bert

John 12:1-8

Jesus returns to the home of Lazarus . . . and Mary and Martha. Martha serves them, and Mary anoints Jesus feet with expensive perfume and wipes his feet with her hair. The fragrance of the perfume fills the house, and Judas objects saying that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus defends Mary saying that she is anointing him for burial. Then he adds, “You always have the poor with you but you do not always have me.”

This is a powerful passage . . . and, I want to suggest, a widely misunderstood passage. And I want to suggest also that there is innocent misunderstanding and not so innocent misunderstanding. Jesus had much to say about understanding, or hearing, the Gospel, about who understands and who doesn’t. He had harsh words for those who could not understand, for those who could not hear his message, for those who could not see what he was doing. These harsh words were not for those whose misunderstanding was innocent, who merely needed more time to ponder the message or merely needed to have it explained to them differently.  His harsh words were for those who misunderstood, could not hear his message, because it challenged them in a way they did not care to be challenged, because it upset their world.

In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus tells the parable of the sower, and then, right before explaining the parable to his disciples, he pronounces judgment on those who don’t understand because they are spiritually deaf and spiritually blind (but not on those who merely need further explanation); He says to his disciples, “The reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing they do not perceive and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand. With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says, “You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so they might not look with their eyes and listen with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” (Matthew 13:13-15).

In another place Jesus rejoices at who has heard his message and how the hearing of this message reverses the established order in society.. He says, “I thank you Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and have revealed them to infants.”

The Gospel, the hearing of the Gospel, reverses everything. Those who are normally thought to understand and know everything are revealed to be deaf and blind, and those who are normally thought to be ignorant and foolish, are the ones who can see and hear. What we understand, what we hear, reveals a lot about us.

So as we look at this passage in John 12, I want to keep in mind this idea of understanding, of how we understand this text, and why we understand it the way we do. And I want to keep in mind who understands what in the text itself.

As the scene opens, the text tells us that Jesus’ hour is almost upon him. It is 6 days before the hour. The text says that it is 6 days before Passover. Six more days, the work week, six more days before the Sabbath rest.  Six days of work and then Jesus can rest in death  . . . before his resurrection. Six days before Passover.

The Passover celebration bookends the Gospel of John.  Jesus goes to Jerusalem for Passover at the beginning of the Gospel and then again at the end of the Gospel. And he goes once in between as well as to two other Israelite feasts in Jerusalem. These celebrations root the ministry of Jesus firmly in the Israelite story. Passover celebrated the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, leading to their subsequent birth as the nation of Israel. The Passover occurrences in the Gospel of John work literarily to underscore Jesus’ call to Israel to be reborn, to be liberated from their spiritual slavery within the Roman system. Just as the first Passover called them out of slavery in Egypt, Jesus calls them out of their spiritual slavery within the Roman system.

I say that it is “spiritual slavery within the Roman system” because it is often taught that Jesus was apolitical and that the exodus/Passover theme in gospels is about Jesus calling people out of their spiritual slavery rather than national slavery, and that the spiritual slavery has nothing to do with the Roman occupation but is rather only for individuals. But, if we read John closely, we can see that the spiritual slavery from which the Judeans suffered was very much connected to the Roman occupation.

You see, it is 6 days before Passover, and Jesus is at the house of Lazarus. This is Lazarus, whom he had recently called back from death, called right out of his tomb.  Lazarus’ resurrection had led to a special meeting of the San Hedrin, the Judean government, where they hatched a plot to kill Jesus. Jesus ministry of life posed too much of a threat to the Roman rule of death. They feared that Jesus’ ministry of Resurrection would bring Roman wrath down on their heads. (You can read about it in John 11:45-57.)

This second visit to the home of Lazarus in John 12 results in the San Hedrin hatching a second plot, this time to kill Lazarus (vs. 9-11). The reason they want to kill Lazarus is that the testimony of his resurrection is causing “defections” from their rule to Jesus. Jesus ministry very much affects the political situation and calls people out from under oppressive powers and authorities.

