SERMON A Certain Passion

Lent5(C): Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

No good deed goes unpunished. Clair Booth Luce apparently said this, although I’m not sure she had the wit to do so. “No good deed goes unpunished” sounds more like Dorothy Parker, who said, “you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” And, “If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.”

No good deed goes unpunished. How many times have you heard that said? How many times have you found it true? Well, Mary wasn’t punished. Maybe that’s because Mary’s deed wasn’t good. It was outrageous.

Today’s Gospel is an extraordinary account of devotion. As one commentator says, “Mary’s anointing of Jesus offers a beautiful demonstration of gratitude, love, and devotion.” And, he might have added, fear. This is a tremendous event. A penultimate event. An event preparing for death. For embalming. And for resurrection.

If we read this story with sentimental eyes, we will miss its meaning. A close reading leads to puzzles. A passionate reading leads to the Passion. Let’s try to do both.

First of all, the story presents many puzzles. People are not anointed on the feet. They are anointed with oil on the head. Virtuous women in Jesus’ world did not let down their hair. Whores did. Nard perfume was not simply costly. In today’s economy 300 denarii would be worth around $12,000 (Judas had a point about selling it and giving to the poor!). Jesus said Mary bought the perfume for his funeral. But Mary dumped the perfume on Jesus’ feet while he was still alive.

If we look to the other Gospels to solve these puzzles, things get even more confused. Mark (14: 3-9) places the story in the house of Simon, a leper. An unnamed woman pours perfume on Jesus’ head from an alabaster jar. Some there are angry for the wasting of perfume that might have been sold to help the poor. Jesus rebukes them, saying “she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”

Luke (7: 36-38) places the story in the house of Simon, a Pharisee. The location is Galilee, not Bethany. The woman is a sinner, who weeps on Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair. She then kisses his feet and anoints them with ointment. Simon wonders how Jesus can let a sinner touch his feet. Jesus criticizes Simon for not offering water to wash his feet while the woman offered her tears.

Matthew (26: 6-13) tells essentially the same story as John, although it is all the disciples, not simply Judas, who are outraged at the waste of money.

Several commentators indicate that many of these contradictions can be explained by a possible blending of two original stories. The first involves a sinner woman in Galilee who weeps and dries Jesus’ feet. She applies no oil. The scandal in this story is over a woman uncovering and loosening her hair in Jesus’ presence. The second story, set in Bethany, involves a woman named Mary who anoints Jesus’ head with oil to show her love. The scandal in this story is over the wasting of expensive perfume.

If these stories are melded in the Gospel accounts, they nevertheless serve a coherent purpose to John. John puts this story at the threshold of the Passion narrative to make a point. He uses the story to anticipate the death and burial and resurrection. John is leading us to the Passion. To understand John’s story, we need to give it a passionate reading.

The Gospel of John has two major sections. The first twelve chapters present the ministry of Jesus. The second half of the Gospel covers the last week of Jesus’ life. This latter section begins with the farewell discourses of Jesus as he prepares his disciples for his death, and is followed by the Passion narrative and the resurrection appearances.

Mary of Bethany’s story is placed near the end of the first section of the Gospel. It is a pivotal story, pointing toward the days in Jerusalem and specifically toward the death of Jesus. John clearly would have recognized the contradictions we can see. But he turned them metaphorically into something else. For John, this is a story pointing to burial of a body, not to anointing a king. Anointing feet with perfume (as opposed to anointing the head or washing the feet) is a metaphor for embalming the body. Mary performed a devotional act, not a kingly act. The value of the perfume she used pales in comparison to the expression of her love and her understanding.

Heightening the drama, John makes Judas Mary’s opponent. And then he drives the point to extremes by calling Judas a thief and impugning his motives. John sets Mary and Judas against each other to intensify the significance of Mary’s loving extravagance. It is an extravagance on a cosmic level. The scene points to the coming struggle in Jerusalem.

This story seems to turn conventional ethics on its head. It seems to overturn Jesus’ own ethics of the kingdom. Judas almost quotes Jesus: sell all you have and give to the poor (Matthew 19: 21). This is why Mary’s act is outrageous. Her extravagance seems unjustifiable. Only one circumstance can justify it. Jesus says, “Leave her alone. She bought it to keep for the day of my embalming.” He speaks with passion.

The word passion means suffering. It’s a loaded word. For Christians, its roots are in crucifixion and death. It begins with Jesus’ suffering. It continues with Mary’s agony at the cross. It returns in the martyrdom of early Christians. It endures in the wounds of peasants.

In our modern society, we cannot easily comprehend these passions. Our Lenten self- denials are shadows of more extreme expressions in more passionate times. Instead, we associate passion with any intense emotion, not just suffering -- “they made passionate love,” “she sang passionately,” “he argued with passion,” “she killed him in a fit of passion.” And then there are Yeats’s words, which seem to fit our times so awfully: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

And, as with so much of our experience, we have psychologized passion. We give it sentimental names. Compassion. Sympathy. Synchronized emotion. Bill Clinton biting his lower lip as he feels our pain. Crying when others cry.

Christian passion is different. It is centered on a real event, not on a feeling. Paul expresses it clearly in today’s Epistle text: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” There is no resurrection without suffering -- for Jesus or for us.

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No good deed goes unpunished. Indeed. We think that statement is ironic because we expect that good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished. We know there are exceptions, but we trivialize them by saying “No pain, no gain.” We say it is better to give than to receive because we like that warm feeling we get when we see ourselves behave well.

Paul is saying something different. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” Paul doesn’t mean literally climbing the cross. He doesn’t mean ignoring the poor while we flagellate ourselves. Paul means that our redemption was obtained with suffering. Like Mary, we can express our gratitude by never forgetting this. As we look around us, we can never say, “I worked for what I got and you didn’t.” We can never say to our neighbor, “You suffer because God condemns what you did. We can never say, “You suffer because God condemns people like you.”

Mary’s act was indeed extravagant. The ultimate reminder that, whatever happens, whatever happens to us, the only thing we can feel is gratitude.

March 21, 2010

Leland Wilkinson

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago