Lent 5 year C Sermon 07 Helping Jesus cry - the anointing
If you don’t survive this... I want you to know I love you.
Mary isn’t going to save her love for later.
The cost of loving Jesus starts right now.
In a week his life will hang in the balance
and Mary knows it...
and so does everyone else in the room.
And so with her hands and her hair...
and with the costly perfume
she’s saved for Jesus’ burial...
Mary seems to be saying...If you don’t survive this... at least I want you to know I love you.
Costly love...the kind of love Mary shows...
is costly...the kind of love Jesus shows during his last hours in Jerusalem... is costly love. The kind of love Jesus asks his followers to show...
followers like Mary...followers like us.
You know children intuitively
understand that kind of love. Someone asked an eight year old what love is... and her answer speaks volumes...
‘When my grandmother got arthritis,
she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time now, even when his hands get arthritis too. That's love she said."
And a six year old says...
"Love... is when you go out to eat...
and give somebody most of your chips...
without making them give you any of theirs."
Another child says: "Love is what makes you smile when you're tired."
Or when mummy makes coffee for daddy and takes a sip of it first... to make sure it tastes OK."
Or how about this one...I love this one...:
"Love... is what's in the room with you at Christmas... when you stop opening presents
and listen."
Another eight year old offers us this... "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend
you hate,"
or "Love is like a little old woman and a little old man... who are still friends...
even after they know each other so well."
Or "Love is when your puppy licks your face...
even after you left him alone all day."
But the very best one... I found...
in the wonderful email Cheryl sent me this very week
about children’s intuitive understanding of love...
the best one... was a four year old whose eighty year old next door neighbor had recently lost his wife.
When the little boy saw the man sitting crying in his garden, he ran across the boundary...
And climbed into his lap, and just sat there quietly.
All the while his mum.... is watching out the kitchen window... and when the little boy comes back home she asks him what he’d said to the neighbor, and the little boy, "Nothing, I just helped him cry" [pause]
You could say Mary was helping Jesus cry. At lunch that day... just a week before his entry into Jerusalem.
She’s already engaging in the grief process they’d almost certainly face... in just a short time. She’s willing to pour out all the perfume willing to risk the ridicule of Judas...before it’s too late to let Jesus know how much she loves him...
Costly love for Jesus is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the church at Philippi
For Jesus sake I’ve suffered the loss of all things,
and regard them as rubbish, so I may gain Christ and be found in him... not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law...but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings
by becoming like him in his death.’ [pause]
You see the nard Mary uses to anoint Jesus’ feet...
is a rare and expensive perfume imported from India.
In the culture of her time...
it’s associated with love and with death.
And in a very short time, Nicodemus will bring spices
to help Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus...
and the women will come to anoint Jesus body again:
The Greek word Christos means... the anointed one.
The Hebrew word Messiah means the anointed one.
Similar stories of a woman anointing Jesus...
are embedded in every Gospel account...
of Jesus passion and death. And in Mark’s story Jesus tells his followers...people will always remember her for this. And so we do...remember.
Love of this kind.... costs. And the pain we endure when we love this way costs us...the pain of... parental love shown in the story of the prodigal son, the huge effort taken by the shepherd to find the lost sheep...Jesus mother’s pain as she weeps at the foot of the cross.
My guess is that we’re unlikely to argue as Judas did.. about the practicality of loving this way...
when we are sitting with a loved one who’s dying
or when we’re looking for a lost child
So why then... do we argue about practicality when we talk about our mission of love as Christ’s Body the church our mission... to our community? It seems to me that like the Judas’ complaint...such arguments
take us away from the very centre of our faith...
arguing about practicality takes us away from Jesus’ command to love one another as he loved us...
and from Jesus’ request to take this commandment... to the ends of the earth....
I think arguments about the practicality of loving allow us to avoid true commitment...
and the costly love which goes with it.
As Christians...‘through worship praise and prayer... we’re called to know and love the God who already knows and loves us... and through sharing the mind of Christ and the fresh insight of the spirit we’re called to the costly love of others and all creation.
For, despite all our bad public relations to contrary, this costly love is what it means to be a Christian... what it means to be in committed relationship... first with Jesus Christ...in true devotion... honouring him... in his life, death and resurrection...
And next...and honouring him... by pouring ourselves out for one another in costly love.
In Jesus name... have the mandate
to affirm this costly love to all the world before it’s too late....
and whether Judas agrees... or not.
