People of the Passion: The Woman February 21, 2021 Dr. Tom Pace Matthew 26:6-13

Now while was at Bethany in the house of , a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, "Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor." But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her." Matthew 26:6-13 (NRSV)

Let's pray together. Gracious God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see and open our ears that we might hear your words in the midst of these words today. Open our hearts that we might feel. And then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen. Oh, my, what a week! It's been crazy! I received this text message from Rev. Cliff Ritter, who's the pastor of caring ministries here at St. Luke's. It goes: "Still no power. Found a leak in the line that feeds our house. Fortunately, there is a valve we can use to shut off the water. Plumber called. Had to leave a message. Complained loudly to the power company. Lost my sanctification. Cliff." Oh, man, it's been a hard, hard week for so many people. So many of you out of power or water - that's maybe even the hardest of all. Broken pipes in the ceiling, flooding, and trying to get a plumber. Just so many things. I'd never thought here in Houston, Texas, I'd receive an email from a friend that says, "Going out in search of water." Sounded like a dystopia of some sort. It's really been a difficult week in so many ways. And we find ourselves moving from trying to be positive to complaining to being angry, to feeling desperate, trying to get back to feeling positive again. Just kind of riding this circuit of our own emotions and struggles and difficulties through a difficult time. So how do we deal with those? I suspect for many of us it will be short-lived but how do we deal with those times that are so difficult? Over the next six weeks during this Lenten season, we're going to be looking at Jesus' most difficult time, which was the last week of his life, heading into his crucifixion. Interestingly not so much how Jesus dealt with his own struggle but how he interacted with the people around him. The people with whom he had contact, those individuals and how he saw them and how they saw him in this last week. Maybe there's something that we can learn from that, about what really matters. Here's the story for today. In that last week of his life, Jesus stayed every night in a little village called Bethany. It's somewhat near Bethlehem, and it's only about two miles up the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. It's one of those little villages that are called the Daughters of Jerusalem. You have a walled city, and then you have all these little villages around it, called the daughters of that city. They're suburbs, and all the trade works through the main part of the city, and any time there's a threat from an enemy or even weather, they would hide and come in and take shelter in the city. So Jesus was staying most nights, it appears, with Mary and , his close friends, and Lazarus in the town of Bethany. During that last week, he would come into Jerusalem every single day, starting with that journey on Palm Sunday, and teach in the colonnades around the Temple. People would gather and as that gathering grew and grew, the , the religious authorities, became more and more threatened. That led to them asking the Romans for his crucifixion. On one of the nights, which the Scripture says is two days before the Passover, Jesus is back in Bethany in the evening, and he has gone to dinner at the home of Simon the Leper, what an interesting decision to just move into the home of someone who is an outcast. And all the disciples were there, and he is teaching. Then a woman comes and anoints his head. He's reclining at the table, and she anoints his head with an ointment, a perfume from an alabaster jar. Now it's an interesting thing. We're not really sure who Simon the Leper is or what his home is. Some believe that Simon is the same as Lazarus and if you're like me and you love to chase down such factoids, just go online, and you can look at all the discussion and conversation about whether that's true. But the essence of this story is that she took an alabaster jar. Now the alabaster of that time was made in Egypt usually, and it is a soft stone that can be carved. So it was carved into this jar or a vase and generally had little brown iron streaks through it. In it would be put spikenard, which is a very unguent perfume, or ointment that was usually

2 imported from India. And it was seen as just the most expensive and luxurious kind of perfume that you can imagine. She came behind him as he's sitting at the table. The disciples would have been offended that this woman - other Scriptures said the woman was named Mary. There were lots of women named Mary, so we don't know if that was Mary as in Mary and Martha. Or . We don't know who it was. This woman comes and anoints his head with this perfume. The disciples rebuked her, and Judas is offended that she's wasted this perfume that would have cost a whole year's wages. He says, "We could have given this money to the poor. What's the deal?" Then Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always. You won't always have me. What she's done is a beautiful thing. She's anointed me for my burial." What I'd like for us to do as we consider this interesting story is two things. The first thing is what is she saying to Jesus when she anoints him? Then what is he saying to the disciples about her in response? First, what is she saying to Jesus? And it's really simple - she's saying, "I love you. I adore you. I worship you, and I give you everything." Now I'll be honest with you. For me personally, to have anointing oil poured over my head and especially perfumed oil would not be something I would be all that excited about. But at that time, it was a statement of this sort of luxurious love. If you read Song of Songs, the romantic love story of the Scripture, it ends with a statement about your anointing oils. The psalmist puts it this way: "How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes." An interesting image, but that's seen as the most luxurious thing. The only thing I can think of that maybe would be a parallel for us is this. I don't know if you've ever gone to the barbershop, and they shampoo your hair, and they're gentle, and it's warm. Then you get the hot towel treatment, maybe a shave. And you think, "Wow, this is marvelous!" Or if someone you love rubs your feet for you. It's a way of expressing this incredible heartfelt love. I just think that's a marvelous picture, to say that "In this moment, I just want to love you." But this isn't as simple as saying, "I love you," what she's saying is, "I want to love you through your challenges. You are headed into the most difficult, challenging time of your life. You're going to go to the cross. I want to love you through that." To love someone through their challenges, through their difficult times.

