Mary Anoints Jesus

My second "sermon" at Christ Church. Crafting the homily is a challenge. Always looking at the words. Is this what I want to say? Is this how I want to say it? This one was more difficult and I was more careful about what I was saying. I find this very difficult but fulfilling. Preaching though is not about quiet study and analytical thinking... it's not about contemplation and personal reflection.  

Delivery of the words and ideas is much more difficult for me. I didn't move away from the text much at all... in this regard I am woefully unskilled. I look up and am at a loss for words... I don't want to move away from the words on the paper in front of me. I guess this is a weakness that I need to overcome. It's a bit disheartening.

Isaiah 43 and today’s Psalm read like two sides of the same coin. Isaiah speaks to a people in exile, a people in captivity… removed from all they dream of and hope for... they couldn’t see God… But God sees them. “Do you remember how good you had it?” God says. “Well… forget about it… because I am doing a new thing!”

The Psalm is a song of thanksgiving for this promise spoken in Isaiah. I love the imagery of this psalm where it states, “…then were we like those who dream”… when a great and wonderful thing happens it’s like a dream… like it just can’t be real… This is what Isaiah refers to… something so great that it’s like a dream come true and Isaiah could just as easily be speaking to us, for in so many ways we live in a world of exile... where we sometimes experience the wilderness… and in the wilderness our hopes and dreams aren’t realized.

God’s new thing is about release, homecoming, and making the dry places bloom; it is so good it’s like living in the best of dreams.

There’s a person I run into nearly every day in one of the elementary buildings I teach in. He’s a good natured guy and a hard worker. We usually greet each other with, “how’s it going?” and when I get to it first he almost always says, “I’m living the dream.” I laugh every time he says that. I guess I’m easily amused because after a hundred times or so I still laugh. It’s funny… it’s a satirical commentary about work and career and so on. The point is that he isn’t really living the “dream”… the “dream” is just a fantasy… and I get that. The “dream job”, the “dream house”, the “dream car”, and dreams like this can offer us happiness… but it’s fleeting… eventually those dreams simply fade away. We chase dreams… and some dreams are worth pursuing… we should chase our dreams…. but I think we all understand that if we believe that lasting happiness or self-worth or real security is tied to a job or a home or a place or an accomplishment… we’ve been fooled. The narrative of the scripture is consistent on this score. But it’s also consistent in offering us this idea of a “new thing”… a better dream.

Paul speaks to us of “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead”. Last week we heard this from Paul, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see. everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” The two ideas work together and they echo the passages we read today. Paul was among other things a focused human being…. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus he put great stock in his learning, his zeal, his accomplishments… his heritage… and his position. He was living “the dream”… the dream as he knew it. We read today that he left it all behind… threw it away even, because his eyes had been opened to this new thing that God had begun.

I’m going to tie this in with today’s Gospel passage because I think Mary was a woman who did not consider what lay behind. She understood what was to come.

Mary was the sister to Martha, and the brother of Lazarus. These three had a unique and special relationship with the Jesus. We know very little of this really. We know that Jesus at least on two occasions shared a meal with them at their house. They seemed to know Jesus. Maybe they were related. Maybe they were old family friends. We don’t know… but they occupy a special place in the Gospel narrative and in the tradition of the church.

Mary pouring costly perfume upon Jesus’ feet was a prophetic act, an act of faith and devotion. It was pure… it was lovely… it was touching. We’ve seen Mary before… where she took a place at the feet of Jesus while her sister worked and fretted, we saw her weeping but believing with Jesus at her brother’s tomb, and here we see her anointing Jesus for burial. She was misunderstood and criticized by her sister and the disciples but not by Jesus… who came to her defense. In this passage we see that she brought out this very expensive perfume in the middle of dinner (or after, I suppose) and poured it on Jesus’ feet. The amount, 300 denarii must have been shocking (I read that it was approximately a year’s salary for a common laborer) but more shocking I think was Mary letting down and wiping the Lord’s feet with her hair. This is something that just wasn’t done… under any circumstance. The level of this kind of devotion was just too intimate and personal. We can imagine the awkwardness that filled the room.

This wasn’t the only thing that filled the room though. It was also filled with the fragrance of the perfume. This sentence reads like a memory of someone who had been there and was reliving the evening and what Mary had done. I think it was also included because there was something wonderful that had taken place and maybe in that awkward space of a few moments… they all felt what Mary felt… they all saw what Mary saw… just before Brother Judas broke the spell.

