Sermon for April 3, 2022
John
12:1-8
Every now and then, you run across a note or
two in a study Bible that really catches your eye – and catches your
imagination. Here are a couple related
to today’s Gospel reading.
The first is a detail about the ointment
that Mary used to anoint Jesus. The
story tells us that “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard [and]
anointed Jesus’ feet” (John 12:3). I’m
guessing few of us know much about nard, so here’s the detail that surprised me:
In the ancient world, nard was imported from the Himalayas. So here are the disciples, in Judea 2,000
years ago, and Mary could go down to the market and get “a pound of nard” brought
from the Himalayas. If it cost 300 denarii,
as Judas says in the reading, that would have been nearly a year’s wages for a
laborer – an astonishing amount of money for the followers of an itinerant
preacher.1 Clearly, Mary and
Martha and Lazarus had some resources – and it gives some context for why Judas
was so angry about the expense. You know
you’re on thin ice, by the way, when you find yourself identifying with Judas
in a Bible story….
Here’s another helpful study-Bible note about
today’s reading. Of course, as we hear this
story in worship, it just drops in out of nowhere. But if we look at what comes before it, that
material sets a foreboding stage. There,
the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court and governing body, passes a death
sentence against Jesus. They justify their
action by arguing that if they don’t shut down Jesus, the Romans will see him
as a political revolutionary and shut down the Jewish people. A couple of generations later, that’s exactly
what happened when the Romans crushed a Jewish rebellion and made Jerusalem
look like Kyiv in Ukraine.2 So
the Jewish leaders are afraid of Jesus.
He’s gathered such a following that the day after this dinner party with
Mary and Martha and Lazarus, Jesus and the crowd will march into the capital on
Palm Sunday. The people will be proclaiming
him the King of Israel because of the incredible signs he’s done, especially raising
Lazarus from the dead. That’s not a power
even the Roman Emperor could claim, and the Jewish authorities know what the
Romans do to subject people who declared someone else to be king. The threat of destruction and mass murder is
very real.
So, there’s the background for today’s simple
but deeply challenging story – challenging to the powers that be, religious,
political, and spiritual. With the capital
on edge, Jesus and his friends go back to the scene of the crime – they go to
the house of Lazarus for a party to celebrate his resuscitation. Whistling as they walk past the graveyard, Jesus
and his friends inch the story closer to its bloody climax on the cross, unafraid
of the authorities plotting against them.
At the party, Mary breaks out this costly ointment from the Himalayas, emptying
her bank account for an action that feels like preparing a body for burial.
What’s going on here? Are they celebrating? Are they preparing for Jesus’ coming death? Yes. Both
those things. Maybe it’s an anticipatory
wake.
Then Judas enters the story. We haven’t heard anything from Judas in John’s
Gospel until now. In fact, this is the
only time in John’s Gospel that Judas says anything about his motivation or his
concerns. In fact, it’s the only time in
John’s Gospel that Judas says anything at all.
So, he rises up sanctimoniously and, like the Sanhedrin, issues the
indictment on which he’ll act a few days later.
You’ve got to be kidding, Judas says.
The Jesus movement is spending a year’s salary, not to help people in
need but to throw a party to honor the leader?
Of course, his indictment reeks because Judas is embezzling money himself. But the extravagance of the anointing gives
Judas an excuse to justify what he’s about to do.
In response, Jesus names the complexity of
this moment, on the eve of Palm Sunday and the crowd proclaiming him king. This huge expenditure for him is actually part
of the movement’s confrontation with evil.
As you may remember, the kings of Israel were anointed with oil as part
of their coronation ceremonies. So Mary
has bought this ointment both to honor Jesus now as the one true king and
to have it on hand for the day of his burial.
Then Jesus looks Judas in the eye and confronts the evil that’s
slithered in: You can help the poor anytime you want, Jesus says, but you won’t
always have me. And that’s on you. I know what you’re planning, Jesus says. Bring it on.
