March 21, 2010
The Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year C)
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14;13;
John 12:1-8
The passage this week from the gospel is about Mary who took nard and rubbed it into the feet of her dear friend Jesus, and used her own hair to absorb the excess – a tender, sensual act of deep love. And immediately she was criticized for it by Judas as being extravagant, too extravagant, practically speaking. The oil could have been sold and the proceeds could have been used to feed the poor. There is an attempt to discredit Judas’ intentions with this criticism, but suppose we just take it at face value this morning.
The words Jesus spoke, “the poor will always be with you but you will not always have me,” have always troubled me far more than Judas’ words in this story. In my fervent, youthful days I challenged that “the poor would always be with us.” I truly believed that my generation would end poverty, but it has been the generations that have come after mine who have actually come up with a plan to end poverty. They also believe we have the means to end extreme poverty. And the prayer that we pray at the end of our service each week, “we pray we will have the will,” speaks volumes to me about why there is still poverty at all, about why my generation failed.
And while I cannot speak of this without self-indictment – I have failed in making poverty a thing of the past, I want to invite us to put the whole idea of the poor being with us and the idea of extravagance side by side in our thoughts and minds this morning as they are in the gospel.
I think what this gospel says is that there is a place in our lives, in our relationships, in our dealings with one another for extravagance. There is the need for extravagance, in thought, in word and in deed – especially extravagance in the true sense of extravagance that is shown in the scripture reading this morning. True extravagance serves not ourselves or the one “spending the capital,” but rather brings delight and joy to another, to someone we love perhaps, or to someone whose life we have the ability to touch with our extravagance, or perhaps even to the poor whom we do not know at all.
For me extravagance is the opposite of stinginess or miserliness or even “New England thriftiness.” It is a step beyond generous into the kind of extravagance that we all experience when we think of what God has provided for us, for all creation.
What could be more extravagant than the depths of the ocean or the heights of mountains? What is more extravagant than fall leaves, or fields and fields of spring flowers? What is more extravagant than the diversity of animal life or the beauty of birds in so many shapes, colors, and sizes?
Extravagance is all around us if we take time to note it, if we have or take the luxury of time to note it. The extravagance of God is as passionate and sensual and tender as Mary was with Jesus that day. Indeed one could even say that “extravagance is the way of God,” and, sometimes, when we are at our best, we are extravagant too. We care for others, for each other, with the tenderness, sensuality, passion, and care that Mary cared for Jesus – while she could.
She used balsam scented oil – also known as nard, also used for burial rituals in an age when people lovingly prepared the bodies of their loved ones for burial. We have lost that sense of caring for the mortal body when we are done with it, of anointing it, and caring for it one last time. We leave that to the funeral directors, not family members. But for family members and friends it would have been standard practice for burial preparation in first century Palestine. John was such an articulate writer that the use of this particular expensive oil was not accidental. John wanted to show that this was a burial ritual, an extravagant ritual in this case, because Jesus was not yet dead. It was meant to be foreshadowing of what was to come, and Mary, it seems, of all the followers, understood what Jesus meant when he said he would be killed in Jerusalem – while the others were in denial.
So this extravagant oil was not only, in and of itself, an extravagance, but it was also a sign, evidence of a profound truth.
Sometimes extravagances are like that. Sometimes, they are the result of someone taking a bold and fearless opportunity to show a truth in a way that others can finally see it. They reveal where our hearts lie and our treasure really is, as Mary’s treasure was certainly not in the oil, but in her deep affection and passion for Jesus.
If we put that sort of extravagance side by side with the poverty of the world, then we get something like the MDG’s (the Millennium Development Goals) and the actions of those who had the vision to begin the campaign to get hundreds of countries and industries to become part of making the dream come true, not only with generous donations of money, but also with extravagant gifts of time, ingenuity, relationship, passion for helping others, teaching to insure self-sufficiency, protection of those who are most vulnerable and a myriad of other “extravagances,“
It’s hard to think of boldness and fearlessness as extravagant, and yet that is what such actions are because bold acts, fearless acts demonstrate where our deepest passions lie and what we are willing to risk to protect or further them. When we follow the way Christ leads us, passionately, we become selfless. Of course, it involves personal sacrifice. But such “following” is marked also with bold risk taking for the sake of others, using resources that we might carefully sock away for a rainy day to provide instead something profound for others. It is not always the most prudent use of resources in terms of a balance sheet, but it is often well in balance with the extravagance of God’s passionate behavior on our behalf.
Mary, a true disciple, knew how to love. She learned that love, that extravagant love, at the feet of Jesus. As Christians, we are invited to love as Jesus taught us, too, with that same extravagance.
This week before Holy Week, the tail end of our Lenten journey, we will, as a community, have evidence that we are loved extravagantly as a congregation. Our bishop, Tom, is coming again, with the Standing Committee, to meet with us, to share with us their plan for how we will go forward. I do not know the plan. I do not know how I will be part of it, if I will be part of it, but I do know that many people have given extravagantly of their time and prayer and love to come up with the plan. I know that no matter what it is, some will be angry at the cost, wanting it to be another way, insisting that something else should have been done, wanting it to be different from what it is. And some will be doubting, they just won’t get it as the disciples really didn’t always “get it.” Some will be sad; some may even be delighted!
But, for certain, what I know to be true, is that it will be risky and it will be bold and it will be extravagant in the things that Jesus taught us. It will be a gift of love and passion and tenderness. As we live it out, whatever our part is in living it out, it is important for us to keep practicing extravagant tenderness with one another. I will try. I ask you to try too. Perhaps we should find balsam oil to keep here, for all to moisten their hands with to remind us that what seems impossible or risky or not the way we would do it, is often an offering of extravagant love and tenderness. May we have eyes to see it and hearts willing to receive it. Me included.
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd