Sermon for Fifth Sunday in Lent - The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello - April 3rd, 2022

To view a video of the Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello’s sermon, click HERE.

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; John 12:1-8

We have a banner that sometimes hangs on the front lawn. It reads, “Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the World.”

We know that, according to the Jewish Shema from Deuteronomy, quoted by Jesus, and recited at the start of our worship this morning, the two great commandments are to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

I wonder, if you had the choice, would you rather do something to show your love of God, or something to show your love for your neighbor?

It’s a trick question of course, because we cannot do one without doing the other. Loving God is loving our neighbor and loving our neighbor is loving God.

To try to choose between loving God and loving our neighbor is to engage in a false dichotomy. Choosing one over the other is to lose an anchor that keeps us tethered to the heart of God. Choosing to love our neighbor without loving God makes what we do for our neighbor about us, and our goodness, and not about participating in God’s mission for this world, sharing what God has given us with those who God calls us to serve.

Choosing only to love God at the expense of loving our neighbor is, at best, blasphemous. It would grieve the spirit of God to receive adoration for show and not as a source and means toward justice, reconciliation, and liberation of all of God’s beloved children.

It is easy, though, to find fault with someone else’s attempt to pour themselves out in hopes of loving God more dearly, that they might see God more clearly in the world around them.

There is always something or someone we think more or less deserving of whatever resources are being shared.

It costs me nothing to point that out so all may know who or what is important to me and then do nothing to follow through.

The world is filled with people who have ideas and ‘shoulds’. There are many fewer who “will” and who “do.”

How easy it is for Judas to watch the scene before him unfold and, at just the right time, signal his virtue from the edge of the crowd in an attempt to undercut and shame the woman who dared pour out all she could in an extravagant display of love and devotion so close to Jesus she could wipe his feet with her hair.

Of course, Judas isn’t wrong. And that little bit about Judas’ motives in John’s Gospel are editorial. Let’s just, for the sake of our conversation this morning, assume Judas’ motive was truly to point out what he saw as a complete waste of valued resources.

It’s funny, though, that Judas’ commitment to the poor still allows him to be a guest in this very woman’s home. It doesn’t stop him from accepting her hospitality; her wine and food and warm welcome. Surely everything that was spent to throw this celebratory feast for Jesus after he raised their brother Lazarus from the dead all could have gone to feed the poor, or clothe the naked. So that isn’t his issue.

But there is something about Mary’s boldness. Something about her strength to walk to the middle of a room filled with men, break open an alabaster jar and let its contents flow out in abundance.

As Stephanie Spellers writes in her book, “The Church Cracked Open,”

“Does she offer the jar … to Jesus? Maybe pour some nard into her hand and anoint Jesus? No, she breaks the alabaster jar. …The crack and crash must have felt like lightning and thunder. … Our sister has no interest in a stingy drip-drip from the jar's small opening. She wants the healing nard to flow onto Jesus like rivers, like power, and there is only one way to get that kind of free flow. Crack it open.”

Spellers continues,

“Already, you can see why the Gospel of Luke assumes she's a sinner and later scholars painted her as a prostitute. What other type of woman would be wealthy enough to possess a jar of perfumed ointment and bold enough to walk into a room full of men? What kind of woman would initiate such a dramatic and sensuous (in the truest sense of the word) gesture? A woman of means. A woman with her own ideas. A woman to be reckoned with.”

Jesus responds to Judas’ rebuke with words that can be hard for our modern ears to hear.

“You always have the poor with you,” Jesus says, “But you do not always have me.”

It can sound a bit “let them eat cake” if we do not care to unpack what Jesus might be saying here.

It might be that Jesus is trying to undo the false dichotomy that Judas has posed for the crowd and remind them that the closer they pull toward him the closer they will be to those Jesus loves and cares for.

You could not be a follower of Jesus and not be forced into proximity with the poor. You could not want to be near Jesus and not end up eating next to someone you might rather not. You could not want to hear what Jesus had to say and not hear the voices of those who had been silenced.

To put Jesus at the center of your world is to put the historically disinherited in the very same place.

We can imagine that if Mary and Martha could afford to host this gathering and have a jar of nard on the shelf, they could afford to feed the hungry outside their door. And we can assume that they did just that. Because they loved Jesus that much. And loving God that much set them free to love their neighbor that much.

What Judas offers in this story is performance. What Mary offers is proximity.

If we keep God with us, we will always have the poor with us. We cannot love God and not love the ones God loves.

It isn’t enough to say we love God without acting like it.

Spellers writes, “What did Jesus notice and admire so much in her? He didn't see waste. He understood that she was literally giving up the best of what she had--the alabaster jar and the nard--because he mattered that much to her. He was the holy one, the center of her world, and she had reoriented her life around him as her focus.”

God does not need our performance. God needs our proximity. God does not need us to be careful, scared of making a mistake or being called out that, instead, we do nothing but yell what others ought to be doing from the sidelines.

You are a vessel filled to the brim with the healing ointment of God’s love for this world. Do not hold back. Do not be afraid there isn’t enough.

Do not worry that there might be a better way to love in some better way on some better day. Don’t listen to the voices from the edge that are ready to point out how you are falling short in their sight.

Love God. Break yourself open at God’s very feet. And let the love of God flow from you like fine oil over the world God has made. Love your neighbor, and let the world be filled with the fine fragrance of God’s abundant love.

AMEN.

© 2022 The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Several sources were consulted while preparing this sermon. Any direct quotes are referenced as such.