Homily – Luke 22.14-23.56, PS, YC, April 14, 2019

Tags

church, death, faithfulness, hope, hopelessness, Jesus, life, Palm Sunday, Sermon, sinfulness, tension

Several years ago, I was visiting a parishioner on her deathbed in the hospital.  We were talking about the things you talk about at the end of life:  the blessings, the memories, the unexpected turns of life.  Whatever fears about death that had been present were long gone.  All that was left was a sense of peace, and a certainty about the eternal life waiting for her on the other side.  I found myself wistful and a little sad, knowing there was nothing I or the doctors could do at that point.  Death was coming.  In the midst of this sacred, serious moment of inevitability, we heard a tinkling noise in the hallway.  Having had a child in a hospital, I knew what the tinkling noise was:  the tinkling sound was the announcement of a new baby being born.  As I explained the noise, the parishioner and I sat in awe – the closeness of life and death were all around us.  We did not have much to say at that point.  The sound of that tinkling just lingered in the room, long after the sound was gone.

I was thinking this week how similar the experience of Palm Sunday is to that hospital room.  We hold in tension so many things today.  We certainly hold life and death in tension:  the joyful celebration of Jesus with palms, and the wailing sorrow of death at the cross of Jesus.  We hold hope and hopelessness in tension too:  the promise of a new king, entering triumphantly, and the despair and finality of Christ on the cross.  We hold faithfulness and sinfulness in tension today:  the bold proclamation of the king who has come in the Name of the Lord, and the shouts of “crucify, crucify him,” just moments later.  Though we might prefer to claim life, hope, and faithfulness, today we must claim death, hopelessness, and sinfulness too.  They are as intertwined as life and death in a hospital.

In some ways, the tension of this day is just what we need in a culture that might like us to jump from the palms to the risen, triumphant Lord.  I am reading Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead this Lent, and one of the hazards to leadership she articulates is numbing.  Numbing can happen in all kinds of ways – through food, work, social media, shopping, television, video games, or alcohol.  The problem with numbing is that we cannot selectively numb emotions.  As Brown says, “if we numb the dark, we numb the light.  If we take the edge off pain and discomfort, we are, by default, taking the edge off joy, love, belonging, and the other emotions that give meaning to our lives.”[i]  When we numb our way through life, we not only suppress the bad stuff; we never get to fully enjoy the good stuff of life.

Today, the Church refuses to allow us to numb.  The Church has us wave palms and sing loudly and smell the sweet smell of victory, with a grin from ear to ear.  And the Church has us listen to the devastation of betrayal, hear the voices of contempt and hatred, and shout for Christ’s death.  Our hearts feel heavy as our minds try to justify all the times we too have betrayed Christ.  We feast as the disciples did on Christ’s body and blood, and we leave in silence as his disciples did from the cross.  Today we feel everything:  life, death; victory, failure; joy, and devastation.  In letting go of our tendency to numb, we open ourselves to the fullness of all that happens on this day.  Only then can embrace the Easter message of resurrection that is to come.  Only when we are fully broken, fully vulnerable, fully present in the tension of this day can we receive the fullness of joy that comes next week.  Only when we are looking into the doorway to death can we understand the depth of joy that comes from the tinkling sound of new life.  So, stay awake with us for just a little while longer.

[i] Brené Brown, Dare to Lead (New York:  Random House, 2018), 85.

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It’s complicated…

Tags

balance, divine, God, goodness, honor, Mother's Day, mothers, painful, pastoral, sacred, tension

Photo credit:  https://www.shutterstock.com/video/search/child-walking

Every once in a while, I have one of those pastoral fails – those moments when I say something that ends up sounding horribly thoughtless and makes me feel disappointed in myself.  Last week, I was talking to a new mom about the struggles of those first weeks of new motherhood.  I was bemoaning how when my mom left two weeks after my first child was born, I cried for hours, not knowing how to raise a child without her help.  Only hours later did I remember that this person’s mom died many years ago, and how insensitive my story sounded in hindsight.

