Being Present with Jesus
Lent 5C
6 April 2025 9:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of St. Luke, Grants Pass (Oregon)
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8; Psalm 126
God, give us grace to feel and love.
Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
In the second century, there was a great churchman named Tatian. He was
converted to Christianity because he hated the messiness of
paganism. He wanted his new faith to be clean and orderly, and in
an effort to help the Church, he took the four Gospels and digested them into a
single reconciled account, the Diatesseron (the 4-fold story). It was wildly
popular. For over two centuries its text was read in Eucharist as the
Gospel in the Eastern Church. As an older man, Tatian veered into a
weird sect that hated the human body and demanded celibacy from all. When
it came time in the fourth century to decide what books were accepted as the
standard for faith, the Church in council decided that the Four Gospels
themselves, and not Tatian’s Harmony, were to go in the Bible. They
had been uniquely authoritative from the start, and this was why Tatian had
used them. So the Church rejected Tatian’s consistent single Gospel and accepted
Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John in all their messy disharmony and inconsistencies.
Mark (14:3-9), followed by Matthew (26:6-13), sets the story at the home of Simon the Leper in Bethany near Jerusalem just days before Jesus’ death. A woman enters a dinner where Jesus is reclined with other guests on small couches around a dinner table. She brings a precious flask of extremely expensive perfumed ointment worth in today’s dollars about $30,000. She pours it onto Jesus’ head. Jesus’ followers are outraged at the waste of money that could have been given to the poor. But Jesus defends her, saying, “Let her alone. She has done a beautiful thing for me. You will always have the poor with you, but I am about to die. She was just preparing my body for burial a little early. Wherever the Gospel is preached, this story will be recounted ‘in memory of her.’” The scene describes a prophetic act: anointing Jesus’ head proclaims him as the ‘Christ’ (or Anointed One).
Luke
(7:36-50), who like Matthew usually edits and adapts Mark, tells a very
different story. Luke places his version of the story very early in
Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, at the home of a Pharisee also named Simon. A
woman “of the city, known to be a sinner” interrupts. She comes in behind Jesus as he reclines with
his head toward the table and begins to weep. Her tears cover Jesus’
feet, which she then wipes dry with her hair, unbound in public in the style of
prostitutes in that place and time advertising their availability. She
then kisses and anoints his feet (not his head) with the precious
ointment. The host says to himself that if Jesus were a prophet, he would
know not to allow this sleazy person to touch him. Jesus tells the
parable of the two debtors explaining that the woman had been forgiven much sin
and so has greater gratitude. He contrasts his host’s cool reception to
the care the woman has lavished on Jesus, pointedly noting “you did not anoint
my head, but she has anointed my feet.”
Immediately after the story, Luke
tells of Jesus’ early women disciples, including one Mary of Magdala, from whom
Jesus had cast seven demons. Forever since, Christians have tended to
identify the unnamed prostitute in Luke’s story with Mary Magdalene, and from
there, with the woman in all four of the stories. The scene in Luke
emphasizes the woman’s interior reasons for approaching Jesus—her gratitude for
Jesus’ forgiveness and welcome.
In
today’s Gospel reading, John (12:1-8) places the scene, like Mark, just before
Jesus’ death in Bethany. But here the
homeowner is not identified, though the main servers are Mary and Martha,
sisters of Lazarus. It looks like the dinner is to thank Jesus for
raising Lazarus from the dead, an act that in John’s Gospel becomes the trigger
for the plot to put Jesus to death. Though this Mary is from Judean Bethany,
not from Galilean Magdala as hinted at in Luke, she anoints Jesus’ feet as in
Luke rather than his head as in Mark.
She, a devoted disciple, anoints the feet of Jesus with costly ointment
and then wipes the excess off with her hair, “filling the house with the
fragrance of the ointment.”
In John, it is Judas Iscariot, the
treasurer of the disciples about to betray Jesus, who complains, probably as
part of John’s bitter and ugly blaming of Jews instead of the Romans for Jesus’
death. Jesus replies, “Let her alone,
her purpose was to keep it for my burial day. You will always have the
poor, but you will not always have me with you.” In John, the scene
describes not a prophetic act by a woman proclaiming Jesus as Christ and
hinting at his death (as in Mark and Matthew), nor an overwrought act of
gratitude of a sinful woman in the presence of grace (as in Luke), but rather
an act of loving devotion by follower of Jesus anticipating his
death.
