Some of the most enjoyable moments in life are spent with friends. Now I don’t know about you, but I love a good dinner party, and if it were up to me, I would spend every evening surrounded by good friends, cooking a great meal together, sitting around chatting, telling stories. One Christian artist, Sara Groves, has a wonderful song called “Every Moment” that has this verse:
“I wish all the people I love the most
could gather in one place
And know each other and love each other well.
I wish we could all go camping
and lay beneath the stars
With nothing to do and stories to tell”
Being able to have the people you love in one place together sounds positively heavenly to me, and the sharing of good food and time together and watching your loved ones interact with each other brings so much delight and joy that it can strengthen you to face the next time your life isn’t so blissful – the next day at work or the next big challenge in your life. Having your friends and loved ones around you is such a blessing, a blessing from God, and it is a blessing that can empower you to take on whatever the world throws at you.
John tells us that six days before the Passover, that is, six days before Christ is nailed to a cross, six days before the Son of Man is lifted up for the salvation of all people everywhere, his friends throw him a dinner party. Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus give a supper for Jesus in their home in Bethany. Martha, ever the worker, served the meal, and Lazarus sits with Jesus at the table. The disciples are there, too – can’t you just see Jesus accepting the dinner invitation: “I’d love to come, y’all – is it ok if I bring these 12 guys with me? They follow me wherever I go these days.” So around the table are all these folks, presumably carrying on a lively conversation.
Now in and amongst all of this celebration of the basic joys of life, this lively dinner party, there is a kind of elephant in the room. Just a few weeks before, Jesus’ friend Lazarus had been dead. Yes, really dead. He had been sick, horribly ill, and had died before Jesus had been able to get to his side to heal him. Lazarus was dead, wrapped up in linen and anointed with fragrant oils and spices, and placed in a tomb like his ancestors before him. He lay there for four days, and the good smells of the perfumes wore off, and the natural stench of death and decay began to take hold. When at last Jesus arrives on the scene, he is cornered by Martha, Lazarus’ sister, who with tears in her eyes tells him: “If you had been here, Lord, he wouldn’t have died.” Jesus looks at her and says: “Your brother will rise again.” Caught up in her grief, Martha gives that stock Sunday School answer: “Yeah, yeah. I know her will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Martha is responding with a stock answer: “Yes, I know that we will all rise again to meet God on the judgment day – but that isn’t much help to me right now, is it?” And Jesus looks her in the eye and says earthshaking words: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus says to Martha – “What I am talking about is a right now kind of thing: I am the resurrection and the life, and through trust in me, belief in me, relationship with me, Lazarus and everyone else will experience a new and living way now and a new life after death. Do you believe this, Martha?” Jesus asks. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God. I believe!”
And Jesus proceeds to the tomb, offers a prayer to God, and says: “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus, dead for four days, comes out of the tomb still wrapped up in the linen strips. Lazarus becomes the evidence of the power of God in Christ Jesus to bring life where there is death, to bring a way where there seems like no way.
And it is this same Lazarus, who just a short time before had been dead and buried, covered in a shroud, that now sits next to Jesus, sharing delicious food and lively conversation, very much alive. It is Jesus who has brought him back to life, and here they all sit together: he who is resurrected; He who is The Resurrection and the life; and the witnesses to all of these events, having dinner.
I want you to think for a moment with me: if it was your brother, or spouse, or child, who had been raised from the dead by Jesus, if it were you who had been given new life, how would you say thank you? How would you express your gratitude to Jesus? Would it be with simple words of thanks and praise? Would it be with great shouts, telling the whole world of the power of God in Jesus Christ? I suspect that Martha, ever the hard-working servant, is expressing her thanks by throwing this dinner party for Jesus, offering her best service, her talents for hospitality to Jesus and her family and friends. But Mary, passionate, devoted Mary, knows that words by themselves will not do to express her gratitude. She arises and takes a container of nard, an incredibly expensive kind of perfume imported from the Himalayan mountains in India, and in the middle of the dinner party, she takes an entire pound of this incredibly fragrant oil and anoints Jesus’ feet, wiping his blessed feet with her hair. Her way of thanking Jesus, of responding to the presence right there in front of her of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life, is to offer him everything she has to give – a touching and personal gift of her most valuable material gift, yes, but also her love and her devotion, and indeed, her worship. She knows that words alone would never be able to express her gratitude to Jesus for bringing her brother back from the dead – and so she responds with a gift that goes far beyond words, she responds with an overwhelming and extravagantly generous gift.