Motherhood is a bit of a minefield.  Some of us are extremely fortunate to have awesome moms and wonderful relationships with those moms.  Some of us have more strained relationships, others of us have cutoff relationships, some had negligent or hurtful mothers, and many are still grieving our mothers who have passed.  Meanwhile, some of us have had amazing experiences being moms ourselves, while others have longed to have children or have lost pregnancies or children.  Motherhood is so complicated that I sometimes find myself caught off guard by my own unexpected emotional response to motherhood.

For a priest, that is why I dread Mother’s Day.  Mother’s Day is a day where I feel split in half – where I both want to honor the goodness and sacredness of motherhood, and I want to honor ways motherhood can be so painful.  This year, I was blessed by a friend who wrote about how to honor the tensions we find on Mother’s Day.  I leave with you a prayer she references found in Women’s Uncommon Prayers, written by the Reverend Leslie Nipps.  May your Mother’s Day find the balance I long for you to find.

On this Mother’s Day, we give thanks to God for the divine gift of motherhood in all its diverse forms. Let us pray for all the mothers among us today; for our own mothers, those living and those who have passed away; for the mothers that loved us and those who feel short of loving us fully; for all who hope to be mothers someday and for those whose hope to have children has been frustrated; for all mothers who have lost children; for all women and men who have mothered others in any way—those who have been our substitute mothers and we who have done so for those in need; and for the earth that bore us and provides us with our sustenance.  We pray this all in the name of God, our great and loving Mother.  Amen. (p. 364)

On Being Called by Name…

Tags

affirmed, baptism, call, church, Episcopal, God, identity, known, loved, name, nickname, pastor, priest, relatedness, role, tension

Photo credit:  blog.sweetcareersconsulting.com/2015/10/what-name-should-you-use-on-linkedin.html

In my line of work, my female colleagues are widely divided on what we should be called.  You see, for years in the Episcopal Church, the male priests were “Father so-and-so.”  In formal writing, it was “the Rev. so-and-so.”  But in the Episcopal Church, priests are not called “Rev. so-and-so” because the word reverend is an adjective, not a noun, and most Episcopalians cannot stand by grammatical errors.  Episcopalians also do not often use “Pastor so-and-so,” as it is considered too protestant.  So, that leaves Episcopalians in a bit of mess with titles for female priests.  Many have taken to calling women “Mother so-and-so,” to create a sense of parity between male and female priests.  But some women despise that address.  And so, female priests tend to be all over the map about what they prefer – from no title at all (simply using their name given at baptism) to Mother, to Reverend (conceding to the grammatical error for the sake of convenience), to Pastor.

So, when I was asked at my local yoga studio what I was called professionally, I had to chuckle.  I told them when I use a title, I prefer Mother Jennifer.  But that I answer to almost anything – Mother Jennifer, Rev. Jen, Pastor Jennifer, or just Jennifer.  But this past week, I added some new favorites.  A toddler in our parish was watching on online broadcast from church.  When her dad asked, “Do you know who that is?” she replied, “That’s Mama Church.”  Just last week, as our ecumenical brothers and sisters helped us host a winter shelter for the homeless in our community, a Roman Catholic volunteer was talking to my husband.  When she realized who he was she said, “Oh, your wife is that little spitfire thing!”

The funny thing is that despite our baptized names, I think we are all living into identities throughout life.  Sometimes we will only be known as our child’s parent – “Simone’s Mom.”  Sometimes we are known by our profession title – Doctor Smith, Nurse Johnson, Professor Green, Colonel Davis.  Sometimes we take on a funny nickname from a particular stage of life – I’ll let your memories recall a few of your own.  What we are called creates meaning, purpose, and identity throughout life.  And sometimes we have nicknames that we do not even know about – whether it’s “spitfire” or something else.