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We, as the Christian community, are called to love one another through our challenges. Sometimes it's in tangible ways. Like you really want to make a difference, so you do something that really makes a difference. I have listened this week to all of the ways that people have responded and cared for one another and expressed their love tangibly. Jennifer Boubel is our Chief of Staff, and her mother, who is older, lives in San Antonio. Their water and power went out, and ultimately her cell phone died because she couldn't charge it. So Jennifer and her sisters were just beside themselves. One of her sisters knew the name of a neighbor of her mother's and called her. The neighbor then rallied all the other neighbors to come and take care of Jennifer's mom. They just loved on her and cared for her, and encouraged her. They brought her meals and all of these wonderful things. It was just a marvelous picture of just people rallying around to care for one another—this tangible way of caring. I'm sure you have lots of these stories as you've been through this week—people who've cared for one another. Rob Dulaney sent me this text, and I loved it - thought it was the best. He said," Some of our friends from church who have power rescued some of their friends who run a small farm nearby. And their animals. So in our friend's home are two dogs, one hundred chicks, one boa constrictor, one rat that got loose, which is food for the snake, four adults, and five kids." As we've reflected on this story, we've all agreed that Christian hospitality does not extend to snakes or rats. Nonetheless, this is just a picture of these tangible ways we express our love. But listen, sometimes we are so task-oriented that we think if we can't fix it if we can't really do anything to make a difference, why bother? We miss the whole point. This woman's anointing him with oil made him no difference. Interestingly, the disciples were thinking, "No, we're going to fix this! Don't go to the cross - turn back! We're going to save this." Peter cuts off the ear of Malchus, the servant who comes to arrest Jesus, and they want to fix it but not this woman. She gets it. She recognizes that he's going to go to the cross, and she just wants to love him through it. Sometimes that's the best thing we can do, to love people through their most difficult times. When someone passes away, we love on their family. We wish we could fix it. We wish we could make the person come back again. But we can't. And as they grieve, we can't make it go away - all we can do is to try to love them through it.

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So many challenges we can't do anything. Somebody goes through a divorce; somebody loses a job. Somebody goes through an illness, and we want to be able to push the button to make it better. But we can't. So maybe we think: "I'll take them a covered dish, and that will make everything go away." It doesn't, but it's still an expression of love. It's just a small way of breaking our alabaster jar and caring for someone. She got it. She understood that the most important thing she could do for Jesus was to love him. Now the second half of that is what did Jesus say about it? How did Jesus talk about her to the disciples? What did he say? He said to them, "You need to remember the why." Now, what does that mean - remember the why? So many people want to change the world. They head out to make a big difference in the world. They head out to change things, to transform things for the better. To make a difference. And that's a wonderful thing. But after a while, you look around, and you think, "Nothing is that much better. I'm beating my head against the wall here. What's the point? I'm just going to give up - why bother?" The problem is that they forget the why. As followers of Jesus, we don't simply just go out to change the world. There's a scene in "The Wizard of Oz" that I love. It's at the end when they get to the city of Oz, and the Wizard comes out from behind the curtain. And he says - I think it was to the Tin Man - "You know, back where I come from in Kansas, there are people who go around all day long, and all they do is good deeds. We call those people ...." And he kind of fumbles around and pauses. Then he says, "...they call those people good deed doers!" We're not just good deed doers. There's a rationale, a reason for us doing those good deeds. There's a why - a core experience, and that experience is our love of Jesus. And as we understand our love of Jesus, out of that grows our love of others. So we continue to serve, we continue to love, we continue to make a difference. But out of that core experience is our love of Jesus. Sometimes you'll hear people being critical of this story, and personally, I'll have to say that maybe Judas is right, this money shouldn't be wasted this way. But we misunderstand the story. In fact, Jesus is actually quoting a passage from Deuteronomy. Here's what Deuteronomy 15:11 says: "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother and sister, to the needy and to the poor...'" He's

