Sermon 3/25/07
The Journey, The Passion: Cost - John 12:1-8
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I can hardly believe it, but today is the last Sunday in Lent before Holy Week begins. Next week we celebrate Palm/Passion Sunday, and then spend the week remembering the events in Jesus’ life that led him from being celebrated and praised by the crowds to be being jeered as he suffered and died. And then, just two weeks from today, we celebrate Easter. How can we be here already? At least from my perspective, this journey of Lent has gone so quickly. When we began this season, we started by talking about our brokenness, and bringing our brokenness as an offering to God. We talked about remembering who we are and what we are called to do. We talked about what it means to be nourished, and what it is that is truly that truly satisfies our hungry hearts. And last week we talked about what it means to be home, always welcome home with God. Today, before we step into Holy Week and the frantic pace of the last leg between here and Easter, it’s time to stop and consider one more aspect of our journey: cost. What is the cost of this journey that we’re on, and are we willing to bear the cost? Pay the price?
What things cost is actually at the center of our gospel lesson today, as we read of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. This story of Jesus being anointed appears in all four gospels in some form, though there are differences in all the tellings of it. In Mark and in Matthew, Jesus is said to be dining at the home of Simon the leper when an unidentified woman anoints his head. All the disciples in Matthew’s account, and just ‘some’ who were there in Mark’s telling complain about her extravagant actions. In Luke’s account, Jesus is eating with Pharisees, when a woman called ‘a sinner’ comes into the house and weeping, wipes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. There is no mention in Luke of the cost of the ointment the woman uses, and Jesus responds to criticism from the Pharisees with a parable about hospitality and forgiveness.
But here in John’s gospel, in the version of the story we study today, we find some different, interesting details. Here, we read that Jesus is visiting with Lazarus in Bethany just before the Passover, just before Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem. In other words, this occurs on the brink of what we have come to call Holy Week, just where we are now. Lazarus has already been raised by Jesus from the dead – just raised, in fact, in the previous chapter of John’s gospel. John clearly shows Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha as people with whom Jesus is very close. They are dear friends. Martha is preparing dinner, and while Jesus and Lazarus talk, Mary takes a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, and anoints Jesus’ feet. She wipes them with her hair, and we read that the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. In John’s account, it is Judas who raises a fuss. We’re told that this is because he was the treasurer of the disciples, and was looking to steal money from their common purse. He criticizes Mary’s actions – “why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Jesus answers: “Leave her alone. She bought it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
In Jesus’ day washing your feet and anointing them was a common practice, as common as hand-washing today. People traveled on hot and dusty roads, and washing and anointing sore and dirty feet was just part of daily custom. A host would provide hot water and sometimes ointment and oil for arriving guests. But the guests would wash their own feet. The only one who would wash someone else’s feet was a slave. So for a person to voluntarily wash and anoint another’s feet would communicate a message that they were devoted enough to the person to act as the person’s slave. That’s what Mary is communicating to Jesus – extreme, complete devotion and commitment to Jesus. (1) Otherwise, we can make no sense of her actions – for a woman to touch a man in this way in public, for a woman to let down her hair in public, for a woman to engage in what would have been considered inappropriately sensual – Mary must have had a strong motivation to act this way. And she did – her motivation was her complete commitment to Jesus.
And then we have Judas. I’ve shared with you all before my interest in the disciple Judas Iscariot, stemming from my longtime love of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ve always wondered exactly what made Judas do what he did – what were his motivations? And I’ve always felt that we better pay attention to Judas, because we’re not always so far from taking actions to betray God ourselves. The gospel writer John, however, doesn’t share my sympathetic look at Judas. For John, Judas is just the betrayer, plain and simple. But even from John’s straightforward presentation, we can learn something about ourselves. In this text, John sets up Judas and Mary to clearly illustrate two paths. Mary and Judas are symbolic of two paths we can choose. Mary shows her complete devotion to Jesus. Judas, on the other hand, shows self-interest in the guise of caring about the poor. His argument sounds good – Mary’s act of devotion is quite extravagant – she spends a year’s salary on perfume for a man’s feet. But John lets us know what he sees in Judas’ heart.
Through John’s eyes, we see that Judas is good at being a fake-follower of Jesus. Think about it. For years, Judas followed Jesus, heard him preaching, was sent out by Jesus to be in ministry himself with the other disciples, and no one suspected him to be any different than any of the other disciples. We can guess that Jesus saw into his true heart, but no where else do we find the other disciples questioning him or wondering what he is doing among the twelve. He blends right in. And yet we know what John tells us: Judas’ motivations are all wrong. He’s looking out for himself and his own interests. Mary is a real follower. (2) Mary and Judas here are symbolic of the two paths we can choose.
This story asks us to consider what the costs are of following Jesus. Mary sees that following Jesus will cost her everything, and she’s willing, ready, to pay that price because Jesus offers life, real, abundant life in return. She’s seen this gift of real life with her own eyes when her own brother Lazarus was raised by Jesus, and when Jesus told her sister Martha that he was the resurrection and the life – not for later, at some distant time, but for here and now. Judas, however, represents someone who sees how much discipleship costs and is not willing to carry his discipleship to its conclusion. Jesus and his ministry – they are leading down a road that Judas is not ready to go. He sees the cost of discipleship as being too high, and so he tries to pretend, to slide by, to masquerade as someone ready to go the distance.
Are we like Mary, wiling to pay whatever it costs to show our devotion to God, or are we like Judas, pretending, masquerading as Christian disciples? As most of you know I recently attended a continuing education event in Washington, DC. We got to choose our focus areas, and I chose the environmental justice track. I’m really concerned about the environment and how people of faith (and others!) can take better care of the earth. And so I learned about a lot of different ways that I can work for better use of the earth’s resources. But I have to ask myself how committed I am to the cause, because I find myself reluctant to make significant lifestyle changes, changes that would be inconvenient to me, or that require extra time and attention from me. Do I want a better, healthier planet? Of course. Am I committed enough to work hard for it? Well… This is the difference John wants to point out between Mary and Judas. They might both want the same things – to experience the life that Jesus talks about. But only one of them is willing to pay the price to get it.
As people of faith, we know that the gift of God’s love and grace is free, offered to us without price. At least I hope that by now we know that. It wouldn’t really be a gift if it wasn’t free to us, offered freely by God. But everything in our Christian faith is filled with paradox – the kinds of things Jesus talked about all the time – the first being last, the humble being exalted. The same paradox holds true in our journey of discipleship. You know the saying that the best things in life are free? That’s true of course – love is a free gift we share with one another. But at the same time, love is very costly. If we truly love someone, that love will cost us a lot – patience, courage, commitment, strength. So it is with grace – it is a free gift offered to us by God. But our response to this gift will cost us something – perhaps all that we have.
Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this strange paradox in his most famous work The Cost of Discipleship. “Cheap grace,” he writes, “is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of [one] will gladly go and sell all that he [or she] has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all [her] goods. It is the . . . call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows [Jesus].”
The apostle Paul uses this same kind of language – this language of paradox in our reading from Philippians today. “Whatever gains I had,” he writes, “I have come to regard as loss because of Christ . . . I press on toward the goal for the prize of the . . . call of God in Christ Jesus.” This season of Lent, we are pressing on toward the goal – the prize – that we find in the Easter resurrection. We are so close to reaching the end of our journey. Now is the time, now is your chance to stop and ask yourself: What will it cost you to be a disciple? Are you willing to pay the price?
Amen.
(1) Exegetical notes from Brian Stoffregen, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john12x1.htm
(2) Ibid.