And her gift is so much more that simply making Jesus smell nice – it is also a deeply meaningful act, particularly in that she is anointing Jesus’ feet with nard. If she had poured it on his head, this would be something that would indicate the kingship of Jesus. The prophet Samuel, back in the Old Testament, poured oil, or anointed, first Saul and then David to indicate that they were God’s chosen king. The very word “Messiah,” which in Greek is translated “Christ” means “anointed one” – the chosen and anointed king. In some Gospel accounts, this fragrant oil is poured on Jesus’ head, indicating that Jesus is the Christ, the one anointed by God for kingship. But here, in John, the story is slightly different. Mary pours the oil on Jesus’ feet – an act that was performed for kings in preparation for their burial. She literally pours out everything she has to give on the feet of Jesus, and her act of devotion and worship points to the time that draws closer and closer when Jesus would die, suffering on the cross to save a broken and lost human race. She gives her all to Jesus, marks him as the Christ, and also is showing the disciples and anyone else within range of that fragrant perfume that Jesus would soon die. Her gift is a thank-you gift, but it is also a good-bye gift, and she pours out everything because she knows that Jesus’ time with them is short, and grows shorter by the minute.
The lavish and extravagant generosity of Mary is not immediately appreciated by everyone in the room, most notably Judas, the disciple who would betray Jesus and who often would steal from the disciple’s joint checking account. As everyone is watching this beautiful, tender, worshipful and holy moment between Mary and her Lord, Judas gets a little huffy. “What is she doing?” he begins. “Why was she holding out on us? This perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii – almost a year’s salary – and that money could have been given to the poor. What a waste!” Judas sees the nard, the costly perfume being literally poured out on Jesus’ feet, poured out on the floor, and he doesn’t see what is really happening – all he sees is the silver coins that he could be holding in his hand slipping away. Judas wants to put a price on Mary’s gift, and thinks he knows a better use for the money – in theory, helping the poor. Judas sees the world as a place with a finite amount of resources -money, materials, what have you – and what is given to Jesus in devotion and worship can’t be used for the poor. What a waste, Judas says, what a waste to anoint the feet of Jesus with this expensive stuff. What a waste to spend our time and money and efforts in worship and praise of Christ, when those energies could do some good to help people!
But Jesus puts a stop to that line of thinking. “Leave her alone. She is doing this in preparation for my burial. You will always have some among you in need, you can help them anytime you like, but you will not always have me.” Jesus knows that Mary’s gift is a personal and extravagant gift that points to his impending death. It is not a waste, it is a blessing, and honor and gives expression to the deepest feelings and thoughts of gratitude and praise. My friends, think on this: how would you respond if Jesus were right in front of you? How could you begin to express your thanks for the life that is in you because of him and his death, because of his Resurrection and Life? We are people looking to follow him, looking to serve him with our whole lives, we are people who have experienced the new life that Jesus Christ offers to us if we will just believe and trust in his goodness and love. We are the ones, my friends, who regularly gather at the table of the Lord to break the Bread of life and to share in a holy meal with Christ and each other. We are the ones who have tasted and seen the goodness of God, who know Christ to be the Resurrection and the Life, who have experienced the power and the encouragement of the Holy Spirit. How do you say thank you to a God who has created us and who has redeemed us and who sustains us? How can mere words begin to express the depth of our gratitude? We must respond to the extravagant goodness and love in Christ Jesus with extravagant generosity – with the gifts of our whole lives, with the gifts of our prayers, our presence, our times, our treasure; with everything we are and have. Like Mary, we spend our lives living in grateful response to the Life in Christ, living in a new way with him and through him.
And there still may be a few Judas’ out there who don’t quite get it. They see money and time as an either/ or thing – either I give my time and treasure to Jesus, or I give it in service to the poor. We can’t do both, can we? We can’t lavish our generosity on Christ and transform the world on behalf of the last, the lost, and the least, can we? Christ is no longer among us in the flesh, my friends, so we don’t have the opportunity to pour out everything we have at the physical feet of Jesus the way that Mary did – at least not until he comes again or we see him in the next life. But the good news is that he did leave us a way to continue to honor him and show our care and devotion to him in this world. As Matthew tells us in chapter 25 of his gospel: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” And we will ask: Lord, when was it that you were hungry, or sick, or in need and we helped you? And Jesus will reply: “just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.” The good news is that we have the opportunity to respond to the extravagant love and amazing Resurrection life that we experience in Jesus Christ by responding with extravagant generosity to the mission and ministry of the church, to respond to the needs in our community and our world with everything we have, our time, our treasure, our service, our lives. Because while Jesus isn’t with us in the flesh, the poor and those in need are, and whatsoever we do to the least of these, we do to Jesus.
So my friends, we are given an opportunity, each and every day, to respond to goodness and mercy we have experienced in Christ. How will you respond? With indignation, with stern words, like Judas, thinking that there is only so much to go around? Or will we respond to God’s generosity with generosity of our own, laying all we have at the feet of Christ, and in so doing, reaching out to the needs of the world, reaching out to the last, the least, and the lost? With God, in Jesus Christ, there is the powerful mystery of the Resurrection, and an amazing new life, and that abundant and overflowing. When we give to the needy, when we work to change the world, we do this to Christ and in his name. There is abundance, not scarcity in God. My brothers and sisters, it is right and a good and joyful thing to respond to God with all we have, to lay it all down at the feet of Christ.
