Saturday, May 25, 2019

A Poverty of Extravagance


Sermon for SMHP, Year C, Lent V, April 7, 2019
John 12:1-8                         
          Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised 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.”

          I like to start with a little quiz, and it’s usually a word thing, but today…it’s math!  It’s a fairly simple problem so shout out your answers.
          [Slide 1] 
          A baseball and bat cost $1.50 together. 
          The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. 
          àHow much is the ball?

          How many say 50 cents?
          It’s 25 cents.  The ball is 25 cents.  The bat is $1.25, a dollar more than the ball.

          If you said fifty cents…cheer up:  according to scientists, you’re more likely to be a person of faith.  If you figured it out, well…actually, you’re just a logical person of faith.  Unlike the people who study the brain, we don’t actually reinforce the false dichotomy between logic and faith.
          This little puzzle is one of many little teasers designed to show that our brains aren’t always as methodical as we think they are.  They often take a shortcut by seeing what seems like the right answer.  Scientists call that intuition.  Intuition sees $1.50 and $1.00 more, and says that the ball in the puzzle costs fifty cents.
          Wanna do another one?
          [Slide 3]—move three matchsticks and make the same fish swim in a different direction.
          Give 30 seconds or so, then show answer.
          Our brains sometimes focus right in on what seems to be the right answer, or make up rules that aren’t there. 
          I put one in your Insert as well.  If you’ve done the nine dot puzzle before, just play along.  The task is to draw four straight lines and connect all of the dots, without lifting your pencil, pen, finger.
          Give 30 seconds or so, then show answer.
           Our brains want to stay inside the box.  But you have to get outside.  Here’s a solution.  Here’s a similar one, started from another point.  Here’s one that I think it cheating.  It will appeal to the folks who don’t mind getting outside the lines.
          And with that, we finally get to the part of this sermon that is about Jesus.  And about the scandalous thing he said that day in Bethany.
          Which was?  What does Jesus say at the end of our lesson?
          You always have the poor with you.
          How much brain power has been spent trying to understand what the heck Jesus meant there.  If you Google it, both “You always have the poor with you” and “The poor will always be with you”—the two most common modern translations—you will get a billion and a half hits.
          On its face, there’s nothing particularly scandalous here.  Two thousand years later and we can say that there has never been a time in this world in which this was not true.  Maybe a couple of matrilineal societies in which everyone shared everything, but never a time when the world alleviated poverty.  Or even tried.
          We’ve been going backward in this country for decades now.  Here’s a chart of income share from 1980 to today.  The red line is the top one percent.  The blue line is the bottom twenty percent.  I call this chart, “Why I give my time to Stand Up KC.”
          Jesus is right.  It appears that we are hell bent—no pun intended—on coexisting with grinding poverty.  It’s why it is so important to fashion our lives on his teachings, and to witness to his concern for the poor.  If you want to take this phrase as a sign that we should do nothing about poverty in our midst, you might want to read the rest of the gospels.
          The poor will always be with us.  That’s why we need Jesus.  We need to lean in to his life, his teachings, his words.
          Like his last words in this lesson, which were not, “You always have the poor with you.”
          What are his last words?
          Those words get lost in this lesson, don’t they?  Like the space outside the dots or the matchsticks on the top.
          This whole lesson, from its first words, is a reminder to focus on what is important in the story of Jesus—to look at the whole picture and understand what it means for us.
          “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.”
          In Chapter One of this Gospel, Jesus comes on the scene and is announced by John the Baptist.  “Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
          You might know that I struggle, as a preacher, with John’s gospel, which is often highly metaphoric.  But what John gets one hundred percent right, and why we need this fourth, non-synoptic gospel, is in understanding the point of the Passion.
          Jesus, the lamb of God,  who takes away the sin of the world, went to dine at the home of his friends, in Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem, six days before the Passover.
          Everybody understand what John is saying to us here?  If not, look to the final words once again:  “You will always have the poor, but you will not always have me.” 
          While at his friends’ home, Mary anointed him for burial, starting with his feet.  The feet that had walked hundreds of miles preaching about the kingdom of God and the one and only true commandment upon which they all rest:  “love one another.”
          She anointed his feet and Judas launched The Religious Right by pretending to care about the poor but instead caring about the money, and the whole house was “filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”
          Filled with the smell of spikenard, a plant used to make an expensive oil often just called nard, which was commonly used to anoint bodies for burial.
          The whole house smelled like extravagance,
          and love,
          and death.
          Three things that our brains struggle to understand.  But smell often cuts through the dissonance in our brains.  It is our most evocative sense.  And the only way to truly understand this lesson is to sit with Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus, and Jesus, and inhale the fragrance of that room.  The lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, anointed with a pound of fragrant oil.
          We sit, my friends, at the doorway to the holiest time of the church year.  I want to suggest to you that you stop and smell the spikenard.
          [Slide]
          Give your brain a break over the next couple of weeks.  At least your linear, rational, logical brain.  Open your senses—see Jesus, taste the supper, hear the songs of lament and the songs of joy, smell the incense and the candles and the rain on Palm Sunday and the daybreak Easter breakfast.

          This story defies logic.  And that is okay.
          Jesus is with us.  Always and to the end of the age.  But this is only so because we walk with him through his Passover into suffering and death.  As we make our way through these days, we are formed to see and to tell what we see.
          Ultimately, it is these days which will form us as witnesses for Jesus Christ.  Those who know us will see in us a love, a hope, a joy, that defies logic, defies rational explanation. 
          It is a love that can stand at the foot of the cross.
          It is a hope that can keep vigil, all night long.
          It is a joy that lives a resurrection life, over and over again.
         
          Let us be holy witnesses, people of Christ!
          Witness our hope.  Witness our devastation.  Witness our love.  Witness our joy.

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