One of the things I love about church is that we work hard to know each other’s names:  sometimes the ones we are baptized with, but sometimes the funny, the serious, and the beloved names.  Those names can make us feel known, loved, and affirmed.  But mostly those names in church remind us that we are known by name by someone else:  our God.  I like to think God is able to hold all our names in tension:  the funny, yet embarrassing ones; the honorific ones; the ones that remind us of our call; the ones that reveal our relatedness.  God knows us better than any one name can contain, and yet I imagine loves every little nuance of our names.  I wonder what names in your life could stand to be let go, and which names invite you to be someone powerful and life-changing.

On Keeping Watch…

Tags

Advent, anxiety, Christ Child, Christian, community, devotional, God, Holy Spirit, insight, inspiration, keep, photo, speak, tension, watch, Word

Photo credit:  https://it.pinterest.com/pin/628252216738231468/

One of the themes we find in Advent is keeping watch.  Throughout the four weeks leading up to the birth of the Christ Child, we are to keep watch, preparing our hearts for the nativity of our Lord.  Traditionally, I have kept watch by using an Advent calendar or a special devotional book.  But this year, I am trying something new.  I have joined the Anglican Communion in a participatory Advent devotional called “Advent Word.”  Each day of Advent has an assigned word, and participants are invited to post a picture on social media that captures that word.

When I decided to join the Advent Word community, I was a bit nervous.  I worried what I would do if I could not figure out a picture to take or use that went with the daily word.  I have found my initial anxiety has not disappeared, but has created a sense of anticipatory tension.  Each day, I open up my email, and find a word and picture, with an invitation to prayer.  Then, throughout the day, I am keeping watch – for inspiration, for insight, for the Holy Spirit speaking to me anew through the images of everyday life.  By praying the word throughout the day, I am finding myself much more aware throughout the day, and much more attuned to God speaking to me in fresh ways.

In some ways, the anticipatory tension of participating in Advent Word has helped me accomplish the bigger goal of keeping watch during Advent.  Instead of having Advent slip by in the bustle of the season, each day has a poignancy and sense of meaning.  Instead of wishing away the days until Christmas comes, my Advent has become much more intentional and meaningful.

I wonder how your Advent is going?  Are you finding ways to keep watch?  If the days are slipping away, I invite you to find ways to slow down, and listen for the Holy Spirit who longs to prepare your heart for the Christ Child.  If you have found other ways to keep watch this Advent, I would love to hear about your experience.  If nothing else, I have learned this year that Christian community can be a wonderful partner in helping us keep watch.  If you are looking for such a community, Hickory Neck is full of everyday people who are happy to keep watch with you.

Sermon – 1 Corinthians 12.12-31a, EP3, YC, January 24, 2016

Tags

Anglican Communion, body, body of Christ, Christ, conflict, Corinthians, diversity, Episcopal Church, gift, one, parts, Paul, primates, Sermon, table, tension, unity

Below is the sermon I had prepared for this past Sunday.  However, since most of my parishioners were still shoveling themselves out of their homes, I never got to preach it.  Here it is in its written form.  

 

A little over a week ago, the primates of the Anglican Communion made a big decision.  The primates suspended the Episcopal Church from full participation in the life and work of the Anglican Communion.  For those of you wondering what exactly the Anglican Communion is, the Anglican Communion consists of 38 autonomous national and regional Churches plus six Extra Provincial Churches and dioceses, of which the Episcopal Church is a member.  All of those bodies are in Communion – in a reciprocal relationship – with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the Communion’s spiritual head.  Each Church makes its own decisions in its own ways, guided by recommendations from specific Anglican entities.  Back in 2003, the Episcopal Church elected the first openly gay bishop, and since that time, the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church have experienced a great deal of tension.  Many churches in the Global South are morally opposed to homosexuality and have suggested that the Episcopal Church voluntarily withdraw from the Communion.  Meanwhile, many Episcopal Churches split from the church, causing lawsuits around the use of church buildings, as well as deep divisions and sadness.

