Sermon to Sojourners UCC
Charlottesville, VA
March 12, 2016

John 12:1-11

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had craised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)7Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Sermon

When I was 17 years-old, one of my best friends was a boy named Eric. We never dated, he has three sisters and didn’t need another, and I’d say our relationship mostly revolved around swapping Simpsons quotes, watching Say Anything and a fondness for mixed tapes and road-trips. It was simple. But he was always a good friend. The door to his house was never locked figuratively or literally.

When the time came for me to leave for college, and we stood in his driveway saying goodbye, here’s what I should have said, “Thanks for cutting school with me the day after my mom died and going to get bagels. Thanks for letting me crash on your couch for the summer and giving me a home. Any bit of happiness and light I have in my life, I owe to you and your family.” I should have wept and held him and taken the chance to show him what his kindness and love meant to me.

Here’s what actually happened. “Okay, well… see ya later.” And an awkward pat on the shoulder.

Goodbyes are hard and awkward. It didn’t help that in this story, we were two unrelated, non-dating teenagers. But even at the best of times, with mature adults, goodbyes are hard.

Today’s biblical story starts with goodbye.  In this strange story of dinner at Lazarus’s house, with Mary Magdalene pouring out and wasting the most expensive thing she can think of on anointing the feet of her teacher with her hair, we begin saying goodbye.

For this is Mary’s goodbye to Jesus. As we walk liturgically through the season of Lent towards Good Friday, we could think of this story as “the second-to-last supper.” But that fact is lost on everyone in the room save Mary and Jesus.  She appears to be the only person in the room who realizes that this is the beginning of the end. And, she appears to be experiencing what we now might call “anticipatory grief.” That feeling when we get when we know we will soon to lose something or someone important and we are overwhelmed with the sheer weight of that impending loss.

And her reaction is totally inappropriate. A simple Google Image search of “Mary Magdalene & feet” will quickly show you this scene depicted in artwork throughout the ages and gives a sense of how strange and awkward this moment is. In one of my favorites, a more modern depiction by French painter Jean Beraud, Jesus sits at a table gathered with what appear to be 19th century French literati, all looking super uptight and proper and scowling and looking aghast at the inappropriate display of affection and debauchery in front of them. Because Mary Magdalene is defying every cultural norm. She is a) touching a man she is neither related to, nor married to (quite the scandal). She is b) using what could well have been oils or perfumes exclusively used in burials to anoint the feet of someone that, as far as everyone else knew, was very much alive, and c) (as Judas is quick to point out) wasting a whole lot of good stuff that could be put to better use. But this goodbye for Mary, and nothing seems to deter her or hold her back.

Some of us don’t do goodbyes very well, or at all. Clearly, it is not the strong suit of my teenage self. But I know people who have quietly slipped away, avoiding saying goodbye all together, or have made what ought to have been something momentous, casual and light. Because as Mary Magdalene show us, it’s awkward and hard, and can feel inappropriate.

For it appears that throughout the ages, we have used our goodbyes to tell others how we really feel. One of the reasons when someone leaves us unexpectedly in any way, it can feel so jarring– we never had that opportunity to say what we need to say.  We don’t need goodbyes to say our peace, of course, or to express our inner feelings to other, and by all means, consider this sermon an invitation to turn to anyone who has moved you lately and express your true feelings towards them for no reason in particular. But we do usually wait for goodbye.

For sometimes, it is in the goodbye, that we realize what someone truly does mean to us. Maybe this is Mary’s great revelatory moment: God is with us and God will be leaving us. And she pours her heart, and everything else she can think of, out.

This is the start of Mary’s journey of grief. Her first step into the valley of the shadow.

As a culture, we tend to want to ignore grief all together. To push it aside, or into a tiny box that we might forget at the back of the closet like those old clothes– maybe we’ll open it another day. There used to be cultural norms around bereavement, and still are in some places: a black arm band tied as a memory, in Korea, women still sometimes wear a white bow in their hair. Something to acknowledge on the outside what is happening on the inside. But for us, gone are those cultural norms and symbols and we are left to walk this trail of grief without guideposts.

Yet, consider how important grief is in the John’s gospel.  Only a few verses before our story today, an entire verse of scripture is devoted to the phrase “Jesus Wept.” It was upon encountering the body of his friend Lazarus. Before the miracle, there were tears. And today before the group with Jesus rises from dinner to start their journey to Jerusalem, Mary pauses to grieve.

