What Lies Ahead

There will be water in the desert...

Lent5c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Thus says the Lord, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

As is clear from our gospel reading this morning, our Lenten season is drawing to a close. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. The gospel passage is set six days before Passover, and Jesus is in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, this unusual family of a brother and two sisters — all the more unusual because the brother had been dead, and behold, he is alive.

But before we come to this domestic scene with Jesus taking part in what begins as a simple family dinner in the home of some of his closest friends — before that our ears are tuned to expect something quite astonishing because of the other Scriptures we heard. They all relate to looking forward — so what is it we have to look forward to?

Isaiah portrays the Lord giving a direct commandment: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing!” And the new thing he describes is making a way in the wilderness, water bursting forth in the desert.

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Let me take this opportunity to tell you a bit of a personal story. I had more or less lost my faith by the time I was in high school. Don’t be too shocked — this often happens with young people; some of you may have had this experience yourselves. In my case, although I had been baptized an Episcopalian, I had been an infant at the time and was too young to remember it, and from about the age of five on I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. This was in those days before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — back when things were taught without being explained, when the worship was in Latin and we were taught to say the words but not what they meant, and the incense smelled like burning tennis shoes and it always made me sick to my stomach, already stressed because these were the days when you were required to fast from the night before. I’m afraid that the teaching — based on the principle “what we say is true because we say it” — wasn’t geared to my inquisitive and doubt-filled mind; and questions were not encouraged. So I drifted away from the church by the time I got to high school.

But a few years later, early in college, I actually picked up a Bible and read the Gospels, and realized what I had been missing. Also about that time — and I do believe this is the grace of God at work — I encountered an Englishwoman, Doreen Griffin (God rest her soul!), through my work at the local educational television station, where she was one of the people coordinating the “talent” performing in the educational TV programs they produced. Doreen was also a very active Anglican, an Episcopalian involved in her local congregation that was part of the emerging Episcopal charismatic movement — a part of the church blessed with. the visible signs of the Spirit’s presence. Now, mind, these were Episcopalians, so it didn’t mean being slain in the spirit or rolling on the floor in an ecstasy, or handling snakes. But it did mean being open to manifestations of the presence of God, evidence of the presence of God.

To make a long story short, I attended one of these charismatic meetings, and joined the circle sitting in silent prayer; and at one point I felt as if there was a strong wind blowing from the center of the circle, blowing into my face and I spoke, not really entirely sure why I did so, and I said, “There will be water in the desert.” That was it. When the prayer session ended the other members of the group told me that this was a prophecy. O.K., maybe it was; whatever it was, I have ever since found that phrase has been very close to my heart — and to which I have returned again and again in times of trial and disappointment. And here it is in our reading from Isaiah today.

It is a word of hope that does not deny the reality of trouble. There is, after all, the desert — the dry and unproductive, and dangerous and deadly environment: you might say, where I had been for those few years without God when I was between the church of my childhood and that of my early adulthood. A desert, yes, but one where there is hope — hope, that with the power of God, water will well up even in this unexpected and unpromising place, precisely where it is most needed. Water, in the desert.

Today’s psalm sums up this mixture of fear and promise, of hurt and hope. The fortunes of Zion, which had fallen very low, are restored; and those who went out weeping carrying the seed, come with joy shouldering their sheaves. I’ve spoken before about how this psalm portrays people risking planting the last of their seed in the hope that it will bring in a harvest — every farmer has to follow that advice to look forward to what is ahead, and to hope that the springs of water will come to nourish the crop. One who has no hope will never plant — but one who never plants will never reap a harvest.

Saint Paul gives this an even more personal spin; similar to the way in which I shared some of my story, Paul talks about his experiences with religion — though unlike me, who only drifted away from the church for a time in my youth, Paul in his youth actively persecuted the church in his zeal for his own religious upbringing. But since he has come to know Christ, he has tossed all of that behind him; he treats it as so much rubbish. All of his accomplishments, all the credit he scored with the leaders of his former sect, all of his learning, and even his ancestry— it has all become so much rubbish, and “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” he “presses on toward the goal of the prize of the heavenly call of God.” Paul has tasted of the water that wells up in the wilderness and he knows that nothing else will ever satisfy his thirst for God.

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So, by the time we arrive at the dinner scene in Bethany, we are prepared to see a new thing that will spring forth, to see water in the desert. And the one who sets the new thing in motion is Mary. You will remember from other incidents in this household that she was deeply devoted to Jesus and sat at his feet to listen to him while her sister Martha was busy preparing dinner. And we find her once again at the feet of her Lord, this time not sitting and listening, but anointing his feet with perfume — valued at 300 denarii as the money-minded thief Judas is very quick to calculate. Jesus is equally quick to rebuke this mercenary impulse — after all he knows this is not intended for the poor but for the protester’s purse — and this gives a hint of what this action means: that Mary has been keeping this perfume for the day of his burial.

