April 7, Tim Hughes Williams. Sermon: Extra

Transcription

1 April 7, 2019 Tim Hughes Williams Sermon: Extra The Hebrew Scripture Reading: Isaiah 43:16-21 Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, 17 who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: 18 Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. 19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. 20 The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, 21 the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise. The Gospel Scripture Reading: John 12: Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus feet, and wiped them [a] with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But 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 [b] and the money given to the poor? 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a 1

2 thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, Leave her alone. She bought it [c] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. Sermon: Extra This might seem a little strange to say but some of the fondest memories I have with my extended family are from funerals, or more specifically, the funeral repast afterwards. There s all of this terrible tension in the funeral service itself that sometimes blossoms into something beautiful at the dinner table or the bar. There was one season in a particular a few years back when three members of my family died within six months of each other my grandmother, my uncle, and our dear family friend - and we found ourselves returning to North Carolina again and again, shell-shocked and grieving. It was an awful time and yet I couldn t help but notice a certain vibe around the table after the service we laughed and cried a little harder. Everything was sort of locked into focus. It s not that mysterious, really. I usually see these people at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. Those occasions are ritualized within an inch of their life I can tell you right now what we will have for Christmas dinner or what board game will be played when the dishes are cleared away or even what order we ll all go to bed after my dad stretches out his arms fully and says, Well, I think I m gonna turn in. The funeral repast, on the other hand. There s no script for that. It s like the absence of loved ones throws the rest of us our fragile, finite lives into stark relief. We really see each other. We might actually mean it when we ask How are you doing? And what will we decide to do with the precious time we have together? I have to think there was something of that kind of vibe at the dinner party in Bethany recounted in John 12. *** For starters, it is a small dinner party in honor of Jesus. I m always fascinated by these domestic scenes involving Jesus. How does one behave at a dinner party with Jesus? What is your go-to small talk question? And let s add this question: what is the etiquette for attending a dinner party where a guest was previously 2

3 deceased? I don t recall Anne Landers ever speaking to it. That s Lazarus situation. Lazarus, beloved brother of Mary and Martha, was days dead and buried just a chapter earlier. It had gotten to the point when Mary was discouraging visitors because the smell of death was so strong. So Lazarus had been dead and now he wasn t, because Jesus finally arrived. In fact, the first thing Lazarus saw, eyes blinking as he emerged from the darkness of the tomb, was the tear-stained face of his friend. Maybe you don t bounce right back from something like that? I would venture to say that nothing was normal about this dinner party. Given what had recently transpired and what was about to happen, Mary and Martha, Lazarus had crossed over into a world in which nothing is really business as usual anymore. And yet, you ve still got to eat. And so they find themselves back at the dinner table. We also have to locate this story in the larger trajectory of John s narrative. Each of the Gospels has a slightly different timeline, but as John tells it, the raising of Lazarus triggered a real panic among the religious authorities. It was a kind of tipping point, and they were worried enough to have called a meeting of the council of the chief priests. This man is performing many signs, they said in Chapter 11. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation. They concluded, with a sort of brutal accounting, that it was worth killing Jesus to save themselves. It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed, says Caiaphas. So they began to spread the word, looking for where Jesus might be hiding so that they could arrest him. The various narrative threads that will tighten until they converge around Jesus betrayal and death are drawing closer. Add this layer of political danger to a dinner party that is already full of layers and you are on your way to understanding what Mary does next. *** 3

4 We get so little detail here but it s enough to paint a picture. Martha, being Martha, is scurrying around the house to make sure the meal is ready to be served. Lazarus is reclining at the table, sort of just marveling at the air that is still flowing in and out of his lungs with every breath. Jesus is somewhere in the room, as are some other friends. Presumably they ve just chatting, waiting for the green light to eat. Mary goes into a closet or a cabinet and grabs this pound of costly perfume. Other gospels say that it was contained in a beautiful alabaster container that Mary unceremoniously broke open. She brought the perfume over to Jesus and poured the entire pound over his feet. John says that the entire house was filled with the fragrance. She then proceeded to wipe off the excess perfume with her hair. If the thought of this makes you feel uncomfortable, well, yeah. Jesus friends would have been no less uncomfortable. In addition to the strangeness of Mary s actions, they were also a pretty flagrant violation of gender roles. Both foot-washing and anointing were tasks typically performed by same-sex servants. To be a woman, and a friend, and to use your hair this would be perceived as inappropriate and unbearably sensual. I imagine a growing silence in the room as everyone s attention is directed to Mary s actions. Judas breaks the silence: Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor? His question is not unreasonable three hundred denarii is about a year s wages. That s a lot of money that was just poured onto the floor. To use some reality television lingo, Judas is absolutely given the villain edit in this story the narrator interrupts twice to remind us that Judas is a liar and a thief. He doesn t care about the poor, and he is about to betray Jesus. Ok. But I find myself wishing his perspective here was presented without all of the editorializing, because that would force us to grapple with the difficult issues he s raising. Judas is invoking equity, justice, stewardship, responsibility. And yes, he may be doing it cynically. God knows there are plenty of politicians and preachers in Baltimore and everywhere who know how to invoke the poor without caring much about the poor. But his protest reminds us that there is this tension between judicious stewardship between fairness - and this outrageous, 4

