NewCreation

Homily Monday of Holy Week ABC

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the Monday in Holy Week. Our Gospel today curiously takes us back to just before Palm Sunday — in other words, it takes us back actually to Saturday evening. Why? Because we celebrate on Palm Sunday Jesus's coming through from the Mount of Olives on the donkey, coming into Jerusalem. But John's calendar, which is very slightly different from the others and probably the most accurate of the calendars, says that six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. Now, remember that in John's Gospel the Passover was on a Saturday — by what we would call a Saturday — because Jesus was actually taken out to be crucified during the time when the priests were sacrificing the Passover lambs, so as to be ready for the evening when the Passover feast would start, hence the need to get Jesus buried before the feast began. In other words, six days before the Passover would mean the time when the Sunday started. The Sunday started Saturday evening. The Sabbath ran from Friday evening to Saturday evening. That was their way of measuring: the days were measured from 6 pm till 6 pm, rather than as we do it from midnight to midnight. So on the Saturday evening it would have been six days before the Passover. So this is the same day, in fact, that Palm Sunday takes place, but it's Saturday evening. So Jesus comes to Bethany, the home of Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. Now, there was a Bethany two miles from Jerusalem, so this is not an implausible place from which to come in fairly short order into Jerusalem the next day. But it's interesting, because Bethany itself — which is a term, a word meaning "house of affliction," or "house of the poor," or "house of humility" — could be a way of referring to a community. Because while the Gospel says that Martha and Mary had a home in Bethany, there's another Bethany mentioned at the beginning of John's Gospel that makes an inclusion with this one, and that is when John was preaching: there is a Bethany just beyond the Jordan where people went, and here it's Bethany the home of Lazarus. So it's conceivable that we're talking about a community that had its name — a house of affliction, house of the poor — where Jesus's followers were forming some sort of community. We don't know. But anyhow, this was the place where Lazarus lived, and it refers to here as the home of Lazarus, whereas before it refers to it as the home of Martha and Mary — but then Lazarus had just died at that time. And here is the home of Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. So there they gave a dinner for him. So beyond the Sabbath, So giving somebody dinner becomes possible. Martha served – so she, as in the account in Luke where she's a bit anxious because she's too busy serving and Mary's too busy listening – she's described here in her role as a deacon, as one who serves. And Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. All of this is suggesting something more like a community than a simple household. So Martha, meaning "the lady," is the person who is making things work, making sure that wisdom is in practical form in this new temple. And Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Lazarus in the Hebrew means Eliezer, who was the patriarch of the priestly family in which Zadok – who had anointed Solomon; Zadok the priest came to make Solomon king – and Solomon of course had filled his house with perfume. So here we have this formerly dead patriarch of the priests, who is both a real person and a symbolic person here. Martha, the lady who is engaged in service within the new temple, and Mary, who is the fount of wisdom, taking a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, or perhaps liquid nard, clearly because she bought it. Now, here's something interesting before we get to what she was doing. One of the things that this immediately calls forth is the Song of Songs, and in the Song of Songs the beloved is looking for her beloved in order to apply nard to him. Mary Magdalene in the garden is full of references to the Song of Songs as well. There seems to be an inclusion between Mary here and Mary Magdalene. They may well have been the same person – in fact, traditionally they are assumed to have been the same person, with some people casting doubt on that nowadays – but this household was clearly a household that is full of both real people and people who are signs, because this whole house is being turned into a sign. So she took a pound of costly perfume and anointed Jesus's feet. And remember that anointing with oil was the equivalent of the ordination by which one became a priest and was able to live in the Holy of Holies; it was the symbol of eternal life. And she anointed Jesus's feet and wiped them with her hair. Now, you remember that the same story appears in Mark's Gospel in the house of Simon the leper. And Simon the leper is clearly a former leper, because otherwise people wouldn't have come to his house. And he's upset, or people are upset, that this woman is doing something that frankly was the sort of thing a prostitute would do – the washing of the feet with the hair. It was a form of adoration, and with perfume and oil was something that they immediately thought: "What sort of prophet can he be, that he doesn't get who's doing this to him?" Interesting. In John's Gospel we seem to have gone beyond whatever people's life story was. and to whom they are becoming now, which is rather wonderful to think that even if you were a prostitute you will now be remembered much more for who you're becoming than who you were once thought to be with contempt. So he anoints his feet and wipes them with her hair, and this is an act of worship. This means actually she is treating Jesus as the Lord. It's a very, very strong act of worship. Now please notice that in not too long — in fact in less than a week — Jesus is going to imitate her, to the shock of the disciples. Jesus is going to take what she did and do it to them, and they're going