LOVE LIKE THAT

A Sermon on John 12:1-8

Happy Spring! Finally, we have made our transition from a long, cold, hard winter into the glories of bud and bloom! Rabbi Edwin Friedman called the transitions of nature and life “windows in time.” Every change of season in nature or in the church, every baptism or funeral is a window, through which we can look into our past and into the future. Perhaps it is because spring has sprung, perhaps it is because there have been two funerals here at All Saints’, when we celebrated the lives of our Christian brothers and friends Philip and Bob, that I have been thinking this past week about other times, other seasons, other people whose lives have been important “windows” into God’s world.

This week I have been thinking about a particular person, a special “window” in time. Her name was Mary Abbay. She was a beautiful woman – a wife, a mother, a teacher and a performer (check out Lionel Ritchie’s “Ballerina Girl” music video on YouTube). She was all that and more. But I knew Mary Abbay as a church musician. Each Sunday evening musicians come together at Church of the Holy Communion to help lead their candlelight service, drawing people from all over Memphis. Flutes, dulcimers, violins and guitars accompany songs from the Celtic tradition or from the community of Taize. But Mary Abbay was the only musician to bring a harp. And when she played, her fingers dancing across those strings, love came down from heaven, a little closer to earth.

Just short of three years ago (March 29, 2007), Mary died in her sleep. She was forty-seven. Numb, in shock, more than six hundred people attended her funeral. The outpouring of musicians who wanted to pay her tribute was so great, some had to be turned away. No one knew why she died so young, but Mary Abbay’s music had changed us forever. There are some who say: what good is music? And we answer: Have you never heard Mary Abbay play her harp?!

We hear of another Mary in today’s Gospel story. Mary and Martha probably couldn’t wait to have Jesus come for dinner, after he miraculously raised Lazarus, their brother, and brought him back to life. Do you remember how that goes? Let me set the stage for today’s story.

If we back up a bit to the time when Lazarus was still in the tomb, we can’t help but notice…a strong smell. It’s Lazarus’ dead body. In telling this story John is very specific about the smell of death. Martha warns Jesus, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” After Lazarus is raised, we can overhear the chief priests and Pharisees. They are planning to arrest Jesus. And we might notice another smell. We may catch a faint whiff of Jesus’ impending death, along with the strong stink coming from Lazarus’.

“What smelled like new life to some people (like Martha and Mary) smelled like danger to others (like the religious elite)” (www.goodpreacher.com). Jesus himself smells a change in the air. As today’s story begins, Jesus and his friends are hanging out in Bethany, safe for one last night before journeying to Jerusalem. I wonder: what did it smell like in that Bethany house, as Martha prepared for a party, celebrating Jesus’ return and Lazarus’ new life?

Finally, we are ready to begin today’s story from the twelfth chapter of John. Jesus and his friends sit down for a fabulous feast. Then Mary enters, carrying something no one could possibly expect – perfume. But this is not just any perfume. It’s a whole pound of expensive nard, made from oils also used to make incense. Nard is pure and lovely, like no other fragrance. And Mary knows just how to use it. Before Jesus washes the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, Mary washes his feet at this one. She pours out that nard, ALL of it. Then she wipes and massages Jesus’ feet with her hair. This Mary does not play an instrument. Instead her body becomes an instrument, releasing an aroma that arrests you, like a song you just can’t get out of your head. It’s a fragrance that fills up, then brings down the house. Unforgettable.

Why, we wonder, would Mary do this? Why would anyone do something so excessive, so extravagant, so over-the-top? Why, when the poor people of the world are dying all around them, would they not sell this perfume and give this money to the poor – somewhat like we are doing with our Lenten Rice Bowl project? That’s what Judas wanted to know. Or so he said. Judas, the gospel of John tells us, wanted that money, but not for the poor. He wanted to steal money from the poor box, which he had been doing all along.

And yet Judas, regardless of his motives, makes a good point. What good is all that fragrant perfume, anyway? Or someone’s gorgeous music? Or – dare I say it? – these beautiful stained glass windows? What good is it all? Where is God in all this excess? God, of course, is right here. But we’re not paying attention. We don’t stop to smell the perfume, or hear the music, or see our God – right here, in our very midst. In the words of poet Annie Dillard:

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke (in church)?....Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children, playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats . . . to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake (up) someday and take offense…the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, pp. 58-59).

Annie Dillard asks if we have actually seen God. The God of un-believable abundance, un-called-for generosity, un-warranted extravagance. The God who drenches the world with dazzling wonders. The God who dares bother with the gratuitous intricacies of a single feather or the multiplicitous colors of the Fall. The God who loves us so much, the God who is so crazy for us as to become one of us, in the person of Jesus. I wonder: how might the fragrance of Jesus’ sacrifice take our breath away? Dare we smell the power of Jesus’ love? Even though it is still Lent, can we catch a whiff of Easter lilies?

There is at least one person in this parish who likely smelled the power of Jesus’ love. When Paul Wisner died nearly two years ago, he gave All Saints’ his entire estate – more than a million dollars. Paul had no wife and no children. But he loved this parish church, coming regularly, near his life’s end, to the Wednesday evening healing service. Of all the charitable organizations he could have blessed with his abundance, Paul chose to pour it all out on us. His extravagant gift, which we need to celebrate often, has begun to set this parish free, moving this church out of bondage to debt. Paul’s extravagance has been of unbelievable benefit to All Saints’, today and for generations to come.

Hardly any of us can do what Paul Wisner did. Or what Mary Abbay did. But we all have some extravagance in us. A flower guild member labors in the middle of Lent over a vase of fresh-cut roses that honors the memory of someone who has just died. A Sunday School teacher prepares a lesson, worries over it, delivers it, and then, all too quickly, class comes to an end. A church choir works so hard to create beautiful music, and three minutes later, like those other offerings, it is gone. Where? Into the air, heavenward, where all our gifts will evaporate, like so much fine perfume. And into the world, earthward, where all our gifts can and do make a difference. These gifts are poured out, with shameless extravagance. Why do people do such crazy things? Love. We do them for love. God’s love. God’s extravagant love always has its reasons.

The love we have for God, we have learned again today, is like a woman who saves nothing, pouring out everything she has on the One who came to love the world. “Like the bottle of perfume,” Barbara Brown Taylor tells us, “(Jesus’) precious life was also not meant to be saved. It was going to be opened, offered, and used at a great price. It will be raised up and poured out for all humankind, emptied to the last drop” (“The Prophet Mary,” Bread of Angels, p. 61). For the love of God in Jesus Christ “was not cautious…(it was) extravagant. (Jesus) didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that” (Ephesians 5:2, The Message).

Ah, yes. Love. The extravagant gift of love. The kind of love someone shares without strings, when they pour out all their music or all their money or all their oil. It’s a window into love. A love like God’s love. It’s love like that.