Losing it for Jesus

Losing It For Jesus

As I read the gospel passage today, no matter how hard I tried to shake it from my head, I kept getting one overarching, overpowering thought over and over again.  So strap in, everybody, because here it is:  Judas should have been a politician.  Now I know that it’s mainly the current atmosphere that’s making me think this way, what with our own primary coming up this Tuesday and the political campaigning taking up so much of our attention and time.  But the more I think about it, the more I could see it happening.

Imagine it with me for a second - Judas already has his first stump speech prepared and it’s right here in this passage.  He scolds Mary for pouring out this ludicrously expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet.  It’s wasteful spending in action, folks.  This unscrupulous woman is taking away opportunities for the poor by putting this perfume all over Jesus when we could have sold it instead and used the proceeds from its sale to fund further mission, outreach, and ministry in the surrounding areas of Jerusalem.  And if I were elected, he now continues, getting into full steam, I’d make sure we cut this kind of wasteful spending entirely.  We’ll eliminate poverty, stop overzealous Roman taxation, and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all!

Can you see the campaign taking shape?  There are certainly worse places and worse issues to start from.  And to be perfectly fair, Judas did have a point!  That was some expensive perfume - in case you were sick that day in history class, Nard was a kind of perfume made from the spikenard plant, which only grows in the Himalayas.  It traveled thousands of miles with some merchant through Asia and into the region around Jerusalem in order for Mary to buy it, and it was an entire year’s wages to purchase.  Weren’t there better ways that Mary could have used that money?  Wasn’t that a part of Jesus’ entire message up to this point, as well?  After all, this is the same Jesus who rails against the money-changers in the temple, who accuses them of turning a place of worship into a den of thieves.  It’s the same Jesus that calls out the scribes and pharisees for robbing widows and whitewashing tombs.  And yet when it comes to being bathed and anointed with Chanel No. 5, it certainly seems strange that Jesus appears to reverse his position all of a sudden.  The smear ad almost produces itself.

The problem is - when I say Judas should have been a politician, I mean it in just about every sense of the way we tend to see politicians in our time.  Sure, he talked a good game here about how the money needed to go to the poor.  But John adds some background information into his Gospel here that reminds us of the kind of person Judas really was.  He was trusted with managing all the disciples’ money, but when it came to dispersing the funds and using them to help the needy, Judas made sure he was always looking out for number one.  As Judas is watching that nard flowing over Jesus’ feet and smelling the scent as it fills the house, he’s watching his own retirement fund flowing away in front of him.

And yet, even though we recognize that Judas didn’t really care about the plight of the poor as he complains about the nard… doesn’t his argument still make sense?  Jesus’ response to Judas is incredibly confusing and difficult to wrap our minds around.  It seems to run counter to so much else that Jesus has already said.  Do we chalk it up to Jesus having yet another surprising moments of humanity where he appears to us as just slightly “less than perfect?”  Do we take it as a withering commentary on the fact that we can never fully resolve the issue of poverty in our world?  Do we scratch our heads, shrug our shoulders and just move on to a more hopeful piece of the Gospel, instead?

For me this week as I wrestled with the text, it became more a matter of context than anything else.  The lectionary has us at a disadvantage this week by suddenly swerving away from Luke and into John - this particular scene comes at the crossroads of several key events in John’s Gospel.  This Mary who anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive oil is the same Mary who just days before had been weeping at her brother Lazarus’ tomb.  The woman Martha, who busies herself in the background humbly serving and tending to the needs of Jesus and his disciples is the same one who just days before had chastised Jesus for being late, telling him that had he come sooner, her brother would still have been alive.  And that very same brother is there at this dinner table, as well - living, breathing, and partaking in the meal as if he hadn’t been in the wrappings of the grave just days before.

With this context in mind, it doesn’t seem as much a waste now as it might have before.  Mary has seen Jesus’ incredible divinity firsthand in the resurrection of her brother.  Where all the other disciples have so far taken the event as one more among a slew of miraculous happenings, Mary here becomes the first one who really seems to get it - he’s not just a teacher, not just a prophet, but a king.  Her Lord.  Jesus tells Judas that she had purchased this perfume to be used for the day of his burial - as Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with this precious oil, then, she’s declaring that she knows as well as Jesus does what is awaiting him, and in that moment, she also marks the transition in John’s Gospel from Jesus’ ministry to his passion.  In John’s Gospel, in fact, this scene is followed up almost immediately by Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem as he rides into town to the loud cries of “Hosannah.”  Jesus’ statement that “you will always have the poor, but you will not always have me,” then, is not as much a commentary on the problem of poverty in our world, but him once again looking toward that hill far away where that rugged and ugly cross still awaits him.

But beyond the prophetic actions of Mary’s anointing, I think there’s something even more important that we can take away from this passage and from Jesus’ admonition to Judas to leave Mary alone from his harping.  And it’s something that is really only there between the lines, in the silence between the words even.  Underlying this entire scene, you have to recognize that there’s a deep and pervading atmosphere of gratitude.  Lazarus sits at the table, alive and well.  Martha serves at a dinner given specifically in Christ’s honor.  Mary pours out expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet and then lowers herself to the level of scandal by wiping his feet with her hair - an intimate act that would have raised eyebrows even further then than it would today.  And in all of these acts, we sense an immense kind of gratitude, perhaps even the likes of which one can only direct most fully to the one who has created them, redeemed them, and continues to sustain them in all the days of their lives.

Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are the living examples in the Gospels of what Paul writes about in his letter to the Philippians.  In their actions, they demonstrate the very same attitude that inspired Paul to write: “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”  Compared to knowing and living in Christ, nothing else matters.  In fact, the word Paul uses that the NRSV translates as “rubbish” is actually a lot stronger than that.  Paul considers all the things that he has to be nothing more than rotting garbage and dung compared to the knowledge of Christ and the promise of the resurrection.  It’s in that joy of knowing and serving Christ that Mary pours out expensive perfume and places herself in a position lower than even a servant would go.  It’s in that joy of Christ that Martha serves in the background.  It’s in the joy of Christ that Lazarus has his own new life.  And it’s that joy of knowing and being in Christ that makes everything matter at all.

It’s this that Jesus is ultimately getting at when he chastises Judas.  You can sell everything you own in this world and give it to help fight poverty, but at the end of the day, without Christ at the center of it all, you’re only left with garbage.  You can cure every disease, bring about world peace, get every kid a college degree and every graduate a job, put a full lunch pail at every table and an electric car in every driveway, but without Christ it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.  At the end of the day, the only thing that matters - the only thing that has ever mattered and ever will matter - is Christ and the power of the promises we are given in and through Him.  So let us, as Paul tells us, “press on to make [that promise] our own, just as Christ Jesus has made [us] his own.”  Let strive on to live our own lives in a measure of the incredible gratitude of Mary, of Martha, and of Lazarus.  Let us embrace the promises of Christ in this season of Lent and beyond.  And let us look ever forward with hope in those promises as we live out that gratitude in service to others.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.