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Scripture Readings: Mark 11:1-11 Mark 14:3-9
Have you ever noticed how some words become more common and comfortable for different groups of people? For example, if I’m in a conversation with a couple of accountants, my eyes begin to do this droopy thing and I start to lose focus. Then, even normal words seem like they aren’t fitting together like they used to do.
The same thing can be true of different social groups and affiliations. Ask a Star Wars fan under the age of 40 what they think about dilithium crystals, and they will most likely have no idea what you are talking about unless they have a parent or grandparent that grew up watching Star Trek. My point is that we tend to swim in circles of comfort, even in the church.
There’s a very churchy word that shows up in our readings today that illustrates this point, or rather I should say that our use of and reaction to this word can be as divisive as it can be unifying. The word is, “anointed,” and it’s not a word we tend to use very much in our mainline, protestant, reformed, PC(USA) fish tank of a church.
I think that is because – although we are pretty comfortable acknowledging Jesus as the “anointed one,” and we love to acknowledge (like scholars) that “anointed one” is in fact what is meant by the term, “Christ” – we get a little nervous about the idea of it happening to anyone else. That’s not a bad thing, as long as we recognize that our concern is based in reverence for God and not an opportunity to condemn or judge others. Even so, we must not forget how it applies to us as followers of Jesus. We must not forget the who, what, and why of the anointing of Jesus.
While the “who?” involves an unnamed woman, it also involves Jesus – it involves a tired, weary Jesus who had just come from Jerusalem after being recognized as the Messiah of God. So, first, he was, in a sense, anointed by the crowds and their praises, and then he was anointed with perfumed oil by a stranger in the company of his closest disciples and friends.
It’s important to acknowledge the crowd, and his entrance – humble on a donkey, yet making a statement that became a spectacle! In Mark’s gospel, we get the sense that Jesus was very intentional in all that he did and that everyone else – especially the disciples – either figured it out later or had to have it spelled out for them. In this instance, Jesus knew that his entrance would be noticed one way or another. His fame, though still pretty localized, had begun to spread based on tales of his miracles, his constant call to repent, and his tendency to include the least – even women and children and the lame and destitute – as equally important in the eyes of God.
Jesus knew that the region was a powder keg waiting to be lit. He chose the foal of a donkey to fulfill the prophecy of a returning, servant-leader king from the line of David, even though being king was never his intent. If anything, he was letting them all know that he had no interest in being king by the way he marched straight up to the temple and did...nothing. I like to think he yawned. It was late in the day. He was tired.
Imagine the crowd. They were used to being made to endure Roman ceremonies with Generals parading in pomp and regalia up to a shrine to make a sacrifice and proclaim divine authority. Kings and Caesars would do the same and claim to be the incarnation of a God! What was Jesus doing? Surely, he knew that he needed the blessing of the Chief Priests and Scribes? He had to know that the Romans would never see him as God’s chosen one if he didn’t show them that he could beat them at their own game!
Yet Jesus seemed to shrug all that off to go see some friends in Bethany. He came back to Jerusalem in the days to follow, and that’s when the trouble really started. We’ll call this the “whaaaaat?” of his anointing. You know this part, we talked about it a few weeks ago. He cleared the temple of the money changers, and pretty much threw shade on everyone except for a poor widow that certainly was not contributing to the endowment fund!
He compared the Chief Priests and Scribes to wicked tenants in a vineyard that were stealing the inheritance of the landowner, he raised questions about a Messiah coming directly from God instead of the line of David and he even prophesied the temple’s destruction! You know, for years I’ve wondered how the crowd could turn from, “Hosanna, Son of David!” to “Crucify!”, but Mark’s gospel makes it seems like he was just asking to be crucified.
On the way into town, and for the third time, he did say that they would crucify him in Jerusalem. I can’t help but wonder if the disciples were starting to think, “Wow. If he keeps this up, they really are going to crucify him...and we’re next.”