5 extravagant outpouring of love. We can t be so reckless, he says. We can t just pour out all our resources in this over-the-top show of affection when there are so many people in our city and in our world who don t know where their next meal is coming from. It s not fair. It s interesting to read this text right after last week s encounter with the prodigal son, right? Judas is sounding an awful lot like the older brother, fuming over the injustice of this extravagant, wasteful, irrational act. And once again, Jesus is on the other side of the fence. Leave her alone, he says. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me (12:8). *** This is embarrassing to admit but Perry who is slightly younger than me is constantly educating me about the latest slang usually because I m seeing something on social media that doesn t quite make sense. It s hard to keep up. So a few years ago when I heard people being described as extra I wasn t really sure I knew what that meant. If you read the manuscript of this sermon you will find a helpful article in the footnotes, What Does Extra Mean? The Slang Term For All The Drama Queens In Your Life. 1 The article breaks it all down. Being extra is defined as over the top, excessive, dramatic behavior. Way too much. Perhaps Urban Dictionary provides the best definition of being extra: doing the damn most. We all have a friend who is a little extra. In some cases, the friend is you. When I was in college, I worked in Admissions with a middle-aged woman named Joanne. She was the definition of extra. She was very dramatic prone to extreme eye rolls or loud laughter. She wore costumes to work for no obvious reason. What s this? Joanne is dressed as an elf today? I m not even going to ask. We honestly tried not to encourage her because it was both embarrassing and 1 What Does Extra Mean?: This Slang Term Is For the Drama Queens In Your Life, by Maddy Foley, Bustle.com, February 1,

6 annoying but at the same time we kind of loved it, you know? It gave us something to talk about at lunch. WWJD What Would Joanne Do? The costumes were one thing, but the extra-ness that elevated Joanne from regular to legendary status was her painted bedsheets. I don t know when she did it the first time years before I worked with her. When it was someone s birthday or anniversary or even high school graduation Joanne would take a cotton bedsheet and tie it up between two trees in her front yard and then spray paint these huge messages on them. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACHEL! or CONGRATS, BOBBY! YOU DID IT or HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MIKE AND JANET. She was like the town crier of good news and encouragement. Extra. It was a source of some consternation all these bedsheets. They were, after all, decidedly more expensive than poster board. How was she doing this? Was she somehow washing them? Did she have connections to some sort of bedsheet black market? We never found out, but the sheets and messages just kept coming, whether you wanted them or not. I think we can safely call Mary s anointing extra. It was uncalled for, in every sense of that word. No one called for it. Putting a perfume like nard on a person s feet was the sort of anointing reserved for a king in fact, nard was used in exactly this manner in contemporary Egyptian cultures. But even in the case of a royal anointing a smaller amount of perfume would be used. The sheer volume of Mary s perfume evoked not just an anointing but also an embalming. In a fairly literal sense, Mary s action marks Jesus for death. Who knows how long the smell lingered on his body? Perhaps he could still smell it in the final terrible moments of his life on the cross. Leave her alone, Jesus says, she bought it for the day of my burial. He understands, even if no one else does, what this action means. Mary is a prophet. The anointing is not just an act but also a message. Mary understands more deeply than the perpetually confused disciples, that they are no longer in normal time. They are at the funeral repast for a death that has not even occurred yet. Their precious, finite lives are thrown into stark relief and normal, measured actions no longer make sense. There are about five sermons that could be preached here sermons about women as prophets, preachers, and priests. Sermons about sensuality and the 6

7 body of Jesus. Sermons about piety and poverty and hypocrisy. I m tempted. But today we re just going to have to contain ourselves to this simple idea which will lead us through the days of Holy Week that are right around the corner. The Gospel is extra. *** I had been out of college for several years when I learned the Joanne had been diagnosed with leukemia. It was sort of unthinkable, really. She was the definition of a life force and the thought of her becoming diminished was somehow even more upsetting than all of the outrageous behavior we had endured over the years. I m only speculating because I never saw her again but I like to think of her wearing absurd hats and cracking jokes well into her treatment. It s just hard to imagine it any other way. I didn t make it to the funeral we weren t quite that close but I was undone when I heard what happened that day. Bedsheets strung tree to tree all over town. People who had clucked for decades about her wasteful habits found themselves pulling linens out of their own closets and spray-painting them. GOOD BYE JOANNE, they said. REST IN PEACE. WE LOVE YOU. THANKS FOR ALL THE MEMORIES. That story made me cry. It still does. Why all of the emotion? Because I think it taps into something we just instinctively know to be true. As much as we believe in justice, fairness, responsibility, stewardship. As much as all of those things are good and right and true, at its heart we know that the Gospel is not actually about that. It includes and transcends it. The Gospel isn t fair, or responsible. It s not a proper accounting of your life s work all your good deeds stacked up against your bad ones. It s not a sort of brutal math about whose life is most valuable or whether or not you deserve to live or love. The Gospel is extra. It s too much. It s over-the-top. It makes people uncomfortable because it s way more than you need. It spills over your feet and all over the floor. 7

8 In our hearts I think we know that every human life is worth that kind of love. Every human life deserves the dignity of abundance. Every life deserves that parting glass, filled to brimming and toasting you on your way out of one life and into another. That s what we were about in those funeral dinners that s why there was life still crackling inside of those sad days. So here s to Joanne, parton saint of doing the most. And here s to my grandmother Marjie, and my uncle Ralph, and your dearly departed. Here s to Mary, who had eyes to see that we should treasure these moments we have because they are everything and we will not always have them. And here is to Jesus, whose story is only just beginning today, as we turn the corner towards the cross. These will be difficult days but they will shine a light on things so easy to forget. Like how valuable you are. Like how far he will go to let you know. Amen. 8