Fifth Sunday in Lent
Service Date:
21 March, 2010
John 12:1-8
Recently I gave up the unequal struggle and found someone willing to keep my house tidy. And now every Friday morning when I come back from the Broomhall Breakfast, I can tell she's been there, because of the piny smell of the cleaning products she uses; it goes all through the house.
This morning we have a new scent in church, too - just before the service,
I sprayed the sanctuary with perfume. Don't worry if it's not your favourite scent - it'll wear off soon. But it helps us to think ourselves into that party we've just heard about when Jesus and Martha and Mary and Lazarus and all Jesus' close friends were eating together. There would be lovely smells of food, like you get at the Breakfast. But there would also be this new smell, this expensive, wonderful scent. Mary was giving Jesus' feet an aromatherapy massage, and drying them with her long hair. The smell of it must have gone right through the house.
It's the same sort of thing when you see two people who love each other, whether it's mother and baby, two best friends or a couple who've been together for years. Their love for each other is obvious. All their attention goes on each other. They'll give up what they wanted to do on their own to be with the other one. When they're apart, they talk about each other to anyone who'll listen. And they'll spend their own money on whatever's going to make the other one happy. If we're looking in from outside, we may say they've gone over the top, that they aren't being reasonable, that we can't see what they see in the other person, that they're wasting money and time and effort. And from outside it may look that way. But if you love someone, you don't begrudge the time and effort and money you put into pleasing them, because their happiness is your happiness too.
We're Jesus' friends. That's why we came here today, so we could think about his life, sing about how we love him and ask him for help to become more like him. But when we go out of here, will other people be able to tell by the way we live how much we love Jesus; how much of ourselves we give to him?
Are we going to live like Mary? She showed Jesus she loved him by getting him the most expensive present she could buy. But it wasn't because it was expensive Jesus liked it. It was because she could see that he had trouble ahead, and wanted to help him through it.
Or are we going to live like Judas? He couldn't see the point of giving Jesus anything that expensive. Mary could have sold the perfume and done something sensible with it, like feeding lots of people. Or Judas could have used the money to do something he wanted with it.
We can't give Jesus a foot massage now. What we can do is to love other people. Not all of us have lots of money, but all of us have time and attention we can give to others. Are we going to keep the love we have to ourselves, or to people like us? Or are we going to give away our love and our time and our effort, even to people who don't love us, people who hurt us? Jesus did, and the scent of that love will never fade away.
Recently I gave up the unequal struggle and found someone willing to keep my house tidy. And now every Friday morning when I come back from the Broomhall Breakfast, I can tell she's been there, because of the piny smell of the cleaning products she uses; it goes all through the house.
This morning we have a new scent in church, too - just before the service,
I sprayed the sanctuary with perfume. Don't worry if it's not your favourite scent - it'll wear off soon. But it helps us to think ourselves into that party we've just heard about when Jesus and Martha and Mary and Lazarus and all Jesus' close friends were eating together. There would be lovely smells of food, like you get at the Breakfast. But there would also be this new smell, this expensive, wonderful scent. Mary was giving Jesus' feet an aromatherapy massage, and drying them with her long hair. The smell of it must have gone right through the house.
It's the same sort of thing when you see two people who love each other, whether it's mother and baby, two best friends or a couple who've been together for years. Their love for each other is obvious. All their attention goes on each other. They'll give up what they wanted to do on their own to be with the other one. When they're apart, they talk about each other to anyone who'll listen. And they'll spend their own money on whatever's going to make the other one happy. If we're looking in from outside, we may say they've gone over the top, that they aren't being reasonable, that we can't see what they see in the other person, that they're wasting money and time and effort. And from outside it may look that way. But if you love someone, you don't begrudge the time and effort and money you put into pleasing them, because their happiness is your happiness too.
We're Jesus' friends. That's why we came here today, so we could think about his life, sing about how we love him and ask him for help to become more like him. But when we go out of here, will other people be able to tell by the way we live how much we love Jesus; how much of ourselves we give to him?
Are we going to live like Mary? She showed Jesus she loved him by getting him the most expensive present she could buy. But it wasn't because it was expensive Jesus liked it. It was because she could see that he had trouble ahead, and wanted to help him through it.
Or are we going to live like Judas? He couldn't see the point of giving Jesus anything that expensive. Mary could have sold the perfume and done something sensible with it, like feeding lots of people. Or Judas could have used the money to do something he wanted with it.
We can't give Jesus a foot massage now. What we can do is to love other people. Not all of us have lots of money, but all of us have time and attention we can give to others. Are we going to keep the love we have to ourselves, or to people like us? Or are we going to give away our love and our time and our effort, even to people who don't love us, people who hurt us? Jesus did, and the scent of that love will never fade away.
Hymns:
R&S 277: How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's earSaid Judas to Mary, 'Now what will you do...'