Into the joy of this dinner held in Jesus’ honor, Mary provokes and Jesus affirms that his death and burial is only a few days away. As the hippies used to say, “Bummer.” But we would be wrong to see this as a reverse of what we’ve been talking about: water in the desert. This is not a desert coming into the water. This is not a buzz-kill, a discovery of something unpleasant floating in the punch bowl — no, this is still good news. This is water in the desert.

It’s just that the desert looks like a dinner party.

But look around that table. There is Martha, serving — is she still casting dirty looks at her sister Mary for not helping her with the work? And there is Judas, complaining out of the desert of his hard, scheming heart that his chance to make a quick buck has been spoiled. And there is Jesus, reminding them that his death is approaching, and that poverty and need will always exist. So much for the desert of want.

Then where is the water of hope?

Well, there is Lazarus — a man who was literally dead not too long before, but who is now alive, and if that doesn’t give you hope I don’t know what will. And there is Mary, willing to pour out that perfume in the hope of a better hope, like the people planting the seed knowing that the rains will come and the harvest thereafter. And of course, there is Jesus: who reminds them of his death and burial, but for we who know the other side of the story, the other side from Easter, know that he will be raised from the dead.

Jesus sets his face towards Calvary in the knowledge that his resurrection lies beyond it — over the hill — as I reminded us not long ago, no cross, no crown! The water will spring forth in the desert — but the desert is there. Resurrection will come, but not before death on the cross and burial in the tomb in the garden, where his body will be anointed again with perfume; laid to rest before he rises.

Jesus reminds us, “You always have the poor with you” — and I think it fair to understand this as meaning there will always be deserts; there will always be need, and disappointment, and loss. But through it all there will also be hope — the Lord will give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to those chosen, to the people God has formed so that they may declare the praise of the Lord, God blessèd forever, and mighty to save, who brings water in the desert, and new life from the grave.+

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Outside the Walls

So much of significance takes place outside the walls of Jerusalem, in Bethany where a woman makes an offering to be remembered 2014 a sermon for Palm Sunday 2012

SJF • Palm Sunday 2012 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

We have just heard the passion of Christ according to the evangelist Mark, as we do every three years. What is unusual about this year is the fact that this is the first time we have heard the Passion according to the new Revised Common Lectionary — the set of Scripture readings appointed for use in the Episcopal Church since the end of 2010. This is the first year we’ve been reading “Year B” as it is called.

One of the revisions that the editors of this Lectionary made, was the decision to begin the Passion with that passage about the woman who poured ointment on the head of Jesus as he sat at table in the home of Simon the leper, in Bethany. This passage of Scripture has never been included in the Sunday gospel readings of the Episcopal Church. That is all the more ironic given the fact that Jesus says that wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what that woman did for him would be told in remembrance of her.

So it is about time she was remembered, and high time the authorities who determine such things took note of this woman and what Jesus said of her. And so I am glad to have this opportunity, finally, to preach on this important text on a Sunday, and Palm Sunday at that. I’m particularly happy to do so because I believe that as with so much of Mark’s Gospel — the shortest of the four Gospels — everything in his text is significant: Mark doesn’t waste words with irrelevant details and if he tells us something, it is important to record it.

This gospel passage also formed the substance of one of the Bible studies in which I took part in South Africa last fall, and this gives me an opportunity to share something of what I learned from that wonderful experience — breaking open the words of Scripture almost like breaking open that jar of expensive ointment, in honor of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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The first thing to note about this passage is that it takes place in Bethany, a small town a Sabbath’s day journey outside the walls of Jerusalem. Remember that a Sabbath’s day journey is a very short one since you are not supposed to travel very far on the Sabbath. This little town outside of Jerusalem — what was it? The name “Bethany” is thought by some to mean “House of Figs” or “House of Dates” — like the Mount of Olives, also outside the city — that this was a place where fig trees grew, or perhaps date palms. But it is far more likely that it relates to the Aramaic word anyi, “the poor.” “Beth-anyi” “the House of the Poor.” Let’s face it, folks, this was the slums outside of Jerusalem. This is the place where the poor and the outcast lived. If you wanted an image of Bethany look at the shanty-towns in South Africa, or the slums outside of Rio, and you’ll have an idea of what Bethany was. It was a place of the poor.

The other striking detail is that this incident takes place in the home of Simon the leper. Now, we don’t know if this Simon was a leper whom Jesus had cured of his leprosy — or even that he had been cured of his leprosy at all. Cured or not, the fact that he was still known as Simon the leper lets us know something about how people regarded him, and his house. This is the home of someone doubly on the edge of society, not someone at its center — Simon is not a person of power and prestige, but someone known as a leper, and his house, “Simon the leper’s house, in Bethany, the house of the poor.” This is a man shunted off to the side, not someone at the center. Even if healed, he was a side-liner if not an outcast

So Jesus, true to his tendency to seek out the lowliest and the most despised with whom to spend his time, is sitting at table in a leper’s house, in the village of the poor. And into this already unorthodox setting there comes this woman with a jar of expensive ointment which she breaks open and pours on Jesus’s head. We are not told her name; we are not told her station in life. Because this incident is similar to accounts from the other evangelists some have suggested that as in Luke, she is a “woman of the city” — and you know what that means. Others have suggested that this might be Mary, who lived there in Bethany with her sister Martha and brother Lazarus. This could be, they think, a different version of the similar event in John’s gospel, where she is identified.