So Jesus is at the home of Lazarus, 6 days before Passover. Martha serves them.  And then Mary comes in, and it is as if the Holy Spirit has overtaken her because she does a most irrational, a most beautiful, a most poignant act.  She pours a pound of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and then wipes his feet with her hair. This extraordinary, perhaps even scandalous behavior takes everyone by surprise, and leaves them all speechless . . . . all that is except for one. But Mary, it seems, is too caught up in this holy, sacred moment to notice or care about what anyone else might be saying or thinking. It is as if she understands something that no one else has quite yet understood. As we read that the fragrance fills the house, we feel the power of her act, the pregnancy of this moment. The Greek word used here for fragrance is the same root word that  a few pages earlier is used when Martha warns Jesus of the stench coming from Lazarus’ grave. What they all smell is at once the fragrance and the stench of death.

Then Judas makes his objection.  Jesus responds by first explaining that her action constitutes a symbolic embalming.

What!? What does he mean by that? In John’s gospel, Jesus has not yet said straight out that he is about to be killed. He has said that he is “going away” to some place where his enemies cannot follow, but that’s as clear as he’s been. In the synoptic gospels, he is much clearer about his impending crucifixion, but what’s the difference really? In those gospels, the texts are also clear that his disciples don’t understand what he is saying. So, there is no difference really. The author of John has Jesus talking cryptically up to this point and then here Jesus dramatically drops the bomb. The disciples are stunned; the meaning of the fragrance begins to hit them like a ton of bricks.

(Pause)

Then Jesus adds the most famous words of the passage, words that have echoed down two millennia, frequently twisted by those who do not have ears to hear, those who are unable, or unwilling to hear the Gospel. He says, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

So forget the rest of the Gospel testimony to Jesus’ concern for the poor and the oppressed. Forget that in Luke 7, Jesus says that the kingdom of God is given to the poor and not the rich. Forget that in Matthew 25 Jesus says that only those who minister to the poor, the sick and the imprisoned will inherit the kingdom. Forget that in Matthew 11, Jesus refers to the Gospel as good news for the poor. Forget that in Luke 4 Jesus inaugurates his ministry by declaring the year of Jubilee, a radical vision of land reform that would have liberated the poor from debt bondage. No, forget all that. All of that is not to be heard, but only, “the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” And with this one partial statement, social justice is pitted against the pious reverence of Jesus Christ. It is asserted that having Him is what is first and foremost the most important thing and that social justice is at best a second order concern, or at worst a distraction from true piety.

But I want to suggest that this interpretation of the text fails on two counts:

First, it fails to notice or examine the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus alludes to when he says, “The poor you always have with you.” Jesus refers to a passage in Deut. 15 concerning the Sabbath year legislation that was set in place to maintain economic justice. The text states that these laws are set forth so that “there will be no poor among you.” Then a few verses later the text makes room for reality that despite these laws, there will in all likelihood always be poor in the land – “the poor will always be with you.” So it encourages a liberal attitude toward giving and lending to the poor.

Jesus cites this passage because it is the one familiar to those around him that would justify Judas’ claim that they should be thinking about the poor.  But Jesus is also very aware, in fact he has made the point in his ministry, that the Sabbath has not been kept holy, that the Sabbath laws of wealth redistribution have been ignored, causing an abundance of poor people in the land.  He is aware that alms giving, charity giving to the poor, the minor note of that Deuteronomic passage, has come to serve as a poor substitute for holy Sabbath justice, a way of enabling those of means to feel magnanimous without really surrendering their power and privilege over the poor, without observing the justice that God demands.  And so Jesus is not much impressed with this kind of hypocritical charity. He knows that the people need, and God demands, justice.  And so he emphasizes his own mission: “She bought it so she might keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me”

And that brings us to the second failure of the interpretation that pits piety against social justice: It fails to comprehend why Jesus took up his cross and was crucified.

With the fragrance of death filling the house, Judas deceptively declares his desire to do charity for the poor. Jesus ignores the deception and dismisses the sanctimonious inadequacy of charity, drawing attention instead to why he is there. The hour is almost upon him. In 6 days the hour of his glory will arrive (all of the gospels refer to the crucifixion as the hour of his glory). In 6 days he will strike a blow at the very structures of domination and oppression that grind the face of the poor and blaspheme the very name of God.

In 6 days he will offer his body as a sacrifice, as a Passover lamb (the text in John describes Jesus’ crucified body in the terms of a Passover lamb).

