Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on April 3, 2022, the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8.
A month or two ago, I was told a story by a pastor in our presbytery. To make a long story short, the basic point was that each preacher basically has one sermon. Some preachers take a while to find it. I’ve been preaching regularly for about a year, and you all probably have some idea what my sermon is going to be about, right? I’m actually going to deviate a bit, so let’s see how it goes.
Jesus probably had more than one sermon, but then again, he was the son of God. That’s an unreasonable standard for a preacher. I would argue that the four Gospels represent four variations of his sermon. For example, in Luke, everything centers on the Jubilee. This year C of the lectionary spends most of the time in Luke. Perhaps that’s an indication to our congregation that when we are searching for a new pastor to lead us, we should remember Jesus’s message of the Jubilee and find someone to help us bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
The lectionary has three yearly cycles centered on the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In all three years, selections from the Gospel of John are sprinkled in. Today is one of those days. I’m grateful that Bob went away from the lectionary last week because his sermon on the raising of Lazarus is a great lead-in to today’s story. We find ourselves at the peak of Jesus’s ministry prior to the start of the passion story.
The Gospel of John has one central, controlling message: Jesus is God. There are seven miracle stories which are labeled as “signs.” They grow in scope from changing water into wine all the way to last week’s story of resuscitating Lazarus. Jesus has power over not just the physical world, but even life and death itself. The wedding at Cana indicates that Jesus is bringing about God’s reign. The raising of Lazarus culminates in the statement, “I am the resurrection and the life.” I AM. The name God tells to Moses, the name by which God has been known throughout the ages, Jesus takes on: I AM.
John builds his argument over the first eleven chapters. Jesus is God, Jesus is God, JESUS IS GOD. Just as the wine in Cana was abundant, equivalent to perhaps 600 bottles, the anointing that Mary did was extravagant. She used a pint or a pound of perfume. Today, we can buy a pint of spikenard for $50 from Amazon, but in Jesus’s day, it would have cost the equivalent of $30,000. Is that too much? Well, is anything too much for God-in-the-flesh? JESUS IS GOD.
After he has been anointed by Mary, he triumphantly enters Jerusalem on a donkey, and then the most profound scene in John’s Gospel: Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. At the very pinnacle of his ministry, when he has raised the dead and been anointed as the victorious Messiah, the Christ, and entered the holy city of Jerusalem, Jesus demonstrates what it means to be God-made-flesh: he serves his disciples as if he were a slave. We cannot comprehend the mystery of the Christ that we serve unless we consider all four scenes together: raising the dead, being anointed, triumphantly entering his city, and washing feet.
In the midst of this critical phase of his ministry, Jesus makes a famous statement, or perhaps it’s infamous. “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” This sentence has been used and abused over the centuries to say that Jesus condones poverty, that Jesus blames the poor for remaining poor, so don’t worry about them. The truth is exactly the opposite. This is an allusion to Deuteronomy 15, specifically verse 11. Deuteronomy is Moses’s instructions to the Israelites as he nears death and they near the Promised Land. The paragraph in question opens with, “If there is among you anyone in need, … do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.” It closes with, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” Moses talked at length about the importance of building a society in which there would not be anyone in need, but understood human nature enough to know that any society will fall short of God’s glory and result in some people being marginalized and left behind. We certainly see that in the world today. America is one of the most prosperous nations in the world, one of the most prosperous nations in human history, and yet 13% of Americans live in poverty. In 2021, more than 300,000 individuals experienced sheltered homelessness, and an unknown number were homeless and unsheltered. We are fortunate to have The Mission here in town, which so far has enabled over 200 individuals to escape homelessness, but not every town has such an effective organization striving to make a difference. Not only that, but in this age of globalization, we should think of the whole world as part of our responsibility. Close to 700 million people globally, more than 9% of the world’s population, live on less than $2 a day.
This is what Jesus meant. There will always be poor people because of human nature. We tend to take care of ourselves and the people close to us. That’s why the Bible talks so much about taking care of widows and orphans. They don’t have any family members who can care for them, so they are reliant on the community for their welfare.
At the peak of his ministry, Jesus reminded his disciples that society will always have people on the margins, so we should live lives of service to them. He demonstrated this servant attitude by washing his disciples’ feet. But what are we to make of the rest of his statement? “You will always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me”?
In Greek, there are two words for time. Chronos is the kind of time that you track with a watch. Kairos means something more like “timely.” Kairos time relates to the appropriateness of an action for the specific time. It’s knowing which action satisfies the highest value on your value stack. We all have a long list of values—safety, integrity, generosity, and so forth. We all have a long list of people and things that we value—ourselves, our families, our communities, and so forth. What is the most important, right now? Is it, for example, safety of ourselves or safety of our families? Well, that depends on the situation. As they say on airplanes, put on your own mask first. You can’t save your child if you pass out, so you have to take care of yourself.
