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.”
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