Poured Out

John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4b-14

I find I need to stand at the grave for a few minutes.
I go back after the funeral, after the cemetery staff have done their work and the grave is filled in, and stand at the raw mound of dirt and flowers, to weep a little. Or to just breathe and be still.

That’s my ritual for accepting death when it comes close to me. For integrating grief and loss into my life, into my relationship with someone I love who has died.

You might do something different. For some people, the funeral itself, or the “viewing” are what anchors and releases your grief. You might need touch. Or time in an empty home, or a shared and special place, or something else entirely. But we all need rituals, touchstones, to anchor our acceptance of death, to release or relieve our grief.

For Mary of Bethany, I suspect that touchstone is anointing. Pouring out fragrant oils on the body of her loved one, massaging that smooth fragrance into the skin, breathing in the heavy scent.

The story John tells us today: of Mary and anointing, of her family, with Jesus and his disciples gathered in their house, is a story about grief and love and the acceptance of loss. And a story about our need to pour ourselves out, like expensive perfume, in the accomplishing of God’s purpose and our love of Jesus and one another.

John sets this dinner party right in the shadow of death. Since Jesus’ last visit to his friends at Bethany, when he opened the tomb of Lazarus and called a man four days buried back to ordinary life, the local religious officials have affirmed how dangerous Jesus is to the way things are supposed to be, and decided that their only option is to kill him.
They’ve put out an all-points-bulletin, asking anyone with information on Jesus’ whereabouts to turn him in. For Mary and Martha and Lazarus to invite Jesus and his disciples over for dinner is a risky act of resistance, as well as friendship.

And the next morning after this dinner, Jesus rides publicly in to Jerusalem, amid crowds shouting “Hosanna!” and “Blessed King!”, triggering the events that lead directly to his death and resurrection and glorification.

Mary, I think, knows something about what to expect in the coming days. She and her family are close to Jesus; he’s probably shared his purpose with them, told them to expect his death, and that his death and resurrection are a revelation of glory.

Mary seems to have understood this teaching more deeply than many of the other disciples who followed Jesus around.
She seems to have accepted – or to be trying to accept – her own loss when that death and resurrection take a beloved friend out of her world, and to live her grief as generous love.
In pouring perfume, she may be trying to pour herself out in acceptance of God’s purpose, in acceptance that death is part of the heartbreaking revelation of un-killable life and glory and salvation.

Mary is a model of faithful discipleship here: imitating Jesus; foreshadowing what he is about to do, an extravagant, disturbing, and costly pouring out of self in the service of God’s purpose of salvation and glory. She pours out precious, fragrant, oil in grief. Jesus pours out his costly, vibrant, life in grace. Both are distressing, public acts of service and love, putting God’s purpose ahead of honest human pain, and fear, and loss.

And just in case we might miss the point about how we ourselves are supposed to respond to Jesus, John provides a contrast, holding up another mirror for us:

Judas is looking on, and he objects.

What a waste! Shouldn’t this money have been given to the poor, instead of poured out over the feet of one man?

Aren’t we supposed to be spending our resources on the needy, instead of on ourselves and our friends? Isn’t this what you teach, Jesus? What God’s law demands?

Judas knows as well as Mary does that Jesus is risking death for himself at this meal, and trouble for everyone at the table, having already violated the rules of death and life by raising Lazarus. Maybe Judas is grabbing for the shield of harmless, respectable charity to protect himself and his friends from the dangerous risk Jesus is taking by stirring things up. Maybe he’s trying to seize life and deny death, deny Mary’s acceptance of death – a death he doesn’t understand.

Maybe he’s just asking about whether Jesus himself is living the priorities we learn from immersion in the Word of God, a question that shows he has been listening and watching and learning – but that he still doesn’t understand.

Which makes him just like many of us, doesn’t it? How many of us – now or at some time in our lives – have been drawn to Jesus’ teachings about generosity, care for others, and meeting the needs of the poor, but feel confused by or distant from this talk of death and resurrection? Not sure why Jesus had to die, how true the resurrection is, or what it means for my life?

How many of us have come to church, or to the Bible, or even to Jesus, looking for what we need: comfort, community, security, answers sometimes, miracles sometimes, or reasonable moral teachings to make sense of senseless things? How many of us come to church or to Jesus for any kind of balm for our anxieties, protection against our fears, instead of to find out what God seeks, and to give ourselves wholly to that purpose?

Me, honestly, a lot of the time. More than one of us here today, I’m sure.

After all, God invites us to find rest and strength and assurance here.

Still, that means that we have to see ourselves in Judas, at least a little bit, when John tells us that Judas used to take gain for himself from “the common purse”, from his relationship to Jesus and his fellow disciples. It means we can see ourselves in Judas, and Judas in ourselves, when we get anxious about the future, and want Jesus or the church to provide security against loneliness and loss, make us voices of influence in the community, or ensure our happiness.

So when Judas wonders out loud if it’s really Christian to squander a year’s wages of perfume on a single man, instead of using that wealth to feed and clothe those in need, Jesus understands. Jesus affirms the value of his expressed concern, quoting a verse of scripture that reminds us to be generous always – and then challenges Judas to even more generous living.

“You will not always have me,” he says, inviting Judas to accept his death, to accept the wideness of God’s purpose in the coming death and resurrection and glory; to see what Mary sees, what enables her to pour her whole self out in extravagant love and care, in grief that commits her whole heart to God’s purpose.

That’s the invitation Jesus offers us, too. An invitation to let go of the fears that shout or whisper that we need to store up God’s treasure for our own security, to shield ourselves with visibly righteous deeds. To let go the fears - and the voices of the culture we live in - that nudge us to see our relationship with God as successful or failed based on how it benefits us and how it makes us feel, and the fears and voices that tell us death is always defeat.

Jesus invites us to embrace instead the only thing that will finally silence those fears: that extravagant love that pours us out, like Mary, in imitation of Jesus. That extravagant love that finds peace and hope in giving our whole selves – our souls and bodies, a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice, as we’ll pray in a few minutes at the Eucharist – to be joined to God’s purpose in the world, letting go of our own wants and needs and plans.

That extravagant love that grows and flourishes within us when we accept and trust the extravagant love that Jesus has already poured out upon us.

That acceptance and trust and pouring out may cost us, like Mary, some human grief, because grief is simply love that’s forced to let go.

So Jesus invites us, like Mary, to pour out that grief at his feet when it comes; letting go of everything fear has made us cling to, releasing our hearts and lives to love extravagantly, and share in God’s abundant, world-changing life and joy.