s a way, a way of being, an embodiment of who we are. It effects how we do things because love at its core is relational. That’s the way . . .

So it’s not enough to just give 300 denarii to those who are poor, because while that is a good deed, we are called to more than good deeds; we are called to a still more excellent way. We are called to love.

Love is being in relationship, knowing and being known. Love is sharing a meal rather than just handing out a meal. Love is building friendships with someone rather than just giving money to someone.

If we don’t love, we are just a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal, actions without the commitment to transformation.

I’ve had to learn this lesson several times, mostly because I keep forgetting. But one of those times was during my summer in Uganda. I was in college and had decided to join a small missionary group that would spend the summer in a small rural village in Uganda. I was so excited about going to a new place that I figured needed my help. We would be staying in a guest house of an orphanage, helping with their onsite primary school and providing VBS as an afterschool activity. I helped administer verbal reading tests and created large visual aides from the one textbook that each classroom shared. I was doing a lot. And I wanted to do more. But once school let out and VBS ended, there actually wasn’t much to do.

Like most small, rural villages, people go home at the end of the day, spend it quietly with their families making dinner, cleaning up, hanging out. The children of the orphanage all lived in family groups, so they went to their homes.

Against my instinct to “do” good, to get out there and create some kind of positive change, I was gently forced to simply be. To simply watch the sun as it set behind the large baobab trees. To simply journal my thoughts and impressions of this amazing country (I filled up an entire journal that summer); to simply walk the dusty, red road.

And as I allowed space to simply “be,” I was given opportunities to be with families. I was invited over to my students’ homes: picked corn and cassava with them, cooked with them, ate with them, allowed my hair to be braided by them, slept over on their floors, shared stories and laughter.

Creating space to just “be” with others led to love, to relationship, to deep trust and care.

I wanted to share my love by doing but was taught how to love by simply being.

Mary loved Jesus, and she had shown her love in many ways—through listening, through inviting him into her home and her grief—but for this time and place, as Jesus prepared to go to Jerusalem for one last time, she shows us how to love, by taking her most expensive perfume and anointing and wiping his feet.

In the same way, Jesus loved his disciples, and he had shown them in many different ways—through parables and meals, through correction and miracles—but on one particular occasion, before he shares in a last supper, he shows us how to love by washing and wiping the feet of the disciples (that same Greek verb is used in both the stories of Mary and Jesus: ekmasso, to wipe).

Gail O’Day, a Johannine scholar says,

In the foot washing, Jesus will wash his disciples’ feet as an expression of his love for them, as a way of drawing them into his life with God. . . . What Jesus will do for his disciples and will ask them to do for one another, Mary has already done for him. . . . In Mary, then, [we] are given a picture of the fullness of the life of discipleship. Her act shows forth the love that will be the hallmark of discipleship in John.

Her act shows forth the love that will be the hallmark of discipleship.

The disciples and Judas had a sense of what was right: giving to those in need was and is right.

But Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that sometimes, “the extravagant love of God both fulfills and violates our sense of what is right.”

In this instance and in the many instances in our lives, the love of God confronts us and violates what we think is right. And yet at the same time, it draws us into something deeper, richer, and so much more fulfilling.

And what’s so amazing is that our God is dynamic and relational, able to respond and relate to us as we need in that moment. That’s why sometimes God explicitly tells people to sell their goods and give their possessions to the poor, but other times God says, it’s okay to be extravagant.

We live cyclically. Our own liturgical calendar has cycles, both for feasting and for fasting.

The same God comes to us, asking of us different things for the different seasons of our lives. But all that we are asked to do, all that we are asked to be, is undergirded by the way of love.

During this season of Lent, may we take time to pause, sit at the feet of Jesus, and worship and love extravagantly. Amen.