Broken Guitars, Spilled Perfume and Devotion to Christ
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent: Passion Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 43.16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3.4b-14; John 12.1-8 (view here)
This week has been a significant one in the Henley household, as it’s been both our wedding anniversary and my birthday.
Amy, my wife, has a wonderful way of making homemade novelty cards with funny messages. This was the inscription on the front of my anniversary card a few years ago:
On our Anniversary: I want you to know how much I have enjoyed annoying you, and how excited I am to keep doing so in the future!
Whatever your method of choice — whether it’s exchanging cards, presents, flowers — as human beings, we are always trying to find ways to demonstrate our love to one another. Whether it’s our partners, our family or friends, it’s important to express our devotion.
In our gospel reading, Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, goes one step further than a card or present. While others are preparing dinner, making polite conversation, she anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. And then, using her own hair, wipes away the excess.
So what is the significance of this dramatic act, and the others’ reactions to it? And how might Mary’s act of devotion encourage and challenge us in our own devotion to Christ today?
There’s something deeply shocking about the extravagant waste of something valuable, especially when it’s for no apparent reason other than the dramatic. Imagine, for instance a rock star destroying their guitar on stage. Or one of the countless film scenes where money is burnt or thrown away.
The anointing of Christ’s feet, in St John’s Gospel, is also intended to be equally shocking. We’re told that the jar of perfume which was poured away was extremely valuable. Worth 300 denarii, close to a year’s wages.
Reacting to this wasteful act, Judas Iscariot is literally incensed, angrily questioning Mary. Meanwhile, perhaps others in the house have simply been stunned into silence by what they’ve just witnessed.
But Jesus’ response is more telling. He tells us that Mary is aware of something the others are still struggling to grasp. Jesus is coming to Jerusalem to die — to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world.
When Mary anoints Jesus’ feet, she’s anointing his body for burial.
Perhaps as a sign of what is to come, or perhaps because she is worried that she won’t have the chance again. That, when the time comes for Jesus to die, in the chaos and confusion there simply won’t be the opportunity.
In anointing Jesus, she doesn’t just provoke the corrupt and stingy Judas Iscariot. She also breaks every rule of polite society at the time. ‘Mary is acting with abandon,’ writes one scholar, extravagant abandon, hoping that the close circle of friends will understand.’1
This was an intimate act — one which normally would have been prohibited. But also one which was deeply appropriate, symbolic, emotive.
And one which has a lasting impact, quite literally, on the environment around them. We’re told, ’the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume’.
A enduring mark of Mary’s devotion, and its impact on those around her. Just like the incense we burn at the Mass on a Sunday, which lingers on our clothes through the rest of the day, and in the church through the rest of the week.
A lasting mark of our own devotion. Of the prayer which has been offered. Of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives.
Perhaps what Mary expresses through her actions, St Paul puts into words in our New Testament reading. His use of language is also dramatic and extreme, designed to provoke a response.
Paul takes care to describe all the reasons for his high status in the Jewish culture of the time — his birthright, his experience, his past allegiances. Then, having built up to a crescendo, he tells us they’re all now worthless to him.
In fact, there’s some argument that the word he uses in the Greek of the time is much cruder than that. Paul writes that he now regards all else, not just a rubbish but as ‘excrement’, compared to knowing Jesus Christ.
While Mary anoints Jesus ready for his death, Paul invites us to join Jesus in his death. To live no longer for ourselves alone, but for Christ. To walk day-by-day, with him, the way of the cross.
To live so fully for the world which is to come, that the trials and temptations of this world no longer matter.
When we surrender all we are to Jesus, our whole lives become one long act of devotion. Just as the fragrance of Mary’s perfume filled the house in Bethany, so the fragrance of our devotion as Christians fills the world around us.
When we live in the way of the cross — recklessly giving ourselves away for the sake of others — then the attractive fragrance of Christ spreads to our friends, our family and neighbours.
And when we come together, serving one another and putting each others’ needs ahead of our own, then our churches are filled with the wonderful fragrance of new life.
There’s an exquisite prayer written by the great Anglican, and then later Roman Catholic, priest St John Henry Newman, which draws on these themes. I wonder whether we might make it our prayer today:
Dear Jesus,
help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go;
Flood my soul with your spirit and life;
Penetrate and possess my whole being so completely
that all my life may be only a radiance of yours;
Shine through me and be so in me
That everyone with whom I come into contact
may feel your presence within me.
Let them look up and see no longer me —
but only The Christ.
Amen.
Gary M. Burge, John: The NIV Application Commentary, p. 493.