5 quoting that, saying "Look, we've got to serve, but why?" It grows out of this moment, this experience of Jesus . Let me do a new translation. This is the Pace Translation because I think this is what Jesus means. "Caring for the poor will always be your mission. You will always be about that. But this is a moment when the world is going to change and will never be the same again. And it will be the driver for all that you do. So don't miss it. Don't miss this moment." Let me give you an analogy, and it's not perfect by any stretch, but it helps me try and explain this. Let's pretend I'm making a swing set for my grandchildren, something I haven't done yet, by the way. But let's just pretend. I'm out working all day, making this swing set; I'm building, sawing, hammering, working at it. And all the time I'm thinking about my grandchildren. Then it gets to be late in the day, and my wife comes out. She says, "Hey, Tom, the grandchildren are here for dinner! Why don't you come have dinner with the kids?" I say, "No, I can't, I'm sorry, but I'm building this swing set." She says, "But you're almost done." And I say, "No, I'm not almost done, I'm not even close to done. There's so much more to do. And when this is finished, I'm going to make a trampoline for them. And I'm going to build them a treehouse. This is going to be the most wonderful place for our grandchildren than you can possibly imagine." She said, "But just come time and spend time with your grandchildren." And I say, "No, I'm sorry I can't." She says, "Look, they're here for dinner, come have dinner. It will be there when you get back." I think that's what this passage is about. Jesus is saying, "Don't miss the reason, the why, for why you're doing all this. Don't get it confused." Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it this way, "Christianity is not about religion, it's about Jesus Christ." That out of this incredible relationship we have with Jesus grow our ethics, grow our work in the community, grow our religious and spiritual practices. All those things. But at the heart of it all, the core of it all, the driver for everything is this relationship we have for Jesus, and sometimes we get it so mixed up. Then that leads to frustration, and cynicism, and a sense of us thinking, "Oh, it's never going to be any different. Oh, what's the point of it all? Why do I do all this?" The reason we do it all is out of this relationship of love we have with Jesus Christ. And that's what drives us. And the more we nurture that, the more we care for that, the more power that will come out.

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Let me share with you another sort of example. A number of years ago, we had a series here on the Holy Spirit. It came right after Easter. I invited both our staff and our lay leadership leaders, the church council it was called at that time to fast and to pray that the Holy Spirit would fill our church and compel us to even greater things. The truth was that none of us are all that good with fasting. We don't really understand it. John Wesley expected all his clergy, his preachers, to fast every Wednesday and Friday until 3 p.m. I'll be honest - I don't really think I understood it. We invited Dr. Billy Abraham, who's the Outler Professor at SMU, to come to talk to us about it and explain it. And he had this great sentence that helped me so much. He said, "As we fast, as we feel that hunger inside us, we say to ourselves, 'As much as I hunger for food, even more do I hunger for the Holy Spirit to fill my life.'" That the driver behind it is to say, "These needs that I have are important, but there's something that's even more essential - even more core and basic - and it is this relationship we have with Christ." It's been a funny time. We sort of had an imposed fast over the past week where we didn't have water or power or food, and the whole idea is that we become desperate for them. It's like everything else goes by the wayside. The point of a fast is to say, "No, there's going to be a day in your life when you won't need food anymore, or warmth, or water. None of those things will matter, and the only thing that will matter is that relationship. Because that's at the core, that's at the heart of it. And that's what drives everything we do." So let me close with this. One of the things I find most interesting is this. We often read Scripture in little pieces, but when you see it in a big context - it's all four , but the passage we read today is from Matthew 26. And Matthew 26 follows Matthew 25 - obviously. And Matthew 25 is a fairly famous passage. It's Jesus separating the sheep from the goats. And what determines a sheep, or a goat, is if you're a sheep and when you saw someone hungry or thirsty, or someone naked you fed them or gave them water or clothed them. When they were a prisoner, you visited them. And Jesus says, "When you've done it to the least of these, you've done it to me." Then how can we come to Matthew 26, where he says that the poor will be with always? Here's what I think it is - if we don't spend the energy and time to nourish that relationship, that primary relationship of faith with Jesus Christ. If we don't take a piece of us and break our own alabaster jar to anoint him. To share our love. If we don't build that relationship, then how will we recognize him in the face of the hungry or the thirsty or the poor or the prisoner or the

7 marginalized? I want to be able to see his face in them. So I'm going to spend the time to love on him. Let's pray together. Gracious and loving God, Oh, my goodness, what a week it's been! And we're just thankful for your presence in the midst of it. We ask that as we seek to respond to our neighbors as we go through this difficult time, we pray, God, that you would show us how to put the very most central part of our faith at the forefront so that we might express our love to your Son Jesus Christ. And that out of that, we would be able to reach out and share that love tangibly or otherwise with all your children. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.

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