At the Rest Stop
Isaiah 43:16-21;
John 12:1-8
March 17, 2013
We’ve been on the
journey for a long time. We know where we’ve come from, and we know where we’re
going. It’s Lent. We come from dust, and to dust we shall return.
But if we are
journeying with Jesus, we know also that the trip is going to go by way of
Jerusalem, the cross, the empty tomb and all that they may mean. Those points
along the way have been interpreted ceaselessly for 2,000 years, and will
doubtless remain fodder for interpretation as long as interpreters – that is to
say, human beings – remain.
Take the story
literally. Take it as metaphor. Read it as history. Hear it as poetry. I really
don’t care. Personally, I understand gospel as a love story. To sum up my own
thoughts: Easter is God’s great “yes” in the face of the “no” of a broken
humanity. Feel free to interpret that as you may, as well. I really don’t care
about dueling interpretations.
Here’s what I do
care about: if we say that Jesus is, in whatever way, an important guide,
instigator, way-maker, sojourner, bread-keeper, savior, fellow-traveler,
choose-your-metaphor for one who plays a key part along our own ways – if we
say that Jesus is important then our steps and stops along the way matter deeply
and are best understood only in relation to Jesus.
We may be dust on
the way back to dust, but the way matters. We are, after all, people of the way
– at least, that’s what they called the original followers of Jesus.
Let me unpack that
just a bit, and do so in terms that Mary, Judas and, perhaps, Martha can help
us with.
Jesus, in the
gospels, is on a journey of his own – from the manger to the cross; from
Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Despite the fact that the Apostles’ Creed reduces the
journey to a comma – “born of the Virgin Mary – comma – suffered under Pontius
Pilate” – the gospels insist that the journey mattered. That’s one of the great
clues telling us that our own journeys matter, too. No matter how you interpret
the ontological status of Jesus, the story that God cares enough about human
beings to journey with us assures us that our journeys matter.
This morning’s
reading picks up Jesus’ journey in Bethany. Jesus stops off to see his dear
friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Bethany is a rest stop along the way for
Jesus. Scholars differ on just who these three were and how they were related.
Perhaps biologically, perhaps by intention as members of a small Essene
monastic order.
In any case, they
turn up regularly in the gospels and the women, in particular, are crucial
figures: Mary, perhaps symbolizing the contemplative prayerful student of
faith, Martha, perhaps symbolizing the life of service in the stories told of
them. Taken together, they give us a full picture of the life of discipleship
and, certainly, they were important people in Jesus’ life and in the life of
the early church.
Lazarus is not as fully
drawn a character, but clearly he was also important in the life of Jesus for
at Lazarus’ death Jesus was, the text in that story tells us, deeply moved and
brought to tears.
On the way to
Jerusalem and his own final, decisive encounter with the powers and principalities,
Jesus stops at Bethany to visit his friends, and in the brief scene that
unfolds in John’s story, we learn something essential about the journey of
faithfully following Jesus.
We learn it around
the table.
Gathered there: a
family of faith that was, like every family, dysfunctional. Now, to be sure,
this family’s dysfunctions were a bit more dramatic than most. After all, one
of those at table has already died and come back to life. That’s just got to
raise some issues. Meanwhile, another family member at the table will soon
betray the family’s leader and give him over to be killed. They’ve got issues.
Judas, the betrayer,
scolds Mary for wasting resources in anointing Jesus. Jesus responds, famously,
“you will always have the poor with you; you won’t have me.”
In typical fashion,
the omniscient authorial voice of John ascribes motives to Judas – he’s a
callous thief, the text insists. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? In the end, what
difference does that make? More fodder for ceaseless interpreting.
What matters is what
unfolds around that table in that moment.
Martha is serving at
table. She plays a crucial, faithful role. Without those who are willing to
roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty nothing that needs doing gets
done – including the life-sustaining work of feeding people.
Mary, meanwhile,
plays another crucial, faithful role. She recognizes the holiness of the one in
their midst and treats him as such. Three things happen at once in Mary’s
action: first, her recognition of Jesus prompts her to join the men at table
and break down social barriers that are lost to our ears; second, in doing so,
she embodies the kind of hospitality that each of us is called to give to every
other one – across every social barrier – because everyone is holy, is worthy
of such welcome, and carries within a spark of the divine; and third, as
theologian Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza put it, Mary, "the woman anointing Jesus recognizes clearly that
Jesus' messiahship means suffering and death."[1]
We are meant to do
likewise. Michaela Bruzzese, a Chilean contributor to Sojourners, put it this way:
It is now our turn to follow her
example, to know the suffering Christ, the persecuted Christ, in the lives of
our families, communities, and the world. We accompany one another through
hardship not for the sake of suffering itself, but because it is only there,
when we love and anoint one another through pain, that the new life of
resurrection begins.[2]
As Jesus insists to
Judas: the poor will be with you on this journey. That is not a statement of
resignation about the intransigence of social problems, it is a statement about
the nature of Christian life in community. The community of followers of Jesus
will always include the poor, the marginalized, the outcast. When it does not
it, just like Judas, betrays Jesus. When we
do not – for whatever motives or reasons or excuses – include the poor, the
marginalized, the outcast we betray
Jesus.
Mary recognizes, in
that moment, that where there is poverty there will be suffering and that, as
followers of Jesus, we will share in that suffering. And, most crucially, new
life begins precisely where there is suffering.
Because God cares
about the dust; about the least of us; about each of us on our journeys from
ash to ash, dust to dust. Jesus calls to us along the way to share in that care
and concern. To sojourn with those who hurt, to share with them from what we
have, to break bread together with those who suffer. In other words: to be
companions in compassion.
Companions in
compassion. In other words, as those words mean at their root, sharing bread in
solidarity with those who suffer.
This is the new
thing that God is always doing: running rivers of life through the barren
desert, making a path through the storming seas, bringing life out of death,
finding food for the hungry in the midst of the suffering.
On our journeys from
dust to dust we are invited to join in something new. We are called to declare
God’s praise as God’s people through participating in this always new thing
that God is always, already about. May it be so. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
5:26 AM
