Fifth Sunday of Lent – April 6, 2025

The Rev. Nat Johnson

Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21 | Philippians 3:4b-14 | John 12:1-8 | Psalm 126

We meet Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in the chapter before our gospel reading from John picks up today. They were beloved friends of Jesus. John tells us that Lazarus became severely ill and that his sisters had sent word to Jesus, telling him of Lazarus’ condition. Instead of rushing to Lazarus’ sickbed, we’re told that Jesus sees in these circumstances an opportunity to reveal the glory and power of God. He told his disciples they would wait. By the time Jesus responded, he reached Bethany a whole four days after Lazarus had died and been buried. Gathered in grief with the village mourners, Martha was informed that Jesus had arrived. She rushed out to greet him and hurled the accusation, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” A little later, Mary did the same. Jesus reminded Martha that he is the resurrection and the life – that those who believe in him, though they die, will live; and that everyone who lives and believes in him would never die. “Do you believe this?” he asked Martha.

At this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus has demonstrated the power of God in healings, in liberating people from demonic power, in restoring outcasts to the community, in feeding the multitude of people who had come to list to him and to follow him. But death was not something that Jesus had faced yet. And, surely in the minds of those who mourned with Mary and Martha, the finality of death had no room for the power of God.

When Jesus was confronted by the grieving crowd, he experienced the same agony of loss, wept alongside Lazarus’ loved ones, and then demanded to be taken to the place where Lazarus was buried. He demanded the stone covering the tomb be removed. Martha protested, claiming the stench of death would be too great. But Jesus was unperturbed and again insisted the stone be removed. He prayed aloud and then, in a booming voice, commanded “Lazarus, come out!” And, after a stumbling Lazarus came out of the tomb, Jesus told the gathered crowd to remove the burial clothes and give him something to eat.

It was shortly after this that Mary and Martha hosted a meal for Jesus. The occasion was celebratory – the brother they had lost had been returned to them! And yet, the smell of death still lingered in the home: Lazarus was newly raised from the dead, and Jesus knew that his time was drawing near, that his own impending death was inching closer and closer. The height of joy in this moment was tempered by a solemnity that seemed to weigh heavily on their minds, for the life given to Lazarus would result in Jesus’ death. Here, for John, is the epitome of the cost of abundant life that Jesus offers.

Unlike his treatment of Judas, John gives us no insight into Mary’s reason for doing what she did. Instead, we are left only with the ritual, with the embodied “words” of Mary’s action:

a costly jar of ointment, typically used for preparing bodies for burial, broken open, poured onto Jesus’ feet, anointing him for the final part of his journey toward Jerusalem, toward his own impending death. She used her body to demonstrate her belief in the One who is the resurrection and the life. She knelt in front of him, wiped up the oil she poured out with her hair. During this intimate and wordless exchange between Mary and Jesus, the powerful fragrance of the nard fills the house. For this moment, this fleeting moment, the stench of death was covered up, overpowered by the musk of myrrh.

The extravagance of this ritual, of this wordless gesture, was too much for Judas. He did not understand what she was doing and in indignation he accused her of mismanaging resources. John would have us believe that Judas’ motive was greed and that he had a practice of embezzling funds from the common purse. “Why wasn’t that costly perfume sold and the money given to the poor?”

I suspect that many of us can relate to Judas’ protest. Why spend so frivolously when the poor are in such need? Perhaps our ability to relate to this is the result of the misuse of the passage throughout Church history to justify the neglect of the poor. For some, Jesus’ rebuke of Judas indicates that our primary focus ought to be on the worship and adoration of Jesus, not on social programs intended to alleviate the devastation of poverty. But there is something deeper in Jesus’ rebuke that we must tend to, something that exposes the dichotomy of an “either/or” as a lie. Jesus’ rebuke draws on a mandate from Torah found in Deuteronomy: “The poor will always be with you; therefore, I command you to open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.” It is simply taken for granted that this would be the posture of all who follow Jesus. Mary’s act does not negate this. Mary’s act is not in competition with caring for the poor among us.

But the reverse is true also: we are called to love Christ extravagantly. We are called to remember that our extravagant love for Christ will be manifest in our extravagant love for the most vulnerable in our midst. What Mary demonstrates for us in this story is that our love for neighbor is not some theoretical love, it is not simply an intellectual disposition – our love is meant to be embodied, it is meant to be costly, it is meant to be extravagant. Love is not a mental or even emotional exercise – love is an action, a ritual we perform in each of our encounters with one another, with the poor and the marginalized, with the outcast and the oppressed. Love is offered with total abandon, with extravagant gestures and humble intimacy. Love requires us see Jesus in the face of the other and refuse to settle for the comfort of pragmatism.

Jesus understood the cost of what he was about to do. He knew the death sentence that hung over his head. And of all of his disciples in John’s gospel, Mary seems to be the only one who also gets it. She has heard Jesus’ prediction of death. She knew her time with him was short, that the sign of God’s power and glory revealed in her brother’s resurrection was also a sign of Jesus’ own impending end. But in this moment, sitting at table with him for a final meal, Mary is overcome with holy and extravagant devotion.

Friends, we know how the story goes. We know what happens next. But the story we heard this morning is an invitation to not settle in the familiarity of the narrative. As we look toward Holy Week, Mary invites us to examine our own hearts, to consider what it means to give our whole selves – our bodies and our minds and our hearts – to follow Jesus. Mary invites us to consider what extravagant love looks like, smells like, feels like. Yes, Easter is coming. We know that. But first we must journey through the pain and agony of Jesus’ passion to the hollow absence felt in the shadow of the cross. Let us anticipate this as Mary did – but let us also love as she did: with reckless abandon. We may not have Jesus with us in the same way that Mary did, but Jesus sits next to us now, walks beside us on the street, begs pocket change from us on the corner. Let us love wildly and boldly, with our whole selves, without thought to cost or reputation. Because in this act of love, we reveal the extravagant love of God in Christ for the world.