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“Extravagance”
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 25, 2007
Prayer: Dear Lord, you
prepare a way for us in the wilderness, and your grace waters our desert. Come
and be with us and give us your Spirit, so that we might listen with open hearts
to your word; help us to be filled with your love, that our lives may proclaim
the extravagance of your love to all, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
AMEN.
On this, the 5th Sunday
of Lent, we are continuing our journey to Jerusalem with Christ Jesus,
redefining and restoring our relationships in a ‘new creation’ with God and
others. Through Yahweh, we hear the prophet Isaiah bring this good news of
reconciliation to God poetically, expressing how Yahweh promises new things for
Israel from older and former things; the extravagance is in God’s promises and
actions in their world. Our Gospel tells us of Jesus’ promises and actions
before and upon his death where the aroma of discipleship in Mary will spread
her faithfulness of love to Jesus Christ and eventually to all the world .
Judas (Iscariot), that disciple
who was to betray Jesus, questioned the extravagance of Mary’s actions. And many
of us probably can identify and sympathize with Judas because of her seemingly
wastefulness in spilling a pound of costly nard on Jesus’ feet. For as we know
in these times, pure nard (spikenard as it was called) took someone
approximately one year in earning money to purchase it; it took Mary, what,
perhaps a few seconds to spread and then wipe it with her hair! Judas is only
asking what many of us would; why can’t it be used for some more useful purpose,
instead of this most extravagant act that won’t feed, shelter, or clothe anyone?
Let’s ponder Mary’s extravagance, or even Judas’ idea of her wastefulness in
this gesture towards Jesus Christ.
Extravagance seems to be an
unreasonable excess, doesn’t it? If you are like me you might contrast this with
wastefulness, meaning to squander, like last week’s prodigal son who consumed or
used up all that he had. Many of us can relate to this wastefulness by Mary
because of our being raised during the Great Depression, or our being raised by
those who were raised by those living in the depression days, and we know that
these people abhorred waste.
So much so that I remember as a
child when mother and dad insisted that we eat all that was on our plate at
mealtime. When we had completed church activities on Sunday, we’d have this
extravagant Sunday dinner that I truly loved; well, maybe not all of the
vegetables or what was served together. But I had to separate my potatoes/gravy
away from the peas and carrots; to have dessert, we had to eat every last pea or
carrot to get our dessert, and my Nana made wonderful desserts. But along with
this practice, I also remember not wanting that Monday ‘leftover’ meal. Today, I
still am a ‘sweet-tooth’ wanting dessert, and am sometimes laughed at and told
after mealtime, “they can put the plate back in the cupboard because it doesn’t
need washing!”And while one of my least favorites, one of my husband’s favorite
meals is leftovers.
Or other stories that you may
remember, like emptying every last drop when pouring out the larger Catsup
bottle into the smaller bottle used regularly in the refrigerator; and years ago
waiting for the last drop of oil at the gas station when checking and filling
your oil gauge, along with getting gasoline. Stories about these practices are
many, but wastefulness wasn’t tolerated. Today wastefulness can be heard of as
more than one family car and garage, televisions in every room in our
homes, and homes larger than we can afford to purchase, but we do it all anyway!
Yet as Jesus answers Judas, “
Leave her alone; she bought it ....,” we are reminded of the extravagance of
Mary towards Jesus in her gesture; not in a wasteful way but in a loving way.
She is moved to her action by her gratitude to Jesus; in her love of Jesus in
his extravagance in raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was, just previous to
this text, with Mary and raised from the dead. Coincidentally, it was because of
Lazarus that many of the Jews were deserting and/or believing in Jesus
(v. 11). Mary is indebted to Jesus for the
gift of life to her brother (John 11:28-44);
she would have expended whatever it took to give her thanks and love to
Jesus.
Also, we are reminded that Mary’s
gesture was because Jesus wasn’t going to be with them much longer, as he says,
“ so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” Mary knew Jesus wasn’t
there with them, eating, talking, sharing for long; they would not always have
Jesus as there was a plot to kill Jesus, and Mary was anointing Jesus for
burial. Foot washing was a sign of Jesus’ impending death. It was also a sign of
intimacy; other than your mother when you were little, do you know of anyone
else who cared for, looked at your calloused, toe-nailed feet? It is a moment
unlike many of us who wait until it is too late to express our love and
gratitude to persons who mean so much to us and then they leave this world and
we feel remorse and guilt in our non-action of showing our love. Mary was
honoring Jesus’ mortality; she loved him extravagantly while he was there with
her to be loved. We might ask, do we have extravagance’s in our living?
Last summer I walked through the
beautiful cemetery down the street here near the lake in Cambridge and looked at
the names, stones, just the atmosphere on one of my lunch hours; it was a
beautiful fall day; this exercise does bring one to grips with their own
mortality, I’d say!. But I noticed familiar family names in this church of older
adults, along with babies born, living 4-10 days and lavish stones in memory of
them. You may have read about some then, or in today’s world where extravagant
obituaries (columns) are written for the public to read expounding on young
lives, or even older ones too. Is this extravagance? Jesus said no!! It is to
show, even in death, our love for someone?
Lastly, we are reminded as we
ponder this question of wastefulness or extravagance by Mary towards Jesus, that
our Gospel tells us, “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”
The aroma in the house of Mary’s love for Jesus was like a fragrant perfume.
John tells us that Mary’s extravagant love was not the kind of love we find in
fragrant ointment used in ancient times (spica nardi, an aromatic Indian herb),
the kind of love we find in spray perfumes from the roots and given a name, a
scent or an expensive price, but by the shear presence of her love, the
fragrance of the extravagant love Mary had for Jesus, the continuous love we
bring to this room as this story is read again to you and me, and the
extravagant love that inspires us to love others as well.
Our texts are quite revealing
because they tell us again about the contrasts and comparisons of those who were
identifying with God and God’s Son Jesus Christ; the Jews, the Pharisees and
chief priests, Greeks and Romans, but especially Mary and Lazarus. Mary has set
the stage and modeled, by washing his feet, what it means to be a disciple
BEFORE Jesus washed the feet of his disciples in an extravagance of love to the
end; later at the table and before his own death.
Jesus is not like any other person
who lived; Jesus is the Son of God. Not everyone believed Jesus as divine; our
gospel helps to convince us that in the revelation of Christ from God, God has
promised and acted extravagantly with new and better things. Mary shows her
extravagance in love to Jesus Christ, and her brother Lazarus is at the table
with them. God has said, “ I’m doing a new thing”; indeed the good news for us
is in Jesus Christ, that extravagance of humanity and divinity, to us from God.
Yes, it is extravagance; let us show forth our love, like Mary, in extravagance
and in excess, like the aroma of perfume, to God and then to one another!
Thanks be to
God. AMEN.
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