That brings us to the next thing, the “why” of the anointing of Jesus. He came into town making a statement, and that statement was, “I am not who you think I am. You have expectations of God and God’s love for you, and they will be fulfilled, just not the way you want them to be. God is ever faithful – and God’s love will be poured out – but this Passover is going to be different. This Passover is going to be for everyone...even the Romans.”
Of course, no one would truly know that until after the resurrection, but he certainly finished his "pre-Passover trouble making" with a mike drop when he told them that the temple would be laid waste and God was going to gather up God’s chosen people at a time of God’s own choosing.
Then he went back to Bethany to stay with Simon the Leper. Interestingly, it never says if Simon was healed. We assume he was, and some scholars say that he is another version of Lazarus. It may be that he is just part of the story to let us know that God is with us in our sorrow. In fact, one translation of Bethany is “House of Sorrow”, not because it’s a place to inflict sorrow. It’s meant to be a place of rest as we wait for healing to come. Simon the Leper’s house in Bethany is that place in between sorrow and salvation, where we need to know that God is with us and we are encouraged to know that healing is on the way.
That is the place in which Jesus was anointed by an unnamed, often forgotten, but always essential character in our story. Many have called her a prophet, and yet I wonder if she was one in the classic sense. Did she know who he was? Did she know what he was doing? Did she know why it mattered? Or, was she just doing the right thing, because it was the right thing to do, and isn’t that a prophetic act all by itself?
Yes. Yes, it was, and in that act, she was as anointed as he was. She was the one who was acting as God’s chosen one for the moment of Jesus’s need. I can’t fault the disciples for missing it, though. Jesus had told them the parable of the wealthy man having more difficulty getting into heaven than a camel getting through the eye of a needle. If we look to Luke’s gospel, he said to sell everything of value and give it to the poor.
I can just imagine what they were thinking. “How dare she waste this extravagant perfume on him, and why doesn’t he call her out for it? Is he just too tired to deal with her? Is this a test? This is a test, right? Ok, we’ve got this – Hey, you! Why don’t you like poor people!”
Of course, she had nothing against poor people, and Jesus was quick to correct them on that. Interestingly though, his correction, “the poor will always be with you” is hardly ever quoted with the second half of that sentence, “and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.” That doesn’t mean that poverty is ok or good. It simply means that, in that specific moment, she has recognized that God’s love is real, and it is costly – even to God.
In fact, it is especially costly to God, because it involves a very real crucifixion and a very real death for Jesus. Whether she really knew that or not, this unnamed woman provided the opportunity for Jesus to make it crystal clear to the disciples and to you and to me that God’s love conquers all our fears and is stronger than even death itself!
The promise that God’s love conquers everything – even our religious institutions and political affiliations – is confirmed in the anointing of Jesus as God’s Chosen One! That doesn’t mean that we can dismiss the disciple’s lament over the poor or that Jesus thinks that caring for those experiencing poverty is something we do “whenever we want.”
If anything, it’s an invitation to realize that our relationship with those experiencing poverty is an incarnational space where we find God in our midst! In that space – in the incarnational space between us and those who long for God’s love – we will find that love is costly, but it is good. When we truly learn to love, and sometimes we have to learn again how to love, as God loves, then we become the anointed ones.
Scripture Readings: Mark 11:1-11 Mark 14:3-9
Have you ever noticed how some words become more common and comfortable for different groups of people? For example, if I’m in a conversation with a couple of accountants, my eyes begin to do this droopy thing and I start to lose focus. Then, even normal words seem like they aren’t fitting together like they used to do.
The same thing can be true of different social groups and affiliations. Ask a Star Wars fan under the age of 40 what they think about dilithium crystals, and they will most likely have no idea what you are talking about unless they have a parent or grandparent that grew up watching Star Trek. My point is that we tend to swim in circles of comfort, even in the church.
There’s a very churchy word that shows up in our readings today that illustrates this point, or rather I should say that our use of and reaction to this word can be as divisive as it can be unifying. The word is, “anointed,” and it’s not a word we tend to use very much in our mainline, protestant, reformed, PC(USA) fish tank of a church.
