5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 1 Several years ago, a ministerial friend of mine told me I needed to watch a film called Babette s Feast. It s a French film. You have to read subtitles. I can see the excitement on your faces already. I was having the same reaction, but out of respect for my friend, I rented the movie and settled in to watch it one evening. I m not sure I ve been the same since. There are roughly 452 sermon illustrations in the movie, but be not afraid. I m going to make a long story short and focus on the ending. Babette is a gourmet cook who winds up fleeing for her life during a tough political time in France. She washes up on the shore of a Danish village. And the villagers, without asking any questions, take her in and love her. The villagers are used to the blandest food on the planet until Babette comes along. When she starts cooking for them everyone s mood improves. Old men get their hope back. Enemies become friends. The sick are made well. Babette receives a safe home and in return she blesses her hosts with her culinary gifts. Then she leaves. The political climate changes in France, and in a manner I don t fully remember, she receives a small fortune in a lottery. So she kisses her adoptive village goodbye, which makes everyone sad and the food goes straight downhill. Then, unexpectedly, Babette returns, this time with a boat load of goodies. Exotic foods, game and fowl, spices no one has
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 2 heard of. She announces she has decided to prepare a feast for the village. With the help of some locals she cooks day and night, serves course after course, until everyone is dancing and singing and blessing their lucky stars. Two sisters, leaders in the village, approach Babette following the meal. They thank her for being so good to them. And they tell her that when she leaves again they will remember her always. Then Babette drops the bomb. She can t leave. Why can t she leave? She can t leave because she spent all of her fortune, all of it, on this meal. She had been desperate. She had nowhere else to go. The village let her in and saved her from death. She was forever indebted to them. The meal was her thank you. And her gratitude was so big, she spent everything she had. We re talking today about our need to say thank you. Sometimes only large gifts will do, laid at the feet of the one to whom we re indebted. We ve received so much we can t contain ourselves. The gift we ve been given overflows in gratitude back to the source. Mary and Martha were having a great dinner party, and it s important that we go over the guest list. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, was there, which sounds so strange to us we can barely believe it. Lazarus, the once dead man now walking, raised by Jesus after four days in the tomb, was reclining at the table with
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 3 all the other guests. This was a resurrection meal and we haven t even gotten to the cross, yet, in John s gospel, as if God s power to save was already being poured out on the earth. Jesus was there, too. In fact, he was the guest of honor for bringing Lazarus back to life. The party was the family s way of saying thank you to Jesus, the Giver of Life, and the sisters laid out heavy cash so that lots of people could enjoy the moment. But the extravagance was just getting started. At some point between courses or after dessert Mary brought out from her storehouse a pound of nard. That doesn t sound very sophisticated, but nard was perfume, and a pound of it represented substantial savings, equal to enough lottery money to send your kid to college for a couple of years, 300 days wages. And you thought Channel was proud of its fragrances. Mary poured all of the nard, 43 weekly paychecks, on Jesus s feet. Not one cubic centimeter of perfume remained. And with her hair, she began to rub the whole pound of ointment into his skin. We re supposed to be shocked. Why would anyone pour out this much perfume on one person? It s like serving the birthday boy the whole cake and all of ice cream. The offering is fifty times more than the recipient can use. The feet of Jesus would have been slathered and dripping with ointment. What s the point?
