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March 21, 2010
Isaiah 43: 16-21, John 12: 1-8

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

Dorothy Day was one of the most interesting religious figures of the 20th century.  She was born just a few years before the last century began and lived until 1980.

She dropped out of the University of Illinois in 1916 after two years of college and moved to New York, where she was active in anti-war and women’s rights protests. She had a couple of common law marriages, a couple of pregnancies -- one that she ended with an abortion, the other with the birth of her daughter, Tamar. And then this politically active but religiously unattached young woman began searching for some spiritual meaning in her life.

Ultimately, she became a Catholic and devoted the rest of her life to serving the poor, protesting wars, defending the rights of the dispossessed -- and giving fits to the Catholic hierarchy. She started a house of hospitality in the slums of New York, which eventually gave rise to a network of Catholic Worker houses all across the country.

This story comes from the early days of her work serving the poor in the hospitality house. And as you listen to it, think back on the characters in today’s Gospel – Mary, Jesus, Judas. You might catch a glimpse of each of them.

Trying to keep a center for the poor operating is never easy. Money is always short, demands are always high. But Dorothy had gathered a dedicated group of volunteers to help and word of their good works was spreading around New York.

One day, a very wealthy woman arrived at the hospitality house in her luxurious car.  Dorothy gave her a tour of the mission project, talking about what they were doing there -- treating the poor with dignity, helping them in the moment  and trying to change the conditions that trapped people in poverty.

The woman was clearly touched by what she saw. She was in a world so different from the one she lived in the rest of the day. As she was leaving, she impulsively pulled a beautiful diamond ring off her finger and handed it to Dorothy.

The staff was ecstatic about this act of generosity. They knew the ring would fetch a good price and they would have enough money to sustain their work at the hospitality house for the immediate future.

This woman had taken something of great beauty and given it to the poor.

So imagine the confusion among the volunteers a few days later when they saw the beautiful diamond ring on the finger of a homeless woman who was leaving the hospitality house.

They went to Dorothy, annoyed that she had just given away something they thought would help them carry out their work of serving the poor. They knew how to count and they knew this ring counted for a lot.

“That woman was admiring the ring,” Day explained. “She thought it was so beautiful. So I gave it her.”

Day paused, then asked her volunteers this question: “Do you think God made diamonds just for the rich?”

Dorothy Day had taken something of great beauty and given it to the poor.

Dorothy Day understood what Mary was doing in our Gospel story today. She was not being practical. She was being caring.

It is not that Dorothy Day was not capable of being practical. After all, she did start a religiously-based social justice movement, a network of hospitality houses and a newspaper that all survive 30 years after her death.  But she knew there were times to be practical and times to be extravagant.

Judas had trouble finding that balance. His view of God was one of counting the cost, of earning points. He was deadly serious. Mary’s view of God was one of extravagant love.

All of which offers us a chance to consider where we fit on this continuum of how we view God.  Today’s readings are filled with the pushes and the pulls of life and they challenge us to figure out how we maintain our balance in the midst of it all.

Take the reading from the prophet Isaiah, for instance. The Babylonians had taken the leading lights in Israel into exile, far from their homeland. They took away the poets and the artists and religious leaders and in the process, tried to take away the vision and the dreams of the Jewish people.

You can understand why the Jewish people in exile might have clung to those memories of God freeing their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. But Isaiah tells them not to live in the past, not to cling to the good old days.

He becomes a voice for God: “Do not remember the former things or cling to the things of old,” he tells the exiles in God’s voice. “I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?”

Isaiah is creating a new vision for the people. It is based on their history – he does not blot out the past. But he recognizes the tendency humans often to have look backward, to the security of what is known and the filtered memory of what used to be so good.  He recognizes that pull and he pushes against it.

There are pushes and pulls around the table at the home of Jesus’ friends as well.

Let’s take a moment to set the scene for this story.  Martha and Mary and Lazarus are some of Jesus’ closest friends. They are not the people who have been on the road with him.

They offer one of those places where he can stop in and hang out with friends apart from all the demands of his life as a teacher, one who brings healing to the broken, one who challenges the civil and religious authorities with a message that weakens their hold over people who are willing to make God the center of their lives.

We have met these people before. The Gospel of Luke tells the story of Martha and Mary welcoming Jesus on another occasion to their home just outside of Jerusalem. Martha was busy with the work of getting the house and meal ready while Mary sat and chatted with Jesus. This did not make Martha happy – “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.”

Does that sound like a familiar lament? One person is doing all the practical stuff that needs to be done while the other is simply treating the visitor as a human being by spending time chatting.  Jesus opts for the one who is spending time with him, not for the one who is so, so busy.

And we have met their brother Lazarus before as well. He was not so busy. He was dead. 

When Jesus arrived after Lazarus had died, Martha got into a theological discussion with him about the meaning of things like the resurrection and the Messiah. Mary simply started weeping at Jesus’ feet and then Jesus started weeping too and pretty soon, in the wonderful words of writer Barbara Brown Taylor, Jesus “roared so loud at death that he scared death away…and Lazarus came stumbling from his tomb, trailing his shroud behind him like a used cocoon.”

Even before this encounter with death in Lazarus’ tomb, Jesus was a marked man. Some Jews at the temple had threatened to stone him for calling himself the Son of God. Blasphemy, they said.  Jesus got away from them, but then he came back near Jerusalem when he heard Lazarus had died.

Lazarus’ return from the grave was one miracle too many for the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Now they signed a death warrant for Jesus. They were worried about the Romans cracking down on all the Jews in Jerusalem if they couldn’t get this Jesus mania under control. The word was out that if Jesus showed up for the upcoming Passover festival, he should be arrested. There was an arrest warrant out for Lazarus as well.

