Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus (John 12)

In Nomine etc..

       There is a lot of meaning packed into this story of Mary, who anointed Jesus, and Martha, and their meal together with Lazarus. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are siblings, of course. The western church in the Middle Ages identified Mary with Mary of Magdala, but today’s story doesn’t make that connection. In any case, from this story we can learn a lot about the people around Jesus, about the community around John the Evangelist, and what they understood about Jesus. The story reminds us of important teachings, and anticipates the death of Jesus.

      “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany.” Six days. This recalls the six days of creation, and links the Passover, the implied seventh day of the story, with the seventh day of the Genesis story. The six-day period before the Passover parallels the six days of creation; Jesus arrives in Bethany on what amounts to the first day of a creation renewed in and through him. Jesus has already raised Lazarus from the dead, a sign of renewed life in the new creation. It foreshadows Jesus’s own resurrection, just as the dinner with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus foreshadows Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples.

      We take it for granted that  Jesus is the host of the Last Supper; we don’t really know who the host of the Bethany supper is; is it Mary or Lazarus, or Martha, "who is serving"? The Scripture doesn’t say. And the ambiguity reveals something about the community around Jesus and John the Evangelist: women are prominent. The apparent wealth of Mary and Martha suggests that perhaps they were financing Jesus’s ministry. Without their support, there might have been no ministry at all.

      “Mary took a pound of costly perfume...anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair.” Notice what’s happening here: Jesus the Anointed One, the Messiah, is receiving a second anointing, a confirmation of his role and ministry. And he’s allowing Mary to anoint herself with the same perfume, to declare that she’s participating in that ministry. We remember that Christus means Anointed. That is why we are called Christians; we are descended, so to speak, from the anointing of Jesus and Mary of Bethany, and we pass that anointing on sacramentally to those who come after us. That is one way to understand the line, “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” The fragrance of the anointing fills the whole church. Just as Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus, so he anoints us.

      Judas Iscariot speaks, as the story continues to foreshadow and parallel the Last Supper. “Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?” A denarius, my commentary says, is a day’s wage for a skilled laborer. So the perfume is worth about a year’s pay for a worker, clearly a high-value, high-status item, meant to show not only how much Mary of Bethany values Jesus, but also how much he values her. Jesus in effect responds in kind to Mary’s gesture.

       Jesus also adds an interpretation to the gesture. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” More foreshadowing of the coming Passion, and a reminder, suitable for Lent, that there is no new, resurrected life without first giving up our pre-resurrection life, if I can put it that way. In the approaching Passover, Jesus will recall the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and will look ahead to passing through death to new life.

      “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Jesus does not allow anyone to follow Judas Iscariot, and descend into a moralizing rant about the proper uses of wealth. It is easy to discern Judas’s motive; the Evangelist is on to it when he says that Judas “kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.” Judas, in other words, is covering for his own greed and hypocrisy. Mary of Bethany in fact is making good use of her wealth, by symbolically placing it at Jesus’s disposal. This gesture continues to benefit the church spiritually to this day. May we all place our resources at Jesus’s feet, and may we accept his anointing us, to the benefit of the poor and all God’s people.

      In Nomine etc.. (6.IV.19. Adv., n. p.)        

           

The barren fig tree (Luke 13)

         In Nomine etc..   

      Today’s Gospel reading presents us with two distinct stories, both of them a little grim, severe even, in their content. And the two stories don’t appear to have much to do with each other. That being so, it is our task to understand why the Evangelist placed them where he did, and to discern what his message is, or what his messages are. And their arrangement is as much a message as any content.

      This chapter, chapter 13 of Luke’s Gospel, is in that part of the Gospel that scholars call ‘Luke’s Special Section’; special because it is unique. It has no parallels in the other Gospels. That tells us that Luke, and Luke’s community, knew teachings and stories of Jesus that the other communities did not know. That gives Luke’s Gospel a special status, an important one; it tells us to pay close attention to his unique content, and to be ready to hear what special emphasis Luke gives to Jesus’s teaching and work.

      Today’s reading begins “there were some present who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” A grim beginning, a bloody one, a foreshadowing of the Passion, a reading which is appropriate as we pass through Lent, appropriate for the time when we remember in our devotions the Stations of the Cross, itself a mingling of blood and sacrifice initiated by Pilate.