This past summer at General Convention, the Episcopal Church voted to authorize liturgies for same-sex marriages.  That decision is what led to the primates’ decision last week to suspend the Episcopal Church from full participation in the life and work of the Anglican Communion for the next three years.  Though the Episcopal Church will have voice in meetings of pan-Anglican institutions and assemblies, the Episcopal Church will not have a vote on those bodies.  Our own Presiding Bishop has talked about how painful this action is, but confesses that the wideness of God’s love has made it impossible for the Episcopal Church to change course.  No one knows what the future holds.  Many in the Anglican Communion hope the Episcopal Church will change course.  Many in the Episcopal Church believe that our mission is to love all God’s children and to provide a witness of that love despite opposition.  For many of us Episcopalians, we may not feel an everyday impact from this decision, but one way or another, through this recent decision of the primates, the Anglican Communion will experience some sort of change in the way the Communion operates.

For all the drama and complexity of the Anglican Church, we are not the first in the church to experience this kind of conflict.  Thousands of years ago, the church in Corinth was struggling too.  You see, the “Church in Corinth ‘was a very mixed group, with several differing views and practices which put considerable strains on their common life.’”  Into that strain, Paul writes them to “encourage a sense of cooperation and unity amongst a group of people that were struggling with their differences.”[i]  He uses the familiar metaphor of a body to help the Corinthians see how they are to relate to one another:  not as a hierarchical body, with one part superior to the others, but as a body of mutuality, diversity, and interdependence, in which all the parts (or points of view) are needed.[ii]  Paul’s letter is both affirming and challenging.  He wants the Corinthians to know that each of them are valued and significant.  But he also wants of each of them to know that they are not to let their significance get “blown up into self-importance.”[iii]  Their significance comes from being a part of the body.  In other words, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that they are each valuable, they are each needed, and they each need to appreciate the contributions of the others.

One of the things that was most hurtful in the early 2000s, when the Episcopal Church first started openly talking about the issue of sexual orientation was that people started to leave the table.  I remember when I first became an Episcopalian, I loved how no matter what differences we all have, we could still come and feast at the Eucharistic table, side-by-side.  And in most Episcopal churches, that still happens.  But when those who opposed same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian brothers and sisters left the Episcopal Church, we lost a part of our body.  We lost the part of our body that would challenge us, question our theology, and make us aware that although we are one body, we are not of one mind.  I fear that the same thing will happen in the Anglican Communion should the Anglican Communion decide that the Episcopal Church can no longer be fully a part of the body.

The challenges that Paul presents to Corinth and the Anglican Communion presents to the Episcopal Church are just as important to us at St. Margaret’s.  Having been with our parish for over four years, I have seen a fair amount of conflict.  Whether we were discerning whether or not to take on an expensive capital project, to start a new outreach ministry, or to reach out to our neighbors and invite them to church, we have rarely been unanimous in our conversations.  But Paul is not inviting the church to experience unity as uniformity or as some sort of superficial harmony.  In fact, Paul might argue that conflict is good because conflict highlights the ways in which we are of a diverse mind.  Diversity within the body means that we are quite naturally going to have a variety of perspectives – and that variety is a blessing.  Paul argues that “diversity within the church community is not something to be tolerated, or regretted, or manipulated for one’s own advantage, but something to be received as the gift that it is.  Paul’s argument implies that not only diversity, but unity in that diversity, is a reality without which the church cannot live.”[iv]

That being said, unity of the body – unity in diversity – is not easy.  I am the first to admit that I grew up in an environment that was conflict avoidant.  My initial inner reaction to conflict is to step back in the face of conflict.  But St. Margaret’s has been a wonderful teacher about how to love and respect in the midst of conflict.  This community has taught me that without conflict, we do not get anywhere real or authentic.  With conflict, we respectfully hear the breadth of our differences, and then we move gently through those, comforting those who mourn decisions, and encouraging those who rejoice in those same decisions.  As Paul teaches us, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it”[v]

