Suscipe/Receive Monday of Holy Week 2022

Prayer of St Ignatius

RECEIVE

You have given all to me 

To you, Lord, I return it

Everything is yours

Do with it what you will

Give me only your love and your grace

That is enough for me

What Lingers in our Wake?*

5th Sunday of Lent  (Year C, RCL)

John 12:1-8

The Anointing at Bethany 

I’m curious

What do you think the other dinner party guests were talking about as they walked home from that dinner party?

 

This is an extremely sensual…maybe even disturbing, episode 

In the context of John’s unfolding narrative 

this episode offers us an almost impossible depth of richness

 

We have a bit of a problem from the get-go 

Because we have been reading from the Gospel of Luke

We have talked about Lucan themes and the Lucan Jesus

And PLOP

The lectionary switches to the Gospel of John!

 

So we need to take a look at where we are

We need to put on our John glasses

Today’s scene follows directly after the Raising of Lazarus story

It might even be considered a continuation of that story 

…the stories are meant to go together…they need each other

 

The Lazarus story begins by foreshadowing what Mary will do:

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, 
the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 
Mary WAS the one who anointed the Lord with perfume 
and wiped his feet with her hair”

 

So the narrator is identifying Mary by what she hasn’t yet done!

That’s a clue that it is really important…it is DEFINING

 

When Jesus went to Lazarus’s tomb and said “take away the stone”

Martha warns: “But Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days!”

 

Looking at the two episodes together

I am struck today by contrasts 

 

Let’s start with Mary and Judas

For Mary, the monetary analysis of her sacrifice never entered her thoughts

For Judas, everything is weighed and calculated…measurability is key

For Mary, extravagance and exuberance erupt naturally in the presence of Jesus

She only has eyes for him…

she is not navigating the concerns of others in the room…

she is utterly free and unencumbered…sitting at the feet of Jesus

 

Judas is attempting to manipulate the scene

He points a deriding finger at her…look at her…what a waste!

Who could ever condone such behavior!

Judas is corrupt…His motivations are corrosive. 

There is nothing likeable about Judas in John’s gospel.

The common purse is for the needs of the poor

He manages the common purse

He is a thief

Mary’s extravagance could have lined his own pocket

 

Mary does NOW what Jesus will ask his disciples to do in the next chapter

He will wash their feet

And instruct them “Do this in memory of me”

Mary becomes a model disciple NOW…intuitively and without instruction!

 

Judas corrupts discipleship…

Mary gets discipleship…

 

 

Then there is Life and Death

Lazarus is dead…and is resuscitated 

He is alive and continues to be present in the story

For John this is what propels the political and religious forces to coalesce against him

 

Mary’s anointing is in anticipation of Jesus’ death

She senses deeply the mission of Jesus and she responds in the moment

Without reserve

With abandon

She won’t get another chance

 

And then there is the assault on the senses

Aroma versus Stench

The aroma of Mary’s ointment counters the stench of Lazarus’ tomb…

the stench of death

 

This detail in the story seeped into my imagination

And it demanded my attention!

 

I googled “why are smells so evocative?”

The olfactory bulb sends its information directly to the amygdala – the memory bank for emotional experience.  There is no extra processing en-route, as there is for our other senses, so smell memories link to emotional memories in a raw state.

 

I sent out this prompt to 10-15 friends

Describe a smell that floods your mind with an arresting memory—person place or event:

 

There was a bit of overlap…but here are a few of the responses:

My mother’s perfume---Estee Lauder

My father’s pipe tobacco…it signaled: I’M HOME!

The Peonies that lined the driveway of my family home

The aroma of my mother frying chicken

The smell of coffee being ground…I remember my mother taking me the grocery when I was four or five and her getting a bag of freshly ground coffee

Perfume of a girl I made out with in High School…don’t use my name;)

The smell of lily of the Valley…the crisp fresh jasmine-like scent of a small bouquet I picked on the way to school to give to my favorite teacher Sr. Michelle…I was in the 1^st grade

 

But one shared memory really helped me understand this gospel story in a fresh way.

 

My friend, Mary…of course it was a Mary…

Responded:

Lilac bushes lined one side and the back edge of our backyard where I grew up. Each Spring, when the lilacs bloomed, my Mother would send us kids out to make cuttings so that she could make bouquets for every room in the house. The bouquets were replenished for as long as the bushes provided. The fragrance filled the house!  Lilacs = Spring = Mom. When I was first married and we bought our first house, I brought transplants from my parents' yard to plant in my first home. I just couldn’t imagine spring without Lilacs to cut…without that fragrance in my home! 

 

I began to wonder about Jesus’ Mary 

About her rich and fragrant ointment

Mary is rubbing this on Jesus’ feet

She used enough for it to fill the house

And she takes her hair and wipes at the excess

Her hair is saturated 

 

Perhaps Jesus’ Mary… 

     Like my friend Mary and her essential Lilacs

Perhaps Jesus’ Mary

Wants to take the aroma of Jesus

The scent of Love with her

 

She saturates her hair

She wants a remnant of his presence

Something to carry with her

 

And perhaps Jesus takes her---

Her scent of devotion and love 

With him to his Passion

 

It is a scent of love

And Love always goes both ways

Giving and receiving 

LOVE always in relationship

 

 

This is rich imagery

But it’s true isn’t it?

Love does have a scent

 

Fear and corruption do too…

There are giveaways in our language:

We say that something “smells fishy”

Or from Shakespeare “There is something rotten in Denmark”

Or when some person or event “leaves a bad taste in our mouth”

 

 

On this fifth Sunday of Lent

As we prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week

I feel drawn to investigate the smell of my life

What is my life’s ratio of aroma to stench?

What lingers in the wake of my encounters with people and places and events?

 

If I can see corrosiveness trailing in my wake

Am I keen enough…honest enough… to investigate?

Does my Judas-like outrage against …just against

Overpower

My Mary-Like freely-spent…devotion and love?

 

What lingers after I pass by?

 

 

When I was working in the hospital…during my chaplain days

I was often with dying patients

And its true…death definitely has a stench

And it doesn’t magically go away

 

But the nurses taught me about an ointment that you could put 

Under your nose…above your upper lip

It doesn’t make the smell go away 

It just deals with it

 

We Christians don’t deny death

Holy week will take us through the cross to Easter

Not around it

Or under it or over it

Through it

 

 

 

Of the 10-15 people I polled

And I used the word smell deliberately

so that it could refer to the

pleasant as well as the unpleasant

All the responses were sweet memories 

even if tinged with loss and longing

 

John’s gospel is keen on abundance…a major theme starting with all that WINE (chapter 2)

Abundance

Be assured

there is plenty of fragrant love on offer

 

 

 

It seems to me that our discipleship challenge is to gather it up

The loving and being loved

Gather it up

Grace upon grace

…enough to saturate our hair…

 

What do we give off as we encounter people, places, and events?

Is it a love that lingers?

A love that leaves a scent?

Is it a love with a measure of momentum?

 

So that 

beyond us…it will take on ever new life?

 

LET IT BE SO!

 

On Craddock

Craddock’s point was that preaching should focus not on preacher, text, or sermon, but on the listener and on “gaining a hearing” for the gospel in a culture that thought it already knew what the gospel was about. He argued that the way to gain a hearing for the gospel is by communicating indirectly. The “something lacking” in a Christian land is “something one person cannot communicate directly to another.” Preachers were invited to shift from trying to prove a point to putting the listener in a dynamic conversation with the text. There was room for the preacher to ask questions—and room for the listener to draw his or her own conclusions.

From: 

"The people’s preaching class: Fred Craddock in retirement"            By William Brosend