She Believed Him First

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[0:00] and now we go to the sermon, and I forgot to give us our greetings, so I'm going to do that real quick. The greetings in the chat log is one from Ellen and one from me, both saying good morning, so that's the greetings, and I think we're moving a little bit more and more to people just being here, and so it's going to get a little harder to have everyone greeted. Well, let's go now to our sermon text. It's John chapter 12, verses 1 through 8. Is it hiding there? Okay, there we go. Good. And a few words of introduction before we begin. We're in Lent. Next week is Palm Sunday, so it's a beautiful time of the year. It's a time of reflection, a time of turning towards God, a time of contemplation of the cross. So the cross is looming over Lent the whole time because we're headed toward the cross. Much like Jesus is headed to the cross in the Gospels, he sets his face towards it, and he's always moving towards it. But when he's moving towards the cross, he's always moving towards the cross. So we're going to look at some things. cross, we understand he's moving towards his own death, and that weighs heavily on him. So today we have a well-known story of how Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anoints Jesus' feet with

[1:10] perfume. And there's parallels between this passage and two other gospels. There's two other gospels that have a parallel passage to this, not identical, but parallel, where we hear of this anointing of Jesus' feet. Now one note that we want to use, or just get you up to speed on before we start, is there's a term used in here for currency in our text, which is a denarius. That's a Greek coin, and it was a common day's wages for a laborer. So at the end of the day, they would just get this tiny coin. And if we assume, if you want to sort of modernize it, assume a laborer in our town makes 400 a day, which is like $50 an hour, which I don't know if that's right or not, but let's just say it is. That's just an estimate. And if this perfume is worth 300, of these denarii, that's the plural, so then we could assume that in our time, this bottle of perfume that gets used up in just a moment, cost $120,000 in kind of our money. And we're like, wow, okay, that's a lot. So of course you have to take away income tax, FICA, Medicare, workman's comp, 401k, and then, you know, it's not a whole lot, but it's something, it's something. I know how y'all feel it. So, but still, it's a lot of money. The other is that this encounter does take

[2:27] away income tax, FICA, Medicare, workman's comp, 401k, and then, you know, it's not a whole lot, but it's you only have less than a few weeks to live. How do you act? Right? What are your conversations like? Who else is attuned to you and what are you going through? Right? And in the middle of that we have this very lavish gesture, a large sum of money spent on a bottle of perfume that is used completely in just a few moments. Right? So how does that work into the emotional atmosphere of what's going on? So today we're going to be looking sort of at the emotional atmosphere of this event, but also the cultural aspect of this event. And it's quite interesting. So let's read and think about these things. Let's go to our reading now. John chapter 12, verse 1. Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary, took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, the one who was about to betray him, said, why was this perfume

[4:12] not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor? He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse and used it to buy what was put into it. Jesus said, 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. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name. Amen. So I want to spend a little time understanding more about Mary. I want to spend a little time understanding more about Mary. I want to remember her. I want to remember her. I want to remember her. I want to remember talk. That was the man's job in that situation during a mealtime, was to be present and to be listening and to be engaged in intellectual pursuits. And for women, it was to bring the men all the things they needed so that that went smoothly. So Martha's angry because her sister is not fulfilling a really important cultural role in that society.

[5:46] And so, but Jesus tells us that it is Mary in that moment who has made the better choice. That's what he says. She has chosen the better thing, and it will not be taken away from her. And so from our reading today, somewhat of a parable, a parallel, I'm sorry, not a parallel, a parable, not a parable, but a parallel, that Mary makes this bold choice and her choice is questioned. And again, Jesus says, I'm not going to be the one to choose. I'm going to be the one to choose. And so this states that she chose well. So it's almost like a parallel, right? In the first time that Jesus is at her house, she does something counter-cultural and somebody questions it. Martha says, tell my sister to come help me. And Jesus says, no, she's doing the right thing. Here in this house, she's doing something counter-cultural. We'll talk about that in a second. And somebody questions that. And Jesus says, no, this is the right thing. So Mary is always coming out like doing the right thing in everything that she does, which is great.

[6:40] So we have to ask ourselves, what social station is Mary in? And we have to ask ourselves, what social station is Mary in? And we have to ask ourselves, what social station is Mary in? And now we're not told directly because we don't get a history of Mary. We don't get her biography, but indirectly, there's a lot of things that we can learn about her. There's a good bet that she's not a married person, right? She lives with her siblings and under the protection of her brother, right? She's in Mary, Mary and Martha and Lazarus all live together in the same house. Okay. And that would not be normal for a married person. They would live in their own house with their husband. Now, Now, when Lazarus dies in the previous chapter, he dies, this is just after that miracle where Jesus raises him from the dead. This was a great blow to Mary and Martha to have two sisters without a male guardian living and protecting them. And so in that society, being left without a male sort of protector could make things really difficult for them. And so they were both sad, they were upset that their brother had died, but I think they were also upset because it had huge consequences for them. There's some danger ahead without their brother being alive.

