Fifth Sunday of Lent – Passion Sunday
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Readings: Philippians 3: 4b-14 and John 12: 1-8
At a Lent group meeting during the week I was looking with others at a painting of the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, by Giovanni Bellini, the scene known as ‘The Agony in the Garden.’ As the gospels record, Jesus was caught up in the anguish of his passion, praying to his Father that he might be spared the horror and desolation to come, but only if it be his Father’s will. Jesus took with him his three closest disciples, Peter, James and John, but – you know the story – they couldn’t stay awake while Jesus prayed. The picture we were studying had them in different attitudes of sleep.
In the discussion that followed, the question was asked, ‘Why did Jesus take the three with him?’ Peter, James and John seem to be part of the inner circle of disciples, and accompany Jesus in special moments. But the point was made that Jesus, like all of us, needed companionship. He was a human being with the same needs and wants as the rest of us. Some of the disciples didn’t always seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but what is clear – something we don’t perhaps consider very often – is that he chose them and, as one verse says somewhere – ‘desired’ them to be with him. Yes, Jesus needed them. And it seems he didn’t just need them to train them as apostles with the building-up of the future Church in mind; he needed them to be his friends, just as they were, warts and all.
One lady in the group I was in enlarged this thinking. She said, ‘God needs us.’ Again, not just to be his followers and agents in the world, but as his friends. This thought struck me afresh. I’m sure the theologians would argue over whether God needs anything, being omnipotent and unchangeable etc. But we remember that he created all things for good, and human beings as the crown of that creation. Quite a thought that God might need you and me to be his friends.
Today we enter Passiontide; it’s Passion Sunday. Although we don’t recall any specific events that took place on this day, we are nevertheless called on to look at the Passion ‘in the round’ before we begin to commemorate its details and live through the drama of next Sunday, Palm Sunday and the days following, including that ‘Agony in the Garden.’ Might we hear again Jesus’ request to his friends, ‘Could you not watch with me one hour?’
Traditionally, crosses are veiled during Passiontide, partly to remind us that the Saviour’s glory was hidden for a while, and to express the humiliation to which he subjected himself. Another reason for veiling crosses and other ornaments was to remove distractions from our meditations, so that our focus can be on Jesus, and his sufferings.
But in today’s gospel, there is an example of the passion which means ‘strong emotion.’ Mary, the sister of Martha and brother of Lazarus, takes a pound of costly perfume, anoints Jesus’ feet, and wipes them with her hair. I’m told the cost of this perfume could have been as much as a year’s wages for the average person. The incident related is one of stark contrasts.
Mary demonstrates great devotion to Jesus in this extravagant gesture. It is also a gesture of gratitude for the raising from the dead of her brother Lazarus. But she understands something deeper; John tells us that Mary bought the ointment so that she might keep it for the day of Jesus’ burial. In the chronology of this gospel, the incident comes after Palm Sunday, and is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death. In her actions, Mary reflects the reckless generosity of God, and worships her Lord in a way misunderstood by the onlookers. Jean Vanier describes Mary’s act of preparation here as “beautiful, foolish and scandalous.” It’s perhaps rather like the excessive amount of water turned into wine at the wedding in Cana; God’s love for us is not limited by rational calculation.
Judas Iscariot, on the other hand, understands little, and we see him take another step on the downward slope of disintegration. We’re told that he was already stealing from the common purse; now he questions Mary’s motives in doing something beautiful for Jesus. Soon he will be lured by the prospect of thirty pieces of silver, and will hand Jesus over. In preparing this, I was reminded of a line from Oscar Wilde, that surfaces from time to time. In Lady Windermere’s Fan he has Lord Darlington making the quip that a cynic ‘is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ Was that Judas? We could spend a long time analysing the character of Judas, and maybe history has been too harsh on him, but that discussion is for another day. But I’m sure you and I have come across people for whom the price is the all-important thing, people for whom getting the best price for something is the big deal, and they’re often people with plenty.
Part of the contrast in today’s gospel is between the old order and the new. Judas, his love for his master evaporating, looks at things in a cold, calculating way. Mary is full of love and of the spirit of spontaneous giving. It’s appreciation versus resentment. In the Isaiah reading for today, the Lord calls out to Israel “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?” In a commentary on this passage, Bishop Tom Wright says “The creator and redeemer God makes rivers flow in the desert, and paths appear in the sea. The wild animals look on and pay him homage. But Israel, the people for whose benefit these mighty acts are done, looks the other way, bored and sulky.”
Mary is doing a new thing, a beautiful thing, even an outrageous thing, because she is passionate about Jesus. As was St Paul. He, too, forsook everything he had been brought up on – his pride of birth, his status, his righteous character – to obey the crazy gospel of the crucified Messiah. Paul is someone who allowed himself to be changed by God, to be made new. All the credentials he had before he considered as rubbish, for the privilege of knowing Christ Jesus. But even this knowing is not something he prides himself on. No effort of his own, no goodness of his own, brought him to that place, but the work of God. He almost turns round that Oscar Wilde quote – knowing the value of everything in the light of Jesus, and not concerned with the price or cost to him of following his Lord.
The hard side of Paul’s joy in Christ, and of Mary’s devotion, is that the only way to be made new is through Jesus, and that sharing Christ’s way of life leads to resurrection, but only through the cross. Judas was not willing to go that far. Paul talks about wanting to share in Jesus’ sufferings. He’s not advocating that we embrace suffering as a discipline, or because it is good for us, or out of some piety, but because whatever happens we must not be parted from Christ. What he seems to be saying is that if clinging to Christ takes you through suffering and death then that is a small price to pay for the enormous privilege of belonging to Christ.
Finally, a word about the last words of Jesus in the gospel. When Judas complains about the waste of money Mary has spent on the ointment, money which could have been given to the poor, Jesus says “Leave her alone; you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” We can’t always measure acts of gratitude or gestures through how useful they are; generosity is its own good. Jesus wasn’t here dismissing the needs of the poor; in fact he championed the cause of the poor and needy throughout his ministry. Rather he was acknowledging what Mary had done as a ‘new thing’, as a precious gift, and important. It’s what friends do. I’m sure we have all come across instances of people giving wildly extravagant presents to others, that seem OTT – or ‘inappropriate’, as we might say – not to show off or impress, but out of real love and affection. Don’t knock it – the world seems to becoming a rather mean place just lately and maybe we need to be reminded of extravagance sometimes.
Our observance of Passiontide must help us to recognise the ‘new thing’ that Jesus has brought about on the cross, and let it transform every aspect of our lives. With Mary, we must contemplate Jesus’ self-offering, and allow ourselves to be drawn into what may seem a ‘foolish’ or even ‘scandalous’ outpouring of adoration. And, with St Paul, the scandal of the cross must transform our values and judgements, so that we, too, die to this world’s obsession with wealth, status and success, and rather reach out to the goal of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, through the sharing of his sufferings.