How do we stand up to evil? We may not have a Roman Emperor claiming to
be a god, but we’ve got plenty of evil around us. There’s the structural racism and sexism and heterosexism
we’re finally gaining the eyes to see more clearly. In the news every day, there’s the dictator of
Russia killing and displacing the people of a sovereign nation. And that’s only one place people are
suffering from war or persecution. I don’t
know about you, but I look at these incarnations of evil we encounter today,
and I feel angry and frustrated. What
can I do?
It will not surprise you to hear me say
that what we can do is to love. But not
just everyday love. We can love like
Mary in today’s story. We can challenge
evil by loving extravagantly.
When it comes to extravagant love, Jesus doesn’t
give us a manual. But I do think the
Holy Spirit raises up situations we can take to heart, current equivalents of
spending a year’s salary on Himalayan ointment for Jesus. Here’s one I saw last week.
We’ve heard over and over about the
refugee crisis stemming from the Russian invasion. The UN estimates more than 4 million people have
left Ukraine, most of them fleeing to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.3
It’s hard to comprehend that number in
the abstract, but it’s roughly the population of Los Angeles. And even harder to comprehend is what
good-hearted people might do to respond to that consequence of evil. But there’s a small church whose story of
extravagant love is worth telling.
It's a Baptist congregation in Chełm, a
town of about 60,000 in Poland near the Ukrainian border and a major transit
point for refugees. Over the past month,
the Chełm Baptist Church has taken in more than 3,000 refugees fleeing from the
tanks and the bombs. They removed their
pews and dedicated all the congregation’s efforts to serving the people at
their doors seeking safety. Refugees
stay at the church for a couple of days before moving on to be relocated
elsewhere. The people of Chełm Baptist
Church and their neighbors offer 200 beds and 350 hot meals a day for the
refugees, volunteers, and drivers. The pastor
says every member of the congregation is taking part, and there are no eligibility
tests for those being served. “We [do] not
care what nationality or what faith they have,” the pastor said. “We do not check their documents. Everyone is welcome.”4
What does this mean for us? I get it that we don’t have millions of Ukrainian
refugees spilling into Kansas City. But
we certainly do have refugees from many other places, and we’re likely to see
our fair share of folks from Ukraine, too, eventually. A few months ago, we worked with two other local
Episcopal congregations to resettle a family from Afghanistan. My guess is that our work with refugees is
not over. We’ve started a conversation
with one of those parishes to see what other sponsorship we might do together,
and I’d ask you to keep that effort in your prayers.
This would be good and holy work, no matter what. Caring for the stranger, remembering that Jesus and his family were refugees – that is always right and good. But given today’s reading, and given the drama of Holy Week we’re about to experience, and given the reality that evil thrives just as virulently today as it ever has – given all that, I’d say that our call goes deeper than just doing good. Our call includes fighting evil – not by any means necessary, for then we may find ourselves little better than the snake we seek to kill; but by the means Jesus gives us. Faced with evil in whatever form, Jesus looks it in the eye, and names it, and pours himself out at extravagant cost, and loves evil into submission. As the pastor of Chełm Baptist Church said, “In all of this [evil], there is also the opportunity for new life. [In all of this,] there is hope.”4
1.
The HarperCollins Study Bible. New York:
HarperCollins, 1993. 2037 (note).
2.
Ibid.
2036 (note).
3.
“Operational
Data Portal, Ukraine Refugee Situation.” United Nations High Commission on Refugees.
Available at: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine.
Accessed March 31, 2022.
4.
“How
a Polish border town is welcoming Ukrainian refugees – Behind The Story.” The
Times [of London] and the Sunday Times. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk89ACjusBk.
Accessed March 31, 2022. Still images available from the Chełm Baptist Church Fadebook
page: https://www.facebook.com/Bapty%C5%9Bci-Che%C5%82m-1495885400676797.
Accessed April 1, 2022.
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