Six days before the events of the first Good Friday and Easter.   

Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

The reader may well say, whoa, wait a minute – what do you mean, raised from the dead?

That story is just before today’s (John 11:1-44). It is a long story, but let me mention several relevant details. Today we are in chapter twelve of John’s Gospel, and at the beginning of the chapter before, chapter eleven, Jesus got word that his friend Lazarus was very ill. It would have been characteristic of Jesus to go to anyone in need, but this time Jesus hesitated. And when he decided to go, some of the disciples tried to talk him out of it. For Lazarus lived in Bethany, just down the road from Jerusalem. Indeed when Jesus went into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday he went along the road from Bethany to the top of the Mount of Olives, and there was the great Temple before him. Going to his friend Lazarus meant going within reach of the city, within reach of certain arrest and death. It was Thomas who spoke up and said, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." (John 11:16)

When Jesus got to Bethany he said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25) We quote these words at the beginning of every Episcopal Burial Service. Jesus went to the new tomb of his friend, and we read that Jesus wept. (John 11:35) A profoundly human detail – moved to tears. Jesus was (and is) the divine Son of God, and also a very human being, who could weep at the death of a close loved friend. Jesus could be both divine and human because we  human beings are created by God in the image and likeness of God. He loved his friend, and he wept at his death. Then he stood before the tomb and said, “Lazarus, come out.” (John 11:43)  

I believe in the resurrection. I believe Jesus died and was buried and on the third day was raised from the dead, and one day will raise us from the dead. I believe one day we each will hear his voice call us into the new life with him. How that happens, I do not know. Except, because it will be God’s doing, I believe it will be in the love which I see in Jesus -- the love which is the primary characteristic of God. That we are made in the image and likeness of God means primarily we are able to love. We human beings have scarred and defaced that image with evil. Sometimes torturing and destroying that image. But in Jesus it is made new and restored.

During this life, we are always fallible and so we always come to confession on our journey, we always need (and always find) forgiveness. I believe we human beings will be fully restored in heaven, in the resurrection, which depends not on our human frailty or limitations but on God’s saving action in Jesus. And sometimes when life has broken terribly – when there has been an especially difficult tragedy -- I anyway find some comfort in the hope that in God’s infinite compassion and mercy and love in Jesus, God will take what is broken and make it whole and new. This is what I believe. But how it happens, I do not know. How Lazarus came out, I do not know. Except he was called by love into life.    

For some of the people angry at Jesus, saying he had raised someone from the dead was the last straw, and we read that Jesus and his disciples withdrew for a time to a remote village. And then, six days before the Passover, came back to Bethany.

There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

And then their sister Mary did something quite extraordinary. It only takes a few words to tell:

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard … A beautiful, extravagant, costly gift. A gift of great love.

Mary … anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.

There are two other stories in the Gospels about Jesus being anointed by a woman. In Mark fourteen, and in Matthew twenty-six, it is also just before Jesus’ arrest and passion, it is also at Bethany – but in the house of Simon the leper, and an unnamed woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. (Mark 14:3, also Matthew  26:7) As in John’s Gospel there is a questioning of the cost of the ointment, and Jesus looks to his coming burial. In Mark he says, “she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”

Well, these three could all be the same event, and some of the details have gotten changed in remembering it. That sort of thing happens in our family. In all three Gospels it is an important story. Johann Sebastian Bach began "The St. Matthew Passion" with Matthew’s version of it – the opening of the story of the cross. The story of the cross opens with an anointing of Jesus. The word “anointing” is not used much by modern western people. Were I to say “inauguration” – ah, you would know that word. We always remember that in ancient Israel, in the Hebrew Bible, the priests and kings were anointed as a sign that they were sent from God to serve the people. In Hebrew “the anointed one” is the Messiah. In Greek, the Christ. The Jewish people looked for the coming of the Messiah, the anointed one, sent from God to save the people. So on the threshold of the first Holy Week, at the beginning of his passion and death, he is anointed – the Anointed One is anointed, the Messiah, the Christ is anointed -- in the loving extravagant action and offering of one of his followers.

In the very next chapter of John’s Gospel we are told that after the Last Supper Jesus took the role of a servant at the table, and washed his disciples’ feet. Giving them and us the great example of loving servant ministry in him: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. (John 13:14-15) And before that Mary has done it for him.

The conventional form of anointing was on the head, as indeed it is in the version of the story in both Mark and Matthew. How gloriously like the writer of John to change it to the feet. Perhaps catching what actually happened and the others said, oh no, it couldn’t have been that way, that’s not how it’s done, that couldn’t have been the way it happened. But Mary anointing the feet of Jesus both had the humility of a foot washing, and was also what would happen at the burial.     

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

Well, it is a good thing to give money to help the poor. Jesus said in Matthew 25 when we serve the poor, we serve him. It can be just such an act of loving offering to him, as this gift of perfume. This house of prayer was filled last Tuesday with the fragrance of corned beef and cabbage cooking for some neighbors in need, and that was no small thing.

Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”  

Jesus himself is the master of the unexpected gesture or image, and the writer of John’s Gospel has a particular ear for those striking gestures. The day of his burial is not far away. And at it, in John’s Gospel, another extravagant gift will be added, Nicodemus will show up with about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for the burial (John 19:39) – a vast horseshoe wreath of an offering.

OK, OK, it is all right. Leave them alone, Mary and Nicodemus, for their extravagant gifts are a response to a love that will be faithful and complete to death, to burial itself.

“You always have the poor with you,”

Never an excuse not to fight against poverty, for in the story of Jesus there is always his call to serve the poor.

“but you do not always have me." (John 12:1-8)

His friends would not always have Jesus present in this same way, physically present.

Present. But there is always the promise of God’s presence with us in Jesus. Holy Communion given to us as the great sign of God’s presence in him – truly with us, loving us, holding us in Jesus’ love. So in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, when the Risen Christ says “Go … and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 18:19) he also thens says, his last words in Matthew, “And remember I am with you always.” (Matthew 28:20)

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Mary made her offering of her heart’s love, anointing Jesus with her offering of love and humble service.

Her extravagant gift is her loving response to a love faithful to death, to burial itself. "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”  

So we make the offering of our heart’s love. In thanksgiving for the love given to us, we offer who we are.