R&S 373: Lord Jesus Christ
R&S 474: Brother, sister, let me serve you
Sermon:
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4b-14I find that reading from Philippians one of the hardest passages in the whole Bible. Not because I don't understand it. Like Mark Twain, it's not the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. And this part of Paul's letter to the church at Philippi goes against everything I was brought up to believe. Everything Paul was brought up to believe, as well.
The thing is, with Jesus, the normal rules don't apply. If you'll forgive me boasting for a moment, I'll show you what I mean. I was born into a well-off and educated family coming from three great nations: Scotland, England and Germany. I've got three degrees from three of the best British universities. I've got my own house, a good credit rating, more than enough money to live on and no criminal convictions. I've even got a plum job as a minister, with everyone respecting my sterling qualities (well, I can dream...) I've done well in life, haven't I?
But Paul could more than match my level of qualifications. He was Jewish right from his cradle; his ancestors came from a respected tribe in Israel;
he had studied under Gamaliel, one of the most famous rabbis of his time; he was a member of one of the most religious groups in Judaism, and he had taken great pains to keep the faith pure and get rid of any threats to his religion. He would have been a wonderful catch for any Jewish mother looking to find a husband for her daughter.
So what's my problem? I'll tell you: according to Paul, none of all the list of things he or I have achieved impresses God in the least. At best, my achievements are irrelevant - well, that's polite; Paul calls them rubbish; at worst, they can put me on the wrong track if I start thinking my primary aim in life is success. My German great-aunt would go along with him. Whenever she rings up, she asks if I'm well. ‘If you've only got your health,' she says, ‘you've got everything.' And I can see her point. If you're not well, what good can all your success do you?
But Paul isn't talking about health, either. So what does he think trumps any of the things people count as important? He says it's ‘the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord'.
The surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. That friendship which made Mary splurge out with her precious perfume, which she would have set aside against her own wedding or funeral, for which she would have saved up for years, to soothe the tired feet of a man who in a week's time, though she did not know it, would be dead. Because in her life Jesus was the most important person there was.
Paul knows what Mary did not; that Jesus was going to give up his life, brutally, painfully, unjustly, to show people just how much God loves us;
and that God was going to raise him to new life. And Paul, who knows that whole story, passionately wants to share in the whole of Jesus' life, even his suffering, to be able too to share in the new life God gave Jesus through resurrection; not, and here is the point, because Paul deserves it as a successful religious man, but because God is generous.
This is not, I suspect, what we teach our children, or do ourselves. We are more likely to find ourselves on Judas' side of the argument than Mary's: let's not go wild with what we have, but husband our resources carefully; let's lay them out only on proven good causes, for we don't know where or when more will come in. It's only common sense.
But our reading from Isaiah shows us that our God does not deal in common sense. He is reminding his readers of the old, old story of exodus: a group of runaway slaves pitted against the might of Pharaoh's armies who, against all the odds, made their escape through the waters of the Reed Sea while their enemies, equipped with all the latest technology, were stymied. That's how our God works, Isaiah reminds them: freeing powerless slaves from forced labour; making water spring in desert places. The old rankings of success that counted in Egypt no longer apply to God's people. Here, the last has become first.
Fine words, but how many parsnips do they butter? The perfume from our theme introduction is still lingering around the sanctuary, but for how long? Soon the service will be over, and we will be back in the real world where rich and powerful people get rewarded with more riches and power, where God only helps those who help themselves and people earn success and recognition by talent and hard work. Are we looking forward to God doing something different? Longing to show extravagant love to God, or to others, even when we have no guarantees as to results? Hardly; we know how things work, and they're not going to change any time soon.
But that's a caricature of cynicism; and I don't believe it's a congregation of cynics I'm addressing this morning. We're a group of people like those addressed in our psalm today. They remember God's goodness to them in the past: the happiness they associate with being in God's presence, with keeping company with God's people, with living their lives in God's ways. But now there are tears as well as joy in their lives. Remember the desert? they tell God. Remember the time you gave us water in the wilderness? Well, we need that now. To go on sowing the seeds of God's kingdom that future generations will harvest, we need to have enough hope in God's power and desire to rescue us to free us from all our insecurities about status and success and survival.
I should love to see this church full to the rafters. It would feed my own ongoing need for status; it would prove to me and to the world that I am a holy enough minister for God to give me success, measured in membership. Maybe from time to time you have similar thoughts. But our task is not to be successful. Our task is to be like Mary, extravagant in our love for Jesus; like Paul, willing to accept suffering and death as part of our life in Christ. But that's a tall order. In order this Holy Week to follow Jesus all the way, to the cross and beyond, we need hope that God can bring freedom from our slavery, water in our desert, new life out of our death. And I believe that hope is justified. Because that is the good news Jesus Christ came to share.
