| |
Jesus Anointed at Bethany
John
12:1-11
Apart from Jesus, there are three characters in this
well known story that are worth thinking about this morning. Let’s
start by putting the story in context.
We’re approaching the feast of Passover, one of three compulsory
festivals for the Jews and Jerusalem was starting to fill up wit
people – they’d be coming from everywhere, because it
was the ambition of any Jew wherever they lived in the world to
make at least one Passover in Jerusalem. On one occasion a census
was taken of the number of lambs slaughtered at the Passover feast,
and it was given as 256,000 which if correct would mean that there
were around 2.7 million people at that Passover feast. Even allowing
for some exaggeration, there’s no doubt that Jerusalem was
buzzing with people and it was almost certainly very difficult to
find accommodation in the city.
Jesus was making his way there despite knowing that the authorities
were planning to arrest him as an outlaw, so this was a very courageous
thing to do. Bethany was close enough to Jerusalem for it to be
designated as an appropriate place to stay if you were going to
the Passover feast, and we can imagine that it was to the house
of Mary and Martha that Jesus and his disciples went to find a bed
for their stay, even though it doesn’t tell us so –
otherwise why would Martha be cooking and serving food there? They
obviously know each other because this is the same Mary, Martha
and Lazarus that we read about when Jesus raise Lazarus from the
dead, and we know from that story just how much Jesus meant to the
two women.
So a meal is given in Jesus’ honour. We know that Martha was
a very practical person, and the way that she showed her love was
through the food that she cooked and the care with which it was
presented to her guests – she gave what she could and that
was her service to Jesus, and an essential service I would guess
as no doubt they had been travelling a distance by foot to get to
Bethany and would have been tired and hungry.
The church needs Marthas, and the world outside church needs Marthas,
who are prepared to give of their best in order to attend to the
needs of friend and stranger.
Then there’s Mary, impetuous in her emotions and actions.
And in Mary’s actions we can see three important aspects of
the way love can be expressed
1) Firstly there’s love’s extravagance! True love does
not count the cost, and Mary took the most valuable thing she had
and spent it all on Jesus. We’re used to giving tokens of
our affection and love as presents, and there’s nothing wrong
with that as it shows that the person to whom we’re giving
means something to us. But it is different when love (with a small
‘l’) becomes true Love (with a capital!) because then
the scale of giving increases!
2) Then there’s love’s humility! We see quite often
in the Old Testament that a future king was anointed on the head
with oil as a sign of honour, and this was often done by one of
God’s prophets. Psalm 23:5 says ‘You anoint my head
with oil’ but Mary couldn’t bring herself to perform
this act on Jesus – she did not consider herself worthy of
anointing his head, so she anointed his feet.
3) Lastly there’s love’s unselfconsciousness! We read
that Mary wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair. Now we might thing
that was an odd thing to do, wouldn’t it have been better
to have wiped his feet with her hands or a cloth? But it was more
than an odd thing to do, because in Palestine no respectable girl
would appear in public with her hair unbound – loose hair
meant a loose woman! But Mary didn’t think about that, she
was in a world of her own with Jesus sat beside her, and couldn’t
care what people thought!
As an aside there’s something else in this story which we
need to note and that is the comment from John that ‘…
the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume’
There’s a image here which is so descriptive of the actions
of love, because there is a sense in which an act of selfless love
is not contained within space and time – it radiates out and
affects other people, is sensed in the same way as a sweet fragrance.
2 Corinthians 2:14
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession
in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the
knowledge of him.
We can’t leave the story without thinking about Judas, of
course. And you can’t look at Judas without looking at the
relationship that Jesus had with this man who he knew early on was
going to betray him. Why did Jesus give Judas the job of looking
after the monetary needs of his little band – effectively
an early church treasurer! Surely if Jesus knew that he was going
to prove to be a traitor it would have been better to have sidelined
Judas and given such a position of authority to someone else who
was more trustworthy?
Well, who are we to judge Jesus?! Maybe Jesus was saying to this
man: ‘Look, Judas, here’s a job that I would like you
to do for me, I’m putting my trust in you – You’re
ideally qualified to be treasurer, I want you as part of this fellowship,
and here’s the proof.’ Judas had faults, big ones, but
Jesus chose to expect the best from him rather than the worst!
Judas’ skills were in handling money, and it was in handling
money that temptation got the better of him – John is very
sure on this point, that Judas was lining his own pocket. How relevant
a story at this current time! It’s often the misuse of gifts
that are the downfall of people – those in positions of power
exploit others, those investing other people’s money get reckless
in pursuit of their own bonuses.
Judas also had a different view when it came to acts of love and
generosity.
Mary’s use of the oil was a terrible waste according
to Judas. Here was someone getting disillusioned with Jesus, beginning
think that this man was not the person that he thought he was going
to be, and this was starting to affect the way Judas looked at everything
that went on around Jesus. He was getting overly critical, misinterpreting
what was happening in front of his eyes, developing a warped view
of things.
You see Mary’s action was spontaneous. If she had stopped
to think about it for half an hour she may well have not poured
all that perfume aver Jesus’ feet. That would have been a
more sensible action to Judas, no doubt. But life’s not always
like that, sometimes it is good to be spontaneous! Because otherwise
an act of reckless love such as this would never happen. As one
commentator says ‘Life is an uncertain thing. We think to
utter some word of thanks or praise or love but we put it off; and
often the word is never spoken.’
Acts of reckless or spontaneous love may seem wrong or be criticised
by some, but that doesn’t mean that we should put them off
until another day. Jesus did not stop to count the cost, wherever
he was and however tired he was, Jesus touched lives, brought healing
and compassion, made broken lives whole.
How effective the church at large could be if it were populated
with more Marys and less Judases – where fear of criticism
never stopped anyone from showing love where love was needed at
the moment it was needed, and not put off and discussed by a sub-committee
first. Deuteronomy 15:11 tells us ‘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 neighbour in your land”’
|