I do not know how the Anglican Communion will fare in the next three years.  My hope is that the Episcopal Church might continue to witness the power of unity through diversity within the body as opposed to unity for the sake of uniformity.  The path forward will be hard.  We will need to rejoice with those who were long treated as second class citizens and are now able to be married and ordained just like their heterosexual brothers and sisters.  We will need to mourn with those who see that change as a violation of God’s will.  We will need to honor those who have consensus around suspending our church, and comfort those in our church who feel rejected by that decision.  But mostly, we will need to keep reminding the Communion that we are one body, whose parts cannot be cut off without a weakening of the body.

The same is true for our parish and our own families.  If we see the Communion weakened by cutting off parts of the body, we will have learned some hard lessons about when our behaviors are similar in our own church and families.  If we see the Communion strengthened as the Communion honors its unity through diversity, we too will see the value of renewal through honoring diversity.  Being a body is not easy.  The good news is that we do not have to work to become the body of Christ.  “That is not Paul’s notion.  He considers that believers as believers are already the body of Christ, and he exhorts [us] to relate to one another in a manner appropriate to what [we] already are.”[vi]  Amen.

[i] Carol Troupe, “One Body, Many Parts:  A Reading of 1 Corinthians 12:12-27” Black Theology, vol. 6, no. 1, January 2008, 33.

[ii] Lee C. Barrett, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 278, 280.

[iii] 1 Corinthians 12.19.  Language from Eugene Patterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. 

[iv] Brian Peterson, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a,” January 24, 2016 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2733 on January 21, 2016.

[v] 1 Cor. 12.2

[vi] Leander E. Keck, ed., The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2002), 948.

The Truth about Weddings…

Tags

abundance, Anglican Communion, Cana, conflict, Episcopal Church, feast, God, Jesus, joy, marriage, miracle, pain, tension, water, wedding, wine

Photo credit:  http://www.freebibleimages.org/photos/wedding-cana/

Almost two years ago, we welcomed our second daughter, Cana into the world.  We have gotten countless questions about the choice of her name and we find ourselves telling the story about the wedding in Cana over and over again.  Sometimes the repetition is annoying.  But mostly, retelling the story is a gift in itself.  You see, the story of Jesus’ first miracle is a story of great joy.  There is the setting of a wedding – one already filled with merriment and delight.  There is the wonder of a miracle – the amazing ability of Jesus to convert water into wine.  And there is the shock of abundance – not just the enormous amount of wine that Jesus produces, but also the best wine of the evening.  There are certainly questions in the story:  What is happening between Jesus and Mary?  Is this kind of miracle an exercise in indulgence?  Why does Jesus choose this as his first miracle?  But the questions usually fade in comparison to the joy.  Jesus chooses an occasion of joy to bring forth a miracle of abundance and pleasure.  I cannot help but smile every time I read the story.

Attending a wedding this weekend, hearing the story of Cana in Sunday’s lectionary, and thinking about our own daughter Cana, I cannot help but be left with a sense of gratitude for the gift of abundant joy given to us by Jesus in his first miracle.  There are parts of Jesus’ story that are neither joyful nor abundant.  But this first miracle gives us a taste – a literal and delightful taste – of the abundance of God’s love and kingdom.  I really cannot seem to wipe the smile off my face when I think of any of the three of those reminders of Jesus’ abundance and grace.

Perhaps that is why I am so saddened by the continued discord in the Anglican Communion about gay marriage.  In my country, the occasion of the legalization and blessing of gay marriage in the Episcopal Church has been a source of great joy for my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, as well as their allies.  That, coupled with the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, has left many in our church feeling a deep connection to the joy and abundance that Christ brings.  And yet, that joy is bringing great sadness to a large portion of the Anglican Communion.  Here we are at the earthly banquet, and instead of a joyful occasion of abundance, we are at a different feast – one where family drama and strife is overshadowing the joy of some of our members.

