What should we care about?
Lent 5C  | John 12:1-8

That has to be the best opening line for any gospel proclamation: 

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 

It’s just dropped in there like it’s no big deal. The people who put together the lectionary are like, meh, we’ll get to that later.

But if you’re reading the gospel straight through, you’d know this was just a few verses back in chapter 11. So this isn’t forever ago and is now part of the lore you have to learn about going in. But when the lectionary just drops us in here, we’ve got background and so much to wrestle with and I’ve got maybe five minutes to do it all, so I’m going to move through some big ideas quickly, alright?

Lazarus Rising

In chapter 11, two sisters, Mary and Martha tell Jesus that their brother Lazarus is dying. Lazarus is his friend, his bro. There’s a whole thing, but he doesn’t get there, Mary and Martha are upset, but Jesus is like You’re obsessed with saving him from dying and that’s not what I’m here to do. And he proceeds to raise Lazarus, his bro, from the dead — so dead that they’ve already wrapped him up and put him in a tomb. And Jesus tells them to unbind him and let him go.

Jesus heads into Jerusalem for a little looky-loo in the Temple and then comes back to Bethany for a second-to-last supper where Mary shows her appreciation to Jesus and her understanding of the moment by anointing him with some super expensive oil. Speculation is that it is worth up to a year’s wages, so we’re not talking $100 cologne or popping open “the good stuff”. We are talking insane money here.

There’s a lot going on here that will no doubt captivate our attention. So let’s draw out the notable conflicts.

It’s about money

Number one for most American Christians is the money, which presupposes a value system of prudence or practicality. We read this and go yeah, that is a lot of money. And the number of people who make this very argument daily — we could have sold _____ and given the money to the poor — and fail to recognize they are making the same argument as Judas against Jesus … We need to recognize that we are making value judgments that are different from the ones Jesus makes, right?

And what is it that Jesus is saying? I think we first have to acknowledge that we overvalue prudence in general as some higher good. Then we can see what Jesus values more. A good reminder of this came in last week’s gospel about the lost sons — that celebrating and honoring and anointing and loving are not “waste” — but the opposite. Hoarding is wasteful. Celebrating death and resurrection is the right thing.

But perhaps the best part of this is a different conflict: Mary vs. the Twelve. She seems to get what the others do not. And while it is Judas that offers the argument for prudence here, it is the whole lot of them that do this in Mark’s version. And John’s gospel seems written for us to listen to her.

More about Mary

If we want to tug a little more at that particular string, I’ll remind us of the research of ​​Elizabeth Schrader, who argues that the original text of John chapter 11 probably did not contain Martha, meaning Lazarus had one sister, not two, and she was named Mary. And this Mary is probably the same Mary that we call Mary Magdalene. So she speaks familiarly with Jesus and trusts Jesus and understands Jesus more than any other disciple. And it is she, not Peter, who recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah, who establishes what true discipleship looks like, and serves as the example for all of us to follow.

And what does she do? She anoints Jesus, preparing him for burial. When everyone else is avoiding the thought of death or arguing over which of them is the greatest (or, in Judas’s case, plotting his betrayal), Mary is anointing, preparing, loving, celebrating, honoring. It isn’t one or the other in the abstract or permanent sense, always this or always that. Jesus was going away and this is what matters now.

She, like Jesus, reflects back at us how we love each other. And how generous we really are.

Eucharist and Openness

Throughout this season of Lent, we’ve taken time to talk about the sacrament we know as Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion. We talked about its history and purpose, the danger of making the practice of it into an idol, the process of distributing and receiving communion, and last week, we discussed communion as presence. This final week, in part five, I want to talk about openness and the table.

In that first week, I reminded us of how those first followers of Jesus celebrated communion together: they gathered in a house and circled around a table and ate together.

They also led non-Christians out of the room for catechesis during the Eucharist so that when they were ready to become full members of the church in baptism, they could join the whole community and participate fully.

A lot has changed since then, eh?

And one of the great debates that has persisted from day one has been how eucharist relates to baptism. Because when everyone was a convert and nobody knew what we did in church, that original pattern worked. For about one generation. Because then they had to start dealing with kids, infants, newborns. And people learned about our secret rituals.

Tradition changed.

It changed again in the rise of catholicism and again in the high medieval period and again in the reformation and again in the holiness period and again in the modern mainline and evangelical era. And much of the debate has been about generous celebration vs. prudent tradition. That continues to be the ground of our present life: our debates and practices which, hopefully, demonstrate respect for Jesus and embody the life of Christ in our neighborhood.

At the heart of our conversations now are questions of membership and commitment: two ideas that are a real challenge in this climate! When people have a deep desire to join something and also not commit to anything.

In last week’s gospel, we read about Jesus getting in trouble for eating with tax collectors and sinners. And much like his forays into healing on the Sabbath, Jesus’s actions and intentions display a willingness to go against tradition in support of expanding our vision of tradition. Perhaps this, more than anything else, speaks to our hunger and our skepticism. Because our rules are good for us — except when they’re not. And Jesus is good at exposing those weaknesses.

What we do

In The Episcopal Church, we welcome baptism to count as baptism. And for nearly a half century now, we’ve proclaimed baptism as sufficient, as complete membership in the church, inviting those of all ages to join us in communion. And we also honor other traditions of refraining until confirmation or being of an age of preparation and understanding.

We don’t require people to receive communion or, conversely, seek to deny access to the table. You can see this, right? How many of our rules do make sense — until they don’t. And as a priest, I have found over the last two decades that I have to trust. Trust the Holy Spirit  — and you! And is there anything more Eucharisty than that?

We rely on each other, on ourselves, and on God. All of that together. That holy both/and. And is there no greater expression of that trust than eating together, praying together, singing together?

We wed human and divine through love and grace. We bring our intentions together with our actions — setting a table for family, friends, neighbors, and strangers, and say come and eat. There’s always enough.

And in every part of this, we give thanks to God.