In 6 days the full force of the empire will come against him to crush him, but in doing so it will reveal its own beastliness, it will reveal its satanic nature. And it will reveal Jesus victory over it.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus refers 3 times to his crucifixion as being “lifted up,” an extremely positive euphemism for what would normally be a tragic and brutal occurrence. This “lifting up,” this crucifixion, Jesus declares, will give hope and salvation to the world, it will draw all people to him, and it will shine a light in the darkness, revealing the evil of his enemies.

The shining of a light in the darkness and revealing the evil of his enemies becomes stunningly clear, in John, when, in their cry for Jesus to be crucified, Jesus’ Judean enemies reveal their true allegiance, crying, “we have no king but Caesar!” Such a cry was blasphemy for the pious Judean for whom, if they were going to talk about one King, it would have to be God, certainly not the king of the hated Romans who maintained a brutal occupation of their land. In this cry, Jesus’ enemies reveal themselves for who they are: Traitors to their own people and traitors to God.

The early church came to understand the cross as place of victory over the powers and authorities that crucified Jesus. 1 Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross.”

The cross was the hour of Jesus glory, when he was lifted up, drawing all people to himself and defeating the powers and authorities of this present darkness.

The victory of the cross is the secret of the Gospel; it is the door to resurrection.

It is in the cross that the powers are disarmed. It is in the cross that we are reborn. It is in the cross that we are liberated from our spiritual slavery to the systems of domination and oppression.

The Judeans, especially the Judean elite, resisted being liberated from their spiritual bondage to Rome. They resisted being led by Jesus in a new Passover, a new exodus, to reborn, born again as a prophetic community that would shine its light to the nations.

Christians in America today, I want to suggest, are not much different. The American church engages in the same resistance to Jesus the liberator who would lead us out of our spiritual bondage in the American system. We also resist being born again.

We in the United States of America bear the inheritance both of the Bible and of Rome.

The Bible, I believe, has much to do with our concern for human rights and democracy. But there are other influences as well, such as that of Rome, clearly seen in the abundance of Roman architecture in Washington, and the Latin inscriptions on our money. It is this kind of influence that has led us to empire and the building of the largest military on the planet, as large as the next 20 largest militaries combined (in terms of budget).

But the legacy of empire is not merely a matter of foreign policy. It is more than that. It is a spirit that pervades our entire society. It influences how we live, what we buy, how much space we think we need, how we tread on the earth, how we raise our children.

The spirit of the cross of Christ is a spirit of courage. The spirit of empire is a spirit of fear. It tells us that we must dominate or be dominated. That we must increase or we will decrease. That we must have more, and bigger and larger things to fill the ever widening chasm in our soul.

And we have to ask ourselves, is this who we really want to be? Is this how we want to raise our children? Always needing more; always afraid; afraid of the terrorist, afraid of the stranger, afraid of the alien and the poor?

The cross leads us in a different direction. It leads us toward courage. It leads us toward justice. The cross does not lead us along an easy road. It is a road of sacrifice. It is a road where we encounter death. But it is a road that Christ travels with us.

And we can learn from Mary. When she washed Jesus feet, she did it, I’m sure, in part out of gratitude for what he had done for her brother Lazarus. But, according to Jesus, she also did it because she understood something. She understood, on some deep, maybe precognitive level, that Jesus was about to be killed, that his clash with the authorities was ultimately a clash with Rome and that it would be fatal. But she didn’t try to dissuade Jesus. Rather, she anointed him for the mission. She anointed him because she understood that there was something in Jesus more powerful than Rome. She understood that Jesus was not going to play by Rome’s rules. She understood that he was going to do something that the powers and those under their spell would not be able to comprehend. She understood that what he was going to do was going to cost him far more than the perfume that she used to anoint his feet. She understood the stench of death, and she understood the fragrance of resurrection, and that the two go hand in hand.

The cross does not play around with cheap acts of charity. The cross of Christ strikes at the very foundation of our world and the very foundations of our lives, calling us to be born again, to be a prophetic community, shining our light in the darkness, daring to understand and to see what many around us are afraid to understand and to see. It calls us out of slavery and fear and darkness and lifts us up with Jesus into freedom and courage and the marvelous light of God.