John 12:1-8
April 6, 2025
One time when my two oldest nephews
were maybe six and seven they raised quite a stink. I mean that literally. They
are both adults now, fully grown men with children of their own. But at one
family meal, they raised quite a stink. Everyone was gathered at our house in
Nashville. After dinner, my nephews – my sister and brother’s oldest children –
had gone upstairs to play in one of the bedrooms. My mom loved pretty things.
She always had carefully placed glass bowls and vases and delicate little
sculptures all over the house. In the bedroom where the boys were playing, she
had a small, silver-edged mirror with pretty bottles of perfume sitting on the
dresser. My mom didn’t wear a lot of perfume, but these bottles were pretty, so
she kept them.
My nephews had been playing quite
happily upstairs, laughing, giggling, talking. But then their happy noises
stopped. They didn’t get into an argument. They just stopped playing and
started walking down the stairs, very, very quietly. When they hit the bottom
step, everyone sitting at the dining room table which was right next to the
entryway where the stairs were, suddenly smelled them. Smelling them is an
understatement. It was more like being punched in the stomach by eau de parfum.
Remember the bottles of perfume upstairs? They had been spraying the contents
of those bottles at one another, dousing each other in fragrance. Now in small
doses, any of those perfumes would have smelled fine. But being drenched in all
of them all at once made your eyes water. The combined smell filled the whole
house, and no one could get away from it – at least not for a while.
I wouldn’t think that the aroma of
the nard poured out to anoint Jesus’ feet was a bad smell like the smell
created by my nephews, but it was strong. It was so strong that as soon as Mary
poured it out the entire house, every nook and cranny, was filled with its
fragrance. You might argue that perhaps it was a small house, so it wouldn’t
take much scent to do that, but I also suspect that small or not the house
would have open windows and doors. And still the fragrance from this pure nard
permeated the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Even if people were in other
rooms, they would have known that something had happened because the fragrance
of that nard infused the air, the floor, the walls, everything.
This is a story, an event in the
timeline of Jesus’ life on earth, so important that each of the four gospel
writers include it. In both Matthew and Mark, the woman who anointed Jesus
with precious nard did so for the same purpose as in John’s gospel; it was
about Jesus’ burial. However, in Luke’s gospel, the woman who anointed Jesus
was a sinner who realized how forgiven she truly was. Anointing Jesus was a
response to this forgiveness. In each version, the woman’s actions are scorned.
And each gospel writer records that Jesus told the people who grumbled about
her to leave her alone. But in the other gospels, this woman is nameless. In
John’s gospel, this woman is Mary, the younger sister of Martha. Her brother
was Lazarus. In Luke’s gospel this same Mary also sat at Jesus’ feet and
listened to him teach while her sister, Martha, worked frantically to prepare
the meal and clean the house for the Rabbi.
There’s a lot that has been
happening leading up to this moment. Lazarus is at home with his sisters,
awaiting Passover, because Jesus has raised him from the dead. Raising Lazarus
from the tomb after four days when the smell of death was becoming noticeable
caused quite the commotion. Some of the people believed in Jesus because of it.
Others went straight to the Pharisees and told them what had happened. The
Pharisees were so concerned that they called a special meeting of the council
to discuss what they should do.
The religious authorities were
worried. They thought that if they let Jesus continue, the Romans would come
and destroy them and their holy places. But in verses that we rarely if ever
read in worship, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, told the other Pharisees
that they didn’t know what they were talking about. It was better to let one
man die for the people than to have the entire nation destroyed. John writes
that Caiaphas had prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not only
for the nation but would gather in all the dispersed and displaced children of
God. So it was decided at that meeting that they would make sure Jesus died.
Because of this Jesus no longer traveled openly among the people. Instead he
and the disciples retreated to a town called Ephraim near the wilderness, and
they waited there.
People were wondering where Jesus
had gone, and there were orders from the chief priests and the Pharisees that
if anyone should see him they should report it immediately. Jesus was a wanted
man. But six days before the Passover, as the preparations for that sacred
feast were well underway, Jesus and the disciples leave their safe place in
Ephraim and travel back to Bethany, to the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary.