[7:47] Now, one question you may ask is, had Mary maybe previously been someone's wife, right? Is it possible that she's a widow and she had to move back in with her brother when her husband died? And there's two things that would maybe push against that. This is how we kind of sort of piece things together, knowing the culture of the time and the clues that the text gives us. First, there's no mention of any children. If she had been married before, she might have children, but they're not mentioned anywhere. And the other is this bottle of perfume, which she bought with a huge sum of money.

[8:21] And that's a clue that she may not have even been engaged yet, because it's possible that because of this great value that she has, 300, a year's worth of wages, that that was her dowry. That was something somebody needed to bring into a marriage, something of value that a bride brings into the marriage. And so it's possible that she had been saving this money for the day when she was engaged and married. But instead, as we'll see, she spends it in a moment. In a moment. And so she, in essence, sacrificing what could have been this future that had been planned out for her. So we'll talk about that in a second, too. So we think that Mary was unmarried, and we think that she lives with her brother and her sister.

[9:09] So now let's... Let's look at our story in a little bit more detail. Jesus comes to their home with the disciples. At least Judas Iscariot was there, but if he was there, I think the other 11 were there, too. So it could have been a large group of people. Lazarus was out there, if you count Jesus, that's 14 people. And the way a meal like that was, it was actually at a very low table, like maybe just this high. And there would be pillows arranged all around it. And people wouldn't sit at it like you would sit on a chair, like the chair over there, but they would sit on a chair, and they would sit on a chair, and they would sit on a chair, and they would recline on a pillow like this, and they would eat. Actually, they would do it like this, because they would never eat with their left hand. They would sit this way, and they would take food from the table, and they would sort of talk to each other across the table. And so they were reclining this way, but it also meant that their feet were sort of draped out on the floor in sort of a, like spokes on a wheel sticking out from the middle of the table. So they'd have to be a pretty big room, too. That's how often how feasts took place, how meals would take place. And then

[10:08] where you were in that room, you would sit on a chair, and they would sit on a chair, and they would circle kind of had some meaning, too. Were you close to the host? Were you close to the guest of honor? Were you furthest away? And of course, people kept track of those things, too. So it would be unusual for a woman to enter this space, right, except for the tasks of hospitality, to bring something in, to take in a full dish, and to take out an empty dish, to refill some drinks, things like that. But we know that Mary is already able, to pass these barriers. She had, in the previous, you know, story about her, she had gone, instead of doing hospitality, she'd gone right to Jesus and just listened to him teach. And her sister was upset about it, because she was breaking cultural norms. So Mary takes her perfume, which again, might also be her dowry, and she pours it over Jesus' feet and wipes them with her hair.

[11:04] And it would have been, of course, easy to get at his feet, because they'd be pointing away from the table. And I want you to notice, how in some ways, this resembles, and this is the thing about the Gospel of John, you have these kind of, these stories that have echoes of stories. And so this also echoes the story of something that happens not much later than this, six days later, when Jesus washes all of his disciples' feet. So here's Mary washing Jesus' feet, and then later Jesus washes all of his disciples' feet. And it's a sign of servanthood. It's a breaking of cultural norms, especially for Jesus, for the teacher to wash the feet of the students. That gets the order upside down, but God is always getting the order upside down. In this case, though, it would be against cultural norms for a woman to touch a man that she's not related to in a public place. That was very much frowned upon, right? For her to touch his feet with her hair. This would have set off a lot of alarm bells in this room, right? So we think of this story, and really, you think of the story, oh, how beautiful. She's washing his feet. She's washing his feet with perfume. She's wiping it with her hair. This is this beautiful moment.

[12:14] Now, maybe, yes, it is. But to everyone else seated around there, they were like, this is very uncomfortable to us. There are all sorts of social norms being broken here. One is, what is she doing here? She should just be refilling drinks. What is she doing here? The other is, why is she touching him? Like, you don't do that. An unmarried woman touching this other man in front of all of us. This is like, so Jesus is never really afraid of her. He's never afraid of the scandal. Because this is a pure moment. It doesn't make him impure if a pure thing happens, right? But it is against culture. It's way against culture. And people are like, what? This is not good. What's going on? This is really uncomfortable.