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 4 The point is Mary can t hold back. God has given her so much in Jesus - hope greater than death, life in his name - a hundred jars of nard wouldn t be enough. Don t get hung up on the size of the gift versus the need of the recipient. Let the gift be the measure of the giver s gratitude. And the sweet smell filled the whole house! We don t have to be rich to say thank you to Jesus, but we do have to be generous. What do we have, given where we find ourselves, that would be a fitting thank offering to our Lord? And I think you already know the answer, even if today, because of the place you re standing, gratitude is hard to come by. The widow of Zarepheth certainly wasn t wealthy, and she was certainly struggling to give thanks. She had to make her gift through clinched teeth, the last bit of meal and oil she owned baked for a wild stranger named Elijah. Yet even she learned of God s abundance. Though drought and famine gripped her land, her flask and flour bin stayed full until the rains returned as the prophet promised. Sometimes we make our offering out of sheer obedience without an overwhelming sense of gratitude. And if you ve been there, down to scraps, making a gift for no other reason than you are commanded to, there s no shame in that. But today at Mary s house, we are in a different place. Unlike the widow of Zarephath, Mary isn t having to wait for God
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 5 to be good to her. Her eyes have been opened to deep channels of grace already flowing in, up and around her through Jesus. And so, she is eager to return love to the one who first loved her. And us? What do you give to the one who knows us better than we know ourselves, who has come not to condemn us, but so we might have life in his name? We aren t anywhere close to the cross yet in John s gospel, but already whatever divides God from human beings has been wiped out. In Jesus, God is with us. His presence means food for our hungers, release from our fears and deep connections with one another in this otherwise lonely, lonely world. We have LIFE in his name in spite of the forces working to undo us. So what do we offer? How do we say thanks? What gift do we bring? It will have to be extravagant. The gift will have to be large to the point of being wasteful. There s a time to save your pennies, and there s a time to split the piggy bank wide open. You don t have to be rich to show thanks, but generous, yes. And I think you already know the great gift begging to be given. Do you not? The gift is: yourself. Judas did not give himself to Jesus. He was more of a taker. He feigned care for the poor. But according to John s gospel, he was less concerned about those in need and more concerned about lining his pockets from the common purse of the
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 6 disciples. We can follow his argument. 300 denarii would buy a lot of bread for the homeless, a lot of electricity for the underemployed, a bunch of clothes for the naked and a good lawyer for the oppressed. Wouldn t it be better, and more in line with Jesus, to sell the nard and give the profit to hurting people in the neighborhood? Judas makes a good point. But he doesn t really want to give. He wants to keep, to save, to protect himself. Mary, on the other hand, has already made up her mind. This person is worth all she has to give. Like us, Mary has been saving up. She s been waiting, guarding herself, not because she s stingy, but because you don t just pour out your life for anybody. And she s decided that he s the one. He brought her brother back from the dead and life back to her house. It s time to break the piggy bank. The ointment is a fitting symbol: extravagant, over the top, more than is needed to do the job. But the ointment isn t the gift. The great gift is her life. Jesus, I m yours. Jim and Ruby Gray were two of the most practical people you might ever meet. Some of us remember them and their silent, faithful participation in the church across many years. Neither of them spent much on themselves. Outside of Sunday, Ruby s preferred outfit was a sweat shirt and work pants. They worked hard at home and at the convenience store on Church Street, saving their pennies. But please don t get the idea that they were stingy.
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 7 Jim and Ruby took care of struggling people, giving milk and bread to families who didn t have what they needed to survive. They also paid attention to the needs of their family and church family, and shared their resources to help them to thrive. And when they died, the Grays left hundreds of thousands of dollars to the church, the income from which continues to feed hungry people, body and soul, as would be pleasing to Jim and Ruby. Why were they so generous? They were grateful. They had been on the receiving end of God s extraordinary gift in Jesus, and gladly they poured out what they had saved up in his honor. And notice, when they said thank you, there wasn t less for the poor, but more! I m not joking when I tell you that I need to confess my sin. My sin was failing to understand the gift that was given. We helped someone pay her light bill recently. Believe it or not, her first name was Mary. She came back to the church about a week after we helped her with a plastic bag full of toboggans she had knitted. She obviously worked hard on them, and they were well done. But most of us wouldn t wear them because of the color and the style. The first question that came to my mind: what are we going to do with these toboggans? My first question should have been: who is the gift for, and the second, what is she saying through the gift? The gift wasn t
5 th Sunday in Lent, Year B, 3/22/2015, Greeneville, Tennessee 8 just to us, was it? And what was she saying not just to us? Thank you? And so I have these hats in my office, little pieces of Mary s self, and if you would like to take one home today, I think the sweet fragrance will fill up the whole house! I know the greatest gift I have to offer to Jesus. And this morning I hope and pray that my need to give thanks will be greater than my need to hold on. How I long to say finally without any reservation, Lord, I m yours.