Week of Thursday, February 26, 2004
•
MESSAGE OF THE WEEK
• BRIEFS
Passionate love
By REV. KEITH GEISELMAN
First Presbyterian
Church
While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,
as he sat at the table, a 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.
But some were there who said to one another in anger,
"Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been
sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor."
And they scolded her.
But Jesus said, "Let her alone; why do you trouble her?
She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with
you, and you can show kindness whenever you wish; but you will not always
have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand
for its burial. Truly, I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in
the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her" –
Gospel of Mark 14:3-9.
It wasn’t the money, or it wasn’t just the money. To be
sure, someone says, "Think of how much that ointment cost. Think of all we
could have bought with it for the poor." But it wasn’t just the money.
Here were serious disciples, struggling through a difficult
time, sitting down to dinner, and here this unnamed woman, walking in,
pouring ointment on the teacher’s head.
In what seems the same story in Luke--the woman, the
alabaster jar of ointment--she begins to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears and
dry them with her hair, and the Pharisees ridicule Jesus for not knowing
that this woman is a prostitute. But of course he does know. That’s part of
the point: he knows, and he forgives.
Luke’s elaboration of the story--the tears, the hair used to
dry Jesus’ feet, the unsavory reputation--picks up, I think, an element
already present in what Mark tells us--the passion, the wild extravagance of
this woman. It wasn’t just the money; it was the embarrassment, the distaste
of upright disciples in the face of this woman, gushing, holding on to
Jesus, scandalous.
Perhaps you’ve experienced the embarrassment of the drunken
friend at the party who keeps hanging on you, or the street person who keeps
talking to himself far too loudly, as everyone else gets steadily more
uncomfortable.
We understand social embarrassment; we can identify with the
disciples. And yet...
In one of Augustine’s sermons on the Gospel of John, he is
struggling to communicate what a life of Christian faith might mean. And he
says--find me somebody who has been in love, and they will understand what I
mean.
Think about two teen-agers, head over heels and crazy in
love, sneaking out of the house, grades going down, can’t think of anything
but each other.
Romeo scrambling up that balcony for one last kiss, and who
cares if all the house of Capulet will seize him.
I don’t claim that such a state of mind and heart is deeply
religious, or even morally good. I only say, with St. Augustine on my side
that people who have experienced that kind of love at least understand what
it means to be willing to throw everything else away for the sake of a
single great passion. And thus, at least at one level, they have a sense of
how Christians are called to love God.
And so we come back to the story of this unnamed woman,
pouring ointment on Jesus’ head. Mark is an amazingly skillful writer, and
one of his favorite techniques is to interrupt one story with another, so
that we’re just forced to think of the two stories together.
So here: at the beginning of chapter 14 the chief priests
and the scribes meet to conspire to arrest and murder Jesus. Then we get the
unnamed woman at the house of Simon the leper. And then, with no transition,
back to the first story, and Judas Iscariot goes to the scribes and priests
and offers to betray Jesus, and they promise to give him money.
So here is the juxtaposition: on the one hand the guardians
of religious respectability, and one of Jesus’ own 12 disciples, all
conspiring together to kill the Son of God. And then, for contrast, right in
the middle: this unnamed woman, maybe scandalous, for certain embarrassing,
preparing Jesus for his death. "She has done what she could."
So the story teaches us something about the extravagance of
love. But the Gospels’ stories of love are never simply about human love. We
can love God truly because God first loved us.
This story thus also stands in a wider context--at the
beginning of the passion narrative in Mark. We are about to learn just how
wild, just how extravagant is God’s love for us, love that will give up
everything, love that will lead even to a cross.
The unnamed woman at the house of Simon the leper offers a
model of how we might live, but it’s a scary world, and love is risky, and
sometimes love gets thrown back in your face, and we are vulnerable,
uncertain creatures. So we can take the risks of love only because we know
that, whatever happens, God has already loved us. And it is the promise of
that love that the passion narratives offer us.
Yesterday marked the beginning of the season of Lent. This
story of passion and Ash Wednesday might seem not to fit. Isn’t Lent
supposed to be about self-denial and self-control, about the very opposite
of extravagance? Well, yes and no.
For you see, in Lent, as in the Christian life generally, we
limit ourselves so that we can free ourselves. We keep ourselves in training
through exercises of self-denial, not for their own sake, but so that we can
be ready, if we are ever called, to throw ourselves extravagantly into the
consequences of loving God.
When a group goes out for training in Outward Bound or other
such programs, one of the first exercises is often that you learn to close
your eyes and fall with the confidence that the rest of the group will catch
you.
So one of the exercises in which we have to train ourselves
as Christians is to learn to let go, in the confidence that God will catch
us. Wherever we jump for love of God, whatever risks we take, we are finally
safe, for God is faithful, more extravagant in love than we can imagine, and
underneath are the everlasting arms.
FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
The Rev. Robert Schoenhals will
be preaching "No Longer," at the 9:30 a.m. Feb. 29 service at First
United Methodist Church, 209 Washtenaw. The Lenten series: Taking on
Justice Today: Sexual Orientation and Justice. For more information, call
482-8374.
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH
First Baptist Church,
1110 W. Cross, meets at 9:30 a.m. Feb. 29 with Pastor Randy Johnson
preaching. Sunday school for all ages is held at 11 a.m. and prayer in the
parlor is held at 5 p.m. Sunday. The women’s Bible study meets at 3 p.m.
March 3 and the Pioneer Club programs, junior and senior high youth groups
and adult Bible study meets at 6 p.m. the same night. The Chancel Choir
rehearses at 7 p.m. March 3. The men’s Bible study meets at 7:30 a.m. on
Feb. 28 and March 6. For information, call 482-7380.
NEW GESTHSEMANE BAPTIST CHURCH
New Gethsemane Baptist Church,
600 E. Clark, will present the Rev. Johnny south and the Ypsilanti
Spiritualaries and others in a full musical at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 29. For more
information, call 485-0968.
EMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH
A Lenten dinner fish fry,
prepared by Boy Scout Troop 290, will be held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. March 3
at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 201 N. River, Street. The mean will
include fish, potato, bread, salad and dessert. The cost is $6 for adults,
$25.0 for children and under five is free. Tickets are available by calling,
483-0839 or the night of the dinner.
STONY CREEK UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
Stony Creek United Methodist
Church, 8635 Stony Creek Road, will
hold its all you can eat chicken dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. March 6. Adults are
$8, children 6 to 10 years old $4 and under 6 is free. Delivery will be made
to shut-ins within a five-mile radius. For information or to make phone
orders, call 482-0240. The church is handicapped accessible. |
