5th Sunday in Lent (Year C) - April 7, 2019

Fifth Sunday in Lent
Year C
April 7, 2019
John 12:1-8

Usually, when I have encountered this text, it has been this particular Sunday in Lent in Year C of the lectionary cycle. Something hit me this time that never quite hit me before. Perhaps for so long I’ve meshed this remembrance of the Jesus’ anointing with the remembrances as told in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Perhaps I heard it so often as it’s own unit that I never noticed what was surrounding it. Or perhaps this is just the way of the the Word of God working on me again. This time, reading the Gospel for this Sunday, I was struck by this story in a new way. I never noticed that this story, at least in the Gospel of John, comes almost immediately after the raising of Lazarus. This story comes after Mary and Martha mourned their brother’s death. This story comes after Martha and Mary both cried to Jesus in their pain, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” This story comes after Jesus tells Lazarus to “come out” of his own tomb. Today, they gather for a meal, to honor “him” (likely Jesus, but it could also refer to Lazarus - the grammar is less than clear). Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet is directly tied to her own experience of death and of resurrection.

For a moment, I’m going to turn to our first reading from Isaiah. At this point in the book of Isaiah, the Israelites are in exile. They have been defeated by the Babylonians and pulled from their land. They’re separated from their home, their families, and seemingly their God. They’ve been in this place of wandering and wilderness for about 50 years at this point. It is here that God tells tells the exiles, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Just like God did a new thing by choosing the Hebrews as God’s people and pulling them out of slavery in Egypt and bringing them to a new place - as God’s own people. God asks God’s people to trust in God’s creative and redeeming work - even when it requires God doing that new thing. God will do a new thing for the sake of God’s people.

And as always, God remains true to God’s promise. God again does something new; God uses King Cyrus of Persia to lead the exiles back home, bringing them wholeness, healing, and salvation. By claiming the Old Testament texts, we claim that the promises God makes are true. We have a creative God. We have a God that continues, throughout history, to reach out to humanity by doing “a new thing.” God continues to make ways in the wilderness and rivers in the deserts. As Christians, we proclaim that, in Christ, God yet again is doing something new in order to bring about wholeness, healing, and salvation.

Mary, as a Judean Jew, would know these stories. And she too would trust in the promises that God will do a new thing for the sake of God’s people. Mary seems to see this new thing that God is about to do in her Lord, in Jesus. Mary gets it. Mary gets it in ways that the disciples don’t. Mary gets it in ways that the crowds don’t. Mary gets it in ways that no one else to this point in the story can - other than Martha and Lazarus. Death and resurrection mean something very personal for her. Her brother, who had died - who had even, as John tells us, begun to rot - was now sitting enjoying a meal with her. The relationship with her brother was restored. And she was restored to relationship with her Lord that she had felt betrayed her by not coming sooner. She knows what resurrection and new life look like, feel like, sound like. It looks like her brother unbound from linens he had been wrapped in while he was in the tomb. It feels like a hug from a loved one thought to be gone forever. It sounds like a dinner party, with conversation and laughter, when one thought they may never laugh again. God acted again, doing a new thing, for her and for her family.

And she knows that by raising her brother, Jesus has caused problems for himself. In the Gospel of John, it isn’t the cleansing of the temple that is the “final straw” that leads to Jesus’ death, as it is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. No, it is the raising of Lazarus that is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Jesus choosing to give Lazarus his life, leads to Jesus’ own death. Mary can connect the dots - she knows that Jesus’ act of love for her and for her family will lead to the cross. Mary knows that Jesus is at a transition point in his life and in his ministry. And she trusts that yet again, in Jesus, God will do a new thing, God godself will experience death for the sake of the world that God so loves.

Mary responds to that experience of Jesus and to that trust that God is about to do yet another new thing. Mary responds in an act of love, an act of discipleship. In response to the experience of death and resurrection, what else could she do? I can only imagine the range of emotions for her, as she looked at her brother, as she looked at her friend, her teacher, her Lord. So she acts. She took a pound of expensive perfume. She bent down. Anointed Jesus’ feet. Wiped them with her hair. The text tells us that the fragrance of the perfume filled the house.The love she shows Jesus is one that hits the senses: it can be felt, it can be seen, it can be smelled. It is an act of love that extends from that dinner party to the cross. It is an act of love that remains with him as Jesus does exactly that new thing that God sent him to do. Karoline Lewis puts it this way: Mary “loves Jesus into the future” that he is about to experience (1). And I agree with her: Jesus needs Mary’s love as much as Mary needed his. It strengthens and keeps him as he shows his love for all on the cross. Together, joined in unconditional, radical love, they face the cross and Jesus’ death together. It is a dinner party marked by endings and new beginnings.

What feels like an ending will become a beginning. The Rev. Anna Blaedel puts it this way, “In seasons of endings, we yearn for beginnings, but if we do not tend to what is ending, if we do not face the losses and griefs that are rending our collective life, there is no space for something new to emerge. As long as we deny the forces of the crucifixion, we cannot expect to participate in the mystery of the resurrection.” - “as long as we deny the forces of crucifixion, we cannot expect to participate in the mystery of the resurrection”(2). Today, Mary lives into that. Mary faces the crucifixion and death head on, anointing Jesus with the perfume that she had purchased for her friend and teacher’s burial. It is through the new thing of the cross that God will again bring life and salvation - not just for the Jewish people but for the entire world. It is in suffering and dying that God chooses to find us, to identify with us, to woo us into relationship with Godself. It is on the cross that God’s love is made known - so that nothing - not even the suffering and death of God - can separate us from the love of God that we’ve found in Christ Jesus. It is on this cross that Jesus takes on everything that threatens to separate us from God, freeing us from the power of sin and death. It is here that we are reconciled to God. God indeed does a new thing yet again to bring humanity back in God’s own embrace.

Mary helps us prepare for it. As she anoints her Lord’s feet, in humble, loving, service, she
encourages us to face the cross, to risk facing death with the trust that God is indeed doing a new thing. She encourages us to look at the signs of new life all around us - trusting that death and suffering never have the final answer - instead God’s word of new life will enfold us all. As we turn toward Holy Week, with Palm and Passion Sunday next week, I pray that Mary’s witness guides us and encourages us to turn toward the cross and look at Jesus’ suffering and death with courage and with devotion, as we too have had a glimpse of what resurrection means for us and for the world. I pray that we trust that God is always doing something new to bring about new life, wholeness, and salvation for us and for all people.
Amen.

(1) Lewis, "Loved into the Future," http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5309&fbclid=IwAR1E8EqYZBH6HxAIJ8h1rKQrYXNFhyvpbhc_q2YT1G4oIzdkaImrCbByc5s.
(2) Blaedel, “First, we sit with the end,” https://enfleshed.com/blogs/mfcn/first-we-sit-with-the-end?fbclid=IwAR1DqTDWFN3fbT-63jieBjGI9fT3O4hW0or8EJ3qnDgSe-kORYY4HQ3r6Zo.