John 12.1-11

The Extravagance of Love

Lent 5 March 25, 2007

Performance art is usually odd and abrasive. Ideas that can’t be contained or expressed on canvas, but only performed; some would rather drop the designation art and simply call it performance or even protest. The person stands on a busy street corner and suddenly falls across the sidewalk, with a blood like substance all over her chest, blocking the path of those trying to get to work. The whole display is meant to express more graphically than Goya’s famous war paintings, the horror of violence and the absurdity of doing business as usual. Is this Art or protest, or both? A group of three occupy a park bench, eyes blindfolded, feet chained, mouths covered. Human rights denied reads the blood stained sign at their feet. Is this Art or protest or both?

What these kinds of displays do is bring to our attention something that is danger of being forgotten or not taken seriously enough, at the least in the opinion of the ones doing the display. Whether it is art or not, others can decide; but it does get our attention and may even cause some folks to think again.

What happened at the dinner party in Bethany had the same effect as the most odd, abrasive performance artists. Mary pushed aside the plates, moved the chairs away and with tender hands massaged Jesus’ feet with the most expensive perfume available. Knowing that Jesus was moving steadily toward his own death, she took the risks of love to anoint him for his burial, an anointing proper to the Jewish rite. With the same tender affection she dried his feet with her hair. Can you imagine a more shocking display of affection and honor than this one by Mary? It was not a calculated performance, but instead a spontaneous display of love for Jesus and a willingness to show that love in the most extravagant way possible. Yet, like performance art, not everyone understood what she was doing and why. Jesus did and said so; Judas didn’t and neither did the disciples. Their complaint has echoed down through the ages even to this day.

Judas gets the bad rap for the all the others who think the same thing. Enough of these costly expenses give it to the poor. He could quote the prophet Amos, “let justice roll down like mighty waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Or Isaiah, “share you bread with the hungry and bring the homeless into your homes. Cover the naked and open your lives to the afflicted.” Perhaps he did, or maybe as John suggests, this was all a smokescreen to cover over his own deception. Maybe he didn’t truly care about the poor anymore than he now truly cared about Jesus. Judas is the fall guy, the one who provides a window into the heart of one who gradually falls away from Jesus. In this sense, we do well to listen carefully to Judas before we banish him with a haughty eye. He is the one who continues to talk a good line religiously and put up a good defense, all the while his heart is falling away from the most essential thing which is love for Jesus, that will stay to the end, an end that includes a horrifying death. Neither Judas nor any of the disciples stayed by Jesus side in the end. They all betrayed him. Mary, who shocked them all with her extravagant love, was there in the end.

For now, Judas protests: give it to the poor, but Jesus, the One who came preaching Good News to the poor rebukes him. In Matthew’s account of this event, he declares “wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will be told in memory of her.” Why remember this woman? After all, she wasted a great deal of expensive perfume simply performing a religious rite, washing his feet, anointing his body. Couldn’t she have said something instead, and saved the money? What’s so important about worship, liturgy, and devotion when the poor are crying out in misery? Jesus, said, remember her. Why?

First, we remember her because she gave extravagantly from the depths of her heart and the resources at hand. Rather than hold back, she gave the most costly gift of all, not only the perfume, but her absolute love and devotion. In this costly giving she sets for us an example. What does being a disciple of Jesus cost you? I don’t mean in the narrow sense of your pocketbooks, although for some of you that may be a beginning. I’m thinking of the more profound sense of what does it cost you and me to be a lover of Jesus, in this world still racked by war, broken by divisions, filled with suffering friends and neighbors? Mary’s giving was not simply about expensive perfume; it was about costly love for the one crucified for us. We remember her because her action reminds us that following Jesus is an extravagant costly act of love that will have real consequences for us in the world. What does it cost you to be a lover of Jesus? If that language is foreign to you, as I suspect it might be for some, consider the way Peter Gomes, chaplain of Harvard University, puts it, “What will you part with that you’re are not willing to share or to change? That is the very thing you must give. What extravagance will you risk to transform your life? Your lives will never be whole until you learn how to give generously. It’s not money we’re talking about here, but something more fundamental. Think about the most precious part of you, and that is what you must be prepared to lavishly give away.”

Secondly, we remember Mary’s extravagant giving because it points perfectly to the generous love of God for us and for the whole world. This was the performance art of Mary, that we would see the extravagant love of God. What if Jesus had done a cost-benefit analysis before the redemption of the world? What if the Father had calculated the cost of the new robes and the fatted calf, before embracing his weary son home for the far country? If God operates on a cost-benefit analysis, then we are lost forever. Sunk in our sin. The Good News is the extravagant love, which is at the center of Jesus death. Without this costly love, the cross becomes a meaningless, routine act of criminal execution.

Mary opened her heart to love. Then she took the risk of love. It’s the mirror of Jesus, who opened his heart to us and took the risk of giving love at the cost of his own life. No holding back.

John says that when Mary had done the scandalous, costly act of love, a fragrance filled the whole house. Think imaginatively with me for a moment. Think as performance artists. Do you think it’s possible that the costly acts of discipleship that we render are the very things that provide God’s saving fragrance to the world awash in the poisonous fumes? Every act of devotion, every expression of compassion, every gesture of merciful love, every wound mended, are these not the same as that perfume that filled the house, now filling this world? Perhaps, we remember Mary’s extravagant tenderness toward Jesus just so that we can be the broken vessels poured out upon the wounds of God’s beloved children, and by such costly caring the world will be filled with the fragrance of God’s love. Such costly love would not be an abandonment of the poor, as Judas complained, but rather the very acts that may bring good news to all. Amazing love, costly love, this is Jesus, God's beloved Son, broken and poured out for us. This is the fragrance that saves the world.

What risk will you take to open your heart to love?