The irony of the wedding of Cana being appointed for the same Sunday that the Episcopal Church is grappling with the Anglican Communion Primates’ decision to suspend the full participation of the Episcopal Church in the life and work of the Anglican Communion is not lost on me.  But maybe that is the truth of every wedding – the constant tension between heavenly grace and abundance and human sinfulness and frailty.  Behind every dreamy wedding is some glossed over (or sometimes very obvious) family drama.  But even in the midst of family tension, there are usually moments of grace – glimpses of the abundance Jesus wants to shower upon us.  That is what I am grasping onto this week:  in the midst of pain, and facing the ambiguity of these next years in the Anglican Communion, God will keep breaking through with abundance, joy, and miracle.  Though I do not know all the answers to the biblical or the ecclesiastical story, I am grateful for the gift of Cana.

The gift of role models…

Tags

anxiety, gifts, glorify, God, non-anxious, role model, stress, tension

This Saturday our parish has its Annual Fall Fair – a festive gathering with vendors, food, children’s activities, raffles, and other fall merriment.  We are blessed with an 11-acre property, so the event is a wonderful way for us to welcome people to our grounds and remind the community that they are welcome here.  Having done this event for so many years, most of our parishioners know what needs to be done – signs, publicity, donors, coordinating vendors, setting up the property, making baskets, bringing in donations.  The list goes on.  But even though we all know what needs to be done, there is usually a bit of anxiety and stress to make sure the event is a success, especially in the week leading up to the event.  As someone who can become easily stressed, I totally understand the reaction.  Though I am not involved in the execution of the event, I always empathize with our parishioners as the tension builds in this final week.

But this year, something has shifted.  I do not know if it is due to their personalities or if they are being intentional in their behavior, but our co-chairs for this event are being the epitome of a non-anxious presence in the community.  Don’t get me wrong, they have had plenty of reasons to become anxious: several key volunteers are unavailable this year, leading to some out-sourcing; the vendors are coming in a little more slowly; and we are trying some very different, new things this year.  But the co-chairs seem to be rolling with the punches, creating solutions, and keeping their cool.  And although the church is abuzz with activity, I sense that the non-anxious presence of the co-chairs is rubbing off on others.  People are doing their assigned tasks, and there seems to be much less tension going into the event.

It is in moments like these when I am grateful to be in a community with a wide variety of gifts.  Being a non-anxious presence is one of my primary goals in my role as pastor and priest in this community.  I feel like that action alone reduces challenges significantly and enables the body to live out its ministry in a healthy and God glorifying way.  But being non-anxious takes work and intentionality, and some days I exude that calm better than others.  This week, I am grateful for parishioners who are serving as healthy role models, and who invite me to live into my call in a more healthy way.

Courtesy of http://collegesoup.org/2011/03/31/reducing-college-test-anxiety/

Both/and…

Tags

and, blessing, both, Christ, maternity, parenting, priesthood, tension, vocation, work

Courtesy of http://www.vineyardusa.org/site/articles/both-and

I was fine until my older daughter’s teacher saw me without the baby, realized I had dropped her off at nursery school, and then asked if I was okay.  I really was fine.  But as soon as I tried to tell her how fine I was, my eyes moistened.  I kept my response short for fear that my eyes would overflow.  The truth is that I was not really fine.  I was sad:  sad to lose those moments of just gazing into my infant’s eyes; sad to lose that new experience of trying to get smiles out of her – especially since now her smiles are also accompanied by her whole face scrunching up in joy; sad to lose those moments of quiet rest, her warm body totally relaxed against mine, with no one else around to distract her.  Though there have been many periods of utter exhaustion, most of these weeks of maternity leave have been filled with the joy of the miracle of new life.  I have been thrilled to have the experience of having a newborn one more time, and I have been trying to soak up every moment.  And so, yes, I am sad for that time to be over.

