April 6: The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Today we find ourselves in Bethany, right outside of Jerusalem. John, our gospel writer, tells us that it is now six days before the Passover, meaning it is only five days until Jesus’ death. And we find him at a dinner party…A dinner party with Martha and Mary and Lazarus, whom Jesus had just raised from the dead. His three friends who loved him, and his three friends whom he loved. And now they share a final meal together.

Jesus knows he is nearing the end, so he’s making the final rounds, saying his goodbyes, spending time with those he cares about most. We don’t know their dinner conversation; maybe the mood is festive, still in thanksgiving for the return of Lazarus, or maybe they feel the gravity of the moment, and are not sharing many words at all.

And then Mary leaves the table, retrieves her box of perfume, pure nard, worth a year’s salary, and bends down, anointing Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. Imagine how tender, how moving this must have been for Jesus, for his friend to do this for him. An extravagant, gracious act of love.

It will be just a few days until Jesus does the same to his friends in that famous upper room, washing their feet and giving them their final lesson, the commandment to love each other as he has loved them. Mary doesn’t seem to need this final lesson, though. She’s already learned it. She’s already doing it. What a beautiful bookend for Jesus’ ministry.

This is the last week of his life, of his ministry, and the time marker that John gives, motions us back to what happened on the first week of his ministry, where we find him at another meal, at a feast, at the wedding of Cana.

You’ll remember how the wine had given out and Jesus’ mother pushed him to provide more for the wedding.

So he orders the stone jugs to be filled with water, and they turn to wine, the finest wine, more than 100 gallons worth. More wine than they could ever drink. An extravagant, gracious act of love.

What Jesus does on his first week of ministry, Mary now continues on his last. Jesus’s ministry is bookended by feasts, of overwhelming amounts of goodness. First, of wine. Last, of perfume.

In between we hear stories of healing, of being made whole, of being brought back in, of a ministry marked by lavish acts of mercy. Throughout his ministry, Jesus offers this world a logic of resurrection. A diction of grace. An invitation to abundance, which so often confuses and challenges our logic of control…our logic of control, which we hear in the mouths of the wedding steward and of Judas- “Why did you save the best wine for last?…” and “You could have sold that perfume!”

Jesus’s ministry pushes us to open our hands first to receive, and then like Mary, to open our hands to give. What she has received, she now gives. She understands that all love comes from God, and our job is only to receive it and then to give it away.

Such knowledge of love that Mary shows takes cultivation, it takes practice. We may hear that Jesus loves us, but so often it’s more like we need Robin Williams’ character in Good Will Hunting to repeat over and over again to us like he did to Matt Damon’s character: You are my beloved, You are my beloved, You are my beloved, until these words finally break through the walls that we have built within ourselves that tell us we are not worthy of being loved, or its extravagance.

When we cultivate the knowledge of God’s love for us, we unveil what it means to love ourselves and our neighbors as God loves us and our neighbors. It is when we cultivate this vision of love, this logic of resurrection, this diction of mercy, that we begin to know how to love this world, our enemies, our neighbors, and even ourselves. It is when we cultivate the knowledge of the love of God, that our hands open to receive, and open to give.

We love, because we were loved first.

As we are nearing the end of our Lenten journey, as we make our way to Jerusalem, where Jesus loves us to the end, I wonder how you have found ways to cultivate the knowledge of God’s love for you?

Is it through daily moments of silence or prayer? On morning walks? When you journal or stop to listen to music that moves your soul?

I know I find such love when I’m able to spend some good time outside, even when, or oddly especially when, the weather is less than ideal. Some of my favorite memories growing up in Oklahoma were watching spring storms. Weather in Oklahoma is often frightening and powerful. The winds come with no warning, dropping the temperature. And massive thunderstorm clouds build seemingly in a matter of seconds, bringing lightning, thunder, and hail.

Rain rarely falls straight down. Because the land is so flat, if you are on even the slightest piece of elevation, you can see storms an hour off, lightning dancing across the entire sky. It’s scary. It’s beautiful. It’s awe inspiring.

When I was a kid, my dad and I would love to sit and watch this rain. We’d open the back of his old GMC Jimmy, raise the garage door, drink a Coke and just watch the rain blow by, jumping every now and then when a big clap of thunder would shake the air around us. The louder the thunder, the bigger my smile would be.

And if we’d hear the tornado siren go off, we’d climb out of the Jimmy, and go stand in the driveway or the street, and try to see if we could catch a glimpse of the tornado. That is, of course, until my mom saw us and wisely made us come back inside.

And at Boy Scout camp in southern Oklahoma, when we could see a storm forming in the distance, we’d climb up what was called turtle rock and sit on its still hot surface from the day’s oppressive summer sun. And in silence, an odd occurrence for a bunch of teenage boys at camp, watch the clouds in awe of their size and the show they offered us.

I remember these days fondly, though I know I was lucky, because I never felt the full destruction of the storms like so many Oklahomans do every year. But there was something in the grandness of these storms that made me feel wonder, amazement, and in a way, small. Small, not in a negative sense, but in that these storms reminded me of the limits of my power, and lovingly, reminded me of my place.

It was the God of creation sitting me down, insisting that I just sit and soak in God’s extravagance, and receive it as a gift, gifts of beauty, of sound, of time with my dad, of memories with my buddies.

And now, when I’m able to spend time outside, whether it be mowing the lawn or watching the leaves dance in the trees, I feel that love strengthening the ground beneath me.

In two weeks’ time, we will once again live into the extravagant passion of our God, whose hands of love will be opened to the world on the cross. With open hands, let us receive this love. With open hands, let us offer its beautiful fragrance to this world. Amen.

The Rev. Daniel Reeves