That was a risky move already, but while they are reclining, waiting for the
meal, Mary comes and pours a pound of pure nard on Jesus’ feet. Then she wipes his
feet with her hair. She anoints him in an intimate, bodily way. As Debie Thomas
wrote, Mary touched Jesus skin to skin, fingers to toes. Social boundaries were
not only crossed, they were completely obliterated. And this pure nard that
Mary used for anointing was so fragrant it filled the whole house. Everyone in
the house knew what she had done, so it wouldn’t be long before people outside
the house knew too.
But safety for Jesus, nor social
mores, seem to be a concern. Instead, in each gospel, the disciples or in this
case Judas, were angry about the waste. That nard was expensive! It could have
been sold, the money given to the poor! What a waste! What an extravagant,
unnecessary waste!
Jesus understood Mary’s actions
differently, and he quickly shushed the complainers.
“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.”
Leave her alone. What she just did
was important and kind and compassionate. It was not wasteful. It was
extravagantly lovely and loving. Leave her alone. It seems that Jesus suddenly
turns a callous eye to the poor with his statement about them always being
there. But we know that Jesus came for the poor, for the marginalized, for the
outcast, and for those shunned by others. Was he telling the disciples and
everyone who was there to ignore the poor or was he reminding them that every
moment they had was an opportunity to serve the poor, the least of these? But in
this moment they had him.
Mary
understood that. In this moment Mary recognized that Jesus was in need. In this
moment she knew that she could not protect him from what was to come; she knew
that she could not keep him there, safe and sound; maybe she even realized – at
least a little bit – that she would not be allowed to go near him at his death.
So she did what she could. She anointed his feet because she would not be
allowed to anoint his body. She wiped his feet with her hair, just as Jesus
would soon wash the feet of his disciples. She treated him with kindness and
compassion because in this moment he was there with her, with them, and she
knew this moment might never come again.
Mary
anointed Jesus not only with pure nard but with compassion. Kindness and care
for their rabbi, their teacher, their friend, their savior, was more important
than anything else. Every moment should be given to caring for the least of
these, for God’s children who are poor and marginalized and oppressed, but in
that moment Jesus needed care. In that moment, Jesus needed compassion. In that
moment, Jesus needed the anointing of kindness. So, Mary seized the moment, and
anointed Jesus’ feet and filled the house with the perfume of life and love.
Mary
understood what was required of that moment. Do we? How many moments have I let
slip by – moments when I could choose kindness and compassion but don’t? How
many moments did I miss when I could have chosen to care for someone else but
didn’t?
Last
Wednesday night during our intergenerational bible study, we watched a video
from the BBC about kindness. It featured a woman who made the intentional
decision to be kind to a stranger every day for a year. Her decision came when
she was feeling despairing and helpless in the face of the big problems of the world,
but then in a small moment of kindness she gave a stranger at the post office
fifty cents for a stamp. His gratitude for this small, seemingly insignificant
act, seemed out of proportion to what she had done. And she wondered what it
would be like to spend a year looking for those moments when she could choose
to be kind. She stated that it was absolutely life transforming. The overall
point of the video was that kindness in small ways, in small actions, adds up.
It is the ongoing small actions of kindness and compassion that ultimately make
a big difference.
Maybe
Mary thought her choice to anoint Jesus was a small thing, a small action, that
wouldn’t make that much difference in the long run. But that’s not how Jesus
saw it. He knew it was the most important thing she could do. She anointed him
in preparation for his death while she still had him with her, alive and whole.
It was one moment of kindness and compassion amid so many other moments that
were not. But that one moment of kindness and compassion made all the
difference. It was a moment of ministry. It was a moment of love.
What
moment can we seize? What small act can we do? What kindness and compassion can
we offer? In a world where unkindness seems rampant and compassion is on the
chopping block, it is these moments, these small acts of compassion, kindness,
and love that can make all the difference, that can anoint the world in the
fragrant aroma of love.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Amen.”
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