And, I am also thrilled to be returning to work.  I use the word, “and,” and not, “but,” because I feel these emotions simultaneously.  I am sad to be ending maternity leave and my time with my newborn.  And I am happy to be returning to my work.  My work gives me such joy, meaning, and satisfaction.  It challenges me, makes me stronger, teaches me, and blesses me.  It is a tremendous privilege to serve as a priest – one that I am even more aware of having taken time away from it.  Though there are days that drive me crazy in my work, I cannot imagine living out any other vocation than my vocation as an ordained minister of the Church.  My love of being a mother to two wonderful girls does not negate my love of being a pastor to a community seeking, serving, and sharing Christ.

And so I am intentional these days about avoiding the word, “but,” when talking about my feelings about my two callings.  Instead, I am using the words, “both/and.”  I both grieve the loss of time with my children and I rejoice in being able to return to the other work God has given me to do.  Obviously some days the balance of “both/and” happens more smoothly than others.  But that balance is also the fullness of all the work God has given me to do – the work of being a priest, a mother, a wife, a friend, a sister, a member of the community.  My prayer for the coming weeks is that I can resist those moments when the “but” tries to sneak its way into my language, and hold dear to the “both/and” that is the blessing of my life right now.

Sermon – John 12.1-8, L5, YC, March 17, 2013

Tags

community, death, faith journey, God, Holy Week, Jesus, Judas, Lazarus, Mary, poor, Sermon, tension

With Holy Week only a week away, today’s Gospel lesson throws us into preparation for that significant week.  Six days before the Passover – six days before Jesus will sit down with his disciples for their last meal together – Jesus sits down for another significant meal.  Jesus returns to Bethany, to the home of the family he loves – the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.  The foreshadowing is all there.  Lazarus, and the lingering smell of his once-dead body, is at the table as a vivid reminder of the death that awaits Jesus.  The two of them sharing table fellowship together both brings to mind the resurrection of Lazarus, and foreshadows a more important resurrection that is soon to come.  Even Mary is preparing us and Jesus for his death, as she uses costly perfume, nard that she has saved for the day of Jesus’ burial, to anoint Jesus now.  Death is heavy in the room.  What sounds like a simple reunion of friends is actually the foretaste of what is to come in a mere week.

So in the midst of this sacred, significant moment, what does Judas do?  Judas totally misses what is happening in the moment.  On one level, Judas is right.  That bottle of nard – a whole pound of fragrance – would have cost about $20,000 in today’s terms[i].  Judas has spent years with Jesus hearing nothing but Jesus’ preference for the poor.  We cannot fault Judas for seeing the potential good that the same bottle could have done for the poor.  But like any good church member, Judas gets stuck in the ways he has learned.  Judas takes a really good practice – Jesus’ passion for the poor – and makes that practice rigid and lifeless.  This valued practice blinds him to the other realities that are unfolding right before him.

We behave like Judas all of the time.  We too have ideas about what we should do and how that should be done.  Our reasoning might be very informed and, under normal circumstances, deeply rooted in our faith and tradition.  But sometimes we too are off base.  We miss the big picture.  When I went on my mission trip to Honduras, we spent an entire winter and spring preparing for the trip.  One of the many books we read was a book by a woman named Elvia Alvarado.  Elvia was a poor Honduran woman who saw much strife in her country and who slowly became an organizer and advocate for change.  But along the way she tells of many atrocities that happened in Honduras to the poor.  As I read the book, I became more and more outraged and incensed about what was happening to the Honduran poor – so outraged that I wanted to go and do something, to make a difference for the people who could not speak for themselves.  But in her concluding remarks, Elvia says something quite shocking.  Elvia asks every gringo reader (gringos being white people from the United States) not to come to Honduras to solve their problems.  In fact she tells the gringos to stay where we are.  She says that this work is the Hondurans’ work to do.  But what she does charge the gringos with is working on our own stuff.  She asks us to look at the systems in our own country that encourage oppression – governmental trade policies, manufacturing and farming practices, and our own purchasing patterns.  Elvia’s words to me were like a slap in the face.  Elvia basically said to me, “Don’t bring your savior mentality down here and think that you will save us all.  Instead, stay at home and work on the ways that you and your country are a part of the problem.”