If you don’t survive this... I want you to know I love you.
Mary isn’t going to save her love for later.
The cost of loving Jesus starts right now.
In a week his life will hang in the balance
and Mary knows it...
and so does everyone else in the room.
And so with her hands and her hair...
and with the costly perfume
she’s saved for Jesus’ burial...
Mary seems to be saying...If you don’t survive this... at least I want you to know I love you.
Costly love...the kind of love Mary shows...
is costly...the kind of love Jesus shows during his last hours in Jerusalem... is costly love. The kind of love Jesus asks his followers to show...
followers like Mary...followers like us.
You know children intuitively
understand that kind of love. Someone asked an eight year old what love is... and her answer speaks volumes...
‘When my grandmother got arthritis,
she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time now, even when his hands get arthritis too. That's love she said."
And a six year old says...
"Love... is when you go out to eat...
and give somebody most of your chips...
without making them give you any of theirs."
Another child says: "Love is what makes you smile when you're tired."
Or when mummy makes coffee for daddy and takes a sip of it first... to make sure it tastes OK."
Or how about this one...I love this one...:
"Love... is what's in the room with you at Christmas... when you stop opening presents
and listen."
Another eight year old offers us this... "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend
you hate,"
or "Love is like a little old woman and a little old man... who are still friends...
even after they know each other so well."
Or "Love is when your puppy licks your face...
even after you left him alone all day."
But the very best one... I found...
in the wonderful email Cheryl sent me this very week
about children’s intuitive understanding of love...
the best one... was a four year old whose eighty year old next door neighbor had recently lost his wife.
When the little boy saw the man sitting crying in his garden, he ran across the boundary...
And climbed into his lap, and just sat there quietly.
All the while his mum.... is watching out the kitchen window... and when the little boy comes back home she asks him what he’d said to the neighbor, and the little boy, "Nothing, I just helped him cry" [pause]
You could say Mary was helping Jesus cry. At lunch that day... just a week before his entry into Jerusalem.
She’s already engaging in the grief process they’d almost certainly face... in just a short time. She’s willing to pour out all the perfume willing to risk the ridicule of Judas...before it’s too late to let Jesus know how much she loves him...
Costly love for Jesus is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the church at Philippi
For Jesus sake I’ve suffered the loss of all things,
and regard them as rubbish, so I may gain Christ and be found in him... not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law...but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings
by becoming like him in his death.’ [pause]
You see the nard Mary uses to anoint Jesus’ feet...
is a rare and expensive perfume imported from India.
In the culture of her time...
it’s associated with love and with death.
And in a very short time, Nicodemus will bring spices
to help Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus...
and the women will come to anoint Jesus body again:
The Greek word Christos means... the anointed one.
The Hebrew word Messiah means the anointed one.
Similar stories of a woman anointing Jesus...
are embedded in every Gospel account...
of Jesus passion and death. And in Mark’s story Jesus tells his followers...people will always remember her for this. And so we do...remember.
Love of this kind.... costs. And the pain we endure when we love this way costs us...the pain of... parental love shown in the story of the prodigal son, the huge effort taken by the shepherd to find the lost sheep...Jesus mother’s pain as she weeps at the foot of the cross.
My guess is that we’re unlikely to argue as Judas did.. about the practicality of loving this way...
when we are sitting with a loved one who’s dying
or when we’re looking for a lost child
So why then... do we argue about practicality when we talk about our mission of love as Christ’s Body the church our mission... to our community? It seems to me that like the Judas’ complaint...such arguments
take us away from the very centre of our faith...
arguing about practicality takes us away from Jesus’ command to love one another as he loved us...
and from Jesus’ request to take this commandment... to the ends of the earth....
I think arguments about the practicality of loving allow us to avoid true commitment...
and the costly love which goes with it.
As Christians...‘through worship praise and prayer... we’re called to know and love the God who already knows and loves us... and through sharing the mind of Christ and the fresh insight of the spirit we’re called to the costly love of others and all creation.
For, despite all our bad public relations to contrary, this costly love is what it means to be a Christian... what it means to be in committed relationship... first with Jesus Christ...in true devotion... honouring him... in his life, death and resurrection...
And next...and honouring him... by pouring ourselves out for one another in costly love.
In Jesus name... have the mandate
to affirm this costly love to all the world before it’s too late....
and whether Judas agrees... or not.