But Jesus was heading back to Jerusalem, stopping here in Bethany for dinner with his old friends.  This is another one of those push and pull moments. He was in action to confront the powers that kept people trapped in the past yet he was stopping along the way to nourish his body and soul.

He was probably greeted at the door with the customary water and towel so he could wash the dirt off his feet from the journey.

The group gathered around the table for a meal -- just a group of friends eating together, even though they all knew Jesus was heading into a storm. 

And then Mary – the one who acted from her heart more than from her head – got up from the table and returned with a large bottle of nard.

Nard was an extremely expensive and elegant perfume made from the underground stems of the spikenard plant that grew in the foothills of the Himalayas near India and Nepal and China.  It was a luxury in places like Jerusalem and Rome. Maybe Mary was remembering a line from that beautiful poem in the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Songs: “While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.”

Here was Jesus, reclining on the dining couch. And here comes Mary, the amazing aroma of nard – think of the earthy smell of hummus – wafting from this jar.

The story says perfume was worth 300 denarii. That was about a year’s wages for a common laborer in those times.  Using today’s minimum wage, that’s about $15,000 for that jar of nard. It’s as extravagant as the diamond ring that Dorothy Day gave to the homeless woman.

Mary throws everyone off balance with what she does next.

First, she loosens her hair in a room filled with men. This simply was not done. It is way too seductive.

Then she pours this precious perfume on Jesus’ feet. There was some precedent for anointing someone’s head with oil. That was done for kings. And as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem to the acclaim of the crowds, that would have made sense. But she anoints his feet. That was only done for corpses, for people who had died.
Was she treating Jesus as a king or as a dead man?
Or perhaps as a king facing death?
Nard, after all, is still used today in some palliative care to help ease the transition from life to death.

In doing this anointing, she is touching Jesus. Women did not touch men in this culture, and here she is, a single woman rubbing a single man’s feet. The whole scene is charged with a sensuality that must have disturbed everyone there.

Finally, she wipes his feet with her hair. This would not have removed the oil. It would have brought the scent of the oil back to her. She would be carrying Jesus with her as he goes off into the dangerous days ahead.

Remember last week we heard the story of the prodigal son and of the father’s unprecedented, extravagant love not only for the son who had squandered his inheritance but also for his son who burned with anger and jealousy? Well, extravagance is back again this week.

Judas is not amused by such extravagance. We don’t know what he was really like. We do know that his status among the apostles was not so good after he betrayed Jesus, so John portrays him here as a hypocrite and a thief who only says he cares about the poor so he can steal the money.

But let’s give poor old Judas the benefit of the doubt. He saw this valuable perfume going to waste. It’s like giving away a diamond ring that could fund a hospitality house. His distress is not an irrational reaction.

Jesus is more attuned to the needs of the poor than the brief quote John attributes to him. Jesus and this crowd knew the Hebrew scriptures well. When he said, “You always have the poor with you,” they would not have heard that as letting them off the hook for caring for the poor.

They would have recognized the verse in Deuteronomy where the idea of forgiving debts every seven years was put before the Israelites, of lending enough to meet the needs of others, even if you would not be repaid.
That section ends with these words: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and to the needy neighbor in your land.’ ” (Deut. 15: 11)

You care for the poor, Jesus is saying, but also care for those who need love and support in the midst of hard times. This was one of those times for Jesus.

Mary also was focusing on Jesus as God’s presence in her midst, and so just as earlier Jesus had told Martha that Mary had chosen the better part by spending time in conversation instead of busyness, here he tells Judas – and those hearing this story – to treasure the time they have in the presence of God.

We’ve been talking about the many pushes and pulls in this story and how we seek out ways to balance them in our own lives. 
Do we cling to the past or look forward with hope?
How do we balance the need for action in the world with care for ourselves?
How do act as stewards so that we can help spirits soar with things of beauty while still opening our hands to those in need?
How much is too much?
When is something not enough?

This meal in Bethany comes just a few days before another meal around another table. Jesus will be with his closest followers that Passover night, gathered in an upper room, the net for his arrest drawing tighter and tighter.

Now he will be the one washing the feet of his followers, telling them to go and do likewise.

Now he will be the one breaking bread and sharing wine and telling his friends to remember.  He will be the one to go off alone in prayer before walking into the arms of his foes.
He will be the one who offers healing to the soldier attacked by one of his followers, he will be the one who offers forgiveness to those who are executing him.

The pushes and the pulls continue. We try to find a balance. There are other words from Scripture that remind us that one key to maintaining that balance is to understand that this life moves in a rhythm.

“For everything there is a season,” wrote the author of the book of Ecclesiastes. “A time for every matter under heaven.”

There is a time to break down, a time to build up,
a time to embrace, a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to keep silence, a time to speak.

We can’t do everything at once.
But we can revel in the beauty that surrounds us,
we can be extravagant in sharing that beauty with others.

So, too, can we open our hands generously to those in need. We can take time to nourish ourselves and we can take time to care for others.

These things are all part of our journey as followers of Jesus. And then together, we can give thanks to God for being with us on this journey.

I’d like to end by inviting you to join me in a simple hymn from the Protestant monastic community of Taize in France – a place that cherishes beauty and prayer -- and that is deeply involved in standing with the poor in places all around the world.

The hymn is called “In the Lord” and it is in your bulletins.

In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful,
In the Lord I will rejoice
Look to God, do not be afraid,
Lift up your voices, the Lord is near,
Lift up your voices, the Lord is near