Elvia’s words to me and all of us are not unlike Jesus words to Judas that night.  What Elvia taught me is that we do not always have the whole picture.  We may have learned a lot, we may have spent a great deal of time studying our faith or developing our relationship with Christ, and we may feel like we have a pretty good idea about what God calls us to do and be.  But what we forget in our confidence is that God is always on the move, always breaking into the world in new ways, and always opening up new paths for us.  The moment that we think we have God figured out – and particularly the moment that we start telling others what they should and should not do – is the moment that Jesus slaps us in the face with another reality.

So if we are not to be imitating Judas in this story from scripture, what do we glean from Mary’s actions?  I once heard a story about an experience at a stewardship conference whose theme was generosity.  When one of the presenters spoke about offering a gift directly to God, the clergy began to yawn.  The presenter then pulled a $100 bill from his wallet, set it on fire in an ashtray, and prayed, “Lord, I offer this gift to you, and you alone.”  The reaction was electric.  Clergy began to fidget in their chairs, whispering about the legality of burning currency, and murmuring about how they would happily take any more money he felt like burning.  In that nervous room, the speaker asked, “Do you not understand?  I am offering it to God, and that means it is going to cease to be useful for the rest of us.”[ii]

In many ways, Mary “wastes” her perfume on Jesus much like this presenter wasted that $100.  But Jesus does not see Mary’s gift as wasteful.  He declares the gift to be appropriate in that moment, and is gracious enough to receive the gift with gratitude.  He understands that the extravagant gift is rooted in Mary’s confidence in the boundless capacity of God’s love.  “Mary pours out her whole bottle of perfume without regret because she knows it is only a trifle compared to the magnitude of God’s love that she sees in the Messiah before her.  Mary knows that Lazarus will die again, and she knows that Jesus will die, but she believes with even greater passion that Jesus can bring victory over death.”[iii]

This tense interaction between Jesus, Mary, and Judas invites us into another kind of tension.  The story invites us to live into the tension of what we know about God and what is still unfolding.  We need to learn the “rules” or the “law” of this crazy life of faith.  But we also need to learn the “way of being.”  We need to learn when to focus on the details and when to see the big picture.  We need to learn when the time has come to “waste” an extravagance on another.  When Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you,” Jesus is not giving us an out for caring for the poor.  Instead Jesus invites us into a “both-and” tension.  Yes, we are to care for the poor.  That is living into the law of our life together.  And, we also need to have the presence of mind to see when something so significant is happening, such as losing our Savior to the cross, that we pause our other work.  This is the way of being in our life together.

Ultimately, we need both Judas and Mary for our faith journey today.  We need that person in our community who will always remind us of the laws that we live by and who will always remind us of the ways things should be done.  But we also need that person in our community who is the crazy one who will open up for us the lavish ways of God and who will remind us to let go of the law enough to see God’s bigger picture.  Without each person in our community, including those individuals who have not yet come to St. Margaret’s, we only have a portion of the community we need to fully embody the community of faith.  Without the “both” and the “and” we are incomplete.  Sometimes that means we will not agree.  The “boths” and the “ands” of our community will experience a tension so strong that we may hear Jesus shouting, “Leave her alone.”  But both the “boths” and the “ands” need each other.  Jesus gives us all value today, but Jesus also requires us to value one another.  Amen.

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[i] George W. Stroup, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 142.

[ii] William G. Carter, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 142.

[iii] Beth Sanders, “Heaven Scent,” Christian Century, vol. 124, no. 5, March 6, 2007, 19.