to protest about it at first. This can have all sorts of meanings, but part of the meaning is: remember that what I'm doing to you is as was done by this prostitute to me. You must not be scandalized by being served, and serving, and becoming served, and being made whole by your contact with people who you might despise. Extraordinary links between this sign of what's going on and the sign that Jesus will celebrate with his disciples before this week is out. So it says the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume — so there's a reference to Solomon's Temple. Here this small community is already beginning to live with the sign of the new Temple, filled with fragrance. "But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, the one who was about to betray him" — actually the Greek means "hand him over." And "hand him over" is the sense in which Jesus hands himself over, and it's one of the key words in the New Testament, actually having both meanings of self-giving and betrayal. Here of course it obviously means betrayal, but we shouldn't be fooled by the fact that our word for "handing over" and our word for "betraying" are different. I think it would have been better to say "was about to hand him over," because that can at least go both ways, and Jesus is going to play on that later when he talks to Judas. Anyhow, Jesus says: "Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?" Okay, well, let's suppose that 300 denarii would be something close to a year's wage — in other words, this was expensive stuff. And "the money given to the poor": now, by the poor he may well have meant members of the different Bethany communities — the house of affliction, the house of the poor, the house of humility — in which the different followers of Jesus were living, maybe one beyond the Jordan, maybe one here. He was in fact the community bursar, if you like; he was the person who was responsible for giving things to them. But in fact here he says this not because he cared about the poor, But because he was a thief, he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it. That's about as straightforward a description of someone as you can get. He abused his financial privileges as community bursar. But it's interesting that he doesn't question where the perfume came from, because they all knew where the perfume had come from. It was one of the sort of things that happened with Mary's previous profession. So Judas — it's not only a financial thing, but it's a kind of a moralistic thing. Well, why wasn't — why wasn't, you know, those usual tools of her trade that should have been put to better use somewhere? And then Jesus says to her, "Let her be." Then our English translation amazingly says something that is not in the Greek text at all. It simply invents something out of thin air. It says, "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial." But that's not what the Greek says. The King James version, as usual, says this: "Let her alone; against the day of my burying hath she kept this" — suggesting that it was in fact something associated with her former profession. That was how she showed her love. That love was accepted and was thought to be a good sign. And she had kept it against the day of his burial, because she knew that the burial process would require the embalming and the perfuming. Not that that actually happened at the time, as you remember — it was a different load of perfumes that were brought via Joseph of Arimathea for Jesus's burial. In other words, it's not that she bought it; she kept it. However it was given to her, however she got it before, is not what's important. The important thing is that she's kept it. Don't be moralistic about it. "You always have the poor with you" — in other words, you're actually living with the community that is supposed to be looking to share a certain poverty. "But you do not always have me." In his own way, Jesus is making exactly the same point as is made in the Markan version and in the synoptic gospels, where Jesus says that what this woman has done this day will be remembered forever. Because Jesus says she's doing this when he's with her — what she's doing is going to be remembered. And how does he reinforce that in John's Gospel? He reinforces it by actually imitating it himself, taking her as an example that he puts before his disciples in a way that is likely to scandalize them. So this is the sign — if you like, we're getting a mini sign, or mini constellation of signs, that we get in the Holy Week period, with Jesus moving towards his passion. Now, meanwhile, because it's now no longer the Sabbath, the great crowd of the Jews… They learned that he was there. They came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus. They'd heard of him, and remember, a reward had gone out by this point — well, the offer of a reward had gone out for handing Jesus over. They also came to see Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead. So the source and the newly living one, the sign who was still alive and was a dangerous sign. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus. In other words, they were beginning to understand the signs and saying, "Yes, well, actually, maybe everything is being fulfilled that we'd heard about, and maybe this does mean the coming to an end of the institutional structure that we've understood so far, with the Temple and its various sacrifices and workings." You can imagine, therefore, why in particular the chief priests were upset about this, because they understood that the sign meant the end of their system. This is not the Pharisees who are being mentioned here. The Pharisees were, if you like, our lay preachers. They're not the ones who are shocked by this. But Lazarus, the patriarch of the priests — dead and raised to life, and living in the community of the poor, with a Temple that has been filled with perfume — this is sounding awfully like something new that is going to put to an end an awful lot of fake religious pretension. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.