The cost of loving

Lent 5 year C Sermon 13 

 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 very expensive perfume she and her sister …have saved for Jesus’ burial…Mary tells Jesus by her actions...

If you don’t survive the next few weeks...
I want you to know I love you
and I want you to know it now!

Mary shows Jesus… costly.. extravagant wasteful love...the kind of love the father showed in the parable of the prodigal son... last week. And costly love...is the kind of love Jesus will show… during his last days in Jerusalem...

and it’s the same kind of love Jesus asks his followers to show. Love that costs and extends us for the sake of another.

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Children know this intuitively don’t they…I was charmed by how children in another church answered their minister when they were asked what love looks like…

one eight year old replied right away…

well when my nanna gets all stiff and sore and can’t

bend over to paint her toenails anymore…my grandpa does it for her. I think that's what love is.

OR a six year old...says "Love... is when you give somebody most of your chips…without
making them give you any of theirs."

Another child says: "Love is what makes daddy smile when he’s tired." And another… when mummy makes coffee for daddy and takes a sip of it first...
to make sure it tastes OK."

Or how about this one... "Love... is what’s in the room with you at Christmas... when you stop opening your presents and just look around."

Another eight year old showed wisdom beyond his age when he said... "If you want to learn to love better,
you should start with a friend you hate,"

Or how about "Love is like a little old woman and a little old man... who are still friends... even after they’ve known each other a very long time."

Or "Love is when my puppy licks my face...

even after I left him alone all day."

But the very best example I heard of a child’s intuitive understanding of love…was this one

It’s the story of a four year old whose eighty year old neighbor recently lost his wife.
When the little boy saw the man sitting outside crying in his garden, he ran across the boundary... and climbed into the old man’s lap, and just sat there quietly.

All the while his mum....is watching out the kitchen window...

When the little boy comes back home
his mother asks him what he and the neighbor talked about…

oh we didn’t talk about anything…said the little boy…
I just helped him cry" [pause…………]

And on Jesus last journey to Jerusalem…in our Bible story today…you could say Mary…is helping Jesus cry.

Mary is beginning to engage in the grief process they’ll all almost certainly face... in just a couple of weeks because they love Jesus.

And it costs her…She’s willing to pour out all her perfume…willing to risk the ridicule of Judas...
before it’s too late to let Jesus know
how much she loves him...

And also in our readings…Paul writes from prison about this costly love for Jesus to the suffering church
at Philippi

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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... 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]

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You see the nard Mary uses… to anoint Jesus’ feet ...isn’t just some ten dollar pot from the body shop…

In first century Judea…Nard was a rare and expensive perfume imported from India.

In Mary’s culture and tradition...nard is associated with
the grief of love and with death. Remember how after the crucifixion…Nicodemus will bring spices for Jesus’ burial and how the women… come the next day
to anoint Jesus body again. And all this fits together subtly of course because Jesus is also the anointed one of God…

the Greek word Christos… meansthe anointed one.
The Hebrew word Messiah means the anointed one.

The story of a woman anointing Jesus...

is embedded in every Gospel account...of Jesus suffering and death. And in Mark… Jesus tells us...
people will always remember her for this.
And so we do....

We tend to remember costly love like this…if we notice it.... And the physical and emotional and spiritual suffering we endure when we love this way costs us doesn’t it…
it’s the pain of inexaustible love… shown in the story of the prodigal son…it the energy and exhaustion…
the huge effort the shepherd expends
 to find his lost sheep...

It’s Jesus mother’s anguish and grief as she weeps at the foot of the cross.

when you and I are sitting with a loved one who’s dying

or looking for a lost child… my guess is we’re unlikely to care whether anyone points out what a waste of our time it is…or argue the way Judas did…
about the practicality of loving this way...

You know there used to be a time…maybe ten years ago when people in our church would argue about showing costly love to our community…why feed the skiers and snowboarders…even… why feed the JAG girls after school…why charge so little for funerals
for those who don’t come to church.

Judas’ complained to Mary...
why waste good burial oil… on the living…

But what if Mary’d stopped right there and embarrassed apologized and put the Nard away for later…

it seems to me that if Mary’d paid attention to Judas
we would all have lost a teaching
at the very centre of our faith...

A teaching that illustrates Jesus’ command to love one another as he loved us...and what’s more…to take this commandment …to the ends of the earth...
As Jesus showed us… loving as he loved…as God loves…
always was… is …and will be costly.
Not the emotion of loving…but the follow through…
in the costly life of loving

As Christ’s Body through the power of the Holy Spirit we are called to this costly kind love…

This costly love is what it means to be a Christian... what it means to be in a committed relationship...
first with Jesus Christ...in true devotion... honouring him…with our lives... by pouring ourselves out
for one another and for the world he came to save in costly love.