[12:56] And it's just like when Jesus washed his disciples' feet. They got really uncomfortable, particularly Peter. He says, you will never wash my feet. You can't do this. This is all upside down. I don't like this upside down stuff. You can't do it. And Jesus says, unless you allow me to wash your feet, you will have no share in what I'm about to do. And then Peter relents. So that palpable discomfort in the room comes out. But in this case, it's Judas who objects. Judas is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not do this. This is very, oh, I don't like this, you know. Evidently, he has an eye for money. He knows what it costs. He's the one that says it's worth 300 days wages. He's the one that makes the case for how much it costs. And maybe in his mind, he said, it would have been better just to give Jesus this jar of perfume and not make this public scene. Maybe Judas could sell it later and put some money in the common purse, maybe keep some for himself. Because there's an implication, a parenthetical implication in the text that Judas is not even honest with all the money. And then it makes sense that he would betray Jesus for money. And that's kind of all sort of fits together. So again, just like he did with Martha, we have Jesus telling people that Mary has made the best

[14:18] choice in the moment, even though I think Jesus is well aware. Yes, this is countercultural. Yes, this is unexpected. Yes, this makes you all very uncomfortable. But this is the right thing to do in this moment. And that's kind of where we're going to be going with this is that she knows the right thing to do in the moment. Jesus knows the right thing to do in the moment. That should happen in this moment. And they're the only two. Everybody else is uncomfortable about it. So he's not upending the entire social order, but there are certain times it's important to break that order because an opportunity presents itself, an opportunity to learn, as Mary had before, or an opportunity this day for something else, which is to really enter into the emotional moment of what's going on. So Jesus is telling us now, now going to tell us what's really happening here. He says, she's doing this. This is great. She's doing this because she knows that I'm going to die. She bought this stuff so that she could anoint my body at its burial. Now, luckily, luckily or unluckily, she gets a chance to do it seven days early. So she doesn't have to. He's there. She was saving this for the day of his burial because she knew he was going to die. And she had spent a long time. She had spent a long

[15:40] her dowry, we think, on this perfume so she could anoint him, right? And this is the other great thing about Mary. Do you see how Mary's always doing the right thing? She's breaking culture at the right time for the right reasons. She is generous with what she has, and she knows that Jesus is going to die. And this is the really great thing, is Jesus had told his disciples, like three times over many months, the Son of Man is going to be handed over to evil men, they're going to crucify him, he's going to die. And every time the disciples said either, oh, that probably won't happen, or let's try to talk you out of it, or they forgot, like they actually forgot that he had said that, right? So they didn't believe him, or they didn't remember, or they tried to talk him out of it. But only Mary, so far, as far as we can tell, only Mary heard it, remembered it, and accepted it. And then acted on it. Do you get that? So here we, in essence, this is really subversive. This text is very subversive, because in essence, it's elevating Mary over every other disciple in that room, including Peter, including James, including, you know, all the bigwigs, right? And this is, why is it counter-cultural? Because she's a woman, right? Jesus, if you read the

[17:03] Bible, you'll find that it's so forward-looking in all these really important ways, and it really, it puts Mary in a really good light compared to all the other people, even in that room, and her sister sometimes, right? So for that alone, she deserves a good name in history. And if you look at one of the parallel passages, Jesus says, this thing that she's doing, it will be remembered for the rest of time, right? He says this.

[17:34] This is the first follower of Jesus who actually believed him, at least about his own death, right? And I want you to also remember that Jesus is in an emotionally painful place, right? He knows his days are numbered. Each one is more precious than the last, and at the same time, he is always emotionally present for other people. He doesn't shut down. He engages with everyone he meets, even lets himself be interrupted. If you read the story of Zacchaeus, Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. He's headed out of town of Jericho, but he sees Zacchaeus and decides to go to Jerusalem. He's headed out of town of Jerusalem, but he sees Zacchaeus and decides to stop and spend the night there instead. So he is available even as he's walking towards the cross. So that's Jesus, the true human, who has all these feelings, but he doesn't shut down. He's still open to interactions with other people. And Mary, in this moment, she also sees this moment as a special once-in-a-lifetime event. And she knows that he needs comforting. She knows that he's going to the cross because she understands this, right? And so she knows that he won't be with us much longer. He's going to be with us for a long time. And she knows that he's going to be

[18:40] with us for a long time. And she knows that he's going to be with us for a long time. And she knows he's here in the house. I'd save this perfume for his burial, but I'm just going to crack it open right now, this spontaneousness. Do you catch that? Jesus said she had bought it for his burial a week from now. But in that moment, she broke it open and spent it all in one second and poured it on his feet. She was truly entering the moment that presented itself. And again, Jesus says she did the right thing. She was in tune with the moment. She was ministering to Jesus in advance. And I kind of think, and it doesn't say this anywhere, that this next week, which was full of conflict for Jesus, full of people trying to kill him, and then full of people actually torturing and killing him, that the memory of this moment must have sustained him emotionally as he went through all of that. That there was at least one person who believed him, who didn't run away, like the men, and who had done this beautiful thing and anointed him with the power of God. And that person had been in the midst of all of that. And that person had been in the midst of all of that. And that person had been in the midst of all of that. And that person had been in the midst of all of that.