      I don’t know what incident this text refers to, but a scenario is easy to imagine. The Galileans are in a temple, there has been a riot, or a revolt, and  Pilate’s soldiers attack during a sacrifice. Many are killed. We remember the recent attacks on mosques in New Zealand, and attacks on churches in Egypt and elsewhere. Luke is telling us that our religion is no protection against violence, and it’s no protection against God’s judgment either.  And he records Jesus as telling us that such violence is not proof of the sinfulness of the victims; rather it is a sign that we are all equally subject to judgment, none of us better or worse than any other. “Unless you repent,” he says, “you will all perish as they did.” We may understand this to mean spiritual death, not necessarily a threat of physical violence. We all have a tendency to believe that violence is, or ought to be, a punishment for sin. Certainly the crowds around Jesus thought so, but we don’t need to be so literal. But we can perish spiritually, if we fail to repent. A suitable warning for Lent, and any other time. The tower of Siloam story makes essentially the same points, and comes to the same conclusion.

        “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.” This parable reads like it’s incomplete and belongs somewhere else. But if we think about it, we realize that it’s really quite ingenious, and that Luke put it here for a reason. It’s our task to uncover that reason.

      The man orders the tree cut down because it’s not producing fruit. The gardener intercedes for the tree, and asks for another year, to fertilize the tree and help it produce fruit. The story stops there, somewhat oddly. There is no recorded reply from the owner of the vineyard, but we can assume that he consents. It is odd that the gardener wants to save the tree at all, and make an issue of it with his employer. What is going on here? What is Luke up to?

        We can understand this story as allegory. There is a tradition that the fig tree represents the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, (we may take it to refer to all creation generally), and that it will be restored at the end of time. The man, then, the owner of the vineyard (which is the Garden, or the Kingdom) is God, and the gardener is the Son. The Son is interceding on behalf of all creation, and working to restore it. But there is a limit. “If it bears fruit, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” This is a way of saying that time will end, there will be a judgment. It is also a way of reinforcing the conclusion of the previous story: “unless you repent, you will all perish.”

      So Luke has fit the stories together well, with one consistent theme: repent! I’m reminded of what an Orthodox priest said in a funeral sermon one Eastertide: Why has God allowed you to live through another Lent? The answer of course: to give the Gardener time to fertilize the Tree, to give us time to repent.

      In Nomine etc.. (23.III.19 Adv.)

      

     

Love your enemies (Luke 6)

In Nomine etc..    

          “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27)

        In today’s homily, I go back and forth between Luke’s version, and Matthew’s version, of Jesus’s teaching about love for enemies. Luke leaves out bits of, and Matthew adds to, Jesus’s remarks. Luke has a fuller, longer version of the teaching, but Matthew comes to  an apparently more challenging conclusion. But when we put the two versions together, we are closer to what Jesus is getting at.

    We have in the two Gospels what may be the most impossible of Jesus’s teachings. From not resisting evil, to not fighting back, to settling for more than we were sued for, to going  farther than is requested of us, to giving to everyone who begs of us, to lending to everyone who wants to borrow from us, to loving our enemies, and finally, to the demand, on top of all that, according to Matthew, that we be perfect, as perfect as God, we have a  list of requirements that probably no human being except Jesus himself has ever achieved, or even attempted. Even the saints were, are, likely not capable of all of these, not all at the same time anyway. What are we going to do with this list of impossible requirements?

    The least we can do is understand what Jesus is saying here, what Jesus is describing, what situation we are in from Jesus’s point of view. He is describing the Kingdom, and what personal relations would be like there. And he’s describing what would be the state of mind, the consciousness, the psychology of the individual and the group, in the Kingdom, what it takes to get there, and what it takes to stay in it.

    According to Matthew, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.” In Luke, Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Jesus is here renouncing violence of any kind. In Jesus’s earthly life, this meant, among other things, renouncing violence against the Roman power. One commentator suggests that this may have been why Judas abandoned Jesus; it is possible that Judas wanted Jesus to be the nationalist Messiah that many hoped for, and was disappointed when Jesus would not accept the role and its inevitable violence. Paul the Apostle affirms this teaching of Jesus when he writes in his Letter to the Romans, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.”