I think that is because – although we are pretty comfortable acknowledging Jesus as the “anointed one,” and we love to acknowledge (like scholars) that “anointed one” is in fact what is meant by the term, “Christ” – we get a little nervous about the idea of it happening to anyone else. That’s not a bad thing, as long as we recognize that our concern is based in reverence for God and not an opportunity to condemn or judge others. Even so, we must not forget how it applies to us as followers of Jesus. We must not forget the who, what, and why of the anointing of Jesus.
While the “who?” involves an unnamed woman, it also involves Jesus – it involves a tired, weary Jesus who had just come from Jerusalem after being recognized as the Messiah of God. So, first, he was, in a sense, anointed by the crowds and their praises, and then he was anointed with perfumed oil by a stranger in the company of his closest disciples and friends.
It’s important to acknowledge the crowd, and his entrance – humble on a donkey, yet making a statement that became a spectacle! In Mark’s gospel, we get the sense that Jesus was very intentional in all that he did and that everyone else – especially the disciples – either figured it out later or had to have it spelled out for them. In this instance, Jesus knew that his entrance would be noticed one way or another. His fame, though still pretty localized, had begun to spread based on tales of his miracles, his constant call to repent, and his tendency to include the least – even women and children and the lame and destitute – as equally important in the eyes of God.
Jesus knew that the region was a powder keg waiting to be lit. He chose the foal of a donkey to fulfill the prophecy of a returning, servant-leader king from the line of David, even though being king was never his intent. If anything, he was letting them all know that he had no interest in being king by the way he marched straight up to the temple and did...nothing. I like to think he yawned. It was late in the day. He was tired.
Imagine the crowd. They were used to being made to endure Roman ceremonies with Generals parading in pomp and regalia up to a shrine to make a sacrifice and proclaim divine authority. Kings and Caesars would do the same and claim to be the incarnation of a God! What was Jesus doing? Surely, he knew that he needed the blessing of the Chief Priests and Scribes? He had to know that the Romans would never see him as God’s chosen one if he didn’t show them that he could beat them at their own game!
Yet Jesus seemed to shrug all that off to go see some friends in Bethany. He came back to Jerusalem in the days to follow, and that’s when the trouble really started. We’ll call this the “whaaaaat?” of his anointing. You know this part, we talked about it a few weeks ago. He cleared the temple of the money changers, and pretty much threw shade on everyone except for a poor widow that certainly was not contributing to the endowment fund!
He compared the Chief Priests and Scribes to wicked tenants in a vineyard that were stealing the inheritance of the landowner, he raised questions about a Messiah coming directly from God instead of the line of David and he even prophesied the temple’s destruction! You know, for years I’ve wondered how the crowd could turn from, “Hosanna, Son of David!” to “Crucify!”, but Mark’s gospel makes it seems like he was just asking to be crucified.
On the way into town, and for the third time, he did say that they would crucify him in Jerusalem. I can’t help but wonder if the disciples were starting to think, “Wow. If he keeps this up, they really are going to crucify him...and we’re next.”
That brings us to the next thing, the “why” of the anointing of Jesus. He came into town making a statement, and that statement was, “I am not who you think I am. You have expectations of God and God’s love for you, and they will be fulfilled, just not the way you want them to be. God is ever faithful – and God’s love will be poured out – but this Passover is going to be different. This Passover is going to be for everyone...even the Romans.”
Of course, no one would truly know that until after the resurrection, but he certainly finished his "pre-Passover trouble making" with a mike drop when he told them that the temple would be laid waste and God was going to gather up God’s chosen people at a time of God’s own choosing.
Then he went back to Bethany to stay with Simon the Leper. Interestingly, it never says if Simon was healed. We assume he was, and some scholars say that he is another version of Lazarus. It may be that he is just part of the story to let us know that God is with us in our sorrow. In fact, one translation of Bethany is “House of Sorrow”, not because it’s a place to inflict sorrow. It’s meant to be a place of rest as we wait for healing to come. Simon the Leper’s house in Bethany is that place in between sorrow and salvation, where we need to know that God is with us and we are encouraged to know that healing is on the way.