In all four gospels, the woman’s act
is extravagant, out of proportion, embarrassing, and questionable
morally. In all these stories, Jesus defends the woman. He does not
criticize her extravagance, but loves her for it. As he taught, “The
kingdom of God is like the case of a laborer who having found a treasure in the
field, in his joy goes and sells everything he has and buys the field; or like
the merchant who having found a pearl of great price, goes and sells everything
and buys the pearl” (Matthew 13:44-46). In accepting Jesus’ love,
no cost is too much, no expression of thanks too extravagant.
That is the point I want us to take from the story today. We must be present, and give Jesus our whole being. Standing back and taking on a critic’s role—that woman is a sinner! Why was this money wasted and not given to the poor!—means not being able to be present for Jesus.
We human beings seem to be hard-wired that we can either be present, active, doing something, living our life, or we can observe, analyze, criticize, and offer our commendation or complaint. We might be able to shift back and forth between these two modes of being—doing or observing—very quickly, but we cannot do both at once. Despite the commonly held view, we are not really able to multi-task. Rather, we at best are able to single task in rapid order, switching between these modes. That’s why texting while driving seems to make us about as able to drive as a person with three times the legal blood-alcohol limit. That’s why one of the quickest ways to kill the mood of romance and love-making is to start to analyze what is going on and worry about how we are doing. You can either do, or you can observe and analyze. But you cannot do both at the same time.
That’s the contrast I see in today’s Gospel between Mary and Judas. Mary is in the moment, carried by her emotions, and acts extravagantly to show love to Jesus, to prepare his body for burial even before his last suffering begins. Judas analyzes it, and offers his criticism. And there is no quicker way to kill one’s experience of faith than to begin to criticize and offer judgment on how we or others act our their faith.
Tears and extravagance are what each
of us must give Jesus if we truly understand what he offers us. The woman
comes to Jesus and offers all she has, including her dignity. Her ego and
self-seeking are dissolved in the wash of tears and the outpouring of the
costly perfume. She comes to Jesus just as she is, with no pretense to
herself, to him, or to others. And, being human, there is plenty
for others to criticize in her "just as she is."
But Jesus sees her heart. And he loves her for honesty, her sincerity,
for her desire. Her love reflects his love. If it’s a waste
of money, so be it. If it’s inappropriate, embarrassing, or morally
dubious, tough. If its extravagance reflects in its own little way the
extravagance of God's love toward us, good. What counts for Jesus is the
woman’s intentions, as flawed as she or they might be.
Jesus’ defense of Mary is no excuse to ignore the poor, or think that Jesus did. After a ministry focused on the poor he says, “The poor are always with you, but I am not always with you.” Jesus is saying that caring for the poor is important, but must never be placed in zero-sum competition with caring for the beloved before you.
The fact is, maybe we do not have to get everything just right before the Lord
accepts us or looks at us with favor. He loves us so much that, like the
father in the parable in last week’s Gospel, he will come out running with arms
outspread if we simply turn to him.
Tears of gratitude warm Jesus’ heart and refresh our soul. The fragrance
of expensive perfume, extravagantly offered by a humble heart, can fill not
only a house, but the whole world. Accepting ourselves and offering our
whole selves, including our disabilities and weaknesses, to God is necessary
for this to happen.
Contrast this with those who look on any act of compassion and beauty with hard
hearts, green eye shades, and
calculators, and criticize and whinge about the failings of those who pursue
beauty and compassion, whether an act of religious and personal devotion to
Jesus, or an act of social justice or charity.
They blast those who wash the feet of Jesus with their tears, and anoint
him with expensive oil, whether in his own person or of the persons of the marginalized
created in God’s image, whom Jesus called “the least of these, my family.” Contrast such extravagant love in all its
messiness with Tatian, who preferred a clean, harmonized Gospel, to the messy gospels
God saw fit to actually deliver to us, to Tatian, who preferred an orderly
world filled with the pure only rather than real human beings.
Let us all try to be a little more honest with ourselves and with God as we
pray. Let us recognize our failings and not loathe ourselves for them,
but rather love and thank God all the more for delivering us from the
hopelessness of life without Jesus. Let us be a little easier on
ourselves and others, more comfortable in the presence of the living God, who
above all is a loving God. Let us be extravagant in showing our
gratitude.
In the name of God, Amen.