    And this means renouncing economic violence as well. Jesus teaches us to be generous, and more than generous, when he says (in Matthew) that we should settle for more than we are sued for, and give to those who beg from us, and lend to those who want to borrow. The core idea here is freedom from selfishness and abuse and exploitation and financial manipulation of others. The core idea, in other words, is an economy not at all like the economies that we know about. The cure for this is the free generosity which Jesus is advocating. His teaching in its literal meaning is very radical, of course. And we need to be reminded, frequently, just how radical Jesus’s teaching really is. In our current economy it is hard, maybe even impossible, to be so radical, but it is possible to turn ourselves in the direction of the free generosity which will bring us closer to the Kingdom.

    In Matthew, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In Luke he says, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Well, here it is again, another radical injunction from Our Lord. This is another declaration, another version,  of Jesus’s renunciation of violence, a variation on his command not to resist an evildoer.

    What is Jesus quoting when he says, in Matthew, “You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye” and so on? This is not an exact quotation of anything in the Scriptures, although there are lines in Psalm 139 and in the Book of Sirach, which mention hatred of enemies without actually exhorting us to imitate the state of mind of the writers. But Jesus is referring to something that evidently his hearers were  familiar with, an idea common to the time and place. And we are familiar with it too. Hatred of enemies is a common attitude, a dangerous, deadly one, in tribal cultures past and present. We see the murderous effects of this attitude in many places in the world today. And it is this tribal consciousness, or rather, tribal unconsciousness, that Jesus is calling us to leave behind. The “eye for an eye” mentality, the selfishness which motivates so much economic activity, and mindless hatred of the other, the so-called ‘enemy,’ are all typical of a primitive, not fully conscious tribal state of mind which we are being called to leave behind. Jesus is calling us to a new state of being, to a new life free of these ancient limitations, a new life in God. And this life we call the Kingdom.

    In Matthew, Jesus says, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good.” In Luke, he says, “the Most High...is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Here Jesus acknowledges that ancient and perplexing problem, the problem of evil. Why does God allow evil to exist? Jesus’s response to the problem of evil is to admit its reality, and to say, “Don’t add to it. Don’t perpetuate it. Choose the good, even in the face of evil.” Jesus is putting this choice before us, a choice that is always available to us. Choice, in other words, a choice to free ourselves from the primitive tribal instinct to hate the enemy, is always available. The choice to step out of tribal unconsciousness is always available to us. I know that there are hard cases, and our world is full of them, in which choice appears to be between one evil and another. But God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” In other words, God’s grace is always present, even in the most difficult of situations. The call out of unconsciousness is a call to free choice, to act in a way that brings the Kingdom a little closer.

    Matthew’s Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Luke tones it down when he writes “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” One commentator describes this text, the “Be perfect” text, as the most abused text, at least in English-speaking countries, in the whole of the New Testament. The problem, as we know, is that little word “perfect.” It conjures up for us a connotation of rectitude and righteousness which are impossible to achieve. We have met people, I’m sure, who attempt this, or, worse, people who think that they have achieved it. We all know how inhuman, how lacking in realism, empathy, such an attitude can be. There is a lot of it in many places today. In the end, it can get a lot of people killed, and damage the survivors. This is not the perfection that our text is talking about.

    The Greek word behind this erroneous translation means something like “brought to completion” or “brought to the end state.” The Greek root is “telos,” “end.” We’ve all heard the word “teleological,” referring to the end state, the destiny, of the world. When Our Lord tells us to be, like God, “teleios,” he is telling us to be open to the end for which we are made, which is life in the Kingdom. This life is typified by freedom, the freedom to be generous, the freedom from an unconscious tribal mentality, freedom to love, freedom to choose the good. That is the perfection to which we are called, for which we are made. “Be merciful,” Luke says; mercy is one facet of the perfection, the completion, the end, the goal, that Jesus is talking about.

    So these impossible teachings of Our Lord are descriptions, pointers to the end state, pointers to the Kingdom. We begin to live in the Kingdom, we bring it a little closer, when we choose the freedom in God which Our Lord is putting before us. We are not to stay in, or revert to, the old morality, but are to choose the morality of love, of freedom, of life, in the Kingdom.

     “But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”

       In Nomine etc.. (23-24.II.19 Adv.)