That is the place in which Jesus was anointed by an unnamed, often forgotten, but always essential character in our story. Many have called her a prophet, and yet I wonder if she was one in the classic sense. Did she know who he was? Did she know what he was doing? Did she know why it mattered? Or, was she just doing the right thing, because it was the right thing to do, and isn’t that a prophetic act all by itself?
Yes. Yes, it was, and in that act, she was as anointed as he was. She was the one who was acting as God’s chosen one for the moment of Jesus’s need. I can’t fault the disciples for missing it, though. Jesus had told them the parable of the wealthy man having more difficulty getting into heaven than a camel getting through the eye of a needle. If we look to Luke’s gospel, he said to sell everything of value and give it to the poor.
I can just imagine what they were thinking. “How dare she waste this extravagant perfume on him, and why doesn’t he call her out for it? Is he just too tired to deal with her? Is this a test? This is a test, right? Ok, we’ve got this – Hey, you! Why don’t you like poor people!”
Of course, she had nothing against poor people, and Jesus was quick to correct them on that. Interestingly though, his correction, “the poor will always be with you” is hardly ever quoted with the second half of that sentence, “and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.” That doesn’t mean that poverty is ok or good. It simply means that, in that specific moment, she has recognized that God’s love is real, and it is costly – even to God.
In fact, it is especially costly to God, because it involves a very real crucifixion and a very real death for Jesus. Whether she really knew that or not, this unnamed woman provided the opportunity for Jesus to make it crystal clear to the disciples and to you and to me that God’s love conquers all our fears and is stronger than even death itself!
The promise that God’s love conquers everything – even our religious institutions and political affiliations – is confirmed in the anointing of Jesus as God’s Chosen One! That doesn’t mean that we can dismiss the disciple’s lament over the poor or that Jesus thinks that caring for those experiencing poverty is something we do “whenever we want.”
If anything, it’s an invitation to realize that our relationship with those experiencing poverty is an incarnational space where we find God in our midst! In that space – in the incarnational space between us and those who long for God’s love – we will find that love is costly, but it is good. When we truly learn to love, and sometimes we have to learn again how to love, as God loves, then we become the anointed ones.
Truly that is the goal of Palm Sunday, that we might see that we have been prepared, set apart, and called out for the way of the cross. This is the time when we, like the disciples before, catch a lump in our throats and say, “I guess we’re next.”
Yet, thanks be to God that our cross is not one that hangs on a hill. It is the one that is empty. It is the one that beckons us to live sacrificially and love in a way that is costly and yet so very fulfilling and so very good. We may not be remembered for it by name, but that’s ok. As Maya Angelou once wrote: “People will forget what you say. They will forget what you do. They will remember how you made them feel.”
The gospel message for us today is that we are not called to make a spectacle of our selves or of our faith. We are called to help others feel loved. We are called to recognize the costly love of God for all the world and to do our best to live as those who have been anointed, called, and chosen to love as we have been loved.
It’s just that simple, and it’s just that hard. Thanks be to God that we are not alone, and that we have been given one another to figure it out together as we move toward the cross and the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Amen!
Yet, thanks be to God that our cross is not one that hangs on a hill. It is the one that is empty. It is the one that beckons us to live sacrificially and love in a way that is costly and yet so very fulfilling and so very good. We may not be remembered for it by name, but that’s ok. As Maya Angelou once wrote: “People will forget what you say. They will forget what you do. They will remember how you made them feel.”
The gospel message for us today is that we are not called to make a spectacle of our selves or of our faith. We are called to help others feel loved. We are called to recognize the costly love of God for all the world and to do our best to live as those who have been anointed, called, and chosen to love as we have been loved.
It’s just that simple, and it’s just that hard. Thanks be to God that we are not alone, and that we have been given one another to figure it out together as we move toward the cross and the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Amen!
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