Old Testament: Isaiah 42:1-9
New Testament: Hebrews 9:11-15
Gospel: John 12:1-11
Psalm 36:5-11
“Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” John 12:7
We are now at the start of a slowly unfolding Holy Week. As a community, and individually, we have gone through five long weeks of Lent. At Ash Wednesday services, Fr. Tommie invited us, using words of our Book of Common Prayer, to “the observance of a holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”
Some of us went through lengthy introspection. Some of us rued our bad habits and recognized downright wrongdoings. Some of us prayed, fasted, and gave up (or took on) foods, drinks, actions, or certain people. Some of us pondered scripture. Some of us did all of this. Some of us did none.
No matter the preparation or lack of it, we are all steadily moving toward the Crucifixion. John’s reading for today tells the story of Jesus’s visit to the home of Lazarus when Judas Iscariot scolds Mary for anointing her master’s feet with an entire pound of pure, expensive perfume. Jesus rebukes him saying, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”
Jesus’s beating, hanging on the cross, brutal death, and committal: Holy Week has a dark solemness, a deep sadness, an overwhelming heartache to it. Intellectually, we know we will come out through the gloom to a glorious Resurrection. But it doesn’t feel that way now in our hearts or guts.
Startlingly, the other readings for this day are joyful. Isaiah says (like our Stewardship theme), “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.” Hebrews 9:14 exhorts, “Christ’s blood [the very blood about to be spilled] will purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God.” And Psalm 36 remind us that God is the well of life, in God’s light we see light, and God’s love reaches to the heavens. Somehow, say these passages, God always wins. Our view of Reality may be limited, but God’s sight is expansive, eternal.
As The Most Rev. Michael Curry said in his 2017 Easter message, “Jesus came to show us there is another way. The way of unselfish, sacrificial love. That’s why he entered Jerusalem. That’s why he went to the cross. It was the power of that love poured out from the throne of God, that even after the horror of the crucifixion would raise him from death to life… That not even the titanic powers of death can stop the love of God. On that Easter morning, he rose from the dead, and proclaimed: love wins.”
Barbara Sloan
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