Year C

John 12:1-18

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Extravagant Love

As we draw even closer to Holy Week and are brought face to face today with what this Lenten season is really about, we are invited to set our eyes on Jesus and the cross so that we might see God’s greatest act of love for us. At the start of Lent, with the story of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness, we saw him accept his calling with all that will be involved in it. Now at last, in the text from John’s gospel some of those who have followed Jesus including us today are beginning to understand where the journey to Jerusalem is leading. Both John and Paul today reflect, each in their own manner, on what Christ’s death means for the community shaped by the cross. Ironically, Isaiah would say it all even more clearly, in the new thing that God is about to do.

If there is a single theme in the texts today, it is that God is not yet finished. The God who acted in the past to save Israel, to usher Paul into a new relationship with God, and to send Jesus to demonstrate God’s love that has more in store for us and for the world. The future is God’s. But that doesn’t make it any easier for us to live today as a Christian, it can be daunting. For this reason, we are  reminded today of just how much God loves us in the present.  And our texts, especially the gospel, help us to be reminded of this love as we are brought to the very brink of the passion of our Lord.. The good shepherd, of which Jesus says he is earlier in John’s gospel, the good shepherd who will give his life for the sake of the sheep, we see him now anointed and ready to do this to show us God’s love.

The anointing of Jesus to prepare him for burial is set in the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Mary, in gratitude for the miracle of Lazarus’ resurrection from death just a few days earlier, anoints, touches, and honors Jesus with a jar of expensive perfume-pure nard worth over a year’s wages. You might expect that they would be the last people to anticipate the cross and Jesus’ death, as they have seen the power of Jesus, and would believe that death has no hold on him, and yet we cannot be totally sure that Mary has thought this all through when she knelt and anointed the feet of Jesus, offering to him her love, her touch, her adoration, and her gratitude. This was not waste in her eyes. It was worship honoring God with her heart. It does seem that at last someone accepts and honors what he is about to do, rather than denying or misunderstanding.

Soon Jesus will pour out his life on the cross for her and for us. Just before Mary anoints him we see the Jews planning how they will arrest him, and immediately after the anointing, we see Judas preparing himself to betray him. Why he betrayed Jesus, no really knows, leaving all theories or questions unanswered. His criticism of what Mary has done seems as if he has put a monetary value on love but can we really put a monetary value on the actions of love? We humans tend to divide ourselves into the scarcity group and/or the abundance group. The scarcity people believe that everything is limited: love, grace, generosity, time, money. If we share anything or give something away, there won’t be enough left for us.

The abundance people see life differently. Whether it’s love, hope, grace, money, time, worldly goods – when it’s gone it’s gone,what we have is enough, and when we need more, it will come. I have seen this happen in my life yet, every one of us tend to be both of these kinds of people at different times. For the abundance people, life is inherently grace, light filled. Mary is apart of that group who chooses the light and in John’s gospel, there is always a stark choice between light and dark, Judas chose the dark. Perhaps he did justify his anger at Mary’s extravagance, after all, he could remember the many times when Jesus taught the importance of caring for the poor. But John allows him no excuses and essentially, Judas has made the choices that have brought him to this point in the story, setting himself against Jesus.

Jesus responds to Judas’ criticism of Mary by quoting from Deuteronomy 15, but he only quotes half the verse. Moses says, “You will always have the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” “Therefore I command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” What Jesus is suggesting is that we are to strive to be gracious, and extravagant in our love, our worship, our gratitude, and our adoration of God as Mary did. And when we do this we learn to be gracious, generous, and extravagant in our care and concern for others. Paul, like Mary and unlike Judas, is someone who has allowed himself to be changed by God, to be made new, and to become extravagant in his love of God.

He lists today all the claims of family, religion, status, and personal choice that might so easily have kept him from Christ, and they make an impressive list. Yet, what flows through this text today like the Gospel is Paul’s overwhelming sense of joy and privilege in knowing Jesus Christ. But even this knowing he does not pride himself on. No effort or goodness of his own has brought him here. It is from first to last, the work of God in Christ. Paul’s great theme, which runs though so many of his letters, is God’s power to make new and to recreate. But the difficult side of this, the side that Paul and Mary see and understand and Judas does not or will not, is that the only way to be made new is in and through Christ, and that sharing Christ’s way of life leads to the resurrection. but only through the cross.

Paul is not advocating that we embrace suffering because it is good for us or should be a part of our piety but because, whatever happens, we must not be parted from Christ. He proclaims with fierce joy that clinging to Christ takes us through suffering and is a small price to pay for the enormous privilege of belonging to Christ. In this way, we come to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord and savior. Therefore, we can let go of the past and look to the future, to a time when God will do “a new thing.” There are no situations beyond God’s care and restoration as Isaiah reminds the Israelites and us today. God is faithful and as we walk this road to Jerusalem and the cross with Jesus, we do well to remember that not only will God raise Jesus from the dead, but God will raise us into new life as well-a life with more joy and promise than we could ever have imagined. So, this morning let us recommit ourselves like Mary to be generous, spontaneous, and extravagant-to be wasteful-in our love of God.