The Smell of Life
Gate Pa – Year C 5th Sunday in Lent, 2022
First Reading Isaiah 43:16-21
Second Reading Phil 3:4-14
Gospel John 12:1-8
- Use my own memory of running around Vogel Street in Gisborne as a wee boy as a way in to exploring the power of our senses to hold memories alive. How does that help us into this story
- This is more than creating life giving memory. It is the story of someone found by love, who offers love. In contrast we have Judas. Sadly Jesus’ response to Judas has been used down the centuries to justify continuing Judas’s cynical approach to the poor, cf Jesus or Deuteronomy.
What are the memories that give you life?
The Sermon
1. Introduction: - Vogel Street
A
couple of weeks ago I was walking barefoot out on our back lawn. It had been
raining. The kikuyu grass was thick, damp, and soft. As I walked over it in the
warm sun, I could smell the grass.
The
power of that feel of grass with the smell offered me a long-forgotten memory.
And such joy and freedom. The sense of life in all that. And all the sense of
family and love that came with it. A gift.
I wonder what life giving memories you have,
and what helps you remember them?
2.
Mary’s Gift
In
our gospel story we hear of Mary’s radical gift to Jesus. This story is not
like the one in Luke’s gospel at Simon the Pharisees house in Galilee.
So,
as Jesus journeys into Jerusalem and the Passover festival, and all that awaits
him as part of that, Lazarus and his sisters welcome him with a meal. There is
fear and anxiety in the air, in this house that not long ago had been filled
with the smell and sound of Lazarus’s death.
Last
week we were told the story of scandalous joy. The outrageous father does not wait for what his rude and
wasteful son has to say, but embraces him with love and welcome, and joyously
throws a party of celebration. Abundant joy led to rules being broken and
welcome offered when none was deserved, much to the anger of the older son,
lost in duty.
This
week we have another story of scandalous joy. Of Mary taking the role of a
servant, and not just washing Jesus’ feet but anointing them with expensive
nard. A sensual gift of love.
In releasing her hair to wipe his feet she breaks
so many taboos. It is shocking. Imagine a traditional Muslim woman doing that today.
It is simply a disgrace that she would do this.
3. “You always
have the poor with you, but you do not always have me,”
As
Mary anointed Jesus’ feet, a number of the men gathered would have felt very uncomfortable.
Some would have been offended at the sight of her hair. Judas was. He said so.
Jesus
wasn’t interested in fake concern. He stood in the biblical tradition of the Mosaic
Law and the prophets of holding the poor at the centre. But sadly, over the centuries,
his comment to Judas has been used to join Judas in not caring for the poor.
“You always have the poor with you, but you do not
always have me,”
Interestingly this can equally be translated as
“Have the poor with you always”. Or “Keep the poor among you always”.[1]
which echoes Deuteronomy 15:11
“Since there will never cease to be some in need on
the earth…. I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour
in your land.’”
But that is not what many have taught down the
centuries, including by wealthy church leaders. They have used Jesus’ retort to
justify ignoring the plight of the poor, and accepting them as simply the way
God intended. Or to suggest that any action for the poor is a distraction from
the Christian duty to worship God through Christ.
But Jesus came from a poor family who lived in
a poor community in Galilee. Galileans were looked down on by Judeans as poor
hillbillies. He was one of the poor.
Jesus is not suggesting an either or here. In all
the gospels Jesus stands in the tradition of the prophets, and is always portrayed
as on side of poor. It is one of the things that gets him into so much trouble.
Mary’s action wasn’t an either or.
It was simply a scandalous act of love and gratitude
for being found and freed. She repented of what constrained her and acted with
deep generosity.
And
she offers a gift of love and life to this man who will face down those who
seek his death.
Mary’s response to Jesus didn’t preclude an equally
scandalous and generous act to others who are poor. Maybe it even invites it.
4.
The Gift
Her
gift was not just for that moment
As
he was arrested, tried, beaten and whipped, as he dragged his cross to Golgotha,
I wonder what the memory of that night offered him as he struggled on.
As
he hung dying, with the women gathered at the foot of the cross, including
Mary, maybe, and the men who promised to die with him nowhere to be seen, I
wonder what this memory offered him.
As
he drew his last breath, I wonder if he would still smell the nard?
This was a gift offered to him, to help carry
him in all that lay ahead. It was gift of love, hope, and life in the face of hate,
fear, and death.
5. Some Final Thoughts
I
wonder in our darkest moments, what gifts have sustained us. What memories of
life help us. What are the moments that remind us that we have been held by
love?
I
wonder in this lent how we might pay attention to those memories and all they
offer us?
[1] Lindsey
S. Jodrey <https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-john-121-8-4>
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