Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on April 6, 2025, Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on John 12:1-8.
Today is the Fifth Sunday in Lent, so we are nearing the end. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, then we have Holy Week, and Easter. Our reading today also comes near the end—the end of Jesus’s ministry.
The Gospel of John can be divided roughly in half. The first twelve chapters are called the Book of Signs because they contain seven miracles, called “signs” by the author, of increasing impact. From the changing of water into wine to the raising of Lazarus, Jesus demonstrates that He is God. Soon after today’s reading is Jesus’s triumphant entry on Palm Sunday. Then chapter 13 starts the Book of Glory, narrating his last days on earth. So today’s lesson is the turning point, where Jesus has demonstrated who he is but has not yet demonstrated what that means.
Back in chapter 11, we have the greatest sign in the Gospel. Mary and Martha had a brother, Lazarus, who had died. While he was still sick, they sent for Jesus, but Jesus delayed his coming until after Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. When he finally arrives, Martha chastises him a little, even though she acknowledged the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God who is coming into the world. But Mary is despondent. She has lost her dear brother and cannot imagine a future. Jesus raises Lazarus and restores the family to wholeness.
Time is a strange thing. We are slaves to chronos, the time that we measure on our watches. Some of you are gloriously free from the tyranny of the clock, but I am still bound to it. I have my Outlook calendar set to give me reminders of where I’m supposed to be when, and honestly, I’m a little too diligent about it. I get anxious when I’m late or, God forbid, miss an appointment. Each night, I use my Monk Manual to review the day that has passed and plan my next day. I fill out the timeline to make sure I am prepared for what is coming, and figure out what tasks I can achieve during the pieces of time that are free.
Pre-industrial societies were less bound to a clock and more bound to the sun. Still, they had a sense that there were things that needed to be done at certain times. Judas was bound to chronos time, and was well aware that time is money. He knew that there were certain tasks that needed to be completed, including giving alms.
Greeks had another word for time, though, too: kairos. Kairos has a bit of a sense like “timely.” Like, the right time, or an auspicious time. In kairos time, some moments or seasons have more significance.
While Judas was bound to chronos, Mary was aware of kairos. She knew that something special and important was happening. It was like all the past had gone away and all the future didn’t matter. All that mattered was right then, being in Jesus’s presence, giving her whole devotion to him. She sensed that time was all compressed, from Lazarus’s death to his resurrection to Jesus’s presence in her home to his coming departure. She sensed that this moment would never come again.
So she did the only thing she could. Like her sister, Mary knew that Jesus was the Messiah, anointed by God, but had not been anointed by humanity. She knew that he was with her right then, but soon would be gone from her life forever. So she gave him all that she had.
Mary had a jar of pure nard, which is a perfumed ointment. Judas claims that it was worth 300 denarii, which is roughly a year’s wages for a laborer. A year’s wages! The average wage in Missouri is roughly $50,000 a year, so imagine—a jar of ointment worth $50,000 that Mary just pours out on Jesus’s feet! And not only that, but she wipes his feet with her hair. I sometimes picture my friend Sharon here. She has shorter hair now, but used to have hair down almost to her waist. Mary would have needed hair that long to be able to wipe Jesus’s feet with it. This in a culture where women usually covered their heads. To have her head uncovered was already a sign of intimacy, and to go another step further and use her hair to spread ointment all over Jesus’s feet was a profound act of intimacy. This is the act of a friend, a close friend. For Jesus to have even allowed her to continue must have meant that he treasured Mary deeply. They were already connected on a heart level, the way we all hope to connect to Jesus, and then Mary acted out her devotion to him.
This, to me, is a prophetic statement. This is a sign act. Throughout the Old Testament, there are prophets who perform actions that are a sign of God’s message to the people. For example, Ezekiel baked bread over a fire of dung. Hosea married Gomer, a harlot. Jeremiah smashed a clay vessel in front of the religious leaders, but then later, he bought a field. Most of the sign acts we read about are negative signs, but this last one was a sign that God would restore the people of Judah. God commanded Jeremiah to buy a field in occupied territory to symbolize that Judah would one day be back in control of the land.
Mary’s sign act is one of extravagant gratitude. In one action, she ties together many concepts that flow through the Gospel of John. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, whose feet are even holy. Jesus is the source of life whose abundant grace calls forth abundant gratitude. Jesus is bringing his kingdom into being, but it’s an upside-down kingdom, just as his anointing by Mary is upside-down. And, this bridges the gap between Jesus the healer who can even resuscitate the dead and Jesus the servant who washes his disciples’ feet. Mary’s prophetic action reveals the weakness in Judas while displaying the strength of her commitment.
One of Jesus’s promises is life in abundance. That does not mean a life of abundance, though. I was thinking the other day, what is wealth? What does it mean to be wealthy? It means that you don’t need to consider the cost. If you’re poor, maybe you need to count out the change in your car in order to afford McDonald’s, but if you’re wealthy, you can go to Sonic on a whim without checking your bank account balance. By this measure, Mary was wealthy. I don’t know if she had much money or any land or other resources, but she didn’t have to consider whether or not she could afford to use the pint of nard that she had. Her brother had been lost to her, yet had been restored. Jesus, the man who restored her family to wholeness, was there in her home. She was overwhelmed with gratitude, and reacted with the knowledge that Jesus’s worth far exceeded the value of the nard.
I’m reminded of the parables from Matthew chapter 13, verses 44 through 46. Jesus said, 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
The kingdom of God is worth everything. Everything you have, and everything you are. Mary gets it. She knows that nothing she owns is worth as much as Jesus’s presence in her life.
Last week in our book study, we read where Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. This is not a calling to breed smaller camels or build bigger needles. This is a calling for us to let go of whatever prevents us from full participation in God’s realm. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, he wasn’t talking about some pie in the sky by and by. He was talking about the here and now. He was talking about His presence in and among us. But each of us has something that holds us back. Many of us are held back by money or possessions. Others are held back by position or status. Still others are held back by their family connections or other relationships. Throughout the Gospels, whenever someone approached Jesus, he identified exactly what was keeping them back from full participation in his movement. For the rich young man, it was money. For others, it was leprosy or another disease that needed to be healed, or a demon that needed to be exorcised. In one case, it was a father’s burial, and in another, it was land and possessions. Whatever it was, Jesus told them to abandon it and follow him.
I’m finishing up a book called Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant. The authors talk about the tribal nature of our modern political system. We have quickly evolved from partisans who think the other party has some good ideas but are more often wrong, into partisans who think the other party is evil and a threat to our nation. You all probably know where I stand on things, but I’ll say that I’m definitely disappointed in the leadership of both parties, or rather the lack of leadership. I’m trying to remember that at the end of the day, I should not be committed to any political party, nor even any nation, but rather to Jesus Christ and God’s kingdom. Among the things that Jesus asks us to give up are our political and other allegiances to worldly things, instead obeying and worshipping God alone. We are all tempted the way Jesus was by the devil during the forty days in the desert that Lent reminds us of. We should all make the same choices—to forsake wealth and power and instead to embrace our citizenship in God’s kingdom.
Or rather, we should embrace our role as a member of the body of Christ. We, the Church—with a capital C—are called to be and to do just what Jesus was and did. Mary showed us how. She gave all that she had for the sake of her devotion to Jesus. We too are called to give all that we have for the sake of Christ’s body, the Church, and its work in the world. In gratitude for the abundant grace poured out upon us, let us seek to give all that we have and all that we are for the establishment of God’s kingdom, a state of being where everyone can flourish and thrive. Amen.
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