FINDINGS II
Lent
V - C - March 21, 2010
Isaiah 43: 16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John
12: 1-8
 By Harry T. Cook
3/15/10
RUBRIC
The RCL is setting us up for the onset of Passiontide and
Easter. We will be bidden by the second
Isaiah to "perceive" a new thing that Yahweh claims to be doing, something
springing forth in a wilderness, a river in a desert suggesting refreshment,
even the reinstatement of life itself. What we may be hearing is the immediate
post-exilic euphoria in which the returning remnant cites the god of its fathers
as the agent of its redemption.
Paul is telling
the Philippians that he wants "to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death ..." The
crescendo is building for both Paul and those who would hear and read his words
that were apparently dictated while he was in a venue of power, maybe Caesarea
or Ephesus (see 1: 12-26) or maybe even from his Roman imprisonment, ca. 61-63
C.E.
It is reasonable to infer from the context that Paul thought
the end was near for him and he, making the best of it, falls back on his
vision of the risen Christ about which he exulted in the 15th chapter of the
first Corinthian letter. He is warning his flock that conflict and death will,
perhaps must, come before joy.
We're in for plenty of conflict as we make the last stop at
Bethany before plunging with John's gospel on into Jerusalem.
WORKSHOP
John begins chapter 12 rather blandly, saying Jesus had come
(actually returned) to the Bethany village and home of Lazarus, which in
chapter 11 was called "the village of Mary and her sister Martha." John puts in
apposition these words about Lazarus: "whom he (Jesus) had raised from the
dead." The context of these eight brief verses is a dinner given for (probably also
"to") Jesus in the sense that it was given in his honor. Martha, of course, is
serving as we found her at Luke 10: 40-42. Mary is left to administer extreme
unction to Jesus, leaving Judas, who is a chapter and a half from here to go
out on his fateful errand, to object to the cost of the anointing agent.
Iscariot: From Issachar or Sychar? A "sikarios" (terrorist)?
A carrier of a "scortea" (the leather bag or purse mentioned in John 12:6)? Or
as Raymond Brown suggested "the ruddy-colored" or red-hair one -- based on the
Semitic root "sqr" associated with the color red?* In one of the Last Supper mosaics
in an apse of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice one can see Judas depicted
with red-hair. But in the end the appellation "Iscariot" remains somewhat of a
mystery.
Some of us who have lived with these texts forever sometimes
think Judas was an anti-Semitic invention to help move along the plot. In any
event, at issue is the "costly perfume made of pure nard" -- nard being a
fragrant oil from the root of a plant native to northern India, clearly
expensive. Mary is depicted as anointing Jesus' feet with it. This is not the first time we have
heard of such a thing. An unnamed woman is depicted as doing it at Mark 14: 3-9
and in Luke 7, a woman "who was a sinner" does it also. Here, however, in the
Johannine take on what must have been a familiar story gone the rounds, the act
is connected to the anointing for burial -- an event that is understood to be
in Jesus' near future. (Of course, the gospel writer knew the end of the story
before he crafted his version of its beginning and middle.)
One unfortunate thing about this passage is Jesus' dismissal
of Judas' concern about how the 300 denarii spent on the nard could more
intelligently be spent on the poor. John intimates that Judas is "a thief."
Jesus is made to object to Judas' feigned parsimony: "You always have the poor
with you, but you do not always have me." That implied egotism goes right along
with John's picture of Jesus saying all those "I am" things. The Jesus of
Mark's and Thomas' gospels would not have been thus quoted.
The reference to the persistent presence of the poor may be
to Deuteronomy 15:11: "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the
earth, I therefore command you to 'Open your hand to the poor and needy in your
land.'" That, of course, puts a different spin on the "poor you always have
with you" statement that has been taken out of context by plenty of "good
Christians" who have objected to the church's involvement in works of mercy,
perhaps preferring well-appointed altars and naves.
*Brown,
Raymond E., The Death of the Messiah, 1994, Doubleday (Anchor Bible Reference Library), Vol. II, p. 1416
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
The church is about to embark upon its most self-consciously
intense days. Attention must be paid, the religious authorities say, to the
liturgies of Passiontide and Easter. Such liturgies must be made as grand as
possible. Why?
One answer is that the church uses this passage of time to
recall the willing and heroic martyrdom of its legendary central figure, much
in the way that huge state funerals of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mohandas
Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. recalled the substance of their lives. Such
occasions take on a sober yet celebrative aspect of their own as a personage of
incalculable significance is mourned even as his or her contribution to the
world is lifted up for recognition and praise.
No poor person was known to have decried the solemn splendor
of Lincoln's or Gandhi's or King's funerals. Only those who perceived a
personal loss because the poor were lifted up would have dared to breathe so
much as word of criticism.
So, yes, the larger-than-life figure of Jesus -- whoever he
may have been in the imaginations of the first evangelists -- is eminently
worthy of the great liturgies of the church as long as they stress in their
splendor the ethical wisdom attributed to him, viz. turning other cheek and
loving the enemy, the embrace and cultivation of poverty for the sake of being
unencumbered in the single-minded aim of getting people to recognize that the
holiness they seek in religious observance is already within them individually
and among them collectively.
If it takes processions, litanies and much ritual business
to turn people's attention to that simple but crucial message, then by all
means fire up the thurible, lay on the incense, don the vestments, form the
procession and let organ and trumpets sound. Have the book of the gospels borne
in solemn honor. Let it be read from in authoritative tone. Let the homilist tell
what is to be found in it, to wit: The essential wisdom of those who believed
life would be better for all if individuals would treat others as they wished
to be treated themselves.
| |