Mary was a quiet martyr of the glory of Christ. She understood more than anyone who was with Jesus in those days what was to come and what it would mean. Her eyes were wide open… she was awake to a dream of God’s promise.

Most of the time, seeing God is a struggle… and at times a virtual impossibility. The nature of life, its ordinariness, its cares, and sometimes its pain, makes it difficult to see God. Maybe our chasing after some of the dreams life offers gets in the way as well. Seeing God is a gift. Seeing God is having our eyes opened to see what cannot be seen and understand what cannot be understood. Like Mary, and Paul, and Isaiah and Patrick… when we see God… when we really understand… it changes everything.

Mary’s act of anointing Jesus for burial was an act of costly self-sacrifice and of resignation… but also one of tender love and great hope. Mary believe what the Rabbi had revealed to his disciples even when they could not… that he would go to Jerusalem, be killed and buried. Did she also believe that he would rise from the dead? I think she understood clearly the risk in believing this. I think she believed that God was doing a new thing… and that Jesus was the one through whom the new thing would come… through death and resurrection. This is the message that the church has proclaimed in the world since… a message we proclaim every Sunday at Holy Eucharist… and now during Lent… working our way towards Easter… That in this life, where there seems to be so much hopelessness, there is great and living hope, where lack of faith is altogether too common, there are acts of extravagant self-sacrifice that scandalize and shame the temporary dreams presented by this world, and that in this cruel and cold culture… if we, like Paul, find a way to open our eyes to God… and lose everything to gain Christ, we will say “then were we like those who dream. Then were our mouths filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”

Missional Approach

This is a short project I wrote up for a course on Missional Church.

A Project of God’s Mission: Christ Church in Austin, Minnesota

Context:

Austin is a “big” small town. We are approximately 27,000 people straddling Interstate 90 in southern Minnesota. We are 40 minutes away from Rochester and 100 miles south of the Twin Cities Metro Area. Our sister city is Albert Lea which is a short 20 minutes to the west. The Hormel Corporation, a Fortune 500 Company that is primarily a pork processing industry but which has diversified over the years, dominates Austin. Austin is the hometown of this large and prosperous corporation and is the home of its executive offices and also The Hormel Institute, a cancer research facility. From the 1920s on Hormel has dominated the town and have made itself Austin’s sole beneficiary. This has become the town that Hormel built.

The demographics of Austin have changed dramatically over the last three decades. Where we were homogenous we are now quite diverse and becoming more so. We have been a hard working meat packing town with social divides that ran rigidly along “who you were” in the Plant. Socio-Economic-Status is a dividing line in Austin. This is quite entrenched. Race is another dividing line. Quality Pork, a company serving Hormel, began recruiting and hiring in certain areas throughout the south some time ago. Many who came were of “Hispanic” or “Latino” decent and culture. New people, new language, and new culture clashed with a very homogenous white, Midwest culture. These barriers still exist. We have since seen African immigrants and some Karen people of Burma move to town to find work. The Hormel Institute and it’s Corporate Offices along with the Mayo Clinic have brought many nations to Austin and there are some really vital and good services that are beginning to erode those barriers.

A major challenge for a majority of people living in Austin is simply making ends meet. Although the current average household income in Mower County is $40,395 we have a poverty rate of just over 18%. Over 50% of children in public schools in Mower County receive free and reduced lunch. Many families are either not making it or are just making it. To be honest I just don’t really know the hopes and dreams of most people who live in Austin. I assume they are the same as my hopes and dreams. I want to be loved and to love. I want to have a job that is fulfilling and where I am respected and valued. I want to live in my own house. I want to be comfortable. I want to have friends and family who I can count on and who can count on me. I want to be entertained when I feel the need and I want to be able to get away from it all from time to time. This is the case with my friends, family, and colleagues and the neighbors who I’ve come to know. But for many these simple hopes and dreams are just out of reach in Austin.

There has been the challenge of addiction and drug use in Austin, especially among the younger population. I believe that in part this has been bred out of a sense of economic and financial insecurity. Our town is a town where there is a sharp and obvious line drawn between those who have and those who do not. Gangs have also been an issue from time to time with violence, suspicion, and racism breaking out, dividing neighbors and neighborhoods.