Value stacks: we all have these competing values, and at any given time, one will be highest. Our challenge is to make sure the highest value is the right one. Jesus’s message here was: Yes, caring for the poor is a high value, one that his disciples should have. But in that moment, Jesus was nearing his death. The time was right for him to be anointed, and Mary, in an act of extreme generosity and devotion, made the right choice.
A great quote from Anne Frank says, “Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.” I wonder if perhaps this story was kept by Jesus’s disciples because they regretted their own lack of devotion to their Teacher. In another story featuring Mary and Martha—perhaps the same sisters, perhaps not, but let’s assume they’re the same—Martha was worried about preparing a meal and caring for her guests. Mary was at Jesus’s feet to learn from him. When Martha complained, Jesus said that Mary chose the better path. Mary was devoted to Jesus, to learning from him, to showing her love and gratitude to him. Later on, Peter denies even knowing Jesus. Perhaps the disciples knew, in retrospect, that Mary had done the right thing, and they regretted not showing their love and devotion to Jesus while he was still living.
But we know how the story ends. We do have the opportunity to show our love and devotion to Jesus even today, two thousand years later. Mary had the nard to anoint Jesus after his death, but when Jesus raised Lazarus, she knew that death would not prevail. She knew that Jesus would die, but would not stay buried. He rose and he lives and reigns forever. On one particular day, the most important thing, the highest value, was to anoint Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, as he prepared to triumph over sin and death. Now, our highest calling is to follow Jesus’s instructions and example in serving his people.
As I mentioned, there are a lot of poor and needy people in America. There are a lot of homeless people in America. There are poor and needy people throughout the world. There are wars around the world—Ukraine is dominating media coverage, but there are active wars also in Yemen, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Somalia, really most of Africa, and many other countries across Asia and the Americas. Climate change is driving droughts and extreme weather events. The list goes on and on.
In fact, the list is too long. I cannot possibly list all of the problems in the world, much less solve them. I could, on the one hand, just quit and only worry about myself and my family. But as Christians, we are called to do more. Because of our devotion to our risen Lord, we are called to emulate him and serve one another. We will always have the poor—so let’s get to work building a society where there will be fewer in need while taking care of those who our economy has left behind. There will always be wars and rumors of wars—so let’s get to work being peacemakers. Pick one thing, just one thing that is the most important to you, that God has placed on your heart, and get to work showing God’s love through service to all the people who dwell in this broken world. We can’t solve every problem ourselves, but God can, by working through God’s people.
Mary anointed Jesus’s feet in an act of love and devotion. She wiped them with her hair. As a result, Mary ended up anointed. In giving all that she had, and all that she was, to her divine Teacher, she was anointed in return to carry on Jesus’s work. In the same way, we come to worship our risen Lord, and in doing so, we are anointed to carry his good news to the world. After all, what is the purpose of worship? Will God cease to be God if we don’t sing praises to God’s glory? Will Jesus cease to be alive if we don’t pray in his name? No. Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is at work in the world whether we participate or not. We come here each Sunday, or tune in on YouTube, so that we can devote ourselves to God and be a part of Christ’s body. In glorifying God, we are glorified. It’s like when Moses went up on the mountain to receive the covenant. When he returned to the Israelites, his face was shining with God’s glory. When Mary sat at Jesus’s feet to anoint him, she rose up covered with his beautiful aroma. When we encounter God in worship, we are conformed to God and empowered to build God’s kin-dom, to welcome everyone into God’s family so they may also experience God’s love, and joy, and a peace that passes understanding.
In a few minutes, we will partake of Christ’s body and blood so that we can receive spiritual food. We will leave here nourished and strengthened, ready to participate in Jesus’s continuing ministry to the world. As we eat these simple elements—a small amount of grape juice and a marginally edible wafer, for those in the sanctuary, or whatever juice and bread you have at home—we are reminded of Jesus’s sacrificial love. We are reminded that God came to be one of us. The moment Jesus was born, he was destined to die. But first, he lived as a model of true devotion to all of God’s people, demonstrating what it means to be a part of God’s realm while dwelling in this broken world. As we eat these elements, we remember his overflowing love and seek to be vessels of that love. Let us leave here with the beautiful aroma of Jesus’s love surrounding us, anointed to carry his message of hope that will overcome all the ugliness of the world and transform it through his beautiful eternal glory. Amen.
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