But Mark gives us none of these details, not even her name, and by choosing not to do so, he invites us to focus on the details he does provide: which is about how expensive this ointment is, and how the woman doesn’t just open the jar and pour the ointment out, but breaks the jar, which means it had to be used up then and there — there was nothing to hold it. This is extravagance, an extravagant offering, broken and poured out and completely given. And the disciples turn on her for and say she is “wasting” it. Jesus immediately places what she has done in the context of his coming passion and death, while also reminding them as the first things he says — and you can imagine again, picturing him sitting where he is sitting: in this shanty-town surrounded by poverty — and when they say, We could have sold this for the poor; he says, “The poor you have with you always” — and all he would have needed do is gesture around him, “What are you talking about, my friends? Where do you think you are now? You will have the poor with you always.”

And so he immediately shifts his attention to his coming death and passion and notes three things in quick succession:

— you will not always have me; I am going away.

— she has done what she could; she gave everything she had in that broken jar; she couldn’t save anything of it in that broken jar once it was given.

— and she has anointed me for in advance of my burial.

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But perhaps the most striking thing for me about this passage is that introductory line about where it takes place, Bethany. For the setting is Bethany is not just the poor-house outside of Jerusalem, this town of outcasts and irregular and unconventional people: Simon the leper, and the household of Lazarus, Mary and Martha; and this unnamed woman. And what struck the Bible study group I was with in South Africa was how little of real importance in the gospel takes place inside the walls of Jerusalem, in the Holy City, and how much of importance takes place outside of those city walls or even further from it — from the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem the city of David, about five miles south of Jerusalem; through his coming death on Golgotha, outside the city walls; and his burial and being raised to life again in the garden, also outside the walls; and even his ascension from Mount Olivet, also outside the city.

All of these crucial events (and I use the word “crucial” with an emphasis on the cross of which it speaks, that cross that stood “outside the city walls” on the “green hill far away”) all of these acts in the drama of salvation take place outside the city walls or even further from it. Only the Last Supper itself takes place in the city — perhaps a way to remind us that it is the priestly act of Christ, joined with his disciples as a new priestly people, in the city whose temple has become corrupted by abuse and misuse. But the acts of salvation themselves, from the incarnation through the ascension — the descent of Godhead into human flesh and the bearing up of the human nature into the transcendent realm of God — all of these things take place outside the walls of the holy city and apart from it — out there with the poor and the outcast. For the holy city has remained content in its own holiness, unwilling to be broken open like that ointment jar, to be poured out, and spent. Remember that those who seek to save their lives, lose, and those who lose their life — who spend them — for his sake, will keep them.

And so it is, is that this unnamed woman performs an emblematic act in breaking open that jar of precious ointment, not only anointing Jesus for his burial but echoing his self-giving emptying of himself for our sake and for our salvation upon the cross, that stood outside the city walls. And this is why her act is so tied up with the good news itself: why else would Jesus say that wherever the good news is proclaimed this will be told in remembrance of her? Her act is emblematic of the good news itself; it is the good news.

It is good news that God did not remain a distant and foreign, benign Creator, looking down upon the earth from a heavenly throne on an earth below; it is good news that God in Christ broke through that great gap fixed between this world and the perfect world of heaven, and entered into the fallen creation, emptying himself of all attributes of majesty, to take upon himself our human likeness, the likeness of one outcast, the likeness of one poor and humble; it is good news that he took on the form of a slave, humbling himself, and becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.

We have entered the beginning of this holy week. In a few moments at this altar, and again on Maundy Thursday we will celebrate that Memorial of his passion, which he said to do in remembrance of him, and which he committed to us in that upper room in Jerusalem. But on Good Friday we will also walk again outside those city walls, walking to the place where he was crucified. We will walk with those bearing his body to the tomb, and we will rest through that quiet Sabbath Saturday. Then on Easter... Well, you know what happens then. Let us not rush on to that; let us pause for a moment for that other remembrance: that remembrance of this woman, finally included in our Sunday readings after all these years, remembering what she did in making that offering, giving of herself as an emblem of Jesus’ own giving of him self. Let us make use, over these next days, of the breaking open of God’s word, like precious ointment, valuable not for how much it could be sold for, but for the honor that it shows to the one for whom it is given. Let us give thanks for the action of that anonymous woman, and like her offer all that we have of value to honor our Lord and our God. He will come to us, in our poverty, in our weakness, outside the walls; where we wait in expectation for the day of his coming in might and majesty, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

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