Jesus First

Jesus First

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

March 13, 2016

Scripture: John 12:1-8

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So we just heard John’s version of a Gospel story known as The Anointing at Bethany. It is one of the few stories that appears in all four Gospels, although Luke’s version of it is very different from the other three. In that story a woman whom John identifies as Mary, apparently the sister of Lazarus, pours some very costly perfume on Jesus’ feet. In other Gospels the woman is not identified as Mary, and she pours the perfume on his head not his feet, but never mind. Those differences don’t matter, or at least they don’t for my purposes this morning. In the story a disciple whom John identifies as Judas Iscariot but the other Gospels don’t identify at all objects to what she has done. He says the perfume could have been sold for nearly a year’s wages for a common worker and the money given to the poor. John says he objects not because he cares about the poor but because he wanted there to be money for him to steal, which the other Gospels don’t say about the man who objects to what the woman has done, but again, never mind. In John’s version of the story Jesus responds to Judas saying “Leave her alone. It was intended that she should have save this perfume for the day of my burial. You always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

I have to say that I used to find this to be a very difficult story to accept. See, I always tended to agree with the disciple who objects to what the woman has done. I mean, why is she pouring this expensive stuff on Jesus anyway? Nearly everyone we meet in the Gospels is extremely poor, and in Jesus’ world essentially everyone except a very few at the top lived only at a subsistence level. They all needed more money than they had. Many people were hungry because they could neither produce nor buy enough food. So why is this woman wasting all her money to buy this stuff and pour it on Jesus? It always used to sound like a waste to me. Beyond that, why does Jesus say something that sounds so much like he’s dismissing care for the poor as unnecessary? Of course care for the poor isn’t unnecessary. Elsewhere in the Gospels Jesus commands us to do it and sees it as among the central works of faith. So why does he say here “You will always have the poor among you,” like there’s nothing you can do about poor people anyway so don’t worry about them? It sounds so un-Jesus-like. It sounds like a slap in the face to all Christians committed to social justice. Frankly, it just sounds wrong; and it used to bother me a lot.

It used to bother me a lot, but it doesn’t anymore. It doesn’t anymore because some time ago when this passage came up in the lectionary I finally figured out what’s going on in this story. I figured out that this story is making a profound and really important point about the life of faith. To understand what the point is, let’s look a bit more deeply at what’s going on here. In John’s version of the story Mary pours some very expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet. One way to understand why she does that is to understand the burial customs of her time and place. It was the Jewish practice at the time to anoint dead bodies, usually with some kind of perfume or spices. Jesus refers to this custom in our story when he says that this Mary had the perfume for the day of his burial. Mary is anointing Jesus’ body in advance of his death.

And we ask: Why would she perform a burial ritual while Jesus is still very much alive? That question leads us to another way of understanding what she’s doing, one that I think is much more important. What she’s doing is “anointing” Jesus. She is showing him to be the anointed one. That’s really significant. As Christians we confess that Jesus is variously the Messiah or the Christ. Those two words, Messiah and Christ, mean the same thing. Messiah comes from Hebrew, and Christ comes from Greek, but they both mean “anointed.” When we call Jesus the “Christ” the most basic meaning of our confession is that he is God’s anointed one. Now, the word Christ has come to have a lot more meaning than that for us, but Anointed One is the word’s original meaning.

Which tells us what Mary is really doing here. She is performing a prophetic act, an act of confession. She is confessing with her actions rather than her words that Jesus is God’s Anointed One. He is the Christ, the Messiah. She’s using her expensive perfume to confess her faith in Jesus.

That’s what she’s doing, and Judas will have none of it. I’ll set aside John’s snide comment about Judas’ motives for now. None of the other Gospels says what John says about the person who objects to what the woman has done. In three of the versions of this story in the Gospels someone says that they think the valuable asset that the perfume is should be used to help the poor. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always agreed. More than that, I find Jesus comment in John’s version of the “you will always have the poor among you” to be unfeeling and dismissive of people in need. OK, so we won’t ever end poverty. Maybe not, but surely that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care for those who live in poverty. I used to hear Jesus as just wrong in this passage.

Then I figured out that he isn’t. Here’s why he isn’t. What he’s saying here is “faith comes first.” Faith is actually more important than helping the poor. Jesus doesn’t mean don’t help the poor. He means faith comes first. He means faith in him comes first, and he’s absolutely right about that. See, caring for the poor isn’t exclusively a Christian thing to do. All the world’s great faith traditions tell people to care for the poor and others who are in need. Islam does that. Judaism does that. Buddhism does that, and so do many others. Caring for the poor can be a Christian thing to do, but it is our Christian faith that makes it Christian, not the actions we take themselves. I suppose it doesn’t matter much to most poor people if the person caring for them is Christian or not, but it should matter to us whether or not we’re acting as Christians. And what makes our actions Christian is our faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus comes first, then come Christian actions.

Faith comes first, and any of you who have done extended work with the poor or others in need know that it isn’t so easy to sustain that work. When we do that work it is so easy to burn out, to get exhausted, to get discouraged, even to get disillusioned. Real work in the world isn’t easy, and doing God’s work in the world can be harder than most other work. If we’re going to keep at that work, we need something to sustain us. We need fuel to keep us going. Faith is that something we need. Jesus is that fuel. They have to come first for us, or we don’t stand a chance of really doing much good Christian work in the world. That’s what this story is trying to tell us. Jesus first, then care for the poor. Not Jesus or care for the poor but both in the proper order.

And the story is telling us something else too. See, Mary doesn’t confess her faith in Jesus with words. Words are cheap, or at least they can be. What Mary does in this story isn’t cheap. This nard that she uses was immensely expensive. In today’s terms the perfume Mary poured out was worth several tens of thousands of dollars. Mary has probably used every material resource she had to obtain it. It represents not a commitment of her mind only but a commitment of her whole being, of everything she has. That’s the kind of commitment Jesus calls us to. Not the words of our mouths only but the commitment of our hearts, of our whole being. That’s the commitment that can keep us going. Words fade, real commitment doesn’t. Or at least we have a better chance that it won’t. Jesus first, yes, but Jesus really, truly first. First in everything we do. First in every use we make of whatever we have. That’s the radical message of this story, and it’s not an easy message. Of course, God forgives us when we don’t measure up to it, but the call is still there. It’s one thing this story is trying to tell us.

So. Jesus first. Jesus first in all we do. Jesus first with all we have. That’s faith. That’s our call from God. Putting Jesus first sustains us. It fills us. It lifts us up when we sink from exhaustion or despair. Yes, we always have the poor with us; and we are always called to care for them and to try to remedy the causes of their poverty. But Mary was right. Jesus first. Always. In everything. May we have the faith to do it. Amen.