I had actually intended to entitle this sermon “Time Out,” because I was considering what the work of grief requires of us, and it seems to be a real time out from our lives. Whether or not we want it to, grief sets us apart, at least for a while. Time can seem to stop, as Auden’s poem so pointedly reminds us. It may be a sad poem to the ears of some, but to one who is grieving, it might sound less like sadness and more like the truth. Sometimes time stops and we seem to have no choice but to stop with it.

This is what the valley is. Taking a walk through the dark bits of life.

The difficulty in taking a time-out, as we all know, and as Judas is so quick to point out in this story, is that the world goes on even as we grieve. We are still needed, our work is not over. Now, John tells us that Judas does not have pure motives in his statement, but that doesn’t make his statement untrue. It just makes him a bit of a jerk.

He brings up a difficult quandary though: how to we take time out, when our work and service are unfinished, when there are so many in need? How do we balance these needs? The need to grieve, to walk the valley of the shadow, and the need to serve and take care of others?

There are many people who have used this passage over the years to justify keeping a status quo in the world, to justify ignoring the needs of others. After all, Jesus says to Judas, “the poor are always with us.”  But I hope you would agree, taking any comment, particularly one from Jesus, out of context, is a recipe for at best, misunderstanding at best and most often, bad theology.

Jesus’ words here sometimes twisted to mean that working for justice is not important. But make no mistake, these words don’t erase Jesus’ life’s work for bringing about the kingdom of God for all.  Jesus was walking a bit of a tightrope with his reply. Of course there were people with needs they must serve around them: to ignore that fact would be to ignore Jesus’ entire ministry. But Jesus also loved, and his response was pastoral.

Churches find themselves in this balancing act all of the time: serving the world outside, and providing pastoral care for those within its walls. Both are important, and I would say that for a church to thrive, you cannot have one without the other – a balancing act I imagine you are facing in some of your conversations in this interim period.

And Jesus’ response to Judas can help us walk that tightrope. Maybe Mary would have been useless if she had tried to go out and serve in her state of mourning. May this is Jesus the pastor saying, “you are human and you can’t be all things to all people at all times.” Take a time out.

There are various biblical sources that site Mary Magdalene’s great ministry after jesus’ death. She didn’t sit and wail for the rest of her life. She journeyed the valley of the shadow and honored her love of Jesus, and her love of God. And then went out into the world with her love.

For, make no mistake, love and grief go hand in hand. We tend to think of the opposite of grief as joy, but I would actually say it’s something closer to apathy or hate.

For grief is required when we love. We would never miss or be saddened by a loss that we didn’t care about. Which, at least for me, is hopeful in itself. Grief is an expression of great love. Mary Magdalene, seeing the beginning of the end as we hear at the end of the story that Jesus has made too much noise raising Lazarus, the authorities are becoming suspicious, has great love and thus, great grief.

I don’t know what your Holy Week looks like. For our busy family, sometimes it’s sometimes all I can do to explain that Easter can’t happen without Good Friday to my children. But this year, my daughter’s METHODIST preschool is holding an easter egg hunt on Good Friday so the message sometimes gets lost in the din of culture, and in a child’s excitement for an impending day full of chocolate.

Perhaps, since we so often miss the lessons of Good Friday (let alone the church services), Mary can be our reminder today. The Good News today is that we cannot rise from the ashes, without first going through the fire. Resurrection does not happen without the crucifixion. We cannot expect to get to the other side of the valley of grief, without first walking down into the shadows. It’s okay to walk that path. You’ll find comfort and companionship for the hard road.

Perhaps for some of you, this doesn’t sounds like Good News at all, but just sounds depressing. But consider that during our long Saturday vigil awaiting the Easter dawn, we await in HOPE.

Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous wrote, “Hold your face up to the light, even though for the moment you do not see.” There is hope in the darkness, there is security in knowing that there is a great love that will never let you go, even in grief, ESPECIALLY in grief. The love will never leave.

Consider this your permission slip for a Time-Out if and when you need one. Sit quietly. Write. Pray. Honor the love in your heart. The world will be ticking on, and you can join back in with Mary when the Easter Dawn rises. Amen.