Sermon for the 6th of April - Passion Sunday

Lectionary Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Psalm 126
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

Philippians 3: 4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that 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, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

John 12: 1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

This year, I have not been quite sure about Lent. Things used to seem clearer. You either "kept" Lent, or you didn't. There were certain practices that were customary--- that defined Lent as Lent. But for me, this year, I have seemed to just carry on doing what I was doing, reacting to things that came along each week.

This Lent, there seem to have been a lot of illnesses, deaths, funerals. More than this time last year? Not sure. There have been more than the usual interruptions, distractions. The news from home has been so bad that I find I am struggling to make sense of what is happening, to try to pray about it in response. But my increased prayers have been difficult to formulate. I have tried to increase my charitable giving, but in the midst of my efforts the needs of the world seem to multiply on a scale I cannot deal with. And all my attempts at fasting have failed.

If Lent is a gift, as I think it is---offered to us---a gift from God's hand of a period marked out to slow down and think about who you are, and what you need to change in yourself to draw closer to God---then this Lent has been a gift I have not received.

So in this spirit, with this acknowledgement,

I looked at the readings are that are given to us for today, and what they are all about. I have thought a lot about them this week.

Isaiah's verses are some of my favourite in the entire Bible.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

These are prophetic words, confident and strong words, words of hope. They were spoken to the Israelites held in captivity by the Babylonians in the 6th c. before Christ. These words promised the Hebrew people that God would make a way for them to return from exile.

They had sown in tears, but they would reap in joy.

They did return, in joy.

For us, in the midst of tragic unfinished wars in Ukraine and Gaza and radical changes in the alliance of nations in our world, with many dispossessed and forced to migrate to some other country, with widespread economic uncertainty and climate change happening before our very eyes, I find the proclamation of God's ability to do a new thing, to make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert one of the few sources of my hope. God acted then; I believe that God will act in our own time.

John's verses are not so clear. They foreshadow Jesus's death.

Why they interest me is very particular, on account of the confusion of three Marys, and what this has meant for women's leadership in the church through history.

Let me go into this a bit to explain.

Even in the earliest layer of the oral tradition, elements of two different anointing episodes were combined and confused.

The first incident happened in Galilee at the house of a Pharisee. A penitent sinner enters and weeps in Jesus's presence. Her tears fall on his feet, and she hastily wipes them away with her hair. There is no anointing with perfume. The scandalous action of loosening her hair in public fits the character of the woman and helps to explain the Pharisee's indignation. This is the backbone of Luke's story.

Mark and Matthew preserve a second, separate, incident.

The second incident happened in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper where a woman, as an expression of her love for Jesus, uses expensive perfume to anoint Jesus's head.

But Luke adds to the penitent sinner's tears the detail of Matthew and Mark's anointing. Because the woman's tears fall on Jesus's feet, the anointing Luke adds is to his feet. But such an anointing seems pointless. People anointed the face that it might have a pleasant fragrance, but the anointing of feet was not a practice. Even more extraordinary becomes the woman's action when John has her wiping off the perfume she has just applied to his feet! Why would she do this? Luke's action of wiping away her tears makes sense, but the action of wiping has, in John, been transferred to the perfume. And the letting down of hair, not inappropriate in the first incident, is out of character for the virtuous Mary of Bethany.

This confusion was increased by Gregory the Great, who in the sixth century made into the same person the sinful woman of Luke, the woman of Bethany (who John names Mary), and then a third Mary, Mary of Magdala, from whom seven devils had been cast out. The Roman Catholic church has celebrated a feast day of the three Marys all put together since the time of Gregory.

But the unfortunate consequence of all this confusion is that Mary Magdalene, instead of being honoured as one of the leaders of the disciples, as she originally was, the one in John's Gospel who ran to tell the other male disciples that Jesus had risen, the one given the early title The Apostle to the Apostles---Mary Magdalene became, in time, instead, the symbol of a penitent prostitute. And so two opposite female images emerged in the Christian tradition: Mary the untouched Mother of God and Mary Magdalen, the representative of all other ordinary women. So ordinary women were rejected for any kind of leadership role in the church. For many centuries of the church's life.

What is the point of John's scene of anointing?

In the previous chapter of John, chapter 11, Jesus raises Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, the family whom he loved and with whom he stayed whenever he went to Jerusalem. This miracle foreshadows Jesus's own death and resurrection.

In our scene, complicated as it is, John wants to portray the closeness of these loving friends to Jesus, and this particular act of love. For Mary to anoint Jesus with perfume may be an act of extravagance, but it is an intentional act of caring for him. All this family will follow Jesus to the end. And so Judas's complaint does not fit the scene.

In this season of Lent we are asked to do two things---to confront our own failings, as real as they are, with thoughtfulness and care, penitence and humility,

but also to look forward in hope, with the certainty that

God will forgive, and God will restore.

God will restore us to wholeness, to a fullness of life that we have not, even yet, known.

We are asked never to let go of hope.

And if these three classic disciplines of Lent do not seem to be working so well for us, this Lent, as for me---let us continue to exercise our love for others in Christ's name, just as Mary did, with her anointing oil for Jesus.

Love is our constant, our theme, all year long. To love and care for others is the hallmark of the Christian life. It is just what we do.

May these remaining days of Lent bring us a renewed sense of the unimaginable reach of God's acting in our world, and the limitless reach of hope.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.