An Approach to what God may be up to:

I would like to use short passages of Scripture to frame the discussion surrounding God’s Mission in Austin Minnesota and the church’s part in that Mission. Episcopalians are woefully short on personal scriptural experience. There tends to be a “disconnect” between what we do as “church” and the narrative of God’s Story. Because of this I think our faith communities (Episcopalian) have a harder time understanding that we are doing God’s Mission. Our efforts of outreach and service are merely social programs. They lack the vitality of faith and love. They make us feel better because we do things for poor people or for “far-away foreigners”. This probably represents another bit of residue from our “establishment” pass.

I would like to think about “the other” and so passages of scripture that speak about the “stranger” come to mind. The stranger is the person who is not “us”. In Austin this makes real sense, as we are a community that is experiencing changes in demographics along racial/cultural lines. Strangers are people we do not know. They are neighbors waiting to receive us. They are “family members” waiting to meet us. We must seek and serve Christ in them just as we do so in each other.

Matthew 25.31-40

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Gifted and Called:

If we are not joined up with God’s presence and movement in the local context then we are simply not the church of God in that locale. Together we are called and equipped to serve God’s Mission in the world. In Austin we must exercise the gifts the Holy Spirit has placed within us, and the variety of callings we embody, to serve our neighbors and community. Christ Church is made up of people from a variety of social, economic and cultural perspectives. We need to recognize and affirm those differences as a blessing from God. Each of us has a unique perspective in this community and has made connections to a wide margin of the people living here. This is a real gift that must come into play when we consider our place in God’s Mission in Austin Minnesota.

Participation in God’s Mission:

I recently took part in a webinar sponsored by the Episcopal Church Foundation called “Becoming Local: From Neighborhood Engagement to Neighborhood Church” this can be found somewhere on the ECF website though I haven’t found the link so I will include the link as an endnote to this “project”. This was a story told to us of an Episcopal Church in San Francisco called Saint Cyprian’s. It’s a wonderful story of one faith community’s effort to make sense of its decline. Essentially they sought the answers to what God was doing in community involvement and getting to know their neighborhood; in making real and vital connections to the world around them with no strings attached. The story of this community’s renewal seems to me to be a case study of a church that has become “missional”; they are real “People of the Way”. In any case the webinar offered some very helpful resources including an article by Roxburgh on the “missional church” that I would make use of with a faith community also struggling to understand what God was doing and how they fit into that story. This is the case with my local faith community/parish in Austin. We have struggled through a couple of decades of decline and business as usual. We have struggled to make sense of what God is up to within and without our walls.

I believe that before we can begin to understand what God is up to in our “neighborhood” we must understand who we are as a “faith community”. I would try to help breakdown and build up concepts and worldviews about what the church is and what the church isn’t. We are still holding on to concepts of “outreach” that are self-serving and pretentious. What we described in discussion as “Establishmentarian”. I would work with focus groups on these issues. I would concentrate efforts at leadership committees for sure (vestry and outreach committee). To this end I would engage these focus groups in “intensive” discussion of scripture and tradition. I would try to engage these groups in meaningful exercises that would shed light on these issues. I have included one “bible study” as an appendix that would work very well. These would be ongoing exercises or book studies. I would have to find a balance with this approach. Most people are not used to theology and find it tedious. Short 15-minute reflections with prayer included in a “business meeting” might be more practical. Coffee gatherings outside of church would be best. Envisioning must take place or anything that follows will be merely “projects” and things to do.

I think our first task in leading God’s people in discerning their participation in God’s mission is to help us see our neighborhood, our town, in the light of what God might be up to. One of the resources that were suggested in the Webinar was what is called “An Exegetical Walk”; an exercise for maybe an “outreach team” or a vestry committee to take part in. the exercise leads the person or group of people to take a walk in their neighborhood and asks them to observe and reflect of what they see and hear.  I modified this exercise to fit my local faith community and have included this document in the appendices.

One thing I might try is to provide a list of resources in the County ranging from emergency responders to schools, mental health facilities and practitioners to food shelves. Churches to service organizations, welcome centers to grocery stores, etc. I would ask the group to begin to visit or contact these resources; to understand how they function, what we can do if we need to refer someone to them, what kind of supports they need from the community, and other questions that occur to us. I have a hunch that it’s in a list of resources like this that we’ll find God at work. Making connections to these resources will give us a real keen understanding for the needs of the world around us.