[19:42] So she's living in the moment, and she meets the emotional needs of Jesus with this reckless act of lavish service to him. She becomes a servant. And she may be sacrificing her own future to do it, if this is indeed her dowry. We don't know that, but it may be. And it may mean finding a good husband from a good family will be much harder to do without this wealth that she had stored up, right?

[20:08] So Jesus tells them, this will be remembered forever, not in this passage, but in a parallel passage. And it should be. There's this Jewish midrash, which is a teaching, which is so close to this. It's very interesting. There's a Jewish teaching. It goes like this. Good anointing oil goes from the inner chamber right into the dining hall, because you can smell sort of this good, the smell of the good anointing oil. But a good name goes from the one end of the world to the other. Mary has developed a good name. Mary has developed a good name for herself, and it will not be taken from her. It will not be forgotten. So this is Mary. I mean, really, this story is a little bit more about Mary than it is about Jesus. Do you see that? Somebody who enters the moment at the right time, somebody who's emotionally attuned to what's happening, somebody who breaks culture when it was right to break culture, because this was the moment to minister to Jesus. This was the moment to hear Jesus teach, okay? So you're probably thinking, well, what is all this? What does this mean for us today? And you've probably already connected the dots, but I'm going to try to connect them for us all again anyways. What does this all mean for us today?

[21:17] Well, for one thing, as Jesus says, we should keep telling this story about Mary. Her name needs to keep going from one end of the earth to the other. We have to keep telling this story, because she believed Jesus. She entered the moment and met him in his need, because she saw the right time to break with culture, because something more important presented itself in that moment. And because serving Jesus is more important than her future. Can we orient our own mind to this? Is there something that you're holding on to? It could be wealth. It could be something else that you think you need for later, but there might be a time to sacrifice it in a moment, in the right moment. Sacrifice this part of your future out of devotion and servanthood to Jesus.

[22:04] So I think we need to contemplate how to be more like this, right? Not just to be more like Jesus, but especially, I think, in Lent. This is a Lent text. Are we emotionally available to the world around us and the moments that God presents us with? Are we? Or have we shut down? I'll be honest, it's easy to shut down. When I watch the news, I shut down emotionally. I try to find things to distract myself with, and Adele gave me the advice that I probably should stop watching the news too much, and that's what I have tried doing. I've given myself moments of time where I won't look at the news, because it's... I can't change the news, but I can't change the news. I can't change the news by reading the news, but I want to stay in touch with the news, but I can't watch it non-stop either, because then I just shut down emotionally. So how can we live as emotionally available people to the people around us and to the world around us and to the moments that we'll present ourselves? How can we live like that? That's a challenge. Can we live with the discomfort of going against culture when the right opportunity comes? Can we live with discomfort at seeing culture get broken around us? That's tough, right?

[23:08] Are we focused on the death of Christ? Can we hold the tension of the good news of his sacrifice for us, and at the same time, the understanding that it is our sin that is sending him to the cross, right? Can we hold that? Can we really say the first line of the hymn, amazing grace, how sweet the sound, what? That saved a wretch like me. It is amazing grace, but it's for a wretch like me, right? Jesus is going to the cross. Yes, great things come from that. But can we live in the emotional rawness and the emotional pain that it's us that send Jesus to the cross with our very own sins? We could spend a lifetime working on these things. I mean, what I've suggested that we could do to be like this, there are very few mature disciples who can actually do this. This is a lifetime of work, getting to the emotional space where you can do all of these things. Praise God for Mary. I'm not there. I am not there. I need to work on my emotional openness to the world around me. I need to work on being able to be comfortable when culture is broken for the right moment, the moment to serve Jesus, right? I need to work on living both in the joy of my salvation and the reality that my sin sends Jesus to the cross. These are all tensions that I need to live in, and I want to get better at them every

[24:32] day, and we all need to get better at these things every day. So we could spend a lifetime working on these things, but it's difficult even for the most mature believer. When Jesus praises Mary for it, he is saying to us too, this is the better choice. This is the way. This is the life I call you into. So I'm going to ask you maybe in the rest of Lent and in beyond, work on these things. Being emotionally available to the world around you. Finding the opportunity to serve Jesus. So if you're having some difficulty with your life, if you're having some difficulty with your life, serve Jesus and more. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. There's so much in here, just eight short verses, so much information, so much guidance. Father, we thank you for the example of Mary, the sister of Lazarus. We thank you for this encounter. Father, help us to live into these things. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.